The last empress who lasted any real length of time at the top was Livia. Masleena comes into this role in some ways with a very clean slate. She's much younger than Livia was. And so she's forced to really create the image of what it means to be empress and new in some ways. Her statues really emphasize her youth, her beauty, her fertility. We also see it in terms of the ways in which she exerts her power.
Messalina was the third wife of the Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women of the Roman world. Historians Tacitus and Suetonius wrote that the Empress Messalina was ‘a ruthless and sexually insatiable schemer.’ The stories they told about her included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress’s legacy but is her story more complex? Classicist Honor Cargill-Martin joins us to reveal the truth about arguably one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history who is the subject of her recent book, Messalina: A Story of Empire, Slander and Adultery. She describes a woman battling to assert her position in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics – and succeeding. Intelligent, passionate and ruthless when she needed to be, Cargill-Martin argues that Messalina’s story encapsulates the cut-throat political maneuvering and excessive lifestyle of the Roman elite in their heyday. Joining Cargill-Martin in conversation is Dan Jones, one of Britain's best known historians.
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