When his wife sensed her husband was sleeping,
Augusta took up the nocturnal hood of a whore,
Boldly preferring a mat to her bed on the Palatine,
And left with only a young woman escorting her.
Hiding her black hair with a blond wig,
She went to the brothel smelly with old rags
And entered her empty chamber; then she sold herself
Naked, with golden nipples, imitating a She-Wolf
And displaying the womb you came, noble Britannicus.
Flattering, she received those entering and asked their money,
And lying there, absorbed all of the strokes continuously.
When the pimp dismissed all his girls,
She left sadly, and left her chamber as late as
She could, her taunt pussy still burning with lust.

Other animals have sex at certain times of the year, but humans, as it is said, for all hours of the day and night; other animals are satisfied with sex, but got men there is none. Messalina, wife of Claudius Caesar, believing this to be a royal palm, selected the most renown young woman of hired prostitutes for a contest, and defeated her after her twenty-fifth lay throughout the day and night.

These are passages from Juvenal's Satires and Pliny's Natural History about the Roman Emperor Claudius' third wife, Messalina. I think she's a good case study about what historians have to deal with. All of the ancient historians I know say she was an insatiable nymphomaniac, and she's had that reputation for millennia. But nowadays people are looking deeper at the evidence and wondering about this. Take for example her son Britannicus, whom Juvenal mentioned in his poem. If she was so well-known for fucking men, why didn't anyone at the time or later question Britannicus' legitimacy? She was executed after Claudius discovered she had a public wedding with her lover Silius, but how the hell could she have done that when everyone knew she was the wife of the emperor?

The possible answer was a massive, long-lasting smear campaign. Claudius was a capable emperor, but you get the feeling he had social ineptitude, which made him susceptible to domineering personalities, whether it be high-level officials or his wives. Many men of the day were not pleased how they, with long pedigrees of senators, were suddenly at the whim of the empress. Then were was Claudius' fourth wife, Agrippina the Younger, who Messalina's rival for the many years leading up to her death. Agrippina was just as ambitious as her predecessor, and probably did everything in her power to make herself seem saintly in comparison to garner support. Both of these parties could've written everything to destroy Messalina's reputation, and we have nothing from her supporters to counter that.

It's impossible to know for certain, but I think we all agree there's more to it than the ancient sources are telling us. Maybe she did have a guy on the side, but that came later in her marriage. Or maybe she did other unsavory things like manipulating Claudius to bestow lots of wealth, which just gave her a bad reputation overall. Or maybe she was actually a bitch and didn't do all the shit people were saying, but because of her personality everyone believed it. We don't know, but I don't think anyone is taking the story at face-value anymore because it just doesn't make any sense. There's no way she could sleep in a brothel every night without anyone knowing. There's no way for everyone to know about a contest to fuck twenty-five dudes whilst the emperor was in the dark. It just doesn't add up. But sifting through the evidence to get the truth is very difficult.

Let it be known throughout the land I am not very good at translating poetry.