When I was in high school, I took Latin. One of the discussions turned to “I, Claudius” (I think PBS was showing a rerun of it) and my Latin teacher started talking about one of the wives of one of the emperors doing something shocking and then being killed in a shocking way.
When one of my classmates asked what the shocking thing was that she had done and what the shocking way she was killed were, the teacher said that she would “get into trouble” for telling us and that we’d have to read the book (or perhaps watch the movie).
In any case, I had forgotten about that until now, twenty years later.
What emperor’s wife was killed in a shocking way for doing a shocking thing that high schoolers wouldn’t be allowed to hear?
Claudius’s wife Messalina? According to wiki she was killed, but basically I believe she conspired against him and was really promiscuous, prone to orgies, etc.
Claudius’s wife Messalina reportedly had orgies, and at one point had a bet with a prostitute about who could service more men. The prostitute gave up at 25, but Messalina kept on going. Her downfall came when she fell in love with a Roman senator named Silas. She married him in secret, making them both bigimists, and plotted to kill Claudius. One of his servants found out about it, and told Claudius, and both of them were executed.
So there’s a wife who had done something shocking, but she wasn’t killed in a shocking way.
Well, Claudius’ third wife, Messalina, was a serious whore in that series. For her conspiracies against her husband, as well as sluttiness in the first degree, she gets her head chopped off.
Was it her head getting chopped off? Wiki says something about her being stabbed, and I don’t remember how she died in the book “Claudius the God.” The sluttiness was shocking, though. (She made Julia look positively chaste!)
Hmm, I have the books so I should go and look - but I think that Nero had some women killed for promiscuity/adultery by having spears or swords thrust inside their vaginas. That would be a shocking way - though I can’t be sure that it was a wife!
It’s been a while since I read I, Claudius, a wonderful book, but I do remember the book ends with Claudius becoming emperor. So it could not have been his wife, at least not at the time he was emperor.
Could it have been a daughter? I remember reading that the/a daughter of Augustus Caesar was such a slut that she had a bed set up in a main square and took on all comers (no pun intended). She was his favorite, but her behavior was so over the top even for Rome that he was obliged to have her executed. Or so the story went.
Messalina’s fall is in the book Claudius the God, but both novels were made into the BBC miniseries I Claudius.
Julia, Augustus’ Daughter, was allegedly a slut (and was in the novels/miniseries), but Messalina was allegedly a slut of epic proportions. She was the one who was executed. (Julia was sent away)
It could also be Drusilla. She was Calligula’s sister. In the movie, when he decided he was the god Jupiter, he decided she was Juno and married and impregnated her. He then cut the baby out of her womb and ate it. That would be a shocking thing (marrying your brother), and dying in a shocking way.
Yup. She’s the one who was sent away to a deserted island as punishment. (Augustus couldn’t bear to have her killed. But he couldn’t keep her around either.)
As for being killed in a “shocking way,” perhaps your teacher was confusing Messalina with Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of Nero. Nero, weary of her overbearing interference, tried several times to kill his mother in more-or-less surreptitious ways, and she always escaped. Finally he sent his guards to kill her, and Agrippina, in protest over her thankless child, commanded them, “Thrust your swords into my womb!” (This episode does not figure in I, Claudius, which ends with Claudius’ death.)
Or perhaps she was referring to Caligula and Agrippina’s sister Drusilla. In the book the manner of her death is left a mystery, though Claudius assumes Caligula was to blame. But in the miniseries, mad Caligula, acting as an Olympian god should, incestuously impregnates her, and then fears the child will be greater than he and overthrow him as Zeus did Cronos, and Cronos Oranos. When she’s pretty far along, he heavily drugs her, ties her wrists to the ceiling with ropes, and then tells her he must cut her open and swallow the child so that a greater child may be born from his own head (confusing or conflating the birth-myths of Zeus and Athena). “There will be no pain, I promise you that! We are immortal gods!” She’s like, “Yeah, man, whatever!” Cut to POV in hallway outside royal chambers: Claudius, walking along, hears a scream. Then Caligula, with a dazed look, wanders out the door and tells Claudius, “Don’t go in there.” Claudius looks in at the door and horror appears on his face.
On preview: Captain Amazing beat me to it, but I told it better!
One thing about Messalina’s death in the mini-series was that Claudius’ advisors were worried that Claudius would pardon Messalina and she would have a chance for future plotting. So they slipped her execution order in with some other state papers and had Claudius sign it when he wasn’t paying attention. They then had her quickly executed. When Claudius asked to have his wife brought before him the next day so he could question her he was told she had been killed at his order.
