It were curious to have seen that woman as Juvenal did, a veil
over her yellow wig, hunting adventures through the streets of
Rome, while her husband in the Forum censured the dissoluteness of
citizens. And it were curious, too, to understand whether it was
her audacity or his stupidity which left him the only man in Rome
unacquainted with the prodigious multiplicity and variety of her
lovers. History has its secrets, yet, in connection with
Messalina, there is one that historians have not taken the trouble
to probe; to them she has been an imperial strumpet. Messalina was
not that. At heart she was probably no better and no worse than
any other lady of the land, but pathologically she was an
unbalanced person, who to-day would be put through a course of
treatment, instead of being put to death. When Claud at last
learned, not the truth, but that some of her lovers were
conspiring to get rid of him, he was not indignant; he was
frightened. The conspirators were promptly disposed of, Messalina
with them. Suetonius says that, a few days later, as he went in to
supper, he asked why the empress did not appear.

Apart from the neurosis from which she suffered, were it possible
to find an excuse for her conduct, the excuse would be Claud. The
purple which made Caligula mad, made him an idiot; and when in
course of time he was served with a succulent poison, there must
have been many conjectures in Rome as to what the empire would
next produce.

The empire was extremely fecund, enormously vast. About Rome
extended an immense circle of provinces and cities that were
wholly hers. Without that circle was another, the sovereignty
exercised over vassals and allies; beyond that, beyond the Rhine