Messalina

"Messalina had received from nature such a violent inclination towards debauchery that it was very difficult for her to confine herself within the legitimate boundaries of marriage, which were too narrow for a heart inflamed by a thousand vices. She was quite beautiful and had enough credit to attract lovers, and too little virtue to keep them waiting for long."

"The name of Messalina has remained the most reviled attribute of immorality and indecency, of unbridled lust and sordid prostitution. This woman, related to the progeny of the Caesars and married to an emperor, surpassed the sad fame of Augustus' two Julias and brought to the imperial palace, along with the most vile vice, the rage of blood and robbery."

"In Messalina, greed for money, ambition for power and bestial lust were combined; so that, in agreement with her freedmen, she shamelessly sold the prefectures of the armies and provinces and the highest offices of the empire, and in brothels, unbeknownst to her husband, she stimulated the most noble and beautiful of both sexes with her own lasciviousness, favouring them if they yielded, extinguishing them if they resisted: all Rome knew, except Claudius."

"Her whole life was a continuous series of faults, and she disgraced herself with the most shameful and discredited excesses. Her prostitution was of the most infamous kind, her disorderliness excessive, and her public debauchery detestable. Those that appealed to her most were bestial pleasures; the most horrible iniquities appeared to her as pleasant images; she regarded virtue with a sinister eye; and her honour was something she never gave a thought to."

"More than her beauty, she has left in history the memory of her immorality. This is so famous that her name alone, if I may say so, has become a programme in itself. It is true that her immodesty is appalling. Today's doctors would assure us that she is afflicted with the evil they call “nymphomania”, that is to say, an “exacerbation of sexual instincts”."

"When night falls, the sovereign, in disguise, goes to the infamous suburbs of Suburra. There, in the most sordid brothels, she offers herself to porters. If her august husband, Emperor Claudius, has taken it into his head to attend a torture session at the same time, the imperial palace of the Caesars will be empty: the emperor is in prison, the empress in the brothel."

"Messalina shows a greed that is matched only by her eroticism and wickedness. She obtains the death sentence for several large landowners on various pretexts, but in reality for the sole purpose of seizing their property."