MESSALINA – OR: ONCE YOUR REPUTATION IS RUINED...

Abstract

This article examines the construction and persistence of Valeria Messalina’s reputation from antiquity to the present, focusing on mechanisms of sexual slander, character assassination, and narrative framing. Beginning with ancient historiography (e.g., Tacitus, Juvenal, Suetonius), the study shows how female sexuality was repeatedly mobilized to explain political dysfunction and to shift responsibility away from imperial structures. The article then traces the afterlife of these narratives in modern historiography, literature, film, comics, and digital media, demonstrating how Messalina became an enduring cultural shorthand for immoral female power. Drawing on gender-critical and receptionhistory scholarship, the paper argues that Messalina functions less as a recoverable historical individual than as a discursive figure shaped by patriarchal, moralizing, and class-based anxieties that continue to shape both scholarly and popular interpretations.