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Page 38
In short, Claudius had been persuaded to divorce Messalina and to marry
her to Silius. The passage from Suetonius, if carefully interpreted,
clearly tells us this. What means were employed to persuade Claudius
to consent to this new marriage we do not know. Suetonius refers to
this, but he is not clear. In any case, this point is less important
than that other question: Why was Messalina, after seven years of
empire, willing to divorce Claudius and marry Silius? The problem is
not an easy one, but after long examination I have decided to accept
with slight modification the explanation given by Umberto Silvagni in
his beautiful work, "The Empire and the Women of the Caesars," a book
which contains many original ideas and much acute observation.
[Illustration: The philosopher Seneca.]
Silvagni, who is an excellent student of Roman history, has well
brought out how Silius belonged to a family of the aristocracy famous
for its devotion to the party of Germanicus and Agrippina. His father,
who had been a great friend of Germanicus, had been one of the victims
of Sejanus, and accused in the time of Tiberius under the law of high
treason, he had committed suicide. His mother, Sosia Galla, had been
condemned to exile on account of her devotion to Agrippina. Starting
out with these considerations, and examining acutely the accounts of
all the ancient historians, Silvagni concluded that behind this
marriage there lay a conspiracy to ruin Claudius and to put Caius
Silius in his place. Messalina must sooner or later have felt that the
situation was an impossible one, that Claudius was not a sufficiently
strong or energetic emperor to be able to impose the disorganized
government of himself and his freedmen upon the empire, and that any
day he might fall a prey to a plot or an assassination. What would
happen, she must have asked herself, if Claudius, like Caligula, should
some day be despatched by a conspiracy? The same fate would doubtless
be waiting for her, for, having killed him, the conspirators would
certainly murder her also. Consequently she entertained the idea of
ruining the emperor herself in order to contribute to the elevation of
his successor, and thus to preserve at his side the position which she
had occupied in the court of Claudius. But once Claudius had been
slain, there would be no other member of the family of Augustus old
enough to govern. She therefore decided to choose him in a family
famous for its devotion to Germanicus and the more popular branch of
the house, thus hoping the more easily to win over the legions and the
pretorians to the cause of the new emperor, Since the descendants of
Drusus were dead, what other option remained to her than to choose a
successor in the families of the aristocracy who had shown for them the
greatest devotion and love?
Thus, for the first time, a woman was placed at the head of a really
vast political conspiracy destined to wrest the supreme power from the
family of Augustus; and this woman proved her sagacity by knowing how
to organize this great plot so well and so opportunely that the most
intelligent and influential among the freedmen of Claudius debated for
a long time whether they would join her or throw in their lot with the
emperor. So doubtful seemed the issue of this struggle between the
weak husband and the energetic, audacious, and unscrupulous wife! They
allowed Messalina and Silius to enlist friends and partisans in every
part of Roman society, to come to an understanding with the prefect of
the guards, to obtain the divorce from Claudius, even to celebrate
their marriage, without opening the eyes of the emperor. Claudius
would probably have been destroyed if at the last moment Narcissus had
not decided to rush to the emperor, who was at Ostia, and, by
terrifying him in some unspeakable way, had not induced him to stamp
out the conspiracy with a bold and unexpected stroke. There followed
one of those periods of judicial murder which for more than thirty
years had been costing much Roman blood, and in this slaughter
Messalina, too, was overthrown.
After the discovery of the conspiracy, Claudius made a harangue to the
soldiers, in which he told them that as he had not been very successful
in his marriages he did not intend to take another wife. The proposal
was wise, but difficult of execution, for there were many reasons why
the emperor needed to have a woman at his side. We very soon find
Claudius consulting his freedmen on the choice of a new wife. There
was much discussion and uncertainty, but the choice finally fell upon
Agrippina. That choice was significant. Agrippina was the niece of
Claudius, and marriages between uncle and niece, if not exactly
prohibited, were looked upon by the Romans with a profound revulsion of
feeling. Claudius and his freedmen could not have decided to face this
repugnance except for serious and important reasons. Among these the
most serious was probably that after the experience with Messalina, it
seemed best not to go outside the family. An empress belonging to the
family would not be so likely to plot against the descendants of
Augustus as had been this strange woman, who belonged to one of those
aristocratic families who deeply hated the imperial house. Agrippina,
furthermore, was the daughter of Germanicus. This was a powerful
recommendation with the people, the pretorian cohorts, and the legions.
In addition, she was intelligent, cultured, simple, and economical; she
had grown up in the midst of political affairs, she knew how the empire
was governed, and up to this point she had lived a life above reproach.
She seemed to be the woman above all others destined to make the people
forget Messalina and to reestablish among the masses respect for the
family of Augustus, now seriously compromised by many scandals and
dissensions. Furthermore, she did not seem to suffer too much by
comparison with Livia.
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