f the Latin would not admit that a man who could
govern an empire should not be able to command a woman. It soon became
the general opinion of all reasonable people that Messalina, in the
position of Livia upon the Palatine, and with so weak a husband, was
not only a scandal, but also a continual menace to the public.

[Illustration: The Emperor Claudius.]

Nevertheless, it would now have been no easy matter, even if the
emperor had wished it, to convict an empress of infidelity and
disobedience to one of the great laws of Augustus. Caligula was a
madman and had been able to secure three divorces, but a wiser emperor
would have to think for a long time before rendering public the shame
and scandals of his family, especially when confronted with an
aristocracy which was as eager to suspect and calumniate as was the
aristocracy of Rome. But the problem became hopeless as soon as the
emperor did not see or did not wish to see the faults of his wife.
Would any one dare to step forward and accuse the empress?

The situation gradually became grave and dangerous. The state,
governed with intelligence, but without energy, with vast
contradictions and hesitations, was being strengthened along certain
lines and was going to pieces along others. The power and extortions
of the freedmen were breeding discontent on every hand. Both through
what she really did, and what the populace said she had done, Messalina
was being transformed by the people into a legendary personage whose
infamous deeds aroused general indignation; but all in vain.

It now became quite evident that an empress was virtually invulnerable,
and that, once enthroned upon the Palatine, there was no effective
means of protesting against the various ways in which she could abuse
her lofty position unless the emperor wished to interfere. In its
exasperation, the public finally vented upon Claudius the anger which
the violence and misconduct of Messalina had aroused. They declared
that it was his weakness which was responsible for her conduct; and
intrigues, deeds of violence, conspiracies, and attempts at civil war
became, as Suetonius says, every-day occurrences at Rome.

A sense of insecurity and doubt was spreading throughout the state as a
result of the indecision of the emperor, and all began to ask
themselves how long a government could last which was at the mercy of a
wanton. The violent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in the
minds of the