This is the story of Messalina - third wife of Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world. According to the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, the Empress Messalina was a sexually insatiable schemer. The tales they told about her - including a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute - have taken deep root in the Western imagination, but Messalina´s real story is much more complex. In her reappraisal of one of the most slandered female figures of ancient history, Honor Cargill-Martin finds an intelligent, passionate and ruthless woman who succeeded in asserting herself in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics. Rather than setting out to ´salvage´ Messalina´s reputation, she looks at her life in the context of her time. Above all, she seeks to reclaim the humanity of a life story previously circumscribed by currents of high politics and patriarchy.