Claudius
We would probably know more about Claudius’s sex life if it didn’t completely pale into insignificance when compared to that of his wife, Messalina. What the empress allegedly managed to get away with is astounding. Pliny the Elder records that she held a competition in the imperial palace with one of Rome’s most notorious prostitutes to see how many men they could sleep with. Needless to say, Messalina won the race: after non-stop intercourse day and night her final headcount was 25, her opponent’s 24. And that’s not all. In one of his satires, the poet Juvenal has her working surreptitiously at a local brothel; “she-wolf” being her nom de guerre.
In 48 AD Messalina put into action what must go down as one of the worst planned conspiracies in history. As soon as Claudius had left the capital to perform a sacrifice down the road in Ostia, his wife Messalina decided the time was right to marry her senatorial lover, Gaius Silius. Up until this point, their affair had hardly been private; she was actually growing tired of how easy it all was, we’re told. But as soon as Claudius was out of sight, they celebrated a wedding ceremony, complete with witnesses, sacrifices, and of course, the all-important consummation.
Suffice to say it didn’t work out well for them. Without hesitation, the Praetorian Guard arrested Silius and Messalina upon their emperor’s return. Silius was executed immediately while Messalina was held in a cell away from the emperor. Weak and indecisive when it came to women, Claudius wanted to spare her. But it was advisors who were running the show, and they chose to act differently. They had Messalina put to death. And the only thing that Claudius could say upon receiving the news was that he’d like more wine.
Claudius wasn’t as sexually perverted as his predecessors but, in line with his character, he was astoundingly hypocritical. After Messalina’s death, he addressed his Praetorian Guard and told them that, if he ever married again, they should kill him. Lo and behold by New Year’s Day 49 AD he was remarried, this time to his niece (Caligula’s sister and Nero’s mother) Agrippina the Younger. By no strange coincidence, Claudius passed a motion in the Senate later that year legalizing incestuous marriages.
We know next to nothing about Claudius’s sex life with Agrippina. Suetonius tells us that throughout his life he was an ardent lover of women, though he never slept with men. We can assume that this continued during his marriage to Agrippina: Roman emperors not being known for their marital fidelity. What we do know is that Agrippina loved power more than her husband. The details are hazy, but their relationship rapidly deteriorated in 54 AD (Claudius often heard lamenting his lousy choice of wives over the years) and on 13 October, after consuming a plate of poisoned mushrooms, Claudius loudly defecated himself and died. Few were in doubt about who’d killed him.