[Born, uncertain. Died at Rome, A.D. 48.] The third wife of the Emperor Claudius I. Her name has become a bye-word for profligacy. A murderess. Herself pierced through the breast by the sword of a tribune entrusted with the execution of one of her victims. The slave of lust, avarice, and ambition. Difficult to find in history a woman more blackened by crime than Valeria Messalina. [From the marble in the Capitoline Museum, at Rome.]