Hello Hannah here and welcome to this episode of Sunday Chops and this time I have a

rural cracker for you. I am talking to historian Anna Cargill Martin about her new book Messulina,

a story of empire, slander and adultery, which is released this week, more specifically

on Thursday, the 11th of May. If you're wondering who Messulina is, I'm going to give you

a bit of background. She was the third wife of Roman Emperor Claudius. She was a cousin

of Emperor Nero, a second cousin of Emperor Caligula, and a great grand niece of the first

Emperor Augustus. So, you know, in terms of the early days of the Roman Empire, about

as well connected as it was possible to be. She was born somewhere between 17 and 20 AD and

died in 48 AD, and subsequent to her death has been largely remembered as a sexually insatiable

woman. How much of this is due to the fact that history was written by her enemies or

written by men? Who was she really? You can expect the answers to those questions and

more in the following interview. You are welcome.

I am joined by classicist and author Anna Cargill Martin, author of a new book Messulina,

a story of empire, slander and adultery. Thank you for joining me.

No, thank you so much for having me. Messulina, she's a woman so notorious and twice

in this last week, I've told someone that I was reading a book about her, and twice

I have accidentally said Melisandra, rather than Messulina, and for anyone who doesn't

know, Melisandra is the sexy witch in Game of Thrones, and I think maybe that tells us

quite a lot about Messulina and her reputation. I quite like that comparison, actually.

I think probably a good place to start. I listen to the Restisted History podcast. I absolutely

love it. Tom Holland gets asked all the time, the question, when you're talking about things

that happened 2,000 years ago, how do you know? I thought perhaps we could maybe run our

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