Valeria (wife of Sulla)

Valeria was the fifth wife of Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. She was the daughter of Marcus Valerius Messalla Niger and a sister of the consul of 53 BC, Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus.

An "alert young divorcee", as Ronald Syme writes,[1] she attracted the notice of Sulla at the theatre, and he married her towards the end of his life. When he retired from public life to a villa in southern Italy, she accompanied him. She was pregnant at the time of his death in 78 BC and had a daughter, Cornelia Postuma, some months later.

Plutarch calls her a sister of the orator Quintus Hortensius, but this is a mistake probably arising from the fact that the sister of Hortensius married a Valerius Messala.[2]

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: William Ramsay (1870). "Valeria". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 3. p. 1215.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Review of Potitus Valerius Messalla Consul Suffect 29 B.C. by Arthur E. Gordon, in Journal of Roman Studies, 45 (1955), p. 155.
  2. ↑ Plutarch, Sulla 35, 37; Wilhelm Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. ii. p. 508. (cited in Smith)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.