For a time she appeared irresistible.

Her personal fascination had won for her an unlimited sway over the facile mind of Claudius, and she had either won over by her intrigues, or terrified by her pitiless severity, the noblest of the Romans and the most powerful of the freedmen.

But we see in her fate, as we see on every page of history, that vice ever carries with it the germ of its own ruin, and that a retribution, which is all the more inevitable from being often slow, awaits every violation of the moral law.
There is something almost incredible in the penal infatuation which brought about her fall.

During the absence of her husband at Ostia, she wedded in open day with C.Silius, the most beautiful and the most promising of the young Roman nobles.

She had apparently persuaded Claudius that this was merely a mock-marriage, intended to avert some ominous auguries which threatened to destroy "the husband of Messalina;" but, whatever Claudius may have imagined, all the rest of the world knew the marriage to be real, and regarded it not only as a vile enormity, but also as a direct attempt to bring about a usurpation of the imperial power.
It was by this view of the case that the freedman Narcissus roused the inert spirit and timid indignation of the injured Emperor.