I was sitting silent, brooding over the list of Messalina’s lovers. Narcissus had headed it: ‘Provisional and incomplete account of Valeria Messalina’s notorious adulteries, from the first year of her marriage to Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Britannicus, Father of the Country, High Pontiff, etc., until the present day.’ It contained forty-four names, later extended to 156.
