Valeria Messala

Who is Valeria Messala?

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

An "alert young divorcee", as Ronald Syme writes, 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.