Valeria (wife of Sulla)

Valeria or Valeria Messalla was the fifth wife of two-term consul and Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Biography

Early life

Valeria was the daughter of a man named Marcus Valerius Messalla Niger and Hortensia. She had a brother named Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus who was consul in 53 BC.^[1]

Plutarch calls her a sister of the orator Quintus Hortensius, but this is a mistake, Plutarch probably confused her as his sister instead of niece (Hortensius' sister being Hortensia, Valeria's mother).^[2]

Marriages

An "alert young divorcee", as

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. It is possible that she was infected by the disease which killed her husband and died not much later after giving birth to Postuma.^[7]

References

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