Messalina's Gilded Nipples?

Abstract

Abstract:This article questions the long-held assumption that the empress Messalina, as described by Juvenal at Satires 6.122–23, is donning gold foil pasties on her nipples as she performs sex work in a Roman brothel. I argue that papilla never unambiguously suggests a nipple in Roman poetry and is better understood as referring to the full breast. The idea that Messalina sports pasties, moreover, arose in the 19th century under the influence of Orientalism. The popular interpretation of this passage is therefore a product of a later western, colonial male gaze. We should think of Messalina's adornment in Roman terms rather than retroject much later stereotypes and sexual taboos onto the past.