Arab Mistress Messalina

Historians now largely agree that this was . After her botched conspiracy to replace Claudius with her lover Gaius Silius, the Roman Senate declared damnatio memoriae —her name was to be erased from history. Instead, the writers of the time did the opposite: they created a caricature of female ambition so grotesque that it became a warning for centuries.

By merging Messalina’s Roman depravity with the exotic "Arab" setting, western writers created a super-villainess. She was Messalina, but more : more perfumed, more treacherous, more likely to poison a sultan after a night of debauchery. Novels like The Arabian Mistress (a fictionalized memoir from the 1920s) and various pulp magazines used the phrase to denote a femme fatale who manipulated Bedouin chieftains as easily as Roman emperors. More recently, the term "Arab mistress Messalina" has been weaponized in internal Arab politics. What Westerners called 'liberated,' conservative Arab detractors call 'Messalina.' Arab mistress messalina

The next time you hear the phrase "Arab mistress Messalina," do not look for a woman. Look for the man who invented her, and ask what he is trying to hide. Further reading: "The Invention of Messalina" by Honor Cargill-Martin (2020); "Orientalism" by Edward Said (1978); "Women and Gender in the Islamic World" by Leila Ahmed. Historians now largely agree that this was