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22on learning of his achievement gave him the title of Britannicus and granted him permission to celebrate a triumph. They voted also that there should be an annual festival to commemorate the event and that two triumphal arches should be erected, one in the city and the other in Gaul, because it was from that country that he had set sail when he crossed over to Britain. 2They bestowed upon his son the same title as upon him, and, in fact, Britannicus came to be in a way the boy’s regular name. Messalina was granted the same privilege of occupying front seats that Livia had enjoyed and also that of using the carpentum.
3These were the honours the senate bestowed upon the reigning family; but they hated the memory of Gaius so much that they decreed that all the bronze coinage which had his likeness stamped upon it should be melted down. And yet, though this was done, the bronze was converted to no better use, for Messalina made statues of Mnester, the actor, out of it. 4For inasmuch as he had once been on intimate terms with Gaius, she made this offering as a mark of gratitude for his consenting to lie with her. For she was desperately enamoured of him, and when she found herself unable in any way either by making him promises or by frightening him to persuade him to have intercourse with her, she had a talk with her husband and asked him that the man should be compelled to obey her, pretending that she wanted his help for some different purpose. 5Claudius accordingly told Mnester to do whatever he should be ordered to do by Messalina; and thus it came about that he lay with her, in the belief that this was the thing he had been commanded to do by her husband. Messalina also adopted this same method with various other men and committed adultery, feigning that Claudius knew what was going on and countenanced her unchastity.
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