Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (consul 58)

Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus^[1] was a Roman Senator who lived in the Roman Empire in the 1st century. He might have been the brother of empress Messalina.

Corvinus was a member of the Republican gens Valeria. Corvinus was the namesake of the Senator and Augustan literary patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus.^[2] He may have been a son of the Senator and consul Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus, who was a son of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus,^[3] or possibly the son of the consul Marcus Valerius Messalla Barbatus and Domitia Lepida the Younger, thus making him the brother of Valeria Messalina, the third wife of the emperor Claudius.^[4]

In 46/47AD, Corvinus was a member of the Arval Brethren. From January to April in 58AD, he served as an ordinary consul with the emperor Nero^[5] and then from May to June in 58AD, as a suffect consul with Gaius Fonteius Agrippa.^[6] Starting with his consulship, he was granted an annual half a million sesterces to maintain his senatorial qualifications.^[7]

• Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome
• D. Shotter, Nero (Google eBook) Routledge, 2012
• Lucan, Civil War (Google eBook), Penguin, 2012
• Velleius Paterculus – Translated with Introduction and Notes by J.C. Yardley & A.A. Barrett, The Roman History, Hackett Publishing, 2011
• Biographischer Index der Antike (Google eBook), Walter de Gruyter, 2001