Narcissus (freedman, d. AD 54)

Bust of a man of the 1st century AD: marble, Metropolitan Museum of Art (26.60.3). An image of the period; no portrait of this person survives.

Narcissus was a freedman and Claudius’s secretary. Suetonius writes that the Senate granted him and Pallas the insignia of a quaestor and a praetor and enormous gifts (Claudius 28). Dio claims he had more than four hundred million sesterces (60.34).

It was he who in AD 48 revealed to the emperor Messalina’s “wedding” to Silius, took command of the Guard for a day and had Messalina killed (Tacitus, Annals 11.29–37). He fought Agrippina openly: she accused him of greed after the battle on Lake Fucinus (12.57). He died soon after the emperor; Tacitus and Dio give different circumstances (13.1; Dio 60.34).

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