Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Marcus Valerius Messalla was the father of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, consul in 53 BC. He was twice accused of illegal practices in connexion with the elections; on the first occasion he was acquitted, in spite of his obvious guilt, through the eloquence of his uncle Quintus Hortensius; on the second he was condemned. He took the side of Caesar in the civil war. Nothing appears to be known of his later history. He was augur for fifty-five years and wrote a work on the science of divination. Cicero, Ad Fam. vi. i8, viii. 4, ad Alticum, iv. 16; Dio Cassius xl, 17, 45; Bellum africanum, 28; Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 9, 14 Aulus Gellius xiii. 14, 3. Reference This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.