One last crime must be added to the record of Messalina before we come to the crowning folly of her career. There remained one woman in Rome more beautiful than she; and one distinguished patrician whose virtue rebuked her, and whose wealth allured her. She resolved to bury the two under a common ruin. Valerius Asiaticus, a patrician of consular rank and great merit, had withdrawn from Rome to Crete as the madness of Messalina and the blindness of Claudius increased. Unhappily for him, he owned the beautiful and famous garden which Lucullus had laid out on the summit of the Pincian Hill, and Messalina was now eager for it. She employed the tutors of her children to declare to the Emperor that Asiaticus was at the head of an important faction at Rome, and had gone to fire the Eastern provinces with his rebellious spirit. The omens which were reported from the East seemed to Claudius to make mere human testimony superfluous. The moon had been darkened by an eclipse, and a new island had risen from the Ægæan Sea. The Chaldæan sages interpreted these signs with their customary art, and Asiaticus was brought to Rome. He listened in disdain to the charge of conspiracy and adultery which the tutors, Sosibius and Suillius, brought against him, but, when they proceeded to accuse him of unnatural vice, he broke into an angry denial of the whole accusation. Messalina was present at the trial--a wholly irregular proceeding, in Claudius’s chamber--and saw that the Emperor was moved. She whispered to Vitellius, the sycophant who had first discovered Caligula’s divinity and shaded his eyes from the blaze, that Asiaticus must on no account escape, and left the room. Vitellius, with ready wit, fell at the feet of the Emperor. He enlarged at length on the great merits of the accused, and concluded with an artful plea that Claudius would grant Asiaticus the favour of being allowed to take his own life, instead of handing him over to the public executioner. Easily confused by this stratagem, and fancying that he was showing some clemency, Claudius assented. Asiaticus, true to the finest traditions of his fathers, returned to his palace, bathed and supped in perfect tranquillity, and then opened his veins. Messalina secured the gardens of Lucullus.