Cornelia

Mother of the Gracchi

Suzanne Dixon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134323364
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Examining the remarkable life of Cornelia, famed as the epitome of virtue, fidelity and intelligence, Suzanne Dixon presents an in-depth study of the woman who perhaps represented the ideal of the Roman matrona more than any other.

Studying her life during a period of political turmoil, Dixon examines Cornelia's attributes: daughter of Scipio Africanus, wife of an aristocrat, and mother of the Gracchi; and how these enabled her to move in high echelons of society.

For students and scholars of classical studies and Roman history, this book will give students a glimpse into the life of Cornelia, and of the influence she had on the period.

1
Fact and fable

Sorting out the sources

Biographers are in the Frankenstein business: we make human beings. We put them together out of odd bits and pieces, not salvaged body parts now but scraps of information.¹

Reconstructing a woman’s life

‘Facts’ and dates

The sub-heading is ironic, for most of the ‘facts’ of Cornelia’s life are contested. This book, though classed as a biography, is the story of a legend, of many legends. Cornelia, a privileged girl born into a famous Roman family early in the second century BCE, might have dropped, like so many nameless women, out of the historical record. Instead, her biographer is confronted with the need to sift and classify the many stories that surrounded her and mark the stages of her life. This can be confusing. In this chapter, I begin with an outline of what we do know (kind of) about Cornelia, then follow it with analysis of how we know and how sceptical we ought to be about the differing stories.

First, the basics: Cornelia was one of four children born some time between 195 and 190 BCE to the famous general Scipio Africanus the elder and his wife Aemilia. She married some time after her father’s death c.183 BCE; she allegedly bore twelve children but only three – two sons and a daughter – lived beyond their childhood. Following the death of her husband Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus c.154 BCE, she devoted herself to her children’s education, attracting the most innovative intellectuals to her maritime villa on coastal Campania.

In due course, her daughter Sempronia married, as did her elder son, Tiberius, who held the plebeian tribunate in 133 BCE but was killed before the year was out, without reaching his thirtieth birthday. Her remaining son was equally active politically and was also murdered after holding that office for the second time, in 121 BCE.² Cornelia was then in her sixties or seventies. She continued to live outside Rome, but did not withdraw from society. Far from it. Her personality and her famous hospitality drew the most cultivated people of the time to Misenum, where her villa became a social and cultural centre. Throughout her old age, she captivated her visitors with anecdotes about her famous father and sons.

Cornelia came from a very distinguished patrician family and married into a very distinguished plebeian family, both part of that small group of nobles which dominated the government and magistracies of Rome in the mid-Republican era.³ She lived in a time of great change, following the defeat of the Carthaginian Hannibal and the expansion of Rome into the eastern Mediterranean. This is the period associated by the Romans with their own growing wealth, luxury and culture, features embodied in the long-lived Cornelia, who was a young girl (how young we cannot tell) when she married her much older husband. She lived to be a very old and distinguished widow, known not only for her male connections, but for her own wealth and culture. She actively promoted the new Hellenic style both prized and vilified by the Roman élite of the late second century BCE. Her children benefited from her promotion of rhetoric and philosophy. Her sons’ skills in public speaking – typical of the new style – were famous, as was Cornelia’s own style of written and conversational prose. So we know far more of her life and tastes than is usual in the case of such women.

She died a distinguished old woman towards the end of the second century BCE, at a date unknown to us, as is the precise date of her birth.

What we do not know about Cornelia

Let us backtrack a little. We are told that she had twelve children but the dates of their births are certain only in the case of ‘the Gracchi’ because we can count backwards from their tribunates. We do not know precisely when the nine children who died young were born or died. In fact, we lack information about many precise details which a modern biographer would regard as essential: the dates of her birth, her marriage and her death are all contested and debated by scholars. The ancient sources are agreed that she was a faithful wife and exemplary widow who would not contemplate remarriage (even to a king!) and she was held up for centuries as an example of a devoted mother. Moreover, she endured what was considered to be the most tragic blow of fate – the death of adult children, and those children among the most promising men of their generation – without self-pity or loss of control. Romans admired that kind of spirit. The praise is extravagant and almost uniform, the legends and romantic stories detailed. But, when you come down to it, we know few firm facts. Ancient historians are used to that. Many of us quite enjoy working out even the most basic dates from the meagre bits and pieces we do know, but the yield is pretty thin. Suffice it to say that, from the narrative perspective, Cornelia’s life divides, like Gaul, into three:

• Her youth and her famously fertile years as a noble wife c.175–154 BCE

• Her widowhood from c.154, devoted to bringing up her three surviving children (154–135) and including the likely peak of her political activity 134–121 BCE

• Her glamorous but bereft old age and her withdrawal to Misenum from 132/121–102 (100?) BCE.

For the sake of convenience and readability, I shall henceforth treat certain dates as my working versions. Thus I shall opt for the compromise date of 190 BCE for Cornelia’s birth and 175 (chosen largely for ease of calculation) for the date of her marriage, 154 BCE for the death of her husband Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and 102 as the arbitrarily selected date of her death.

Sorting out the stories and the life stages

Whatever the precise dates of her birth and death, Cornelia lived a long life. Too long, for she outlived almost everybody she might have loved. But she has lived on longer still in the minds and tales of others. Some of the stories are confused and confusing, but we need to look at them to get some idea of Cornelia’s standing in Roman eyes. They include topoi, or commonplaces, the kind of jokes and moralizing anecdotes which circulate in different periods, presented as true stories, and attached to different names, places and eras (‘urban myths’ in modern media-speak). Whatever we call them, they are highly dubious as evidence but, usually, great stories which are fun to hear and to pass on.

Cornelia stories generally illustrate something about her moral superiority or the regard in which she and her sons were held. They jump around the life stages which biographers would normally delineate. Perhaps we should treat them more as thematic events in the dramatized life of a Cornelia soap opera, as follows:

• the unmarried girl: a dramatic betrothal

• the proud mother: children vs. jewels

• the young wife: snakes and conjugal love

• the well-dowered heiress

• mother of many – but how many? And when? And of what sex? And …?

The unmarried girl: a dramatic betrothal

Cornelia’s betrothal and marriage to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a leading political figure and an enemy of her father Africanus, fell easily into the ‘political reconciliation story’ category. Romans could be savage and sentimental by turns and popular stories reflected this taste. Feuds and reconciliations were not just fictions but also genuine features of Roman political life, which could be melodramatic. Staged (and doubtless hammy) reconciliations in public settings, to the applause of onlookers, punctuated the vicious feuds, and were guaranteed crowd-pleasers.

Let me start with the most romantic and improbable (impossible) version of this particular reconciliation story. It is set on a holy day, when the senate gathered in force on the Capitoline hill for a grand feast to Jupiter. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (senior), sworn enemy of the Cornelii Scipiones (Cornelia’s family), dramatically interposed his tribunician veto to prevent the great Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus being led off to the very prison in which he had incarcerated so many of Rome’s enemies.The senators all clamoured that Africanus seal this reconciliation with his erstwhile political opponent on the spot with the promise of his daughter in marriage. They insisted the two men embrace and conclude the arrangement before the dinner ended. Africanus acceded, yet another dramatic gesture was performed and the sentimental senators burst into applause.⁴

It gets better. For when the great general Africanus returned home after this eventful dinner, he informed his wife Aemilia that he had betrothed their daughter. She flew into the kind of rage women (or wives) are prone to (muliebriter indignabunda), protesting that she should have been consulted about their daughter’s future. She climaxed her tirade with the clincher: ‘I should have been included in the decision. Even if you were to promise her to Tiberius Gracchus!’ Scipio happily replied that Tiberius Gracchus was indeed the bridegroom he had scored for their daughter. And domestic harmony was restored (Liv. 38.57.6). Well, it’s a story. And it livens up lectures.

So what parts of this story could or could not be true? After all, Tiberius Gracchus was indeed an enemy of Publius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus) and was probably involved in the many attempts to hound him and his brother Lucius Cornelius Scipio.⁵ And he did marry Cornelia. And it was normal to seal a new alignment or political deal with a marriage (Plut. TG 1.3). But the details of the anecdote do not fit what we know of Scipio Africanus’ (Cornelia’s father’s) movements in the final years of his life, which he spent outside Rome.

The wealthy and successful Scipio Africanus, famous for vanquishing Hannibal in north Africa, came from a great family, the Cornelii Scipiones. In the viciously competitive world of Roman aristocratic politics, these apparent benefits conferred no immunity. At the peak of his fame, he was hounded by his enemies’ accusations – a kind of Scipiogate. Scholars now are divided on whether there were ever any formal charges but Africanus took offence. Disgusted with the ingratitude of his fellow citizens, he retreated to his villa at Liternum in the mid- to late180s to pursue his cultural interests and died there within a year or two. He was therefore probably alive at the time of Tiberius Gracchus’ tribunate in 187 or 184 BCE, but he is unlikely to have been in Rome attending an official banquet.

Cornelia’s engagement is more plausibly dated to the period after her father’s death, when his brother Lucius (Cornelia’s uncle) was more vulnerable to attack. A political deal with Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (senior) saved Lucius from disgrace and was sealed with his niece’s betrothal to the new ally. We must relinquish the setting of the public dinner on the Capitol, the dramatic rescue from prison by the impetuous tribune and the betrothal by acclamation. Such embellishments typically accrue over time, as people forget (or ignore) the circumstances which would spoil a good yarn.⁶

Sadly, placing Cornelia’s engagement to Tiberius Gracchus after Scipio Africanus’ death c.183 BCE also requires us to discard the lively story of the domestic contretemps between Cornelia’s parents (which is also told with other protagonists elsewhere).⁷ It is less fun, but it makes much more sense to accept the alternative version, that the fatherless Cornelia’s engagement was determined by her mother and other relatives in council.⁸ The timing, after 183 BCE, accords better with the dates of Cornelia’s known child-births.⁹ Livy passes on a series of conflicting accounts, only to throw up his hands – metaphorically, that is – and exclaim that there are just so many different stories (Liv. 38.57.8). Another good example to follow.

The proud mother: children vs. jewels

The best known story about Cornelia has her putting a Campanian woman in her place. The woman was being obnoxiously boastful about her jewels until Cornelia pointed to her children and stated, ‘These are my jewels’. It may sound arrogant and uncharitable to the modern ear, but the story served in the ancient world to illustrate her devotion to her children and her virtuous indifference to feminine fripperies and decadent badges of wealth. Comeuppance stories are eternally popular. This one is also tol...

Table of contents

• Women of the Ancient World
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Some useful dates
• Biodata
• Reader helpline
• 1 Fact and fable
• 2 People, politics, propaganda
• 3 Culture wars
• 4 The icon
• 5 Afterlife
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Annotated index of ancient authors (conspectus auctorum)
• Index