Download HIS 30 (2017) – 4 – Cornelia

SOME NOTEWORTHY WOMEN OF THE MIDDLE AND LATE
REPUBLIC
1. We should now turn to some individual women, although it will become
immediately clear how little we can often say
- compared with what we can say about their
menfolk.
2. We’ll begin with CORNELIA (“Mother of the
Gracchi [Tiberius and Gaius]”).
CORNELIA WITH HER ELDER SON
as envisioned by Jules Cavelier (1814-94)
CORNELIA, MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI
1. CORNELIA (“Africana”) (ca 190 – ca 100 BC) [the first truly historical female citizen we
should look at] had enormous advantages compared with many other women even of
her own class - because of her ancestry on both sides of her family.
2. Both her parents were distinguished, as were her grandparents and their
ancestors.
a) i) Her father was Publius Cornelius Scipio “Africanus” (236 – 184 or 183 BC),
the victor over Hannibal and a very skilled military commander and
political leader.
ii) The Cornelii Scipiones - the Scipio branch of the gens (clan) Cornelia to
which her father belonged - held one of the two annual consulships
frequently from the early 300s BC onwards and were one of the leading
patrician families in the state.
i) Her mother, Aemilia Paulla (ca 230 – 163 or 162 BC) was the daughter of
Lucius Aemilius Paullus (consul in 216 BC and killed at the Battle of
Cannae).
He [Cornelia’s maternal grandfather] had been [like her paternal grandfather] one of the state’s
foremost leaders.
ii) The gens Aemilia (like the gens Cornelia) was another of perhaps the five
most important patrician families in the state - even though, of course, the
“nobility” had long ago come to comprise mainly “plebeian” families
[“nobles” by merit rather than “nobles” by birth].
In every sense, then, CORNELIA was from the very heart of the society’s elite.
A further word about her mother, Aemilia Paulla, whose life may have influenced
Cornelia heavily.
Aemilia Paulla was, reputedly,
1. a) mild-mannered, but
b) fiercely loyal to her husband who came under a lot of criticism from his peers
for his adoption of the new liberal “Greek” lifestyle which began to influence
Roman society and to challenge many of its traditional values in the decades
immediately after 200 BC.
2. a) She appears to have enjoyed an unusual freedom for a woman of her status –
both in the disposition of her wealth and in her interactions with others in
society – even though she will have been in the manus of her husband.
[Since she was ‘patrician’, her marriage must have been by confarreatio]
3. a) A widow for the last twenty years of her life [she died when she was about 67 - never
having re-married], she is likely to have been close to her two daughters.
b) This was especially likely since her two sons not only died some ten years
before their mother but never rose to the consulship, were probably a
disappointment to her, and are not known to have had any children of their
own.
4. Aemilia Paulla cannot but have greatly influenced “Cornelia, mother of
the Gracchi” - her younger daughter - one imagines, given how their
married lives followed a very similar course.
CORNELIA
1. Born about 190 BC, she married in 172 BC at 18 – quite late for a daughter from a
leading senatorial family – and died before 100 BC [when she was at least in her late 80s].
2. i) Her husband, TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, was a middle-aged
senator of distinction who held the consulship twice (in 177 and 163 BC) and
the censorship in 169 BC.
ii) He was born about 217 BC, married at the age of about 45 (and so was about 27
years older than Cornelia) and died suddenly in 154 BC at the age of about 63,
after 18 years of marriage.
3. CORNELIA and TIBERIUS had 12 children, but only three survived beyond
childhood - Sempronia (born 170 BC), Tiberius (born about 165 BC), and Gaius (born 154
BC).
4. CORNELIA was to have four grandchildren - but only one reached adulthood:
her daughter had no children, her son Tiberius had three sons who all died very
young, and her son Gaius had a daughter [whose daughter Fulvia, in her turn, married three leading
Roman statesmen, the third, Marcus Antonius, putting her head on a coin – the first living Roman woman to appear in this
way].
5. a) CORNELIA herself, widowed in her late 30s, never remarried [despite offers]
and was to become an icon – the devoted mother who gave herself
exclusively to her three children (especially to her two sons) when she was
left to raise them alone when they were, respectively, 15, 10 or 11, and a
babe in arms.
b) She was, allegedly, one of the very few mothers who alone influenced her
sons’ political careers, but how far the stories told about her were true is a
matter of great debate – at best they were probably greatly enhanced in the
re-telling.
CORNELIA AS THE IDEAL MOTHER
1. a) Cornelia was so highly regarded that, eventually, the Roman state erected a
statue in her honour – an unusual development for the “Republican” period.
b) Unfortunately the statue itself has not survived but its base has.
2. If the story is to be believed, in her lifetime her fame was enough for her to
have been approached with marriage in mind even by a king, Ptolemy
[probably Ptolemy VIII] of Egypt, but she refused his hand.
[A subject which appealed to Laurent de la Hyre in the 1600s]
3. While the term seems not to have been used until quite late in the Roman
period, CORNELIA is likely to have been admired even more for being a univira (“a
woman who only ever had one husband”).
4. All her efforts after she became a widow [as already noted] were invested in the
raising and education of her children – especially that of her two sons, normally the
duty by example of boys’ fathers.
STATUE BASE
“CORNELIA
DAUGHTER OF
AFRICANUS
[MOTHER] OF
THE GRACCHI”
“CORNELIA
AFRICANI F
GRACCHORUM”
LAURENT DE LA HYRE
(1606-1656)
“CORNELIA REJECTS THE
CROWN OF THE PTOLEMIES”
5. With her sons’ education in mind she brought to Rome Greek scholars to act as tutors
to her boys - in particular Blossius (of Cumae) and Diophanes (of Mylitene) - and
it seems likely that, as an advocate of ‘the new education’, she will have engaged in
discussions with them herself alongside her own study of literature - all
unheard of at this time in a Roman matrona however distinguished.
6. One story of the place her children played in her life has been the subject of
artists over the ages: when a wealthy visitor called on her one day and made a
great display of the jewellery that she had brought with her and then asked
Cornelia to show her her jewels, Cornelia produced her children and said that
they were the only jewels she needed.
Among the artists who chose to depict Cornelia are Angelica Kauffmann (17411807), Benjamin West (1738-1820), Noël Hallé (1711-1781), Joseph-Benoît
Suvée (1743-1807), Jean-François-Pierre Peyron (1744-1814), Tancredi
Scarparelli (1866-1937), an anonymous creator of a silk and paint scene (ca
1810), and John Leech (with his “Comic History of Rome”).
The most famous sculptor of Cornelia and her two sons is Jules Cavelier (18141894).
ANGELICA
KAUFFMANN
(1741-1807)
“Cornelia, Mother of the
Gracchi, Pointing to her
Children as Her Treasures”
ca 1785
BENJAMIN WEST
(1738-1820)
NOËL HALLÉ
(1711-1781)
1799
JOSEPH-BENOÎT SUVÉE
(1743-1807)
JEAN-FRANÇOISPIERRE
PEYRON
(1744-1814)
1779
TANCREDI SCARPELLI
(1866-1937)
“CORNELIA SHOWS OFF HER SONS”
ANONYMOUS
‘SILK & PAINT ON SILK’
ca 1810
JOHN LEECH
“COMIC
HISTORY
OF ROME”
JULES CAVELIER
(1814-1894)
7. Even when her sons were adults, had begun their political careers and, as
“tribunes of the plebs” (Tiberius in 133 BC and Gaius in 122 and 121 BC),
challenged and upset the conservative establishment by advocating and trying
to introduce reform [leading to the assassination of both], CORNELIA,
allegedly, stood by them.
8. a) BUT Cornelius Nepos (Rome’s first biographer, writing about 50 years
after Cornelia’s death) preserves a letter reputedly written by Cornelia to her
son Gaius berating him [rather like the legendary Veturia] and demanding
that, out of respect for her, he should restrain his political activity.
b) Its authenticity is very much in question, but, if genuine, had little effect on
him.
.
c) But it would be a rare example of a woman, however distinguished her family
background, trying to influence the outcome of a public policy she felt was
contrary to the state’s best interests.
d) If the letter is a ‘forgery’, the aim of reproducing it would have been twofold:
i) to dissociate Cornelia from the disastrous political programmes of her sons;
and
ii) to reinforce to later generations her role as an ideal and heroic mother.
9. Cornelia retired to a villa near Misenum (near Naples) before the death of her
younger son Gaius (in 121 BC) and continued to study literature and philosophy
until her death before 100 BC in her late 80s, remaining a model for others to
follow.
Given the idealization of Cornelia after her death, she has to remain a somewhat
elusive figure historically.
AFTER CORNELIA
1. After Cornelia, no individual woman stands out in her own right for quite
some time.
2. Certainly none is known well enough to merit close attention - although
we might consider the marriages of some of the leading male political figures
since they can show us how marriages were initiated and maintained and
ended for largely political reasons - again always within the members of the
elite political classes.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla (ca 138 – 78 BC)
1. Sulla (who came from a “patrician” family which had fallen on hard times financially) rose to one
of the consulships for 88 BC largely because of his service to the state when he fought
in the “Social War” between Rome and about half of its Italian allies (late 91 to 90 BC).
2. As consul he was assigned the task of bringing King Mithridates of Pontus
(below the Black Sea) to heel because of his threats to Roman interests in Asia Minor, only
to find his command transferred by “populist” political leaders to Gaius Marius.
3. Rather than accepting this reversal to his career prospects, Sulla marched on Rome
with troops twice (once before going off to fight Mithridates and then after his success against him),
assumed the office of dictator after his second ‘march on the city’, and, as such, put
in place a very conservative, anti-populist régime from 83 BC (accompanied by the bloodbath
made legitimate by his “proscriptions”).
4. He retired from a public role in politics in 79 BC and died in 78.
He married five times and his marriages may have been arranged with his political
advancement in mind (although, in his case, this is not always possible to show).
a)
i) At the age of about 28 in 110 BC he married a “Julia” [reported by the
biographer Plutarch as “Ilia”], the marriage lasting six years (until 104 BC).
ii) If this wife was a Julia, then she was “patrician” too and perhaps a cousin
‘once-removed’ of Julius Caesar. A marriage with someone from another
“patrician” family which was not in the shadows like his branch of the
Cornelii would probably have served Sulla well at an early stage in his
career – given his families lean circumstances.
iii) Together they had a son who died young and a daughter, Cornelia, whose
daughter, Pompeia, in her turn eventually became Julius Caesar’s second
wife [as we’ll see].
b) Sulla’s second wife was an Aelia – from a “plebeian” family. Virtually nothing
is known about her.
c) His third wife was a Cloelia, from another “patrician” family; Sulla divorced
her after a fairly short time on the grounds that she was barren – and it was
important to a member of the elite to have a son to carry on the family’s name
and traditions – without having to resort to adoption (the alternative way to
obtain an adult son).
d) i) His fourth wife was Caecilia Metella (Dalmatica) with whom Sulla had a
son and a daughter, Cornelia; her second husband, Titus Annius Milo, was
the political enemy of Publius Clodius whose sister Clodia was, allegedly,
“notorious” [see later].
CAECILIA METELLA
1. Unfortunately we cannot say much about Caecilia Metella herself, but she was
a member of one of the most distinguished “plebeian” families within the
limited Roman ‘Republican’ “nobility”.
2. The Caecilii Metelli (perhaps the most outstanding branch of the Caecilii) had
held consulships since at least the 280s BC – for two hundred years before our
Caecilia’s birth.
3. Her father, Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus (born about 160 BC), had
gained an excellent reputation both as a political and as a military leader, had
held one of the two consulships in 119 BC and one of the two censorships in
115 BC, serving as Pontifex Maximus (“head of the state religion”) from 115 BC.
4. For Sulla to marry her (eventually) would have reinforced his membership of
the most intimate political circle in the state, but he was not her first husband.
5. She had been married earlier to an aging politician at the height of his career,
Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, from a distinguished “patrician” family, who was
‘leader of the Senate’ (princeps senatus).
6. And, with Scaurus, she had had two children – her daughter (again eventually)
going on to be the second wife of Pompey.
7. When her husband, Sulla, was in Asia Minor fighting King Mithridates and
the political situation in Rome had erupted into conflict, she was forced to flee.
8. She joined Sulla in Greece and there gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter
(the one who eventually married Titus Annius Milo [see above]).
9. We simply cannot say whether she had any influence on her husband’s public
life – other than to help boost his auctoritas (‘social standing’) because of her
own family background.
Sulla again
i) Sulla’s fifth wife, Valeria Messalla, had been married to Sulla for only two years
when he died, his final child, another Cornelia, being born after his death.
ii) The Valerii traced their origins to the earliest days of the Roman state, the branch
to which Valeria Messalla belonged, becoming particularly distinguished
(through their male representatives, of course) in the 260s BC at the time of the
first war against Carthage (264-241 BC). But the Valerii Messallae were ‘in the
doldrums’ between 154 and 61 BC [in terms of holding the highest offices in the state].
iii) In light of this, it is not clear how ‘useful’ Sulla’s marriage to her will have been
politically – but he retired from politics at about the time of their marriage in any
case and died within about two years.
iv) His marriage to her will have been when he was about 58; her age at the time is
not clear but it is said that she caught Sulla’s eye at the theatre. Her brother in 80
BC will have been about 24 and so Valeria Messalla is likely to have been of
approximately the same age.
Gnaeus Pompeius (Magnus) [Pompey]
1. There are similarities between Sulla’s marriages and those of Pompey (born in
September 106 BC): his fives wives play little role in their own right; they were
all married for political reasons – to advance Pompey’s career and to enhance
his standing in the state.
2. They were Antistia, Aemilia, Mucia, Julia (the daughter of Julia Caesar), and
Cornelia.
3. a) Pompey was 23 years old in 83 BC when Sulla returned to Italy and marched f
or the second time on Rome.
b) He raised a private army in support of the victorious general.
c) His family was fairly new to the elite having produced its first ever consul
only in 141 BC.
d) At 20, in 86 BC, Pompey had been accused of being in possession of stolen
property, defended himself before a praetor (the second rank of annually elected
official), and so impressed him that the praetor offered him his daughter,
Antistia [wife 1], in marriage. Pompey accepted.
4. We have no information about their four years of married life.
Aemilia
1. Pompey had so impressed Sulla in 83 BC when he had supported him with
troops (albeit illegally) that, Plutarch tells us in his biography of Pompey [section
9], both Sulla and his fourth wife, Caecilia Metella, wanted to associate him
more closely with their family.
2. Consequently, Sulla and Caecilia Metella, persuaded him to divorce Antistia
and to marry immediately Metella’s daughter [Sulla’s step-daughter], Aemilia.
3. Aemilia
i) was already married,
ii) was pregnant, and
iii) was reluctant to go along with the plan (assuming that she had any say in the
matter).
4. But she
i) ‘agreed’,
ii) married Pompey [becoming his second wife], and
iii) died very soon thereafter giving birth to the child – leaving Pompey free (at
the age of 26) to marry again.
5. He did so almost immediately and, by 79 BC, Mucia had become his third wife.
Mucia
1. a) Pompey’s third marriage was to be his longest – lasting until 62 BC (that is, 17
years).
b) It ended in divorce, three ancient writers saying that Mucia was guilty of
adultery, one of them (Suetonius) naming her lover as Julius Caesar.
c) i) BUT adultery with Caesar is unlikely [they got on very well later];
ii) all we know is that Pompey sent Mucia a letter of divorce in 62 BC.
2. Who was Mucia and what do we know about the marriage?
a) She was the daughter of Quintus Mucius Scaevola [who will have claimed descent from
Gaius Mucius Scaevola, the legendary hero who, at the same time as Cloelia was escaping with the Roman
maidens from the clutches of Lars Porsenna, made an attempt on his life] one
95 BC and Pontifex Maximus.
of the two consuls of
b) The family of the Mucii Scaevolae had been prominent since just before 200 BC,
although the number of its members obtaining high office was limited.
c) Once again Sulla, as the ‘master’ of Rome, was instrumental in ‘arranging’ the
marriage.
3. a) Mucia had been married to the son of Sulla’s bitter rival, Gaius Marius, and
she became very much a pawn in the play of power politics when her husband,
Marius’ son, was eliminated by Sulla.
b) Her father had died in 82 BC and, as a young widow, she may not have had a
strong “guardian” to stand up for her.
4. Sulla was eager to ensure that Pompey, now a widower, remained a supporter of
his and arranged for him to marry Mucia (in 79 BC) to give Pompey even greater
social respectability.
Again, a woman was married, with little say in the process, to enhance a man’s standing
and improve his career opportunities.
5. Pompey and Mucia had three children together: a daughter and two sons.
6. a) But Pompey was away from Italy for much of his early career (from 76 to 62
BC) and so for most of their 17 years of marriage.
b) That they did not remain close should not, perhaps, be a surprise.
Julia (possibly born about 76 BC)
1. When Julius Caesar in 60 BC persuaded the two bitter rivals, Pompey and
Marcus Licinius Crassus, to pool their resources and to work with him in the
informal “‘First’ Triumvirate” to control the Roman state, he sought to bind
Pompey close to himself and to prevent him drifting from the political
relationship by offering him his daughter Julia in marriage.
2. i) Julia, who was already betrothed to Quintus Servilius Caepio, was unhappy
about the idea of her engagement being broken, but her father had Pompey
offer Caepio his own daughter, Pompeia, as an alternative future wife!
ii) Pompeia did not marry Caepio; instead she was married to the son of Sulla!
[This demonstrates yet again that, amongst the elite (and possibly lower down the social scale) it was
fathers who decided whom their daughters would marry]
3. With Julius Caesar himself [see below] marrying Calpurnia for political reasons and
seeing to it that her father was then elected to a consulship, the biographer Plutarch
[Life of Caesar 14] (although such arrangements were by no means unusual) has Cato the
Younger (the ultra-conservative great grandson of the ultra-conservative Cato the Elder) protest: “that it
was intolerable for marriage to be the medium by which leadership of the state was
bought and sold, and for women to be the means by which men slotted one another
into provincial governorships, military commands, and the control of resources.”
4. And so Julia, likely still in her teens, found herself married (in April 59 BC) to
Pompey who would be 47 years old at the time.
5. She had a miscarriage in 55 BC and died in childbirth in 54 BC – the baby dying
too.
6. Her death contributed significantly to the break between Julius Caesar and
Pompey and the civil war which erupted in 49 BC.
Cornelia
1. Pompey married for the fifth time within two years – in 52 BC.
2. His new wife was Cornelia, the widow of Marcus Licinius Crassus, the third
member of “the Triumvirate” who had been killed in battle the previous year.
3. a) She was born about 73 BC and so was about 21 at the time of her second
marriage.
[She will have been about 18 when she married Crassus about 55 BC, when Crassus would have been close to 60]
b) By now Pompey will have been 54 years old.
4. Plutarch (in his biography of Crassus) describes Cornelia as “a beautiful woman
of good character, well read and a skilled player of the lyre. She was”, he adds
“also very well educated in geometry and philosophy.”
5. She came from the heart of the “nobility”; her father Quintus Caecilius
Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica was consul with Pompey in 52 BC, arranged the
marriage, and was "the last Scipio of any consequence in Roman history." [Sir
Ronald Syme Historia 7 (1958), p. 187].
6. She followed her new husband to the East when he left Italy to pursue the civil
war, joined him on the island of Lesbos, and accompanied him when he went to
Egypt where he was murdered (in September 48 BC).
Despite marrying five times – and doing so for reasons of political advancement Pompey is said to have been always a very loving husband.
a) Before we turn to Julius Caesar’s three marriages (so ‘similar’ to those of
Sulla and Pompey in that they were essentially ‘arranged’ and ‘political’, with
the advancement of Caesar’s career in the fore);
b) Before we consider Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and his wife FULVIA;
and
c) Before we look at CLEOPATRA in her relations with both Caesar and Antony,
…………
……….. we should say something about the “notorious” CLODIA and about
Cicero’s two wives (TERENTIA and PUBLILIA) and his beloved daughter
TULLIA.