Feminae Romanae: The Women of Ancient Rome

Perhaps no woman better represented the paradigm of the ideal Roman matrona (wife) than Cornelia, forever known as "mother of the Gracchi." Born in the late Republic, in her own and later times she was held up as a supreme exemplar of Roman feminine virtues by men and women. True to the low profile for which she was universally admired, no statue has survived of the mother of the Gracchi (although a famous one was set up in Rome after her death, perhaps the first statue of a non-legendary woman).

Cornelia was the daughter of legendary warrior-hero Publius Scipio Africanus (who defeated Hannibal in the second Punic War). Both the dates of her birth and death can only be inferred. She married well (to patrician cousin Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus) and bore him twelve children. Only three lived to adulthood: a daughter, Sempronia, and two sons, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.

	" In the old days, every child born to a respectable mother was brought up not in the room of a bought nurse but at his mother's knee. It was her particular honor to care for the home and serve her children.and no one dared do or say anything improper in front of her. She supervised not only the boys' studies but also their recreation and games with piety and modesty. Thus, tradition has it, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, Aurelia, mother of Julius Caesar, and Atia, mother of Augustus, brought up their sons and produced princes. "
	Tacitus, Dialogue 28, quoted in Women's Life in Greece and Rome, Lefkowitz,Fant, 191.

After her husband's death, Cornelia devoted herself to raising her three young children in the highest patrician traditions of service to the state. Allegedly, soon after her husband left her a young widow, the Egyptian king Ptolemy VIII proposed marriage and she refused him, thus embodying the Roman ideal of the univira, a widow who survives her first husband and loyally never remarries.

At a time when Rome's increasing overseas empire meant a flood of wealth and ostentatious display, Cornelia was said to have lived with modesty and thrift. A legend preserved by Valerius Maximus claims that, when another woman who was a guest in her house "...showed her jewelry, the finest in existence at that period, Cornelia kept her in talk until her children came home from school, and then said 'These are my jewels.'" Valerius Maximus, IV.4. A highly educated woman, Plutarch described her care for the boys' education and wrote,

	""These boys Cornelia brought up with such care and such ambitious hopes that, although by common consent no Romans have ever been more naturally gifted, they were considered to owe their virtues even more to their education than to their heredity." "
	Plutarch, Life of G. Gracchus, 1.

Her influence on both her sons was considerable even after their political careers made them the lightning rods of reform in the late Republic. She would survive the tragedy of losing first her eldest, then her youngest, son to political murder.

Following the murder of her older son, Tiberius, in 133 BC, Cornelia supported her youngest son, Gaius, in his attempts to achieve his brother's land reforms. Plutarch hints she ever possessed enough political influence with her son to persuade him to revoke what she viewed as an unjust law (Plutarch, 4). In the next century, as the Republic continued its decline in political turmoil, it was fashionable to pretend Cornelia would have steered both her sons towards moderation. In an alleged fragment quoted in a vanished document of Cornelius Nepos, Cornelia is said to have written Gaius at the height of his reforms to revenge his brother:

"You will say that it is a beautiful thing to take vengeance on one's enemies. That seems to be neither better nor more beautiful to anyone than to me, but only if it is possible to pursue these things while the republic is kept safe. But to the extent that this cannot happen, for a long time and for the most part our enemies will not perish and, as they now are, let them continue to be rather than let the republic be ruined and perish... I dared to swear in a solemn speech that no enemy, except those who killed my son Tiberius Gracchus, had given me so much bother, so much work, as you have on account of these matters...Will you ever feel shame at the confused and turbulent state of the republic? ...But if this absolutely cannot happen, when I am dead seek the tribuneship; do what will be pleasing in my eyes although I will not be aware of it. When I am dead give me a funeral and call upon the father of the gods...if you persist, I'm afraid that, with only yourself to blame, you will receive such great burden throughout your life that at no time will you be able to be happy with yourself."

It is arguable whether Cornelia actually wrote the letter, or whether later writers simply wished to invent her approval for their own positions due to the reverence in which she was held.

	" "Cornelia is said to have borne her misfortunes in a noble and magnanimous spirit, and to have said of the sacred places where her sons had been murdered that these tombs were worthy of the dead who occupied them."
	Plutarch Life of Gaius Gracchus, 19.

Accepting her sons' deaths with stoic courage, Cornelia retired to Misenum but continued to entertain prominent and learned guests, while "reigning kings" sent her gifts. She was able to speak of her dead sons without showing sorrow or shedding a tear, recalling their achievements and their fate with detachment, so that some wondered that she could bear sorrow with such courageous fortitude. After her death, a statue was raised to her bearing the simple inscription "Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi." The statue was so influential that it became a model for centuries for how to honor women who symbolized Rome's greatness. Cornelia herself would become an icon to later women who, like Livia, wanted her reputation as well as genuine power.

History of Rome,, Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus; Life of Tiberius Gracchus, issued under title "Makers of Rome" (Penguin Edition), trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert, 1965. Memorable Doings and Sayings, Valerius Maximus (see Bibliography and Links). Photograph of unknown Roman woman and child by author, Vatican Museum.