Cornelia Africana - What a woman! by Elisabeth Storrs

My previous posts about Roman women have centered on victims (Lucretia and Virginia) and villains (Tarpeia and Tullia Minor) whose virtues and vices served as exemplars both good and bad. Today I write about another celebrated woman who was seen as the architype of a Roman Matron. Her name is Cornelia Africana. 

Unlike the other women who were legendary figures, Cornelia’s existence is verifiable through the writing of the Greek historian, Plutarch, who refers to Cornelia in his histories about her two famous sons, the Gracchi Brothers.

Born around 190 BCE, Cornelia Minor was the daughter of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the famed Roman general and hero of the Second Punic War, and Aemilia Paulla. Her name, ‘Africana’, derives from the cognomen ‘Africanus’ granted to her father after his conquest of the Carthaginians in North Africa. Like Lucretia, Cornelia is seen as an embodiment of civic virtue but she is a far more complex character given her interest in literature and ‘behind the scenes’ influence on politics.

Cornelia and her jewels by Angelica Kauffman, 1785

Cornelia grew up in luxury within an aristocratic household where her father encouraged appreciation of Greek culture and art. She was also schooled in Stoicism, a philosophy which espouses facing the vicissitudes of life with equal fortitude.

At seventeen she was married to the middle-aged Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in what appears to have been a happy marriage. There is an apocryphal story her husband discovered two snakes in his bed chamber, a male and a female. He consulted a seer who told him that he must kill one and let the other go. If he killed the male, he himself would die, and if he killed the female, Cornelia would perish. Such was his love for his young wife, Tiberius opted to kill the male snake, and he passed away not long afterward.

During their marriage, Cornelia bore twelve children of whom only three survived to adulthood –a daughter, Sempronia (later married to her notorious cousin Scipio Aemilianus to maintain the Scipio dynasty), and two sons, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (born nine years apart). She proudly claimed her children as ‘her jewels’.

When her husband died, Cornelia refused the hand of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes of Egypt and chose not to remarry, thereby fulfilling the role of the dutiful ‘univera’ ie a ‘one man woman’ loyal to her husband in life and death. Yet such a choice may well have been a shrewd way to ensure her own independence as well as control over her children’s lives. She already held an esteemed reputation due to her bloodline, and therefore could make choices for herself, a rarity in the ancient world. She thereafter devoted herself to her children’s education. Emulating her famous father’s Graecophilia, she hired the Greek philosopher, Blossius of Cumae, and the rhetorician, Diophanes of Mitylene, as tutors.

The Gracchi Brothers would go on to leave significant marks on Roman history as reformists who proposed the Roman State and wealthy landowners give land to poorer citizens. As a result, Tiberius and Gaius died, a decade apart, in bloody fashion. And this is where the story of Cornelia becomes particularly interesting. Fragments of letters reputedly written to her son, Gaius, were included in the manuscripts of Cornelius Nepos, one of the earliest known Latin biographers. In these fragments, Cornelia is seen as harshly admonishing Gaius for his rebellious actions which had caused unrest in Rome. For he advocated extending citizenship to Latin speaking allies and giving greater freedoms to the plebeians thereby undermining the power of aristocracy.

“No enemy has caused me so much annoyance and trouble as you have because of these events – you who ought, as the only survivor of all the children that I have had in the past, to have taken their place and to have seen to it that I had the least possible anxiety in my old age; you who ought to have wished that all your actions should above all be agreeable to me, and should consider it impious to do anything of great importance contrary to my advice, especially when I have so brief a portion of my life left.” (Nepos, Fragments 1.2)

Cornelia’s voice is forceful and there is an assumption she gives her advice freely and expects it to be heeded. It seems this could be true. In another letter, she advised Gaius not to punish a politician who had been an enemy of his brother which he duly obeyed.

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, by Jules Cavelier

This correspondence was studied decades later by Roman scholars such as Cicero who attributed both Gracchi Brothers’ notable eloquence to their mother’s influence. He also praised the beauty of her writing style. Yet there is supposition the fragmentary letters are not genuine but rather propaganda circulated by an elite faction opposed to the agrarian reforms. Yet, if the letter chastising him is valid, I can understand the passion in her voice. This is allegedly a private epistle to her only living child. By this stage she had buried eleven children. Is it any wonder she would agonise over his politics knowing he might be violently assassinated in a riot as had Tiberius? Sadly, Gaius’ fate was to suicide amid a massacre on the Aventine Hill.

After Gaius’ violent death, Cornelia retired to a villa in Misenum where she received learned men from all over the Roman world to discuss literature and freely share ideas. Plutarch’s description of her here is not of a mother disenchanted with her sons but instead proud of them while displaying the stoicism that enabled her to endure the unbearable loss of all her children and her husband.

‘She had many friends and kept a good table so that she might show hospitality, for she always had Greeks and other literary men about her, and all the reigning kings interchanged gifts with her. She was indeed very agreeable to her visitors and associates when she discoursed with them about the life and habits of her father Africanus, but most admirable when she spoke of her sons without grief or tears, and narrated their achievements and their fate to all enquirers as if she were speaking of men of the early days of Rome.’ (Plutarch’s Life of Tiberius Gracchus 19.2)

After Cornelia died at an advanced age, Rome revered her for embodying Roman virtues and voted for an expensive bronze statue to be erected in her honour. Yet the inscription on the base limits her identity to the men in her life ie her father and sons. (Interestingly, there is no mention of her being the ‘wife of’ Sempronius Gracchus even though he’d been a consul and a triumphing general.) The base still survives and can be seen in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The inscription reads:

Cornelia Africani f(ilia) | Gracchorum (Daughter of Africanus | Mother of the Gracchi)

The Cornelia Pedestal, Capitoline Museums, Rome

The simplification of Cornelia’s character as an ideal mother and daughter sadly erodes her extraordinary erudition and unusual independence. Thank goodness for Plutarch! Although he writes about Cornelia through the lens of her son’s lives, at least he has given greater context to her than a worn inscription etched in weathered bronze.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy and is the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com