Born: 190s (circa), Italy
Died: 115 (circa)
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: Cornelia Africana
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Cornelia, (flourished about 150 B.C.) a Roman matron. She was of the highest birth in Rome, yet became the wife of T. Sempronius Gracchus, a member of a plebeian family renowned for its popular sympathies and acts. Eminent for gravity and virtue, she had a cultivated mind, and was familiar with the language and literature of Greece. After the death of her husband she was a central figure of Roman society, and gathered around her all that was noble, learned, and high-minded in the republic. She refused an offer of marriage from Ptolemy, King of Egypt, and lived to extreme old age. Her character is the purest of any woman’s mentioned in the historical period of Rome.
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, 168 B.C.
This famous Roman lady lived in the days of the Roman Republic – a hollow mockery for a state – that existed for five hundred years, and was in reality a government by aristocracy, at first one of birth; later of wealth, selfishness, and lust. Slavery was the foundation and oligarchy the structure, and within it was full of unspeakable cruelties and crimes.
By birth Cornelia was of the very highest patrician class, her father being the P. Scipio Africanus who had destroyed Carthage, and her mother, Amelia, the daughter of the L. Æmilius Paulus, who perished at the battle of Cannæ.
She was married to T. Sempronius Gracchus, of a plebian family of wealth, renowned for their acts and sympathies with the great multitudes of the city’s suffering poor. Twelve children were born to her, three only reaching adult age.
She was highly educated in the Latin and Greek literature, was pre-eminent for virtue and gravity of character, and a central figure in Roman society during her husband’s lifetime and after. Her house was the resort of the high minded, noble, and learned of Rome.
Her daughter Sempronia married the younger of the Africanus, her two sons being those famous Gracchi, Tiberinus and Caius, both eminent soldiers and tribunes. The former sought when tribune to aid the poor by amendment of land laws and urged that the immense wealth Attilus, king of Pergamos, had left to Rome be distributed among them. At election for tribune, Tiberius and hundreds of his followers were killed in riots instigated by the patricians. Ten years later, Caius, for seeking to reform the government in the interests of the poor, employing them in building roads and other public works, was set upon in a similar riot and perished at the hand of his slave. The Romans afterward repenting, put upon the mother’s tomb, “Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.”
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
A woman of ancient Rome, she embodies through the centuries the model of Italian motherhood. Descended from a patrician family, the “Gens Cornelia,” she was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, the famous general who defeated the Carthagenian power. Widow of Sempronius Gracchus, she remained faithful to his memory by refusing her hand to the King of Egypt and devoting herself completely to the education of her children, Tiberius and Caius, the strong and unfortunate defenders of the people’s rights, and a daughter, Sempronia. It is said that a Neapolitan matron went one day to visit Cornelia and showed to her a beautiful set of jewels she owned. She then asked to see Cornelia’s riches, and the Roman matron, pointing to her children, said with a smile: “These are my only gems.” After she had provided for her daughter’s marriage, and lost her two sons during the internal conflicts between the noblemen and the plebeians, she lived her last days in solitude, answering to anybody who pitied her, that “no one should call unhappy the
woman who had given birth to the Gracchi.” She was still alive when the Romans erected to her a bronze statue, writing on it these simple words: “To Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi.”
Her character is the purest of any woman’s mentioned in the historical period of Rome. She lived to an extreme old age.