CORNELIA, one of the greatest women in Roman history, was the younger daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder, the conqueror of Carthage, and mother of the two great tribunes, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, and of Cornelia, the wife of Scipio Africanus the younger. On the death of her husband, refusing numerous offers of marriage, including even one from King Ptolemy, she devoted herself to the education of her children, a task for which her lofty spirit and wide attainments rendered her admirably fitted, and which had the most extraordinary results. Tlιe only attack ever made upon her lofty reputation was the charge that she was concerned in the death of her son-in-law, Scipio, which was, there is no reason to doubt, a mere baseless slander. On her death a statue was erected to her memory bearing the inscription—“Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.” She is said to have presented her sons to a Campanian lady, who asked to see her jewels, as the only jewels of which she could boast. After the murder of Caius, the second of her sons, she retired to Misenum, where she devoted herself to Greek and Latin literature, and to the society of men of letters. See Plutarch’s Lives of Tib. and C. Gracchus.