Cornelia Cinna minor
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- This article refers to the wife of Julius Caesar. For other Roman women named Cornelia, see Cornelia.
Cornelia Cinna minor (94 BC[citation needed] – 69 BC[1] or 68 BC[2]), daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, one of the great leaders of the Marian party, was married to Gaius Julius Caesar, who would become one of Rome's greatest conquerors and its dictator. Caesar married her in 83 BC[3], when he was only seventeen years of age; and when Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix commanded him to put her away, he refused to do so and chose rather to be deprived of her fortune and to be proscribed himself. Cornelia bore him his daughter Julia,according to Tacitus Annals iii 6 in 82 or 83 BC, dying in childbirth 13 or 14 years later before his quaestorship. She was 24 or 25 years old at her death. Caesar delivered an oration in praise of her from the Rostra, when he was quaestor.[4][5][6]
In Conn Igguldens Emperor series about the life of Julius Caesar, Cornelia becomes Caesar's love at the end of the first book (The Gates of Rome) when they are teenagers. He secretly seeks her out at night, (largely fictionalized) and she convinces her father that she can marry him after they are caught in bed but Caesar escapes. In the end, Cinna's political enemy Sulla comes to power and threatens to burn Caesar's eyes and hang him if he does not divorce her. He refuses, and - astonished - Sulla subsequently lets him go (after slaying Marius in battle when he refuses to surrender).
Cornelia is a major character in the second book (The Death of Kings), in the beginning of which she is haunted by Sulla who wants her whilst Caesar is exiled in Cilicia, fighting rebels and pirates. One night, after Cornelia has given birth to Julia, Sulla rapes her and is subsequently murdered (purely fictional) by Tubruk, Caesar's caretaker as a child and friend, who poisons Sulla as a revenge. Sulla's friends, namely Cato and the fictious General Antonidus exact revenge by having close relatives of suspected populares assassinated. Cornelia is stabbed to death while her husband is out fighting Spartacus (entirely fictional). Tubruk kills her assassins, but is himself mortally wounded and dies after having a talk with Caesar later.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, (translated by Peter Needham), Oxford, 1968; Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 132, New York, (1951-1986). Gelzer quotes Broughton to assert that Caesar was quaestor in 69 BC. Gelzer explains that Caesar, after becoming quaestor, delivered an oration in praise of his aunt Julia. Shortly after this event, Cornelia died too.
- ^ William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851.
- ^ William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.
- ^ Plutarch, Caesar, 1, 5.
- ^ Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 1, 5, 6.
- ^ Velleius Paterculus, ii. 41.
[edit] References
This entry incorporates public domain text originally from:
- William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.
