Cornelia Cinna minor

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This article is about the wife of Julius Caesar. For other Roman women named Cornelia, see Cornelia.

Cornelia Cinna minor (94 BC– 69 BC[1] or 68 BC[2]), daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna (one of the great leaders of the Marian party),and a sister to suffect consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, 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 eighteen years of age and Cornelia was thirteen years of age; and when Lucius Cornelius Sulla 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 Caesaris, according to Tacitus (Annals iii 6) in 82 or 83 BC, dying in childbirth 13 or 14 years 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]

Note that in keeping with the custom of the times, Cornelia had no name of her own as we would understand it. Daughters were given their father's name, with the designation major, minor, or the third to designate their birth rank: Majora, Minora, Tertia, and so on.


[edit] References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851.
  3. ^ William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.
  4. ^ Plutarch, Caesar, 1, 5.
  5. ^ Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 1, 5, 6.
  6. ^ Velleius Paterculus, ii. 41.

This entry incorporates public domain text originally from:

  • William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.