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[B.C. 230.]

PLUTARCH.

IBERIUS Gracchus, though once honoured with the censorship, twice with the consulate, and led up two triumphs, yet derived still greater dignity from his virtues. Hence, after the death of that Scipio who conquered Hannibal, he was thought worthy to marry Cornelia, the daughter of that great man, though he had not been upon any terms of friendship with him, but rather always at variance. It is said that he once caught a pair of serpents upon his bed, and that the soothsayers, after they had considered the prodigy, advised him neither to kill them both, nor let them both go. If he killed the male serpent, they told him his death would be the consequence; if the female, that of Cornelia. Tiberius, who loved his wife, and thought it more suitable for him to die first who was much older than she, killed the male, and set the female at liberty. Not long after this he died, leaving Cornelia with no fewer than twelve children.

The care of the house and the children now entirely devolved upon Cornelia, and she behaved with such sobriety, so much parental affection and greatness of mind, that Tiberius seemed not to have judged ill in choosing to die for so valuable a woman. For though Ptolemy, king of Egypt, paid his addresses to her, and offered her a share in his throne, she refused him. During her widowhood she lost all her children except three, one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius. Cornelia brought them up with so much care, that though they were without dispute of the noblest family, and had the happiest genius and disposition of all the Roman youth, yet education was allowed to have contributed more to their perfection than nature. When her son Tiberius entered upon those public employments which plunged the family into so many misfortunes, some blamed his mother Cornelia, who used to reproach her sons, that she was still called the mother-in-law of Scipio, not the mother of the Gracchi.

Cornelia is reported to have borne all her misfortunes, including the murder of her two sons, with a noble magnanimity, and to have said of the consecrated places, in particular where her sons lost their lives, that "they were monuments worthy of them." She took up her residence at Misenum, and made no alteration in her manner of living. As she had many friends, her table was always open for the purposes of hospitality. Greeks, and other men of letters, she had always with her; and all the kings in alliance with Rome expressed their regard by sending her presents, and receiving the like civilities in return. She made herself very agreeable to her guests, by acquainting them with many particulars of her father Africanus, and his manner of living. But what they most admired in her was, that she could speak of her sons without a sigh or a tear, and recount their actions and sufferings as if she had been giving a narrative of some heroes. Some, therefore, imagined that age and the greatness of her misfortunes had deprived her of her understanding and sensibility. But those who are of that opinion seem rather to have wanted understanding themselves, since they knew not how much a noble mind may, by a liberal education, be enabled to support itself against distress, and that though, in the pursuit of rectitude, fortune may often defeat the purposes of virtue, yet virtue, in bearing affliction, can never lose her prerogative.