celticdragonfly

The famed brothers Gracchi were sons of Tiberius senior (twice Consul and Censor) and Cornelia, patrician daughter of Publius Scipio Africanus, who was famous in her own right. She refused to remarry after Tiberius' death and devoted herself to her children, whom she educated and inspired with a sense of civic duty. When a wealthy patrician woman spoke of her jewels, Cornelia pointed to her two sons, saying, "These are my jewels." Cornelia thus became a legend in her own time noted for possessing the virtues of the ideal Roman matron.