Cornelia Metella

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Cornelia Metella
Charles-Antoine Coypel, Portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur (early 1720s) showing the prominent 18th-century French actress as Cornelia Metella in Pierre Corneille's play The Death of Pompey. Comédie-Française, Paris
Bornc. 73 BC
Spouses
ParentQuintus Scipio

Cornelia Metella (c. 73 BC[1] – after 48 BC) was the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica (who was a consul in 52 BC and originally from the gens Cornelia) and his wife Aemilia.[1] She appears in numerous literary sources, including an official dedicatory inscription at Pergamon.[2]

Biography[edit]

Plutarch describes her as a beautiful woman of good character, well read and a skilled player of the lyre. She was also very well educated in geometry and philosophy.

Cornelia was first married to Publius Licinius Crassus, son of Marcus Licinius Crassus, in 55 or 54 BC, when he returned to Rome after serving under Julius Caesar in Gaul. After her first husband's death at the Battle of Carrhae, Cornelia became the fifth wife of Pompey in 52 BC. She was a faithful follower of Pompey and met him in Mytilene with his son Sextus Pompeius, after the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. Together, they fled to Egypt where Pompey was murdered. On his arrival, Caesar punished the murderers of Pompey and gave Cornelia his ashes and signet ring. She returned to Rome and spent the rest of her life in Pompey's estates in Italy.

Cultural references[edit]

Annelies Burmeister as Cornelia in Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1970 production)

Cornelia appears in George Frideric Handel's 1724 opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto ("Julius Caesar in Egypt"), where she pleads with Caesar to spare her husband; he is about to grant her plea, but Pompey was already killed by the Egyptians. She is the title and main character in Robert Garnier's play Cornélie and its English language adaptation Cornelia by Thomas Kyd.

In the first season of the TV series Rome, broadcast in 2005, Cornelia is portrayed by actress Anna Patrick. Unlike the historic Cornelia, this portrayal sees her as middle aged, and as having two children probably from her first marriage, not with Pompey.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Ronald Syme points out that in 74 BC, Cornelia's father was the romantic rival of Cato for Aemilia, Cornelia's mother; their marriage followed soon after and provides the earliest possible date for their daughter's birth. The latest date for Cornelia's marriage to young Crassus would be 54 BC, before he left to join his father for the ill-fated Parthian campaign; Cornelia is unlikely to have been younger than 15 at the time, and so her latest year of birth would be 69 BC. See Syme, “The Sons of Crassus,” Latomus 39 (1980) 403-408, reprinted in Roman Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), vol. 3, p. 1225.
  2. ^ Greek inscription translated into Latin as Cornelia Q. Metelli Pii Scipionis filia. Despite her father's testamentary "adoption" by Metellus Pius, Cornelia is never called Caecilia Metella in any extant sources. Münzer supposed that she retained the gens Cornelia name because she was born before her father's adoption, which was a legal formality. Discussed by Jerzy Linderski, "Q. Scipio Imperator," in Imperium sine fine: T. Robert S. Broughton and the Roman Republic (Franz Steiner, 1996), p. 150 online.