The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College
“Mom Said I’m in Charge”
Understanding the Motivations of the Gracchi Brothers, Caesar, and Augustus through their Maternal Parenting Lydia Davis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Class of 2023
Abstract
Recent psychological research suggests an association between authoritative maternal parenting with high levels of academic achievement and a self-attributed need for autonomy in children. To provide a novel analysis of the characters of the Gracchi brothers, Caesar, and Augustus, this paper applies such psychological findings to these revolutionary figures. It concludes that the mothers of these men, Cornelia, Aurelia, and Atia, respectively, influenced the ambitious mindsets of these men through their strict parenting. In addition, it argues that these women were able to affect such influence through a combination of unusually high levels of education and positions as widows or sole disciplinarians.
During the late Roman Republic, a few key historical figures facilitated the governmental transition from Republic to Empire: Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Augustus. Recent scholarship has begun analyzing the specific motivations of these revolutionary leaders, but a common motivation has yet to be agreed upon. However, modern psychological techniques have identified personal ambition as a characteristic common among leaders of reform.1 As an explanation for this commonality, other psychological findings suggest that authoritative maternal parenting correlates to personal ambition, achievement, and a need for autonomy in children.2 This indicates that examining the maternal parenting of revolutionary Roman figures allows for a better understanding of their behavior. Corroborating this, in his Dialogus de oratoribus, Tacitus mentions the exhaustive parental regulations of Cornelia, Aurelia, and Atia, connecting these to their sons’ later accomplishments and ambitions (Dial. 16.28).3 Therefore, by applying current psychological findings to contemporary Roman perspectives and Roman definitions of motherhood found in the works of ancient historians, this paper seeks to establish a link between the actions of the Gracchi brothers, Caesar, and Augustus and their maternal parenting. While the late Republic of these figures’ day is remembered for its tumultuous political history, it was also a time of greater opportunities and power for Roman women. As Hemelrijk notes, this is when the ideal of educated motherhood originally appeared.4 Beginning with Cornelia, mothers were praised for their education because of the benefits it could convey to their male children. Many, but not all, women of senatorial rank therefore received at least a basic education.5 This is indicative of the fact that the actions of their adult sons were one of the few ways Roman women could elevate their statuses.6 It is no wonder, then, that the ideal of the univira (literally ‘one-man/husband woman’) was born during this time and that widowed mothers were able to reach consider4 Emily Ann Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 69. 5 Ibid. 212-3. 6 Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1988), 6.
The Haley | Volume I | Issue II | July 2020
able levels of power.7 Not only did widowed mothers likely have greater control over their household wealth, but they were also solely responsible for the upbringing of their sons, from whom they could gain social prestige.8 Thus, Romans expected mothers to maintain a much greater level of influence in an adolescent or adult son than is typical today.9 For these reasons, republican and imperial authors praising mothers focus on their actions as firm disciplinarians, keenly interested in their sons’ later success.10 Cornelia et Fratres Gracchi The preeminent example of the ideal Roman mother is Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. Born into a wealthy patrician family, as the daughter of Scipio Africanus, Cornelia’s upper-class status, accompanied by her father’s permission, allowed her to be educated in Greek literature and Latin rhetoric. This was very unusual for a woman of that period, and it left her with a unique position in society as a well-educated woman.11 Additionally, through the death of her husband and lack of remarriage, she achieved the status of univira (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 1.1-5). Because of Cornelia’s extensive education and widowhood, she was poised to exert great influence over her sons, Tiberius and Gaius, and to fuel their ambitions. With Plutarch stating, “these sons Cornelia reared with such scrupulous care…[that] they were thought to owe their virtues more to education than to nature,”12 the great influence Cornelia had over her sons was well-known throughout Roman history (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 1.5). As a widow, she was able to utilize her household wealth to provide her sons with a rhetorical education by Diophanes and a philosophical education by Blossius (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 8.5). Plutarch goes on to claim that many Romans place the blame for Tiberius’ (and likely Gaius’ as well) revolutionary behaviors on these teachers or on Cornelia herself. In fact, he mentions that Cornelia “often reproached her sons because the 7 Ibid. 6, 22. 8 Ibid. 6. 9 Ibid. 134, 233. 10 Ibid. 2. 11 Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna, 24. 12 Trans. B. Perrin.
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