Cornelia was the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. The latter two had reputations as rabble rousers, revolutionaries, and demagogues. Tiberius was the first Roman to be assassinated in office. Cornelia was the daughter of Scipio Africanus (victor in Punic Wars). She may have died around 100 BCE.

Cornelia often represents the ideal Roman matron. If that's the case, what qualities does the ideal Roman matron have?

Seneca, On Consolation 16. L., A.D. 41/9

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher, politician, and tutor to the young Nero, spent eight years (A.D. 41-9) in Corsica, exiled because the empress Messallina had accused him of adultery with Julia Livilla, Caligula's sister. During this period he wrote the long essay To Helvia on Consolation, from which this extract is taken, to comfort his mother, Helvia. He urges her to limit her grief.

Do not use the excuse that you are a women, who has the right to weep immoderately, but not without limit; and if our ancestors gave widows by law up to ten months for mourning, it was in reaction to the tenacity of women's grief. They did not forbid mourning; they limited it; for to suffer for the rest of one's life for the loss of a loved one is as inhuman as showing no grief at all. The best compromise between devotion and reason is to feel the grief and to suppress it. Do not look at certain women whose period of bereavement ends only with their own death (you know some who lost their children and put on mourning and never took it off). From you, life, harder from the very beginning, requires more. A woman who never had women's defects cannot now plead womanhood as an excuse.

You-unlike so many-never succumbed to immorality, the worst evil of the century; jewels and pearls did not bend you; you never thought wealth was the greatest gift to the human race; the bad example of lesser women-dangerous even for the virtuous-did not lead you to stray from the old-fashioned, strict upbringing you received at home. You never were ashamed of your fertility, as though the number of children you had mocked your age. You never tried to hide you pregnancy as though it were indecent, like other women who seek to please only with their beauty. Nor did you ever extinguish the hope of children already conceived whom you were carrying. You never polluted yourself with make-up, and you never wore a dress that covered about as much on as it did off. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honour of modesty.

So you cannot use your sex to justify your sorrow when with your virtue you have transcended it. Keep as far away from women's tears as from their faults. But not even women will let you nurse your wound till it eats you up. Once you have got over the first wave of sorrow, they will invite you to pick yourself up, at least if you look at the examples of women who deserve to be ranked with great men. Fortune took all but two of Cornelia's twelve children. If you count the numbers, she lost ten; if you consider the value, she lost the Gracchi.[1] But when those around her wept and cursed her fate, she forbade them to blame Fortune, which had given her the Gracchi as her sons. The man who said in public "You would speak ill of my mother, who brought me into the world?" should have had her as his mother. How much prouder the remark of the mother: for the son what counted what the birth of the Gracchi, for the mother their death as well.

Rutilia followed her son Cotta[2] into exile and was so attached to him that she preferred exile to separation and would not return until he did. But when, after he returned and his career was flourishing, he died, she bore the loss with no less courage than that she had needed to follow him, and no one saw her crying after the funeral. She showed strength of spirit towards her son in exile, and wisdom when she lost him. For nothing could deter her from her maternal devotion, and nothing could detain her is useless and foolish sorrow.

I want you to be one of those women. You have always emulated their life; you will do well to follow their example in suppressing your grief.

Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus

Having moved the people's passion with such addresses (and his voice was of the loudest and strongest), [Gaius] proposed two laws. The first was, that whoever was turned out of any public office by the people, should be thereby rendered incapable of bearing any office afterwards; the second, that if any magistrate condemn a Roman to be banished without a legal trial, the people be authorized to take cognizance thereof.

One of these laws was manifestly levelled at Marcus Octavius, who, at the instigation of Tiberius, had been deprived of his tribuneship. The other touched Popilius, who, in his praetorship, had banished all Tiberius's friends; whereupon Popilius, being unwilling to stand the hazard of a trial, fled out of Italy. As for the former law, it was withdrawn by Caius himself, who said he yielded in the case of Octavius, at the request of his mother Cornelia. This was very acceptable and pleasing to the people, who had a great veneration for Cornelia, not more for the sake of her father than for that of her children; and they afterwards erected a statue of brass in honour of her, with this inscription, Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. There are several expressions recorded, in which he used her name perhaps with too much rhetoric, and too little self-respect, in his attacks upon his adversaries. "How," said he, "dare you presume to reflect upon Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius?" And because the person who made the reflections had been suspected of effeminate courses, "With what face," said he, "can you compare Cornelia with yourself? Have you brought forth children as she has done? And yet all Rome knows that she has refrained from the conversation of men longer than you yourself have done." Such was the bitterness he used in his language; and numerous similar expressions might be adduced from his written remains.

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As soon as Opimius also was chosen consul, they presently cancelled several of Caius's laws, and especially called in question his proceedings at Carthage, omitting nothing that was likely to irritate him, that from some effect of his passion they might find out a tolerable pretence to put him to death. Caius at first bore these things very patiently; but afterwards, at the instigation of his friends, especially Fulvius, he resolved to put himself at the head of a body of supporters, to oppose the consul by force. They say also that on this occasion his mother, Cornelia, joined in the sedition, and assisted him by sending privately several strangers into Rome, under pretence as if they came to be hired there for harvest-men; for that intimations of this are given in her letters to him. However, it is confidently affirmed by others that Cornelia did not in the least approve of these actions.

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It is reported that as Cornelia, their mother, bore the loss of her two sons with a noble and undaunted spirit, so, in reference to the holy places in which they were slain, she said, their dead bodies were well worthy of such sepulchres. She removed afterwards, and dwelt near the place called Misenum, not at all altering her former way of living. She had many friends, and hospitably received many strangers at her house; many Greeks and learned men were continually about her; nor was there any foreign prince but received gifts from her and presented her again. Those who were conversant with her, were much interested, when she pleased to entertain them with her recollections of her father Scipio Africanus, and of his habits and way of living. But it was most admirable to hear her make mention of her sons, without any tears or sign of grief, and give the full account of all their deeds and misfortunes, as if she had been relating the history of some ancient heroes. This made some imagine, that age, or the greatness of her afflictions, had made her senseless and devoid of natural feelings. But they who so thought were themselves more truly insensible not to see how much a noble nature and education avail to conquer any affliction; and though fortune may often be more successful, and may defeat the efforts of virtue to avert misfortunes, it cannot, when we incur them, prevent our hearing them reasonably.

Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus

Having completed the first two narratives, we now may proceed to take a view of misfortunes, not less remarkable, in the Roman couple, and with the lives of Agis and Cleomenes, compare these of Tiberius and Caius. They were the sons of Tiberius Gracchus, who though he had been once censor, twice consul, and twice had triumphed, yet was more renowned and esteemed for his virtue than his honours. Upon this account, after the death of Scipio who overthrew Hannibal, he was thought worthy to match with his daughter Cornelia, though there had been no friendship or familiarity between Scipio and him, but rather the contrary. There is a story told that he once found in his bed-chamber a couple of snakes, and that the soothsayers, being consulted concerning the prodigy, advised that he should neither kill them both nor let them both escape; adding, that if the male serpent was killed, Tiberius should die, and if the female, Cornelia. And that therefore Tiberius, who extremely loved his wife, and thought, besides, that it was much more his part, who was an old man, to die, than it was hers, who as yet was but a young woman, killed the male serpent, and let the female escape; and soon after himself died, leaving behind him twelve children borne to him by Cornelia.

Cornelia, taking upon herself all the care of the household and the education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a widow, that Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing to die for such a woman; who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown, and would have married her, refused it, and chose rather to live a widow. In this state she continued, and lost all her children, except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius, whose lives we are now writing.

These she brought up with such care, that though they were without dispute in natural endowments and dispositions the first among the Romans of their time, yet they seemed to owe their virtues even more to their education than to their birth. And as, in the statues and pictures made of Castor and Pollux, though the brothers resemble one another, yet there is a difference to be perceived in their countenances, between the one, who delighted in the cestus, and the other, that was famous in the course, so between these two noble youths, though there was a strong general likeness in their common love of fortitude and temperance, in their liberality, their eloquence, and their greatness of mind, yet in their actions and administrations of public affairs, a considerable variation showed itself. It will not be amiss before we proceed to mark the difference between them.
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Some have also charged Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius, with contributing towards it, because she frequently upbraided her sons, that the Romans as yet rather called her the daughter of Scipio, than the mother of the Gracchi. Others again say that Spurius Postumius was the chief occasion. He was a man of the same age with Tiberius, and his rival for reputation as a public speaker; and when Tiberius, at his return from the campaign, found him to have got far beyond him in fame and influence, and to be much looked up to, he thought to outdo him, by attempting a popular enterprise of this difficulty and of such great consequence. But his brother Caius has left it us in writing, that when Tiberius went through Tuscany to Numantia, and found the country almost depopulated, there being hardly any free husbandmen or shepherds, but for the most part only barbarian, imported slaves, he then first conceived the course of policy which in the sequel proved so fatal to his family. Though it is also most certain that the people themselves chiefly excited his zeal and determination in the prosecution of it, by setting up writings upon the porches, walls, and monuments, calling upon him to reinstate the poor citizens in their former possessions.

Quintilian, Orations 1.1.6
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone. We are told that the eloquence of the Gracchi owed much to their mother Cornelia whose letters even today testify to the cultivation of her style.

Pliny, Natural History 34.31
For instance, there is the statue of Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi and daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus. This represents her in a sitting position and is remarkable because there are no straps on her shoes; it stood in the public colonnade of Metellus, but is now in the building of Octavia.

Cornelius Nepos, fragment 1.1 (excerpt from a letter of Cornelia to her son Gaius)
"You will say that it is a beautiful thing to take vengeance on one's personal enemies. That seems to be neither better nor more beautiful to anyone than to me, but only if it is possible to pursue these things while the republic is kept safe. But to the extent that this cannot happen, for a long time and for the most part our enemies will not perish and, as they now are, let them continue to be rather than let the republic be ruined and perish... I dared to swear in a solemn speech that no enemy, except those who killed my son Tiberius Gracchus, had given me so much bother, so much work, as you have on account of these matters...Will you ever feel shame at the confused and turbulent state of the republic? ...But if this absolutely cannot happen, when I am dead seek the tribuneship; do what will be pleasing in my eyes although I will not be aware of it. When I am dead give me a funeral and call upon the father of the gods...if you persist, I'm afraid that, with only yourself to blame, you will receive such great burden throughout your life that at no time will you be able to be happy with yourself."

Cicero, Brutus 104
Gracchus, thanks to the affectionate pains of his mother Cornelia, had been trained from boyhood and was thoroughly grounded in Greek letters.

Cicero, Brutus 210-11
It does certainly make a great difference what sort of speakers one is daily associated with at home, with whom one has been in the habit of talking from childhood, how one's father, one's attendant, one's mother, too, speaks. We read the letters of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi; they make it plain that her sons were nursed not less by their mother's speech than at her breast.

Valerius Maximus, On Illustrious Men 4.4pr.
A companion matron who was staying with Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, was showing off her jewels, the most beautiful of that period. Cornelia managed to prolong the conversation until her children got home from school. Then she said, "These are my jewels."