Transitioning and Transforming Female Character Conventions in Plutarch’s Life of Tiberius and Gaius

In this talk, I show how the “unique double” Life of Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (with mostly Appian and Valerius Maximus as control sources) functions as a point of transition asthe beginning of Roman civic unrest in the Lives, as well as a pivoting point for the political situations and female roles. I will demonstrate this shift by regarding Cornelia, the mother ofthe Gracchi, as the framing character and a driving force of the Life.
While other Lives feature prominent mothers (e.g. Alexander and Coriolanus), Plutarch injects an added intensity in his representation and employment of Cornelia as a character because of the transitioning period during which the narrative takes place. I situate her importance in the structure of the Life by starting with Grac. 1, in which Plutarch places Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, upfront as the main educator and nurturer, a strand that will continue throughout the narrative. Moreover, I show how the paired double Spartan Life, Agis/Cleomenes presents illuminating connections through, for instance, the speech of Chilonis (Ag./Cleom.17-18), who steps in as a mediator and addresses the complexity of her position as wife and daughter between Leonidas and Cleombrotus.
Inevitably, the bulk of the narrative comprises of the Gracchi’s rise to renown, their legislative reforms and respective assassination, yet I argue for a continued presence of Cornelia’s influence, both explicitly (Grac. 9, 25, 34) and implicitly (Grac. 9 and 15). While female characters, other than Cornelia, are mostly absent in the “half-Life” of Tiberius Gracchus, his death functions as a pivoting moment in the narrative and the novelty of the situation in
Rome (Grac. 20). The shift to Gaius Gracchus brings another change along: his wife Licinia appears as the penultimate character in the second half in this Life (Grac. 21, 36, 38): Plutarch subverts the epic “ascending scale of affection” by placing Cornelia at the very end of this double Life (Grac. 40). In short, in this paper, I demonstrate Plutarch’s use of Cornelia as a similarly transitioning figure, as a symbol and symptom of these changing times.