THE CORNELII AND JUPITER: A CASE STUDY IN THE MANIPULATION OF TRADITIONAL RELIGION BY AN ARISTOCRATIC ROMAN KINSHIP GROUP

Abstract

The Cornelii were one of the oldest and most prestigious Roman gentes, extended family kinship groups, in Republican Rome. Various members and branches advertise some kind of connection to Jupiter, Jupiter Optimus Maximus in particular, notably Scipio Africanus, but he was certainly not the only Cornelius to do so. Numismatic evidence has long suggested some kind of claimed relationship between the Cornelii and Jupiter. The Cornelian connection to the religious office of flamen Dialis (high priest of Jupiter) is more proof that their claims to be associated with Jupiter were accepted by Roman society. Some later branches of the Cornelii, notably the Sullae, began to prefer Venus instead, but a connection with Jupiter was still explicable via the genealogy of the Trojan royal house.

The gens Cornelia was one of the oldest and most eminent of all Roman aristocratic clans (gentes). One of the sixteen Roman voting tribes that king Servius Tullius supposedly created was named after the Cornelii, and like several other patrician gentes they had their own special religious holiday.¹ The gens Cornelia also seems to have been the largest patrician family in the Republic, with many branches (stirpes) discernible from the variety of cognomina they used: i.e., Arvina, Blasio, Cethegus, Cossus, Dolabella, Lentulus, Maluginensis, Mammula, Merula, Rufinus, Scapula, Scipio, Sisenna, and Sulla. Some of these branches, like the Lentuli and Scipiones, were themselves so numerous by the end of the Republic that their members often took second and even third cognomina in order to distinguish themselves from other members of their stirps (e.g. Scipiones Africani, Scipiones Nasicae, etc.).²

Politically and militarily, the Cornelii were also unmatched at Rome in terms of their success. They held more consulships than any other gens in the Republic. Famous Cornelii include: the fifth-century Aulus Cornelius Cossus, the first Roman since Romulus to win the ultimate war-trophy, the spolia opima (the ‘fattest’ or greatest trophy one could win), taken from the personal killing of an enemy leader while serving as commander of Roman forces; Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War who finally defeated Hannibal and forced Carthage's surrender, and then with his brother Scipio Asiaticus defeated Antiochus the Great in Asia; Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, who was the mother of the Gracchi brothers and a political and intellectual force in her own right; Scipio Aemilianus, who ended the great wars in Spain with the conquest of Numantia and destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War; and the infamous dictator Sulla, who was victorious over the Cimbri, the Social War rebels, Mithridates VI of Pontus, and Roman forces in civil war. No period of Roman Republican history was without at least a few important Cornelii being squarely in the public arena.

The Cornelii, as a whole kinship group, also evince some kind of connection to Jupiter, often Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the most important Roman deity politically speaking. As we shall see, extant literary sources never make a specific link between the gens as a whole and Jupiter, but they do make it between the god and one specific member of the Cornelii, Scipio Africanus. In any case, it is worth looking at how different branches (stirpes) of the Cornelii, like the Scipios, celebrate this connection or, like the Sullae, recast it in the late Republic. Numismatic evidence in particular suggests a relationship of some kind claimed by various members of the Cornelian family. Moreover, the clan's repeated tenure of the priesthood of Jupiter, the flamonium Diale, in light of their other connections to the ‘father of the gods’, indicate that the Cornelii were linked to the god in the minds of its kin if not in those of the Roman establishment.

The Cornelii Scipiones

Part of the legend of Scipio Africanus – ultimately inspired by stories about Alexander the Great – was that his real father was the god Jupiter, who had entered the bedroom of his mother Pomponia as a huge snake and impregnated her. One of our extant writers for this story cite as his sources Gaius Oppius and Gaius Julius Hyginus, freedmen of Caesar and Augustus respectively.³ Oppius wrote a biography of Scipio, of which only three fragments survive; Hyginus wrote several works, one of which was entitled De familiis Troianis (On Trojan Families), and it seems possible that it was there he recorded this story, following an earlier source who was attempting to establish a Trojan pedigree for the Cornelii.⁴ An ancestry from Jupiter would be in line with a Trojan genealogy, since the Trojan royal house was itself descended from Zeus/Jupiter (e.g. Hom. Il. 20.199–241). Certainly, the Cornelii Sullae, or at least the dictator Sulla, were interested in Trojan links for themselves, as we shall see below. For analogues among other Roman families, the patrician Aemilii asserted themselves as descendants of the Trojan king Assaracus and Jupiter,⁵ and the Sulpicii may have done something similar.⁶

In any case, during his lifetime Scipio Africanus was very closely associated with Jupiter Optimus Maximus in other ways, and especially with his temple on the Capitoline Hill. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, of course, was the most religiously important deity of the Roman state.⁷ He shared his temple with Juno Regina and Minerva as the ‘king of the gods’, taking the central of the three cellas that made up the building. Together they constituted the ‘Capitoline triad’, the patron deities of the city of Rome whose blessings were sought through annual vows, the performance of which were the first official acts of the newly installed consuls, along with other regular ritual performances and festivals (e.g. the Ludi Maximi or Ludi Romani). Generals departing from the city took their auspices and made sacrifice here as they set out with their armies; if they returned victorious, they hoped to celebrate a triumph that would parade up the hill and reach its climax with a sacrifice to Jupiter himself. The senate met in the temple for their first meeting of the year, and used it as something of an archive, including keeping the Sibylline books there (until Augustus moved them to the Temple of Palatine Apollo). Together the Capitoline Triad were sometimes called the summi imperatores (the greatest leaders), and Jupiter himself was called ‘Imperator’ and there was a statue of him in this guise.⁸ Capitoline Jupiter and his temple served as a potent symbol of Rome's hegemony, a focus for Rome's imperial pretensions and the collective identity of the state.⁹

It was to this awe-inspiring temple that Scipio was known to make visits every morning for supposed communion with Capitoline Jupiter. Various sources report his behaviour, clearly drawing upon a similar tradition: in most versions, he would visit the Capitolium before undertaking any major public or private action; he would go into the temple (sometimes specified as the cella of Jupiter in the temple) alone or with doors shut, and would spend a long time there, presumably getting divine advice. For colour, some sources note that even at night the guard dogs would not bark at him, clearly a sign of divine favour and his right to be in ‘Jupiter's house’.¹⁰ We also hear that Africanus was allowed to sacrifice 100 white oxen on the Capitolium at a festival following his Spanish victories (Dio Cass. 17.56). Following his victories, Livy (38.56-12–13) also records that Africanus was awarded statues not only on the Capitolium and but even in the cella of Jupiter itself – Africanus, however, piously refused these.

Most sources, sometimes the same ones, mention his mystical or even prophetic behaviour beyond the Capitolium.¹¹ On the way toward his final showdown with Hannibal at Zama in Africa, Scipio performatively sacrificed to Jupiter and Neptune in Sicily (App. Pun. 50). In one extraordinary episode in Spain in 208, Appian (Hisp. 101–4) describes Scipio appearing before troops telling them that ‘the divinity which customarily came to him’ (at 101: τὸ δαιμόνιον ἥκειν τὸ σύνηθες αὑτῷ) had exhorted them to attack the enemy. Scipio even brought divinatory priests with their sacrifices before the troops to confirm the good news, and he pointed out propitious birds flying by as he led the cheers of the soldiers. Clearly, his special relationship with the gods, Jupiter in particular, was a major part of his identity from the point of view of many our surviving literary sources.

Even in death, Scipio Africanus was closely connected to Capitoline Jupiter. Africanus’ imago, his wax ancestor-mask, was stored in the Capitoline temple in the cella of Jupiter after his death. In a speech attributed to Africanus’ brother-in-law, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (cos. 177), Livy says that the placement of Africanus’ imago there in triumphal attire and for retrieval during special events was one of many honours given to Africanus posthumously (38.56.13). Valerius Maximus says that ‘for him alone the Capitoline temple was like an atrium’ (8.15.2: unique illi instar atrii Capitolium est), the traditional showroom of a family's imagines. Appian adds that, even in his own day (i.e. mid-second century ce), the imago of Scipio was specially carried down from the Capitolium in (funeral?) processions while all other imagines came from the Forum (Hisp. 89). Because of this honour, Harriet Flower has noted that any funeral from the house of the Scipiones would have had to make a detour up the Capitoline and down the clivus Capitolinus (‘Capitoline rise’), reversing the traditional triumphal procession route, to retrieve Scipio's imago.¹² She points out that all of this would have made the funerals of Africanus’ descendants longer and more spectacular, clearly marking out this powerful gens from all others, by visiting one of the most important temples in Rome and passing family monuments along the way to the place of final interment at the family tomb along the Via Appia.

Furthermore, there is evidence that the traditional banquets held after aristocratic funerals would seem to have taken place on the Capitolium for some Scipiones, if not for all Cornelii.¹³ Three sources record the particularly frugal funerary banquet given by the Stoic enthusiast Lucius Aelius Tubero for his uncle Scipio Aemilianus, grandson of the great Africanus, in 129.¹⁴ One of these sources, Seneca the Younger, specifically mentions that Tubero conducted this banquet on the Capitolium.¹⁵ Perhaps this was where all Cornelii, or at least the relatives of Africanus, had their funerary banquets. In any case, this is a striking statement about the Cornelian connection to Jupiter, especially via Africanus himself.

Later Scipios continue to maintain a close relationship with Jupiter. Africanus’ brother, Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (cos. 190), displayed a painting representing his Asian victories on the Capitolium (Plin. HN 35.22). Also, Africanus’ son or grandson was inaugurated as a flamen Dialis, a priest of Jupiter, in the mid-second century.¹⁶ In the Third Punic War, Scipio Aemilianus was believed by some to be able to access the same support from the ‘divinity’ as his grandfather, Scipio Africanus, and the same ability to see the future.¹⁷ In fact, there was a belief, a ‘divine inspiration’, among his soldiers that only Scipio Aemilianus could end the war, and they wrote home to urge that the young Aemilianus be elected consul.¹⁸ There is numismatic evidence attesting to later Scipionic interest in Jupiter, as we shall see below, including Jupiter in African guises, that is, as Egyptian Zeus Ammon and Punic Baal.

Along the lines of equating Jupiter with Ammon and Baal, it is perhaps just worth mentioning the third cognomen of two Cornelii Scipiones Nasicae Serapiones (coss. 138 and 111). It comes from Serapis, the Roman name for the Egyptian god Osiris who was often considered to be Jupiter in another guise.¹⁹ We know the name was given as a jab at the cos. 138 by Gaius Curiatius Trigeminus (tr. pl. 138) because of his resemblance to a low-born man named Serapio.²⁰ Most of our sources for this story note several other aristocrats who received extra cognomina in this fashion.²¹ Nevertheless, Curiatius might have had in mind the connection between Jupiter and the Cornelii (and their victories in Africa) as part of his joke, disparaging the cos. 138 an ‘Egyptian Jupiter’ as it were, playing on contemporary Roman prejudice against Egyptians, and especially on their contempt for Egyptian gods.²² It is worth noting that, although in theory insulting, the name was later consistently used with respect to the cos. 138, and was also kept and used by his son, the cos. 111. Perhaps its bestowal upon the cos. 138 was seen as auspicious somehow in light of the family's Jovian interests, or at least that a renunciation of it would have been viewed as inauspicious.

Finally, one more bit of evidence links the Scipios to Jupiter. Africanus and other Scipios, including his father and uncle, are referred to by several Latin authors as fulmina, ‘lightning bolts’, in service of the Roman state.²³ Long ago, Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro felt that this probably implied an etymology of their cognomen from the Greek word skeptos, ‘lightning-bolt’.²⁴ The Late Antique author Macrobius, however, says that the Cornelii Scipiones gained their cognomen because of the piety of a young Cornelius who led around a blind member of the family with a scipio, a military baton or staff.²⁵ Whatever the case, it seems possible that the inventor(s) of this etymology – picked up on by a variety of later authors – were aware of the reputed Jovian connections of the gens Cornelia and suggested that the cognomen of this illustrious branch of the family arose from their divine patron's famous device, the lightning-bolt.²⁶

The Cornelii Sullae

Although most modern scholars have focused on the dictator Sulla's claim to Venus as a divine patron, Sulla's connection to the goddess may in fact suggest a Trojan genealogy via the Trojan royal house,²⁷ a pedigree that might have included Jupiter, since the god was the ultimate ancestor of the Trojans (as noted above). Firstly, the connection between the Sullae and Venus is earlier than the dictator, which leads one to believe that it was not merely Venus as a personal deity of fortune that Sulla was advertising. The bronze coins of Publius Cornelius Sulla, uncle of the dictator, dated to about 151, have the reverse types of the prow of a ship with a female head decorating it. Michael Crawford regards the head as that of Venus and adduces this from a similar type in the coins of the Memmii who we know also venerated her and claimed Trojan descent.²⁸ Of course, plenty of coin and literary evidence links the dictator directly to Venus, as is well known,²⁹ but, importantly, Appian (B Civ. 1.97) mentions not only the cognomen Epaphroditus that Sulla had assumed, but also in the same breath brings up an oracle that addressed the Romans, saying that on Aeneas’ line all power in Rome would soon reside. Appian (or his source) probably meant the Julii by this remark, but he might have had Sulla's interest in Venus and the Trojans in mind, too. Also, significantly, the dictator ‘revived’ the Trojan Games in about 80.³⁰

As for the Sullae and Jupiter directly, it may be significant that the first known member of the stirps, Publius Cornelius Sulla, was a flamen Dialis in the middle of the third century (see below). But later Sullae were more interested in Venus, perhaps because of her closer connections to Trojan Aeneas, though this might have been rooted in a traditional family connection (if not genealogy) from Jupiter. The dictator then may have just used his unique position in the state to magnify the claim of his gens to Trojan descent, employing Venus – as the mother of Aeneas – as his patron and ancestor.

Moreover, Sulla may have also had motivation to avoid connections to Capitoline Jupiter in his later years. As Flower has emphasized, Sulla was blamed, at least in part, for the burning of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in 83 while he was marching on the city through Italy. Sulla was not present in Rome at the time, but he seems to have gone some way to try to steer any blame away from himself. Perhaps this event encouraged him to double down on his focus on Venus and shy away from drawing connections between himself and Capitoline Jupiter.³¹

Jupiter on coins of the Cornelii

As noted several times already, there is a wealth of numismatic evidence – about a dozen coin-issues –that suggests a claimed relationship of some kind by various Cornelii. According to the Crawford catalogue of Republican coins and my own deductions explained below, of the thirty-six or so coin-issues of the Republic that allude to Jupiter directly in some way, ten were struck by the patrician Cornelii.³² Moreover, when Cornelii were moneyers and were able to allude to Jupiter on their coins, they almost always did so.³³ In fact, regarding the preponderance of Jupiter on the coins of various members of the Cornelii, Michael Crawford once declared: ‘We should rather suppose that Jupiter…was the object of special veneration by the whole gens Cornelia; from this fact those parts of the Scipionic legend associated with Jupiter and the Capitol perhaps developed.’³⁴ A survey of the numismatic evidence by different individual members and branches of the Cornelii, therefore, seems useful here.

Among the Cornelii Lentuli, one of the coin-issues of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus (cos. 72, dated to 88) displays a head of Jupiter on his quinarius. The quinarius, a half-denarius, was an uncommon denomination to be struck and there was no deity who standardly appeared on it. Clodianus, then, seems to have had some choice about putting Jupiter on the coin.³⁵ In 74, P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther (later cos. 57) strikes coins (RRC 397/1) with an unidentified male figure being crowned by a victory: he is bearded, seated on a curule chair with his head covered, but his clothes hang down to his waist in heroic fashion; he holds a cornucopia in his right hand and a sceptre in his left; his right foot rests on a globe and his left rests on an unidentifiable object (perhaps the prow of a ship?). Crawford does not believe the figure represents the Genius Populi Romani, an older identification of the type; he instead feels the image is an assertion of Roman authority against the rebel state led by Sertorius at the time.³⁶ I do not see why the bearded, royal-looking figure could not be Jupiter in one of his many guises, here serving the dual purpose of asserting Rome's hegemony and a family connection. Also significant, the gold staters of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus (cos. 56) have an eagle on a thunderbolt, emblems of Jupiter, on the reserves of his issues.³⁷ A fourth Lentulus, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus (as cos. 49) struck coins that display types of Jupiter with his consular colleague Gaius Claudius Marcellus during civil war. These coins, likely struck while the army was travelling, were certainly indebted to local influences, but various lieutenants of Pompey at this time struck enough coins with family types that we can perhaps say Lentulus had some influence in putting forward images of Jupiter for the ones his name appeared on.³⁸ Immediately thereafter, a coin of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus (possibly the Q. 48) has types celebrating the winning of the spolia opima by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, (cos. V 208): it features a scene of Marcellus placing a trophy in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.³⁹ By tradition, Aulus Cornelius Cossus had also placed his spolia opima in that temple in the fifth century, and so perhaps Marcellinus was pointing out his ancestral connection to both winners of the spolia and notably to his family's connection with this aspect of Jupiter. If these identifications are correct, this means that five Cornelii Lentuli alluded to Jupiter on coin-issues struck between 88 and 48 bce.

As noted above, later Scipios also make various allusions to Jupiter on their coins, including ones with African versions of Jupiter. Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiagenus (cos. 83) minted coins whose obverse and reverse types both had Jupiter in them.⁴⁰ Later, in the last years of the free Republic, there are coin-issues of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio that have laureate busts of Jupiter on their obverses.⁴¹ Metellus Scipio, as his name indicates, was born a Cornelius Scipio and was the heir to both the Caecilii Metelli and the Cornelii Scipios. In the Empire, the coins of Publius Cornelius Scipio (cos. 12) in Asia depict a bust of the moneyer and one of Zeus Ammon, a god (as noted already) particularly associated with Egypt and Africa.⁴² Finally, there is the African coinage of Africanus Fabius Maximus (cos. 10), who was a descendant of the famous Scipio Africanus, as his praenomen indicates; accordingly, an image of the cos. 10 and Punic Baal, often equated with Jupiter, appear together on these coins.⁴³

Among other branches of the gens, the denarii of Gnaeus Cornelius Blasio of the late second century depict the Capitoline Triad of Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter, the first and only time the trio was represented on Republican coins.⁴⁴ At about the same time, Gnaeus Cornelius Sisenna mints denarii with a head of Jupiter on the obverse and Jupiter in a chariot hurling a lightning-bolt on the reverse.⁴⁵ To my mind, the references to Jupiter on this particular coin-issue, in light of the predilection of the family to depict the god on their coins, proves that the Cornelii Sisennae claimed to be patrician Cornelii.⁴⁶ Finally, I have argued elsewhere that a contemporary coin-issue of a Cornelius Cethegus may have tried to portray images of Silvius, first king of Alba Longa, as a claim to Trojan–Alban heritage for the Cornelii (as the Sullae were doing); if so, this could possibly have been meant as an oblique allusion to their Jupiter connection.⁴⁷

The Cornelii and the flamonium Diale

Four flamines Dialis of the Republic were Cornelii, and when Augustus revived the office in 11 bce (after a hiatus of seventy-six years created by the suicide of Lucius Cornelius Merula), he selected Servius Cornelius Lentulus Maluginensis, who in turn was succeeded by his son in 23 ce.⁴⁸ All told, this means that six of the eight known Dial flamens of the Republic and early Empire were from the gens Cornelia. In addition, the only known flaminica Dialis, wife of the flamen Dialis – a priestess in her own right⁴⁹ – was a Cornelia, the first wife of Julius Caesar, who had been designated to be flamen Dialis before Sulla took this priesthood away from him.⁵⁰ The dominance of the Cornelii in the priesthood of Jupiter is striking, and certainly seems significant for a proposed special gentilician devotion to the god – a connection that other scholars have, in fact, proposed before.⁵¹

Indeed, Jens Vanggaard in his study of the flamonia noted that the Cornelii must have maintained the archaic marriage ceremony of confarreatio (which few families must have still done) in part so that they could remain eligible for the major flamonia (of which the flamonium Diale was one) and the office of rex sacrorum.⁵² The parents of the prospective flamen (and flaminica?) and the priest himself had to be married in this special marriage ceremony that involved a sacrifice of a cake made of spelt-wheat (far) to Jupiter Farreus with the flamen Dialis and the pontifex maximus both present.⁵³ Further proof that marriage was an inseparable part of the priesthood comes from the fact that upon the death of either the flamen or the flaminica the survivor in the couple had to give up their office.⁵⁴ Confarreate marriage became so rare – no doubt in part because it was a type of manus marriage, a marriage in which the wife's property came under the control of her husband – that Tacitus reports the difficulties of finding three candidates born of confarreate parents for the Dial flaminate in 23 ce, when it was eventually filled by a Cornelius Lentulus (Ann. 1.136, 4.16). Moreover, the ceremony may have been only available for patricians in practice, if not by law.⁵⁵

Eligibility for the greater flamonia or the office of rex sacrorum (another deeply important religious office held multiple known times by the Cornelii)⁵⁶ can explain why some patrician families maintained the confarreate marriage ritual at all, given its difficulties.⁵⁷ One must not rule out, however, the symbolic value of such an act: performance of it was itself something few families could do, and so it was likely to have been an act of aristocratic pretension and display. While all other marriages in Roman society were by-and-large secular, this one was distinctly religious, with the two most important priests of the state in attendance. Since confarreatio involved a sacrifice to Jupiter Farreus, perhaps the Cornelii performed it out of respect to the god to whom they claimed an ancient connection. Other patrician families may have had their own particular motives for marrying this way. Nevertheless, I would argue that the Cornelii continued to marry by this archaic ritual in order to keep their children eligible for the greater flamonia and office of rex sacrorum – but particularly for the flaminate of Jupiter, a deity to whom the gens Cornelia was tied uniquely. It is important to note how significant and desirable these religious posts were, and the prestige and privilege they provided: the opportunity for frequent and special public participation while wearing conspicuous religious clothing; the right to sit on a curule chair; the right to be escorted by a lictor, even when not holding public office; and the right to be present in senate meetings.⁵⁸

Another Cornelian family custom– which one could perhaps relate to the kind of personal physical taboos and sacrosanctity expected of a flamen and flaminica Dialis – was the inhumation of their dead family members,⁵⁹ a funerary habit very rare among the Roman aristocracy.⁶⁰ The flamines and flaminicae Dialis had many scruples (caerimoniae) they had to observe, the strongest ones requiring them to separate their physical person from the taint of death: they could not step on a grave, touch a corpse, hear funerary flutes, or touch or mention ivy, beans, or a she-goat; their hair and nail clippings had to be buried under a fruitful tree; their boy attendants had to be camilli, that is, both of their parents had to be alive still while they served; as noted above, the flamen or flaminica had to abdicate when the other died; they could not see an army preparing for battle; they could not touch raw meat or wear shoes made from the skins of animals who had died naturally; and they may not have been allowed to leave the city of Rome while serving in their offices.⁶¹

One episode may further illustrate the family's carefulness about separating the office of the flamen from death. According to Appian (B Civ. 1.74), when the flamen Dialis Lucius Cornelius Merula committed suicide in 87, following a jerry-rigged trial arranged by Cinna and the Marians, he removed his albogalerus – headgear composed of a leather helmet (galerus) with a spike (apex), worn by the flamines and perhaps other priests – symbolically resigning his priesthood before his death as he was required to do. His death was still shocking, perhaps even taking place in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and was believed to foretell the continuing horrors of civil war and the destruction of the temple in 83.⁶² It was perhaps made all the more terrible coming from a Cornelius, from a family tightly connected to the flaminate and Jupiter.⁶³ As noted above, it would be decades before he was replaced, and then only by a Cornelius.

At any rate, in light of these taboos involving death and the maintenance of his physical body, it seems possible that one who had been a flamen or flaminica Dialis could not be cremated for burial either. The Cornelii then would have developed a family custom of inhumation because some family members were compelled by their priestly obligations to inter their bodies in this way. Along these lines, it is interesting to note that another family, the Popillii, who claimed a special role in the history of the flamonia (and descent from the goddess Venus), also inhumed their dead.⁶⁴ They had won their cognomen Laenas because a family member was thought to have invented, or to have been otherwise linked to, the sacrificial garment of the flamines, the laena.

Perhaps the Cornelii practiced these marriage and burial rituals to ensure their eligibility for the flamonium Diale, or even in active pursuit of the priesthood of Jupiter by some members of their gens. Their later claims of a Jovian connection and royal Trojan descent by different branches in the family certainly would have influenced this predilection.

Conclusions

All of the accumulated evidence points toward an intimate connection between the gens Cornelia and the god Jupiter, especially Jupiter Optimus Maximus, who was housed on the Capitolium. The supposed nature or origin of this relationship is unclear, and it is possible that different Cornelii promoted different explanations of it – something to be expected of a kinship group so ancient and with so many different branches. Nevertheless, we may be able to plot the development of elements of their putative relationship with the god chronologically throughout various lines of the gens.

At first, at least, their kinship claims were taken seriously enough to allow their regular holding of the flamonium Diale, and possibly of the regnum sacrorum, starting in the middle of the third century (if not quite earlier). Scipio Africanus' close association with Jupiter seems to indicate that the familial connection to Jupiter was strengthened (if not restated) by him in the late third century. His victories in Africa – and those of Scipio Aemilianus from 149 to 146 – spurred along this claim and seemed to show the favour granted to the Cornelii (or at least the Scipios) by Jupiter, who was equated with the Punic god Baal and the Greco-Egyptian hybrid gods Zeus Ammon and Serapis. Their success in Africa even created a legend that the Scipios were always destined to be victorious there, a belief that was exploited by Metellus Scipio in the civil war against Julius Caesar in the African war-theatre (although ultimately this family propaganda was countered by Caesar).⁶⁵ Following suit, throughout the last centuries of the Republic and early Empire, various Cornelian moneyers put images relating to Jupiter on a dozen or so coin-issues.

However, also in the late Republic, when a Trojan origin was being more aggressively asserted for Rome, a legendary genealogy for the Cornelii via the royal house of Troy could also be brought to bear, if it did not actually rationalize this ancient connection to Jupiter, too. Along these lines, it may be relevant that the ‘best youth’ selected to bring in the Phrygian Magna Mater to Rome in 205 – a deity associated with Troy – was the cousin of Africanus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica.⁶⁶ Ultimately, the Cornelii Sullae (and possibly the Cornelii Cethegi) promoted Venus more than Jupiter, probably wishing to tie the gens more obviously to the Trojans. The other branches (notably the Cornelii Scipiones and Cornelii Lentuli), however, were more interested in maintaining the traditional connection to Jupiter himself, which they continued to do into the early Empire by advertising the deity and his symbols on coins and holding the flamonium Diale.

It has been rightly questioned how much cohesion individual Roman gentes had by the late Republic.⁶⁷ Certainly, the various branches of the Cornelii had been separated from each other for many centuries and generations by then. Nevertheless, it is clear from the above narrative that, as a kinship group, they shared some customs and beliefs in common (i.e. burial and possibly marriage ones), and they even shared some religious traditions in common, too: a special holiday and, as I have suggested here, a connection to/descent from Jupiter. These were elements of a common kinship identity that they could deploy to their social and political advantage, each individual member or branch to their own preferred ends.

More broadly speaking, their investment in Jupiter and focus on him as part of their clan identity points to what was probably a widespread phenomenon in the Republic: that is, the manipulation of traditional religion by individual families for their own advancement and glorification. We can only detect it – as we can discern it in other large, famous families, especially those later connected to the imperial household – because of interest in them by our literary sources, which might also corroborate numismatic evidence (when we have it). But it is fair to imagine that most if not all the major deities and cults at Rome were staked out by the most important – and ambitious – Roman kinship groups. We should view the manipulation of Venus by the Julii in this light: they were just one kinship group, if ultimately the most important one, who were engaging in very old behaviour when they claimed primacy in Rome's political culture by associating themselves with an important Roman deity.⁶⁸ Indeed, it is important to remember that Julius Caesar was just the first in a line of Julii to celebrate Venus in very much the same way that the Cornelii had Jupiter. Indeed, one can imagine that if a Cornelius had become emperor, Jupiter might have replaced Venus as the focus of early imperial family cult.