Cornelia Africana - The Cornelia Statue

The Cornelia Statue

After her death, a marble statue of Cornelia was erected in which only the base has survived. But her statue endured during the revolutionary reign of Sulla and became a model for future Roman women culminating with the portrait said to be of Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother four hundred years later; however, the base of Cornelia's statue was altered during the conservative attempts of later Roman reformers in which the base of her statue that gave reference to her famous sons was filed away and replaced with the inscription as “daughter of Africanus” rather than “mother of the Grachii.”6