Tullia and Crassipes

THE MARITAL CAREER OF Tullia, daughter of Terentia and Cicero, is known in considerable detail thanks largely to survival of her father's correspondence. Briefly, following sequence of events is generally accepted for her: Tullia was betrothed in 67 at age of eight or nine to C. Calpurnius Piso Frugi (quaest. 58), whom she married probably in 63, year of her father's consulship, when she was about twelve or thirteen. She was widowed in 58 or 57, and then betrothed a second time in April 56 to Furius Crassipes, marrying him shortly after but at an indeterminate date. Little is known of this match, but in 51 Cicero was once more and with some urgency looking for another husband for his daughter. The common assumption is, therefore, that she and Crassipes had divorced. In 50, however, Tullia ipsa announced to an absent and astonished father her engagement to P. Cornelius Dolabella (cos. 44). A third marriage followed but ended in divorce in 46, closely followed in 45 by Tullia's death (probably from puerperal fever) when she was thirty. These, in skeletal form, are known facts of Tullia's marital history.1 The concern of this paper is sequel to Tullia's second betrothal, putative marriage to and divorce from Furius Crassipes.2 For although assumption is widespread that a marriage took place and that it was followed at some point before 51 by a divorce, there is in fact no direct attestation of either. Shackleton Bailey states: the marriage [to Crassipes] followed within a year or so ... but did not last long, while other scholars, perhaps feeling a long period of celibacy to be unlikely, assume that a marriage closely followed engagement.4 But there is no consensus with

Traditional medicine · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Studies and Legal History · Medicine