History of Rome

​These things, even if placed in a funeral oration, would point to the immense greatness of a mind regulating itself to a citizen’s status in the midst of honors—things which his enemy admits by way of reproach.

​It is agreed that the younger of his two daughters was married to this Gracchus—for the elder had undoubtedly been placed in marriage to P. Cornelius Nasica by her father.

​This point is not sufficiently clear: whether she was both betrothed and married after the death of her father, or whether those reports are true that, when L. Scipio was being led into chains and none of his colleagues was of any help, Gracchus ​swore that the enmity he had had with the Scipios remained, and that he was not doing anything to curry favor, but that he would not suffer the brother of P. Africanus to be led into that prison into which he had seen Africanus leading the kings and generals of the enemy.

​They say that the senate, which happened to be dining on the Capitol that day, rose up in a body and requested that Africanus should betroth his daughter to Gracchus during the banquet.

​When the betrothal had been duly performed in this way during the public ceremony, and when he had returned home, Scipio told his wife Aemilia that he had betrothed their younger daughter.

​When she, with womanly indignation that there had been no consultation with her about their common daughter, added that, even if he were giving her to Ti. Gracchus, ​the mother ought not to have been excluded from the consultation, Scipio, delighted by such a harmonious judgment, replied that he had betrothed her to that very man. These matters concerning so great a man, since they vary so much both in reports and in written records, had to be set forth.