Tullia(78 av. J.-C. — 44 av. J.-C.)
Tullia Ciceronis
Rome antique
6 min read
Tullia was the only and beloved daughter of the great Roman orator Cicero and Terentia. Her premature death plunged her father into deep grief, as his correspondence attests. She embodies the condition of the elite Roman woman at the end of the Republic.
Key Facts
- Born around 79-78 BC, the only daughter of Cicero and Terentia
- Married three times, notably to Publius Cornelius Dolabella
- Died in 45 BC shortly after childbirth, causing Cicero immense grief
- Cicero considered raising a shrine (fanum) to her memory, a project that was never realized
Works & Achievements
Her three marriages (Piso, Crassipes, Dolabella) also served her father's political strategies in the Rome of the late Republic.
Cicero praised his daughter's wit and education: a rare case of an elite woman lauded for her intellectual qualities.
A philosophical treatise Cicero composed to overcome his grief after Tullia's death, now lost but often cited in antiquity.
Written about her death, it is one of the most famous letters of consolation from antiquity, preserved in Cicero's correspondence.
Cicero wished to raise a shrine to his daughter in order to deify her: a unique testimony of a planned private cult devoted to a mortal.
For historians, her figure embodies the condition of the aristocratic matron and the strength of family bonds at the end of the Republic.
Anecdotes
Cicero adored his daughter and tenderly nicknamed her "Tulliola
(little Tullia) and *deliciae meae* (my delight) in his letters. These words of affection
rare in the correspondence of a great Roman man
reveal a father-daughter bond that was exceptionally warm for the time.
Tullia was betrothed very young, around 67 BC, to Gaius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, whom she married in 63 — the year her father was consul and foiled the Catiline conspiracy. Piso remained loyal to Cicero and worked for his recall from exile, before dying prematurely in 57.
In 50 BC, while Cicero was governing the distant province of Cilicia, Tullia married Publius Cornelius Dolabella, a young supporter of Caesar. The situation was delicate: her new husband belonged to the political camp opposed to her father's, on the eve of the civil war.
When Tullia died in February 45 BC, Cicero sank into immense grief. He withdrew to his solitary villa at Astura, read everything the philosophers had written about mourning, and composed for himself a *Consolatio*, a treatise now lost.
Cicero wanted to make his daughter a deity: he planned to raise a *fanum*, a shrine, in her honor, and feverishly searched for gardens along the Tiber on which to build it. This plan for a private cult, unique of its kind, was never carried out.
Primary Sources
I have arranged a match for our little Tullia with Gaius Piso, son of Lucius, Frugi.
In this solitude I speak to no one; in the morning I hide myself in a thick and wild forest, and I do not emerge until evening.
On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Aegina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the regions around me. Behind me lay Aegina, before me Megara, on my right the Piraeus, on my left Corinth: cities once so flourishing, which now lie overthrown and in ruins before our eyes. And we, frail mortals, grow indignant if one of us dies!
I want a shrine to be built for her, and that is something no one can wrest from me.
Key Places
Capital of the Republic where Tullia was born and where Cicero's family owned its domus, at the heart of Roman political life.
Cicero's favorite country residence, in the hills southeast of Rome, where Tullia died in February 45 BC.
Cicero's secluded villa on the coast of Latium, where he withdrew to mourn his daughter and sought gardens in which to build her a shrine.
The home town of Cicero's family, from which the Tullii Cicerones took their name and their ancestral estates.