Cossutia was a Roman woman who became engaged to Julius Caesar prior to his reaching adulthood. There has been debate among historians on whether the marriage actually occurred.
Biography Early life Cossutia belonged to a very wealthy equestrian family from Pisa.Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum, Caesar, 1.
Caesar Cossutia appealed to Caesar, although the Cossuti were not even novi homines.Betrothed Whom Caesar Rejected, Frederick Stanley Dunn, University of Oregon extension monitor, Volume 1, Issue 2, 1913, pp. 1-4. She was recommended to Caesar by his father and it is believed that the future dictator of Rome married Cossutia after he began wearing the toga virilis. Both families issued coins with her image and were inscribed with Uxor Caesaris.Jonathan Sawday, Neil Rhodes; The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print - page: 62 No children sprang from this relation. In 84 BC, after his father's death, Caesar left Cossutia and married Cornelia, as that was more pragmatic than the earlier relation to Cossutia.Women of Caesar's Family, The Classical Journal, Volume 13, 1918, pp. 502-506. It is also possible that Caesar chose to leave her to marry Cornelia because he had been nominated as Flamen Dialis, a role which demanded marriage to a patrician via confarreatio.Tom Stevenson; Julius Caesar and the Transformation of the Roman Republic - page: 42
Later years Cossutia perhaps died in Pisa, Italy in 84 BC.
Scholarly disagreement In the past it was commonly accepted that Caesar and Cossutia were married, but more recent opinions differ. Among those arguing that Caesar was never married to Cossutia are Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius, Napoleon III, Charles Merivale, James Anthony Froude, Theodore Ayrault Dodge, William Warde Fowler, Ernest Gottlieb Sihler, , and John Carew Rolfe.Notes and Discussions — "Caesar's First Wife", Classical Philology, Volume 12, 1917, pg. 93. The French author lists Cossutia first, then Cornelia, Pompeia, and Calpurnia, as wives of Caesar. The ancient historian Plutarch largely ignores Cossutia,American Notes and Queries, Volume 1, 1888, pg. 20. but names her as one of Caesar's wives.Plutarchus; Plutarch Caesar: Translated with an Introduction and Commentary - page: 152 Suetonius also used the word for an official divorce when describing the separation.Caesar: Life of a Colossus, Adrian Goldsworthy, Yale University Press, 2008, pg. 49.
Cultural depictions Cossutia appears as a major character in the opera Young Caesar, and as a minor character in several novels. A character named Cossutia appears in the television series Spartacus: House of Ashur, portrayed by Claudia Black.
See also List of Roman gentes Plebs
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