Cornelia
Κορνηλία
1. Κορνηλία, One of the noble women at Rome, who was said to have been guilty of poisoning the leading men of the state in B. C. 331, the first instance in which this crime is mentioned in Roman history. The aediles were informed by a slave-girl of the guilt of Cornelia and other Roman matrons, and in consequence of her information they detected Cornelia and her accomplices in the act of preparing certain drugs over a fire, which they were compelled by the magistrates to drink, and thus perished. (Liv. 8.18; comp. V. Max. 2.5.3; August. de Civ. Dei, 3.17; Dict. of Ant. s. v. Veneficium.)
Family of the Cinnae.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.