The position of women had also changed. They were now beginning to make a stand for their rights--a thing undreamed of in the old days. The father of the family was no longer allowed to execute his arbitrary power entirely unquestioned. Livy narrates an incident which illustrates this development and bears interestingly upon the character of Æmilia and the history of Cornelia. He relates that "the Senators, happening to sup one day in the Capitol, rose up together and requested of Africanus, before the company departed, to betroth his daughter to Gracchus; the contract was accordingly executed in due form, in the presence of this assembly. Scipio, on his return home, told his wife Æmilia that he had concluded a match for her younger daughter. She, feeling her female pride hurt, expressed some resentment at not having been consulted in the disposal of their common child, adding that, even were he giving her to Tiberius Gracchus, her mother ought not to be kept in ignorance of his intention; to which Scipio, rejoiced that her judgment concurred so entirely with his own, replied that she was betrothed to that very man." It has been well said that the words which Plautus puts into the mouth of Alcmena may be applied to the character of Cornelia, who was thus bestowed by her great father upon a no less worthy man: "My dower is chastity, modesty, and the fear of the gods; it is love to my kindred; it is to be submissive to my husband, kind toward good people, helpful to the brave." She also received a _dot_, an accompaniment of marriage which was beginning to be highly considered among the matrons of Rome as of more practical value than the above-mentioned moral qualities. It consisted of fifty talents of gold. But the time had not yet arrived when the riches of virtue and goodness were entirely unappreciated; there were still matrons who could enter, with faces neither brazen nor abashed, the temple erected to chastity; and upon the tombs of many of them might have been truthfully inscribed, as upon that of Claudia: _Gentle in words, graceful in manner, she loved her husband devotedly; she kept her house, she spun wool_. Among these chaste matrons Cornelia excelled; her fame remains as that of the highest type of the pure-principled, noble-minded, cultured Roman matron. She lived in entire sympathy with her husband; and we may well believe that it was partly owing to her influence that the generous Sempronius Gracchus found it in himself to command an army enlisted from among the slaves, and to emancipate them upon the battlefield as a reward for the bravery which his leadership incited.