Cornelia Postuma or Postuma Cornelia^[1] (born 78 or 77 BC) was the only daughter of Roman dictator Sulla and his fifth wife, Valeria. She was Sulla's fifth and final known child.^[a]

Life

Postuma was delivered some months after Sulla's death. It is uncertain whether her name, Postuma, was a praenomen or cognomen, as the usage of the name Postuma as a female praenomen is unattested in epigraphical evidence for the Roman Republic period but it would have been unusual to give a cognomen at such an early date.^[2] The male-equivalent praenomen Postumus is well attested.^[3] Her birth was highly significant, as it unified Sulla's family with that of her mother's.^[4]

She had three surviving older half-siblings—Cornelia Silla and the twins Faustus Cornelius Sulla and Fausta Cornelia—as well as a brother who died young. Her oldest sister, Silla, had already had children by the time Postuma was born.^[5]

T. F. Carney presumes that she died young since there is no further mention of her in literature; he states that a member of such a notorious household could not have failed to be mentioned somewhere if she had been old enough to marry.^[4] He assumes both she and her half-brother died in congenital infection, perhaps contracted by her mother from Sulla, who himself died of infected ulcers.^[6]

Cultural depictions

In Colleen McCullough's book Fortune's Favourites Postuma's mother Valeria expresses doubt that she is actually Sulla's child, believing that she was instead fathered by her lover Metrobius.^[7]