Cornelia Postuma

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. The male-equivalent praenomen Postumus is well attested. Her birth was highly significant, as it unified Sulla's family with that of her mother's.

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

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. 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.