This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel, visiting with Daisy Dunn, the classicist and author of the new book, The Missing Thread,

a women's history of the ancient world.

Iliad's behind us, the odyses behind us.

Etruscans have become Romans.

And here we are in the second century BC. Two brothers, known collectively today as the Grakai, are convinced that the Roman elite

must be challenged, must be challenged by laws that favor the plebeians, the common people.

Sound familiar? It's called they're reformers. However, they come up against a Roman

Senate and a Roman elite that is not going to give in. And it turns to tragedy. But in this

is one character who emerges as behind the scene of these two brothers, the Grakai. And that is Cornelia, their mother,

celebrated by centuries since then. Daisy, thank you very much for this. What do we need to know

about Cornelia? Because she stands apart from all the tragic ends. She stands apart from all

the women who eventually are widowed and find themselves without power.

She's very powerful.

Is she somebody who we can say taught her sons to be reformers?

I think so.

She came from quite a prominent family.

She was a daughter of Skippeer, Afrikanus, one of the

heroes of the wars fought between Carthage and Rome. And she was very well educated. She knew

Greek. She knew Latin. And we're told that she had, or at least conceived, 12 children, of which three survived. And she took control

of their education because she was widowed while she was still quite young. So she had two sons,

Tiberius and Gaius and a daughter called Sampronia. And she was renowned for being very

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