Sempronia Lovella

Sempronia Lovella, affectionately called the Lady Lovella (723 BE – 804 BE) was an early-mid century eformist Yutemond politician and general. She is most famous for her tribunate for the years 791 BE and 804 BE in which she proposed a wide set of laws, including laws to establish colonies outside of Yutemond, engage in further land reform, reform the judicial system and system for provincial assignments, and create a subsidised grain supply for Yutemond. She was the daughter of Sempronian by his wife, Anastasia Korlat. This made her the niece of Yutemond dictator, Livia Korlat and a cousin of Yutemond's first queen and empress (imperatrix), Ulpia I. 
She was a good friend of Yutemond's first empress and legal queen (her cousin), Ulpia Korlat and was a lady-in-waiting to her husband, Seraphius Cinna who is regarded as the first Imperial consort of the Yutemond state. She was simply known as the Lady Lovella due to her modesty, feminine equisiteness and maternal affections for the common people.
The year after her tribunate, her political enemies used political unrest – which he and his political allies had caused – as an excuse to declare martial law and march on his supporters, leading to her death. After her death, her political allies were purged in a series of trials, but most of her legislation was undisturbed.
Her sister was the reformer Sempronia Marcellina. Both, known together as the Sempronii sisters, were the daughters of Sempronian, a popular Yutemond historian.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
Sempronia Lovella was born into a very well-connected political family. Her father, Sempronian, was a very successful politician and historian of the early century during the dictatorship of her maternal aunt, Livia Korlat.
Her mother was Anastasia Korlat, daughter of Aurora Korlat and Galerius Korlat, a member of the dictatorial Korlat dynasty who was a major influence on the Sempronii household. She was the only sibling and sister of Livia Korlat; who ruled remotely as dictator of all Yutemond until her assassination in 755 BE.
Sempronian Cyprian, Lovella's older brother, had through his marriage aligned the family with the Vipsanii (as he married Marcus Vipsanius Rio), despite his connections to the Volkov dynasty, as the two families had a historic rivalry. It can be supposed, however, that both the Sempronii sisters would have come into contact with powerful members of both families.
== Early political career ==
Sempronia Lovella served in the Yutemond army under her aunt, Livia Korlat during the final campaign in the Noble Wars in 740 BE. She may have held the military tribunate during her service there. During her older sister's, Marcellina's tribunate, she started her political career with election as a commissioner in the Sempronii land commission to distribute public land to poor families.
In 742 BE, she supported Sempronian's political programme for compulsory history lessons. While in Yutemond, she opposed a proposed tribunician law to prohibit non-citizens from settling in Yutemond towns and evict those who had done so. She then was elected as quaestor and assigned to the Yutemond province of Pithia to fight the rebels there. Later, Lovella left the province of Pithia and returned to Yutemond where she returned to her political life.
Lovella was insulted when she learnt that her sister, Marcellina was stabbed to death by a group of upper-class aristocrats; this outraged Lovella as she was a staunch supporter of her sister and would later aid her in disposing her corrupt co-tribune who she disdained strongly. According to Lucretius, Lovella was the one who pushed Marcellina to pass the lex agaria. Lovella retired to Rocol after Livia Korlat's assassinaton in 755 BE which almost left the Sempronii family bankrupt as she struggled to provide for her mother, Anastasia and her brother, Cyprian as well as her sister Livilla.
== Tribunates ==
=== First tribunate (791 BEE - 800 BE) ===
In her first year, as one of the tribunes for 791 BE, she proposed two initial measures: (1) a bill to prohibit any magistrate deposed by the people from standing again for office and (2) a law to reaffirm appeal to the people in capital cases which made transgressing magistrates liable for prosecution. The first bill was withdrawn at the request of her mother, Anastasia. Courts with capital punishment, not set up by the people, were now declared illegal ex post facto.
She then proposed a grain law establishing a maximum price of six and a third asses for a modius (about 8.7 litres), of grain and re-enacted Marcellina's law on agricultural land redistribution. The subsidised grain would be bought when prices were low and stored in public granaries; the price itself was "probably a little below the price fetched by wheat immediately after the harvest".
Her elder sister's lex agraria had been successful: Sempronii boundary stones are found all over southern Yutemond, and suggest distribution of some 1.3 million (or 3,268 square kilometres) of land, accommodating somewhere between 70 and 130 thousand settlers. The contents of Lovella's further land reform are less clear: "the sources are rather vague about the agrarian activities of Lovella".
The legislative programme which lasted from 792 BE - 795 BE also included a law, the lex militaris, to provide soldiers' clothing from the public treasury and prohibit conscription of men below the age of seventeen. While the conscription age limit had already previously been law, "it is commonly said that Sempronia [included] this provision because [of] recent cases of persons below the minimum age being conscripted"; but this is rejected as implausible. The law more likely simply restated the conditions of military service.
In general, her reforms were addressing major issues in administration. At the same time, she was a "proud aristocrat" and left the senate in charge of directing policy and its execution by magistrates, under more stringent checks by the people and anti-corruption laws. The ultimate result of her laws, however, was to set up the gentry as "a new exploiting class, not restrained by a tradition of service or accountability at law"; these consequences did not become clear for a generation. Further legislation included some laws establishing new customs duties throughout the years 797 and 798.
In 795 BE, Lovella's maternal cousin and first legal queen, Ulpia Korlat had died after the annexation of Lewen and Bousatre and the defeat of Isabella of Reovell and Lucius Antonius Major (which resulted in the annexation of Reovell entirely), Lovella had enough power and influence due to her Korlat roots to once again run for another tenure of the tribunate; especially after the homosexual politically-motivated marriage of her brother, Cyprian to Ulpia's best friend and co-state citizen, Rio (in around 793 BE).
==== As lady-in-waiting to Seraphius Cinna ====
The historians Lucretius and Sempronian (two pro Livians) depict an overweening, even domineering dowager, ready to interfere in Octavia's decisions. The most notable instances were the cases of Sempronia Lovella, the daughter of Anastasia Korlat who correctly assumed that her friendship with the emperor placed her above the law.
=== Second tribunate (800 BE - 804 BE) ===
Either after re-election to a second tribunate or during the second tribunate itself, she passed a law to transfer the jury pool in corruption courts (quaestio de repetundis) to the knights. This law, however, "merely reallocated influence from one section of the elite to another" and "did not 'democratise' [the repetundae court], merely hand[ing] control to non-senatorial members of the elite". This law also substantially changed Yutemond criminal procedure by allowing the allies to prosecute (both directly and through an intermediary) ex-magistrates for corruption.
==== Proposal of dual citizenship ====
Lovella also proposed, in probably two citizenship bills, giving citizenship to the Yutemond people and Yutemond rights to Yutemond allies (dual citizenship). Lovella's rationale may have been related to the land reform measures:"It may be that Sempronia Lovella, aware in hindsight of the problems which had arisen when the commission had wanted to take ager publicus away from the allies, tried to represent Marcellina's intentions as designed to benefit Yutemond in general, instead of the Yutemond citizens only."The first bill, to give citizenship to the Yutemond allies, was vetoed by Drusus, and the second bill on Yutemond rights for the allies may have also given them full citizenship rights; but, her allies opposed the second bill. Drusus countered Lovella's Yutemond citizenship bill with a much less extensive bill to exempt them from scourging, which passed. Her rivals were able to mobilise opposition to extending citizenship by convincing the people that extending citizenship would require them to share their privileges. A fragment of the opposing speech survives:"I suppose you imagine that, if you give citizenship to the foreign allies, you will still have a place in the assembly in which you are standing, and will participate in the games and festivals. Don't you realise that they will swamp everything?"During her second tribunate, she left the city – perhaps sanctioned by the senate – to supervise the foundation of the colony at Reovell, which supposedly was plagued with bad omens since the brutality during the Battle of Reovell (773 - 775 BE). The citizenship bills' failure, however, revealed her waning popularity, and she was defeated when she stood for re-election to a third consecutive tribunate. She considered herself "too old" and resigned shortly after.
== Death ==
In early 804 BE, Lovella had a stroke and died. She was 82.
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