Tomb of the Scipios in the context of Cornelii Scipiones

Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (properly Asiagenes; 3rd century BC – after 183 BC) was a general and statesman of the Roman Republic. He was the son of Publius Cornelius Scipio and the younger brother of Scipio Africanus. He was elected consul in 190 BC, and later that year led (with his brother) the Roman forces to victory at the Battle of Magnesia.

Although his career may be eclipsed by the shadow of his elder brother, Lucius' life is noteworthy in several respects.

In ancient Roman religion, Tempestas (Latin tempestas: "season, weather; bad weather; storm, tempest") is a goddess of storms or sudden weather. As with certain other nature and weather deities, the plural form Tempestates is common. Cicero, in discussing whether natural phenomena such as rainbows and clouds should be regarded as divine, notes that the Tempestates had been consecrated as deities by the Roman people.

A temple (aedes or delubrum) was dedicated to the Tempestates (given in the singular by Ovid) by L. Cornelius Scipio in 259 BC, as recorded by his epitaph. Scipio had been caught in a storm with his fleet off Corsica, and the building of the temple was in fulfillment of a vow made in asking for deliverance. Ovid gives the dedication day as June 1, but it appears as December 23 in the Fasti Antiates Maiores; this latter date may mark a renovation, or there may have been more than one temple to the Tempestates. The temple vowed in 259 was located in Regio I, perhaps near the Tomb of the Scipios, and was connected with the temples of Mars and Minerva there. William Warde Fowler saw a pattern of temple dedications during this period that acknowledged water as a divine force, including the Temple of Juturna vowed in 241 by Lutatius Catulus, and the Temple of Fons during the Corsican war of 231. Black sheep were sacrificed at her temple.

The sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 B.C., is a solid tuff burial coffin, once located in the Tomb of the Scipios. It is now found in the Vestibolo Quadrato of the Pio-Clementine Museum in the Vatican Museum complex.

The name is incised on the lid (CIL VI 1284) and the epitaph (CIL VI 1285) on the front of the only intact sarcophagus (some of the decorative detail has been restored). The letters were originally painted red. A Doric-style decorative panel is above the inscription featuring roses alternating with column-like triglyphs. The top of the sarcophagus is modeled as a cushion.

The gens Cornelia was one of the greatest patrician houses at ancient Rome. For more than seven hundred years, from the early decades of the Republic to the third century AD, the Cornelii produced more eminent statesmen and generals than any other gens. At least seventy-five consuls under the Republic were members of this family, beginning with Servius Cornelius Maluginensis in 485 BC. Together with the Aemilii, Claudii, Fabii, Manlii, and Valerii, the Cornelii were almost certainly numbered among the gentes maiores, the most important and powerful families of Rome, who for centuries dominated the Republican magistracies. All of the major branches of the Cornelian gens were patrician, but there were also plebeian Cornelii, at least some of whom were descended from freedmen.