Laelia was the daughter of Gaius Laelius (c. 190-after 129 BCE) and the wife of Quintus Mucius Scaevola (c. 159 – 88 BCE), with whom she had three children. We know very little else about her, reinforcing the impression that her daughter's husband, the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus (140-91 BCE), leaves of a sheltered but educated woman. Women of her class would typically have received early instruction in the home with their brothers, but how much more education they would have acquired is uncertain. Crassus implies that Laelia had knowledge of the early dramatic poets Plautus and Naevius, or at least she sounded as if she had. Although teachers would typically have been either mothers or, in elite households, Greek tutors, Crassus cites only Laelia's father as her model. Laelius was a cultured man who had had fought in Africa with Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (c. 184/5–129 BCE), earning the nickname Sapiens for his interest in Greek philosophy and literature. He was famous for his oratorical ability and was praised for his elegant language by Quintilian, who repeats Crassus's report that Laelia spoke like her father: Laelia C[aii] filia reddidisse in loquendo paternam elegantiam dicitur (Institutio Oratoria 1.1.6; see also 1.1.4 on page 33, The Worlds of Roman Women). In the passage below Crassus, one of the speakers in Cicero's dialogue on rhetoric, argues that good Latin pronunciation mirrors ancient Roman diction, the only remaining traces of which he finds in the speech of his mother-in-law, Laelia. See Laelia Lesson for questions to deliberate.