Cinna
1.
L. Cornelius. An adherent of Marius, who played a conspicuous
part in the civil war between that leader and Sulla. Having attained to the consulship, after
the proscription of Marius by his opponent, he began to exert himself for the recall of the
former, and accused Sulla , who was just going as proconsul to Asia, of maladministration.
That commander, however, took no notice of the complaint. After the departure of Sulla , he
brought forward once more the law of Sulpicius, which admitted the Italians into all the
thirty-five tribes without distinction. A savage riot ensued, numbers were slain, and Cinna ,
with his chief partisans, was driven from the city by his colleague Octavius. The Italian
towns, regarding the cause of Cinna as their own, received him with the utmost cordiality. He
collected thirty legions, called the proscribed to his support, and, with Marius, Sertorius,
and Carbo , marched upon and took possession of Rome. A scene of bloodshed and lawless rapine
now ensued, which has perhaps no parallel in ancient or modern times, and has deservedly
procured for those who were the actors in it the unmitigated abhorrence of posterity. Cinna
and Marius, by their own authority, now declared themselves consuls for the ensuing year; but
Marius dying, after having held that office for only seventeen days, Cinna remained in effect
the absolute master of Rome. During the space of three years after this victory of his, he
continued to hold possession of the government at home, a period during which, as Cicero
remarks, the Republic was without laws and without dignity. At length, however, Sulla , after
terminating the war with Mithridates, prepared to march home with his army and punish his
opponents. Cinna , with his colleague Carbo , resolved thereupon to cross the Adriatic, and
anticipate Sulla by attacking him in Greece; but a mutiny of their troops ensued, in which
Cinna was slain, B.C. 77. Haughty, violent, always eager for vengeance, addicted to debauchery, precipitate in his plans, but always displaying courage in their
execution, Cinna attained to a power little less absolute than that afterwards held by Sulla
or Caesar; and it is somewhat remarkable that he should be so little known that scarcely a
single personal anecdote of him is to be found on record.
2.
One of the conspirators against Caesar ( Plut.
Caes.).
3.
HelviusGaius . A Roman poet, intimate with Caesar, and tribune
of the people at the time when the latter was assassinated. According to Plutarch, he went to
attend the obsequies of Caesar, but being mistaken by the populace for Cinna the conspirator,
was torn to pieces by them. Helvius composed a poem entitled
Smyrna (or
Zmyrna), on which he was employed nine or ten years. Four fragments of it
have reached us. It appears to have been characterized by considerable obscurity of meaning
until the grammarian Crassicius wrote an able commentary upon it (
Suet. Gram. 18). Some other fragments have also reached us of other
productions of this poet. They may be found in L. Müller's edition of Catullus
(1870).
