Cinna (redirected from Cornelius Cinna)

Cinna, d. 44 B.C., Roman tribune

Cinna (Caius Helvius Cinna), d. 44 B.C., Roman tribune. At the funeral of Julius Caesar the mob mistook him for Lucius Cornelius Cinna and killed him. He was probably the minor poet Cinna, a friend of Catullus and author of the epic Smyrna (of which fragments survive).

---

Cinna, d. 84 B.C., Roman politician

Cinna (Lucius Cornelius Cinna) (sĭn`ə), d. 84 B.C., Roman politician, consul (87 B.C.–84 B.C.), and leader of the popular party. Shortly after Cinna's first election, Sulla left Rome to fight against Mithradates VI of Pontus, having received from Cinna and Cinna's colleague Gnaeus Octavius a promise to maintain Sulla's reforms. When Sulla was safely out of Italy, Cinna revived certain anti-Sullan proposals; the conservatives opposed Cinna and expelled him from the city. Cinna promptly collected Roman soldiers and Italians in S Italy, called Marius from Africa, and returned to Rome. Cinna and Marius declared themselves consuls, and a great slaughter of Sulla's followers took place. After Marius' death Cinna remained consul. When Sulla defeated Mithradates and set out for Rome, Cinna and Cneius Papirius Carbo raised an army to oppose him, but before the civil war began Cinna was murdered in a mutiny at Brundisium. His daughter Cornelia was the first wife of Julius Caesar. Cinna's son

Lucius Cornelius Cinna, fl. 44 B.C., was a praetor who expressed approval of Caesar's assassination.

Bibliography

See H. Bennett, Cinna and His Times (1923).

---

Cinna 

a genus of plants of the family Gramineae. The perennial grasses have a creeping rhizome. The leaf blades are flat and broad, and the single-flowered spikelets are in a loose panicle. The upper glumes are linear-lanceolate and single-veined; the lemma is lanceolate and greatly flattened laterally. Below the top of the lemma are short pointed or sharp barbs. There is a single stamen. The genus has three species, which are distributed in the temperate belt of the northern hemisphere and in the mountains of South America as far south as Peru. One species—C. latifolia —is found in the USSR, growing in damp shady coniferous and mixed forests. It is a good feed crop.