Gaius Helvius Cinna (died 20 March 44 BC) was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus.
He was lynched at the funeral of Julius Caesar after being mistaken for an unrelated Cornelius Cinna who had spoken out in support of the dictator's assassins.
[1] Cinna's literary fame was established by his magnum opus "Zmyrna", a mythological epic poem focused on the incestuous love of Smyrna (or Myrrha) for her father Cinyras, treated after the erudite and allusive manner of the Alexandrian poets.
Catullus's poem is the key information to survive about his life, together with a passage in the Suda about the Augustan period poet Parthenius of Nicaea:
The last three writers mentioned above add that he was a tribune of the people, while Plutarch,[9] referring to the affair, gives the further information that the Cinna who was killed by the mob was a poet.
But such an interpretation of the Virgilian passage is by no means absolutely necessary; the terms used do not preclude a reference to a contemporary no longer alive.
Cinna the Poet (1959), a painting by Jacob Landau that was inspired by the Mercury Theatre's modern-dress production of Caesar (1937), is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
[10]: 49 [11] Cinna is a character in the chamber opera Le piccole storie: Ai margini delle guerre, written in 2007 by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero.
In Richard Linklater's 2008 film Me and Orson Welles, English actor Leo Bill plays the role of fellow American actor Norman Lloyd, who in turn plays the role of Cinna the Poet in Orson Welles' production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.