Cinna
Encyclopedia
Cinna was a cognomen
Cognomen
The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...

that distinguished a patrician branch of the gens
Gens
In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...

 Cornelia
, particularly in the late Roman Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

.

Prominent members of this family include:
  • Lucius Cornelius Cinna
    Lucius Cornelius Cinna
    Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelii gens....

    , consul
    Consul
    Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...

     four consecutive times 87–84 BC, a popularist
    Populares
    Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...

     leader allied with Gaius Marius
    Gaius Marius
    Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

     against Sulla, and at the time of his death the father-in-law of Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar
    Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

    .
  • Cornelia Cinna minor
    Cornelia Cinna minor
    Cornelia Cinnilla , daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna , and a sister to suffect consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, was married to Gaius Julius Caesar, who would become one of Rome's greatest conquerors and its dictator...

    , the wife of Julius Caesar and mother of his only legitimate child.
  • Lucius Cornelius Cinna
    Lucius Cornelius Cinna (suffect consul 32 BC)
    Lucius Cornelius Cinna was the son of the consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who was a supporter of politician Gaius Marius. His sister, Cornelia Cinna minor, was the first wife of dictator Julius Caesar and he was the maternal uncle of their daughter Julia Caesaris...

    , the son of Lucius Cornelius Cinna and a praetor
    Praetor
    Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, usually in the field, or the named commander before mustering the army; and an elected magistratus assigned varied duties...

    ; he was a conspirator against Caesar.
  • Helvius Cinna
    Helvius Cinna
    Gaius Helvius Cinna was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus.His magnum opus Zmyrna established his literary fame; a mythological epic poem focused on the incestuous love of Smyrna for her father Cinyras, treated after...

    , a poet murdered for having the same name as the assassin Cinna during the riots following Caesar's death.
  • Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus
    Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus
    Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus was the son of suffect consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Pompeia Magna. His sister was Cornelia Pompeia Magna....

    , a conspirator against Augustus Caesar in AD 4, and the subject of Corneille's
    Pierre Corneille
    Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

     tragedy Cinna
    Cinna (play)
    Cinna ou la Clémence d'Auguste is a tragedy by Pierre Corneille written for the Théâtre du Marais in 1639. It takes place in ancient Rome, but the ideas and themes characterize the age of Louis XIV, most notably the establishment of royal power over the nobility...

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