GAIUS HELVIUS

See also:

• CINNA
• GAIUS HELVIUS CINNA

CINNA  , Roman poet of the later Ciceronian age . Practically nothing is known of his life except that he was the friend of Catullus, whom he accompanied to Bithynia in the suite of the praetor Memmius . The circumstances of his death have given rise to some discussion . Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Appian and Dio Cassius all state that, at Caesar's funeral, a certain Helvius Cinna was killed by mistake for Cornelius Cinna, the conspirator . The last three writers mentioned above add that he was a tribune of the people, while Plutarch, referring to the affair, gives the further information that the Cinna who was killed by the mob was a poet . This points to the identity of Helvius Cinna the tribune with Helvius Cinna the poet . The chief objection to this view is based upon two lines in the 9th eclogue of Virgil, supposed to have been written 41 or 40 B.C . Here reference is made to a certain Cinna, a poet of such importance that Virgil deprecates comparison with him; it is argued that the manner in which this Cinna, who could hardly have been any one but Helvius Cinna, is spoken of implies that he was then alive; if so, he could not have been killed in 44 . 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 . It has been suggested that it was really Cornelius, not Helvius Cinna, who was slain at Caesar's funeral, but this is not borne out by the authorities . Cinna's chief work was a mythological epic poem called Smyrna, the subject of which was the incestuous love of Smyrna (or Myrrha) for her father Cinyras, treated after the manner of the Alexandrian poets . It is said to have taken nine years to finish .

A Propempticon Pollionis, a send-off to [Asinius]

Pollio, is also attributed to him . In both these poems, the language of which was so obscure that they required special commentaries, his model appears to have been Parthenius of Nicaea . See A . Weichert, Poetarum Latinorum Vitae (183o); L . Muller's edition of Catullus (187o), where the remains of Cinna's poems are printed; A . Kiessling, " De C . Helvio Cinna Poeta " in Commentationes Philologicae in honorees T . Mommsen (1878); O . Ribbeck, Geschichte der romischen Dichtung, i . (1887) ; Teuffel=Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Lit . (Eng. tr . 213, 2-5) ; Plessis, Poisie latine (1909) .

great pest on young plants, and can only be kept down by fumigating or vaporizing the houses, and syringing with a solution of quassia chips, soft soap and tobacco .