Guy Helvius Zinna

Guy Gelviy Tsinna ( Latin Gaius Helvius Cinna ) is an ancient Roman poet who lived in the first century. BC e., which belonged to the plebeian family Gelviev . From his biography it is only known that, together with the poet Catullus, he embarked on a journey to Bithynia in the retinue of the praetor Guy Memmii in order to improve his condition. Catullus called Zinna a friend, mentioning that he had porters with him in common use with Chinna ^[1] .

The poetic works of Cinna are preserved only in excerpts, judging by which, as well as the testimony of other ancient writers, it can be concluded that Cinna belonged to the poets of the so-called new school. One of its distinguishing features was the desire to imitate the direction of Greek literature, which it adopted during the period of Alexandrian scholarship, which was to replace small poems on mythological themes (the so-called epilles ) instead of the predominant national-historical and didactic epos and drama. epigrams and erotic elegies.

Of all these types of poetic creativity, Zinna seems to have succeeded most of all Zmyrna epillies about the tragic fate of Adonis 's mother, Smyrna, or Mirra , who the poet worked on for 9 years, and the poetic guidebook (Propempticon) on Greece for Azinia Pollione . In both of these works, Zinna discovered such a scholarship and wrote them so flowery that in less than a century, they needed comments. Both in “Zmyrna” and in “Propempticon” of Zinna, apparently, imitated the Greek poet Parthenius of Nicaea . Some scientists, in particular, Ludwig von Schwabe ^[2] , identified Helvius Zinn with the one who, according to Plutarch , was killed by a mob during the burial of Caesar ^[3] ; but this is unlikely.

The collections of excerpts from Zinna were published by L. Miller in the publication Catulli Tibulli Propertii carmina (Leipzig, 1870) and in Behrens in Fragmenta poetarum Romanorum (Leipzig, 1886). About Zinn also wrote see Kiessling, "De Helvio C. poeta" (Berlin, 1877), and Ribbeck, "Geschichte der römischen Dichtung" (I, 1894, p. 356 ff.).