CINGOLI (anc. Cingulum), a town of the Marches, Italy, in the province of Macerata, about 14 m. N.W. direct, and 17 m. by road, from the town of Macerata. Pop. (1901) 13,357. The Gothic church of S. Esuperanzio contains interesting works of art. The town occupies the site of the ancient Cingulum, a town of Picenum, founded and strongly fortified by Caesar’s lieutenant T. Labienus (probably on the site of an earlier village) in 63 B.C. at his own expense. Its lofty position (2300 ft.) made it of some importance in the civil wars, but otherwise little is heard of it. Under the empire it was a municipium.
CINNA, a Roman patrician family of the gens Cornelia. The most prominent member was Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a supporter of Marius in his contest with Sulla. After serving in the war with the Marsi as praetorian legate, he was elected consul in 87 B.C. Breaking the oath he had sworn to Sulla that he would not attempt any revolution in the state, Cinna allied himself with Marius, raised an army of Italians, and took possession of the city. Soon after his triumphant entry and the massacre of the friends of Sulla, by which he had satisfied his vengeance, Marius died. L. Valerius Flaccus became Cinna’s colleague, and on the murder of Flaccus, Cn. Papirius Carbo. In 84, however, Cinna, who was still consul, was forced to advance against Sulla; but while embarking his troops to meet him in Thessaly, he was killed in a mutiny. His daughter Cornelia was the wife of Julius Caesar, the dictator; but his son, L. Cornelius Cinna, praetor in 44 B.C., nevertheless sided with the murderers of Caesar and publicly extolled their action.
The hero of Corneille’s tragedy Cinna (1640) was Cn. Cornelius Cinna, surnamed Magnus (after his maternal grandfather Pompey), who was magnanimously pardoned by Augustus for conspiring against him.
CINNA, GAIUS HELVIUS, 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, Poëtarum Latinorum Vitae (1830); L. Müller’s edition of Catullus (1870), where the remains of Cinna’s poems are printed; A. Kiessling, “De C. Helvio Cinna Poëta” in Commentationes Philologicae in honorem T. Mommsen (1878); O. Ribbeck, Geschichte der römischen Dichtung, i. (1887); Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Lit. (Eng. tr. 213, 2-5); Plessis, Poésie latine (1909).
CINNABAR (Ger. Zinnober), sometimes written cinnabarite, a name applied to red mercuric sulphide (HgS), or native vermilion, the common ore of mercury. The name comes from the Greek κιννάβαρι, used by Theophrastus, and probably applied to several distinct substances. Cinnabar is generally found in a massive, granular or earthy form, of bright red colour, but it occasionally occurs in crystals, with a metallic adamantine lustre. The crystals belong to the hexagonal system, and are generally of rhombohedral habit, sometimes twinned. Cinnabar presents remarkable resemblance to quartz in its symmetry and optical characters. Like quartz it exhibits circular polarization, and A. Des Cloizeaux showed that it possessed fifteen times the rotatory power of quartz (see [Polarization of Light]). Cinnabar has higher refractive power than any other known mineral, its mean index for sodium light being 3.02, whilst the index for diamond—a substance of remarkable refraction—is only 2.42 (see [Refraction]). The hardness of cinnabar is 3, and its specific gravity 8.998.