A report on Catullus and Helvius Cinna

Modern bust of Catullus on the Piazza Carducci in Sirmione.
Catullus at Lesbia's by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Bithynia within the Roman Empire
Catullus et in eum commentarius (1554)
Lesbia, 1878 painting by John Reinhard Weguelin inspired by the poems of Catullus

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.

- Helvius Cinna

His friends there included the poets Licinius Calvus, and Helvius Cinna, Quintus Hortensius (son of the orator and rival of Cicero) and the biographer Cornelius Nepos, to whom Catullus dedicated a libellus of poems, the relation of which to the extant collection remains a matter of debate.

- Catullus
Modern bust of Catullus on the Piazza Carducci in Sirmione.

3 related topics with Alpha

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Bust of Virgil at the entrance to his crypt in Naples

Virgil

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Ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period.

Ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period.

Bust of Virgil at the entrance to his crypt in Naples
Bust of Virgil at the entrance to his crypt in Naples
Page from the beginning of the Eclogues in the 5th-century Vergilius Romanus
Horace, Virgil and Varius at the house of Maecenas, by Charles Jalabert.
Late 17th-century illustration of a passage from the Georgics, by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter.
A 1st-century terracotta expressing the pietas of Aeneas, who carries his aged father and leads his young son
Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia by Jean-Baptiste Wicar, Art Institute of Chicago
A 3rd-century Roman mosaic of Virgil seated between Clio and Melpomene (from Hadrumetum [Sousse], Tunisia)
A 5th-century portrait of Virgil from the Vergilius Romanus
Virgil in His Basket, Lucas van Leyden, 1525
The verse inscription at Virgil's tomb was supposedly composed by the poet himself: Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces. ("Mantua gave me life, the Calabrians took it away, Naples holds me now; I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders" [transl. Bernard Knox])
Tomb of Virgil in Naples, Italy

From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, associated with Catullus' neoteric circle.

Neoteric

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The Neoterikoi (Greek νεωτερικοί "new poets") or Neoterics were a series of avant-garde Latin poets who wrote in the 1st century BC. Neoteric poets deliberately turned away from classical Homeric epic poetry.

The Neoterikoi (Greek νεωτερικοί "new poets") or Neoterics were a series of avant-garde Latin poets who wrote in the 1st century BC. Neoteric poets deliberately turned away from classical Homeric epic poetry.

The most significant surviving Neoteric works are those of Catullus.

Latin poets normally classified as neoterics are Catullus and his fellow poets such as Helvius Cinna, Publius Valerius Cato, Marcus Furius Bibaculus, Quintus Cornificius, etc. Some neoteric stylistic features can also be seen in the works of Virgil, who was one generation younger than the poetae novi.

T. P. Wiseman

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Named as Peter Wiseman in other sources, is a classical scholar and professor emeritus of the University of Exeter.

Named as Peter Wiseman in other sources, is a classical scholar and professor emeritus of the University of Exeter.

Catullan Questions (1969).

Cinna the Poet (1974).