Cinna, a Roman patrician family of the gens Cornelia.
The most prominent member was Lucius Cornelius Cinna.
His daughter Cornelia was the wife of Julius Caesar, the dictator; but his son, L. Cornelius Cinna, praetor ill 44 BC, nevertheless sided with the murderers of Caesar and publicly extolled their action.
The hero of Pierre 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.
