Gaius Helvius Cinna — somewhat doubtfully identified with
the " Cinna the poet " who met such a tragical end at the
hands of the populace after Caesar's assassination — carried
the Alexandrian movement to its most uncompromising
conclusions. His fame (and that fame was very great)



v.] Cinna and Calvus. 53

rested on a short poem called Zmyrna, over which he spent
ten years' labour, and which, by subject and treatment alike,
carried the Alexandrian method to its furthest excess. In
its recondite obscurity it outdid Lycophron himself. More
than one grammarian of the time made a reputation solely
by a commentary on it. It throws much light on the
peculiar artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that
this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm and
evidently sincere praise.
The other member of the triad, Gaius Licinius Macer
Calvus, one of the most brilliant men of his time, was too
deeply plunged in politics to be more than an accomplished
amateur in poetry. Yet it must have been more than his
intimate friendship with Catullus, and their common fate
of too early a death, that made the two names so con-
stantly coupled afterwards. By the critics of the Silver
Age, no less than by Horace and Propertius, the same idea
is frequently repeated, which has its best-known expression
in Ovid's beautiful invocation in his elegy on TibuUus —

Obvius huic venias, hedera iuvenilia cinctus
Tempora, cum Calvo, docte Cafulle, tuo.
We must lament the total loss of a volume of lyrics which
competent judges thought worthy to be set beside that of
his wonderful friend.
