Lucius Cornelius Cinna - Death

Death

Cinna was murdered in a mutiny of his own soldiers in 84 BC. He had been working to transport his troops across the Adriatic in order to meet Sulla on foreign soil. The troops were not relishing the upcoming fight, which promised no booty. Their dissatisfaction was increased when they heard that the second convoy of troops who had been in transport had been shipwrecked in a storm. Those that survived had returned to their homes. Cinna ordered an assembly in order to terrorize the troops back into obedience. One of his lictors struck a soldier who had been standing in the way as Cinna entered the gathering and when the soldier hit back Cinna ordered his arrest. This caused another soldier to throw a stone at Cinna, which struck him. The spirit of the mob then took hold as more missiles were thrown and the nearest soldiers stabbed Cinna to death.

Plutarch tells a slightly different story, stating that Pompey visited Cinna’s camp and escaped accused of doing some wrong. The soldiers assumed that Cinna had helped Pompey escape and killed Cinna for this breach of their trust. In either account, Cinna was murdered not due to his politics, but as more of a brief flare up of the mob spirit within his troops. Christoph Bulst argues that Cinna was killed in “an absolutely un-political mutiny,” pointing out that there is no mention of specific opposition against Cinna, and that he did not even feel the need to travel with a bodyguard.