While on the public stage, Cinna was the dominant leader of a tense coalition that ruled Rome for three years. And while Cinna obviously had a dismissive attitude toward republican norms, so did everyone else. Despite repeated attacks from men like Cicero who called him a “monster of cruelty,” Cinna was no more a lawless and wicked tyrant than any of the other men who played the deadly new game of violent politics. Cinna was certainly not an unimaginative dictator who used brutality only to secure petty whims and pleasures. The regime Cinna led tried to address the economic devastation of
...more
