Populares

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Populares ("favoring the people", singular popularis) were leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite. The populares themselves, however, were also of senatorial rank and might be patricians, noble plebeians or Equites.

Populares addressed the problems of the urban plebs, particularly subsidizing a grain dole. They also garnered political support by attempts to expand citizenship to communities outside Rome and Italy.

Popularist politics reached a peak under the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, who had relied on the support of the people in his rise to power.^[1] After the creation of the Second Triumvirate (43 BC–33 BC), popularis ceased to be a relevant political label.

Besides Caesar, notable populares included the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Cinna, Sertorius, Saturninus, Sulpicius Rufus, Drusus, Clodius Pulcher, Rullus and (during the First Triumvirate) Crassus and Pompey. Both Pompey and Crassus had, however, fought on the side of Sulla during the civil war, and after the death of Crassus, Pompey eventually reverted^[2] to his position as a conservative optimas. These shifting allegiances are reminders that the designation populares refers as much to political tactics as to any perceived policy. Indeed, Republican politicians 'had always been more divided on issues of style than of policy'.^[3]

Prominent members

• Tiberius Gracchus
• Gaius Gracchus
• Gaius Marius
• Lucius Appuleius Saturninus
• Quintus Sertorius
• Marcus Aemilius Lepidus
• Marcus Licinius Crassus
• Catiline
• Julius Caesar
• Publius Clodius Pulcher
• Mark Antony

Ideology

A historian of the Late Republic cautions against understanding the terms populares and optimates as formally organized factions with an ideological basis:

This summarizes the dominant interpretation of the populares in 20th-century scholarship, deriving in large part from Ronald Syme in the Anglophone literature. In the early 21st century, and as early as the publication of the ninth volume of The Cambridge Ancient History in 1994,^[5] the validity of examining popularist ideology in the context of Roman political philosophy has been reasserted. T.P. Wiseman, in particular, has rehabilitated the use of the word "party" to describe the political opposition between optimates and popularists, based on Latin usage (partes) and pointing to the consistency of a sort of party platform based on the food supply and general welfare of the populus, making land available to those outside the senatorial elite, and debt relief.^[6]

References

Further reading

• Brunt, P.A. "The Roman Mob." Past and Present 35 (1966) 3–27.
• Holland, Tom. (2003) 'Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic' (London:Abacus)
• Hölkeskamp, Karl-J. "Conquest, Competition and Consensus: Roman Expansion in Italy and the Rise of the nobilitas." Historia 42 (1993) 12–39.
• Millar, Fergus. "Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 B.C.)." Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986) 1–11.
• Millar, Fergus. "Political Power in the Mid-Republic: Curia or Comitium?" Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989) 138–150.
• Millar, Fergus. “Popular Politics at Rome in the Late Republic.” In Leaders and Masses in the Roman World: Studies in Honor of Zvi Yavetz. Edited by I. Malkin and Z.W. Rubinsohn. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Limited preview online.
• Millar, Fergus. The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. University of Michigan Press, 2002. Limited preview online.
• Parenti, Michael. "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome". The New Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-797-0.
• Seager, Robin. "Cicero and the Word popularis." Classical Quarterly 22 (1972) 328–338.
• Sherwin-White, A.N. "The Lex repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus." Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982) 18–31.
• Taylor, Lily Ross. Party Politics in the Age of Caesar. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1949. Limited preview online.
• Yakobson, Alexander. "Petitio et largitio: Popular Participation in the Centuriate Assembly of the Late Republic." Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992) 32–52.

External links

• Videos of talks by Michael Parenti, about his book "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome", which describes the conflict between optimates and populares: 76 minute talk in 1 part, and in 8 parts.