Populares
Encyclopedia
Populares were aristocratic 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 or noble
plebeians
.
The populares addressed the problems of the urban plebs
, particularly subsidizing a grain dole, and in general favored limiting slavery
, since slavery took jobs from poor free citizens. 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. After the creation of the Second Triumvirate
(43 BC
–33 BC
), the populares ceased to function as a political movement.
Besides Caesar, notable populares included the Gracchi brothers
, Gaius Marius
, Lucius Cornelius Cinna
, Publius Clodius Pulcher
, and (during the First Triumvirate
) Marcus Licinius 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 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'.
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, 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.
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
who relied on the people's assemblies
Roman assemblies
The Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Republic were political institutions in the ancient Roman Republic. According to the contemporary historian Polybius, it was the people who had the final say regarding the election of magistrates, the enactment of new statutes, the carrying out of capital...
and tribunate
Tribune
Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...
to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates
Optimates
The optimates were the traditionalist majority of the late Roman Republic. They wished to limit the power of the popular assemblies and the Tribunes of the Plebs, and to extend the power of the Senate, which was viewed as more dedicated to the interests of the aristocrats who held the reins of power...
, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
. The populares themselves, however, were also of senatorial rank and might be patricians or noble
Nobiles
During the Roman Republic, nobilis was a descriptive term of social rank, usually indicating that a member of the family had achieved the consulship. Those who belonged to the hereditary patrician families were noble, but plebeians whose ancestors were consuls were also considered nobiles...
plebeians
Plebs
The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...
.
The populares addressed the problems of the urban plebs
Plebs
The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...
, particularly subsidizing a grain dole, and in general favored limiting slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, since slavery took jobs from poor free citizens. They also garnered political support by attempts to expand citizenship
Roman citizenship
Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to certain free-born individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance....
to communities outside Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
Popularist politics reached a peak under the dictatorship
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, who had relied on the support of the people in his rise to power. After the creation of the Second Triumvirate
Second Triumvirate
The Second Triumvirate is the name historians give to the official political alliance of Octavius , Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony, formed on 26 November 43 BC with the enactment of the Lex Titia, the adoption of which marked the end of the Roman Republic...
(43 BC
43 BC
Year 43 BC was either a common year starting on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday or a leap year starting on Sunday or Monday of the Julian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Proleptic Julian calendar...
–33 BC
33 BC
Year 33 BC was either a common year starting on Saturday, Sunday or Monday or a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar and a leap year starting on Saturday of the Proleptic Julian calendar...
), the populares ceased to function as a political movement.
Besides Caesar, notable populares included the Gracchi brothers
Gracchi
The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, were Roman Plebian nobiles who both served as tribunes in 2nd century BC. They attempted to pass land reform legislation that would redistribute the major patrician landholdings among the plebeians. For this legislation and their membership in the...
, Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...
, Lucius Cornelius Cinna
Lucius Cornelius Cinna
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelii gens....
, Publius Clodius Pulcher
Publius Clodius Pulcher
Publius Clodius Pulcher was a Roman politician known for his popularist tactics...
, and (during the First Triumvirate
First Triumvirate
The First Triumvirate was the political alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Unlike the Second Triumvirate, the First Triumvirate had no official status whatsoever; its overwhelming power in the Roman Republic was strictly unofficial influence, and...
) Marcus Licinius Crassus
Marcus Licinius Crassus
Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and politician who commanded the right wing of Sulla's army at the Battle of the Colline Gate, suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus, provided political and financial support to Julius Caesar and entered into the political alliance known as the...
and Pompey
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
. Both Pompey and Crassus had, however, fought on the side of Sulla during the civil war
Sulla's second civil war
Sulla's second civil war was one of a series of civil wars of ancient Rome. It was fought between Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius the younger in 82 BC.-Prelude:...
, and after the death of Crassus, Pompey eventually reverted 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'.
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
Ronald Syme
Sir Ronald Syme, OM, FBA was a New Zealand-born historian and classicist. Long associated with Oxford University, he is widely regarded as the 20th century's greatest historian of ancient Rome...
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, the validity of examining popularist ideology in the context of Roman political philosophy has been reasserted. T.P. Wiseman
T.P. Wiseman
Timothy Peter Wiseman FBA , who usually publishes as T.P. Wiseman and is named as Peter Wiseman in other sources, is a classical scholar and professor emeritus of the University of Exeter...
, in particular, has rehabilitated the use of the word "party" to describe the political opposition between optimates and popularists, based on Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
usage (partes) and pointing to the consistency of a sort of party platform
Party platform
A party platform, or platform sometimes also referred to as a manifesto, is a list of the actions which a political party, individual candidate, or other organization supports in order to appeal to the general public for the purpose of having said peoples' candidates voted into political office or...
based on the food supply and general welfare of the populus, making land available to those outside the senatorial elite, and debt relief.
Further reading
- Brunt, P.A.Peter BruntPeter Astbury Brunt FBA was an ancient historian at Oxford University....
"The Roman Mob." Past and Present 35 (1966) 3–27. - Holland, TomTom Holland (author)-Biography:Holland was born near Oxford and brought up in the village of Broadchalke near Salisbury, England. His younger brother is the historian and novelist James Holland...
. (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 nobilitasNobilesDuring the Roman Republic, nobilis was a descriptive term of social rank, usually indicating that a member of the family had achieved the consulship. Those who belonged to the hereditary patrician families were noble, but plebeians whose ancestors were consuls were also considered nobiles...
." Historia 42 (1993) 12–39. - Millar, FergusFergus Millar-External links:* staff page at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford* announcement of "History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ."...
. "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 ComitiumComitiumThe Comitium in Rome is the location of the original founding of the city. The area is marked by a number of shrines, temples, altars and churches today from throughout its history. The location was lost due to the cities growth and development over a thousand years, but was excavated at the turn...
?" 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, MichaelMichael ParentiMichael Parenti is an award-winning, internationally known American political scientist, historian, and culture critic who has been writing on a wide range of both scholarly and popular subjects for over forty years. He has taught at several universities and colleges and has been a frequent guest...
. "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient RomeThe Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient RomeThe Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome is a 2003 history book by American professor Michael Parenti. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize...
". 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 repetundarumLex Acilia repetundarumLex Acilia Repetundarum was a law established in ancient Rome in 123 BC.It provides for equites as jurors in courts overseeing senatorial class to prevent corruption abroad. It was extremely unpopular since the inferior class judges the senatorial. It was believed to be part of Gaius Gracchus'...
and the Political Ideas of Gaius GracchusGaius GracchusGaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populari politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the ill-fated reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus...
." Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982) 18–31. - Taylor, Lily RossLily Ross TaylorLily Ross Taylor is an American academic and author, who in 1917 became the first female Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.-Biography:...
. 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 ParentiMichael ParentiMichael Parenti is an award-winning, internationally known American political scientist, historian, and culture critic who has been writing on a wide range of both scholarly and popular subjects for over forty years. He has taught at several universities and colleges and has been a frequent guest...
, about his book "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient RomeThe Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient RomeThe Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome is a 2003 history book by American professor Michael Parenti. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize...
", which describes the conflict between optimates and populares: 76 minute talk in 1 part, and in 8 parts.