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Optimates and populares
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Populares (/ˌpɒpjʊˈlɛəriːz, -jə-, -ˈleɪriːz/; Latin for "supporters of the people", singular popularis) is a label for politicians, rhetoric, tactics, or ideology in the late Roman Republic which favoured the power of the popular assemblies, generally in opposition to the senate. Politicians described as popularis "use[d] the populace, rather than the senate, as a means [for advantage]".

The traditional view, from the 19th century work of Mommsen – that the populares emerged around the time of the Gracchi brothers, who were tribunes of the plebs between 133 and 121 BC, and existed akin to a modern parliamentary political party – is discredited: "It is common knowledge nowadays that populares did not constitute a coherent political group or 'party' (even less so than their counterparts, optimates)". There were no "neat categories of optimates and populares" or of conservatives and radicals in a modern sense. Some recent scholarship has focused on assigning an ideological motivation to populares in line with democratic interpretations of Roman politics, but there is still "heated academic discussion" as to whether Romans would have recognised an ideological content or political split in the label.

The importance of the term comes from Cicero's Pro Sestio, a speech published in 56 BC, in which he constructs two types of politicians. Many scholars question the extent to which the speech reflected actual republican politics. Robb argues that Cicero's description of the categories is greatly distorted. Moreover, the term was not used in an entirely political sense: Cicero, while linking optimates to Greek aristokratia (ἀριστοκρατία), also used the word populares to describe politics 'completely compatible with... honourable aristocratic behaviour'.

Meaning

Denarius of Gaius Minucius Augurinus, 135 BC. Roma is portrayed on the obverse, while the reverse depicts the Columna Minucia, with at the top a statue of his ancestor Lucius Minucius Augurinus, who as praefectus annonae in 439 BC organised a corn distribution. This coin participates to the popularis propaganda for the grain dole.

There is debate as to whether the label had much meaning of any sort. Robb argues that a label describing action in the popular interest is of little use: "the principle of acting in the popular interest was a central one that all politicians would claim to be following". Gruen in Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974) rejected both populares and optimates, saying "such labels obscure rather than enlighten" and arguing that optimates was used not as a political label, but instead used for approbation.

Taking, however, the term of meaning something concrete, the label is still used to describe certain political tactics, rhetoric, and beliefs. A populares politician is a person who:

[adopts] a certain method of political working, to use the populace, rather than the senate, as a means to an end; the end being, most likely, personal advantage for the politician concerned.

Rhetoric and themes

This political method involved a populist style of rhetoric, and "only to a limited extent, that of policy" with even less ideological content. References to populares are not associated with a specific "party", but rather, a "recognisable, if statistically quite rate, type of senator". Or, used to describe bills pushed forward even after being rejected by the senate.

Their rhetoric was couched "in terms of the consensus of values at Rome at the time: libertas, leges, mos maiorum, and senatorial incompetence at governing the res publica". Like most Roman rhetoric, it drew heavily on historical precedents (exempla) – including that from ancient times, such as the revival of the comitia Centuriata as a popular law court, – from the abolition of the Roman monarchy to the popular rights and liberties won by the secession of the plebs. There also were general popularis themes: secret ballot, subsidised grain, and inclusion of non-senators on juries before the law courts. Optimates also had themes of their own, stressing protection of senate, the public treasury, and Rome's alliance obligations. Popularis rhetoric surrounding secret ballots and land reform were not framed in terms of innovations, but rather, in terms of preserving and restoring the birthright liberty of the citizenry. And populares too could hijack traditionally optimate themes by criticising current senators for failing to live up to the examples of their ancestors or framing their own arguments in fiscal responsibility.

Material interests like corn subsidy bills were not the whole of popularis causes: popularis politicians routinely made arguments on the power of the popular assemblies rather than just questions of material interests. Optimates and populares agreed, however, on core values such as Roman liberty and the sacred nature of the republic.

Ideology

Mackie argued that popularis politicians had an ideological bent towards criticising the senate's legitimacy while focusing on the sovereign powers of the popular assemblies while criticising the senate for neglecting common interests and administering the state corruptly. She added that populares advocated for the popular assemblies to take control of the republic, phrasing demands in terms of libertas, referring to popular sovereignty and the power of the Roman assemblies to create law. T. P. Wiseman argues, further, that these differences reflected "rival ideologies" with "mutually incompatible [views on] what the republic was".

This democratic interpretation did not imply a party structure, instead focusing on motivations and policies. Scholars of the late republic have not reached a consensus as to whether Roman politicians really were divided in these terms.

Usage by ancient Romans

In Latin the word popularis, is normally used outside the works of Cicero to mean "compatriot" or "fellow citizen".

Cicero

In Cicero's letters – rather than his forensic speeches – he used it generally to refer to popularity. In Cicero's philosophical works, it was used to refer to "the majority of the people" and to describe "the style of speech most useful for public speaking".

The oppositional meaning between populares and optimates emeres mainly from Cicero's drawing of a distinction between the two in his speech Pro Sestio, a speech made to defend a friend instrumental in recalling Cicero from exile by his political enemy Clodius. Cicero's use of the term, that "populares aim to please the multitude", is recognised to be polemical. His remarks that popularis tactics emerged from a failure to win the support of the senate and of personal grievances with the senate are also 'equally suspect'. Cicero's usage in that speech draws a distinction optimates who "are honourable, honest, and upright... [and] safeguard the interests of the state and the liberty of its citizens" with populares who are not so honourable and instead engage in failed attempts to cultivate demagoguery. Cicero's description of Clodius as popularis "concentrates on the demagogic sense of the word, rather than risking attack on the rights of the people".

Cicero, however, did not always use the word this way. During his consulship, he "stak[ed] his own claim to being popularis [in] the popular mandate he [held] as an elected consul" and drew a distinction between himself and other politicians as to who truly acted in the interests of the Roman people. This usage did not draw a contrast between populares and optimates. He similarly uses the term popularis describe himself in the Seventh Phillipic for his opposition to Antony and later, in the Eighth Phillipic, to describe the actions of Nasica and Opimius "for having acted in the public interests" by killing Tiberius Gracchus. This usage does not contrast to optimates but instead suggests that some person is "truly acting in the interest of the people".

Other people in the late republic

While ancient accounts of the late republic describe "a political 'establishment' and the opposition" thereto – as the "dyadic nature of [the senate and people of Rome] meant that when a senator opposed his peers... there was only recourse available" to the people – they do not use words such as populares to describe that opposition. Because politicians viewed their own status as reflected by the support of the people, the latter acting passively as a judge of "aristocratic merit", all politicians claimed "to be 'acting in the interest of the people', or in other words, popularis". Words used to describe dissent in the vein of Gaius Gracchus and Quintus Varius Severus trended more towards seditio and seditiosus.

Sallust, writing an account of the Catiline conspiracy and the Jugurthine war, does not use the word optimas (or optimates) at all, and uses the word popularis only ten times. None of those usages are political, referring either to countrymen or comrades. Robb speculates that "[Sallust] may have chosen the avoid using the word precisely because it was so imprecise and did not clearly identify a particular kind of politician".

The works of Livy, the author of Ab Urbe Condita Libri (known in English as the History of Rome), have been used to argue in favour of a distinction between populares and optimates through to earlier periods such as the Conflict of the Orders. Livy wrote after the late republic, during the Augustan period. Sadly, however, his treatment of the late Republic does not survive except in an epitome called the Periochae. While it is generally accepted that "Livy applies late republican political language to events from earlier periods", the terms optimates and populares (and derivatives) appear infrequently and generally not in a political context.

The vast majority of the usages of popularis in Livy denote fellow citizens, comrades, and oratory suitable for public speaking. Usage of optimates is also infrequent, the majority of usages referring to foreign aristocrats. Livy's terminology in describing the conflict of the orders referred not to populares and optimates but rather to plebeians and patricians and their place in the constitutional order. Livy only uses the word popularis in contrast to optimates in political terms only once, in a speech put into the mouth of Barbatus on the tyranny of the Second Decemvirate.

Historiography

The traditional view comes from scholarship by Theodor Mommsen during the 19th century, in which he identified both populares and optimates as 'parliamentary-style political parties' in a modern sense, suggesting that the struggle of the orders resulted in the formation of an aristocratic and a democratic party. John Edwin Sandys, writing in 1921 in this traditional scholarship, identifies the optimates as the killers of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. Mommsen too suggested that the labels themselves became common in Gracchan times.

This view was reevaluated by the 1930s. According to Syme in the 1939 book Roman Revolution:

The political life of the Roman Republic was stamped and swayed, not by parties and programmes of a modern and parliamentary character, not by the ostensible opposition between senate and people, optimates and populares, nobiles and novi homines, but by the strife for power, wealth and glory. The contestants were the nobiles among themselves, as individuals or in groups, open in the leections and in the courts of law, or masked by secret intrigue.

Syme's description of Roman politics viewed the late republic 'as a conflict between a dominant oligarchy drawn from a set of powerful families and their opponents'. Strausberger, writing also in 1939, challenged the traditional view of political parties, arguing that 'there was no "class war"' in the various civil wars (eg Sulla's civil war and Caesar's civil war) that started the collapse of the republic. Meier noted in 1965 that "'popular' politics was very difficult both to understand and describe [noting] that the people itself had no political initiative but was 'directed' by the aristocratic magistrates it elected [meaning that] 'popular' politics was... the province of politicians not the people'. Moreover, "very few 'populares' appeared to embrace long term goals and most acted in a way described as popularis for only a short time".

Meier suggested four meanings for the word popularis:

1. politicians acting as champions of the people against the senate,
2. politicians manipulating the popular assemblies,
3. politicians who took up a causa populi and paraded the people before the plebs urbana, and
4. a manner adopted by politicians who used 'popular' means to prolong a political career.

His analysis viewed popularis in terms of justifications and themes rather than an ideology, and emphasised the "importance of the networks of public and private ties on which senatorial politicians relied" rather than a political platform.

Gruen in the famous Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974) rejected the terms entirely:

The term optimates identified no political group. Cicero, in fact, could stretch the term to encompass not only aristocratic leaders but also Italians, [farmers], businessmen, and even freedmen. His criteria demanded only that they be honest, reasonable, and stable. It was no more than a means of expressing approbation. Romans would have had even greater difficulty in comprehending the phrase 'senatorial party'... The phrase originates in an older scholarship which misapplied analogies and reduced Roman politics to a contest between the 'senatorial party' and the 'popular party'. Such labels obscure rather than enlighten.

Brunt, writing in the 1980s–90s, took a view trending against political parties but towards an ideological dimension, emphasising that shifting alliances and loyalties between senators precluded the existence of "durable or cohesive political factions" which could be identified as optimates or populares, He concluded "optimates and populares did not and could not constitute parties as we know them" and that there were no "large groups of politicians, bound togehter by ties of kinship or friendship, or by fidelity to a leader, who [acted] together consistently for any considerable time" and that "of large, cohesive, and durable coalitions of families there is no evidence at all for any period". And that the transitory nature of political alliances made differences between factions or groups far less significant than conflicts of principle.

The optimates were explored by Burckhardt in 1988, viewing them as portions of the nobility acting against the tribunes of the plebs and focusing on vetoes and obstructionist tactics. Gruen, however, noted in 1995, that this analysis provided "no clear criteria" for determining anything about the makeup of the group. Identification of optimates also continues to be difficult. They have been identified as "members of an 'aristocratic party' to upholders of senatorial authority to supporters of the class interests of the wealthy".

The categories emerge from Cicero's writings and were 'far from corresponding with definite parties or definite policies'. It also is damaging to the utility of the term that Roman politicians, including Caesar and Sallust, never identified Caesar as a member of any populares "faction". 'The terms populares and optimates were not common and everyday labels used to categorise certain types of late republican politician'. Robb denigrates both populares and optimates writ large, as all Roman politicians would have asserted their devotion to public liberty and also have asserted their own excellence; instead of populares to describe demagoguery, Romans would have used seditiosi.

There continues to be debate as to the utility of the terms in scholarship. In 1994, Andrew Lintott wrote in The Cambridge Ancient History that although both factions came from the same social class, there is 'no reason to deny the divergence of ideology highlighted by Cicero' with themes and leaders stretching back in Cicero's time for hundreds of years. T. P. Wiseman, for example, lamented an 'ideological vacuum' in 2009, promoting the term as an label for ideology rather than for political factionalism in the vein of Mommsen.

Even in the late republic, in the run-up to Caesar's civil war, Flower wrote in 2010 that in the study of the conflict between Caesar and Pompey before the civil war in 49, "an analysis of these years in terms of 'party politics' inevitably misses the sheer degree of destabilisation and the loss of coherent political identity [of that period]".

Members

Notable populares included men who held the plebeian tribunate such as the Gracchi brothers, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Marcus Livius Drusus, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, Servilius Rullus and Publius Clodius Pulcher; and men who held the consulship such as Appius Claudius Pulcher, Publius Mucius Scaevola, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus (who also became a plebeian tribune), Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius the Younger, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Julius Caesar. There were other notable Populares such as Quintus Sertorius, who participated in the capture of Rome by the Marians in 87 BC and fought the Sertorian War, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Marc Antony, who fought for Caesar, were given a consulship by him and later became members of the Second Triumvirate.

The Romans did not describe all politicians today viewed as popularis or members of a populares "faction" with those words. Robb highlights three traditionally populares politicians who are not so described by the ancient Romans: Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Catiline, and Gaius Cornelius. The ancient sources never describe Lucius Cornelius Cinna as a popularis, but is traditionally viewed by historians being so due to his opposition to the optimate Octavius and his support for Publius Sulpicius Rufus. Catiline also, while traditionally viewed as popularis due to his debt relief proposals, is not actually described as popularis in the ancient sources, described rather as seditiosus.

See also

• optimates

References

Books

• Brunt, P. A. (1988). The fall of the Roman Republic and related essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-814849-6. OCLC 16466585.
• Crawford, Michael Hewson (1974). Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-07492-6.
• Flower, Harriet I. (2010). Roman republics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14043-8. OCLC 301798480.
• Gruen, Erich S. (1974). The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02238-6.
• Millar, Fergus (2002) [1998]. The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-08878-2.
• Mouritsen, Henrik (2017). Politics in the Roman Republic. ISBN 978-1-107-03188-3. OCLC 1120499560.
• Robb, M. A. (2010). Beyond Populares and Optimates: Political Language in the Late Republic. Steiner. ISBN 978-3-515-09643-0.
• Syme, Ronald (1939). The Roman revolution,. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. OCLC 830891947.

• Wiseman, T. P. (2008-12-25). "Roman History and the Ideological Vacuum". Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republican Politics and Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-156750-6.

Articles

• Mackie, Nicola (1992). "'Popularis' ideology and popular politics at Rome in the first century BC". Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. 135 (1): 49–73. ISSN 0035-449X.
• Yakobson, Alexander (2010). "Traditional political culture and the peoples' role in the Roman republic". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 59 (3): 282–302. ISSN 0018-2311.
• Yakobson, Alexander (2016-03-07). "optimates, populares". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.4578. Retrieved 2021-04-26.

Further reading

• Millar, Fergus (1986). "Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150-90 B.C.)". The Journal of Roman Studies. 76: 1–11. doi:10.2307/300362. ISSN 0075-4358.
• Millar, Fergus (1989). "Political Power in Mid-Republican Rome: Curia Or Comitium?". The Journal of Roman Studies. 79: 138–150. doi:10.2307/301185. ISSN 1753-528X.
• Seager, Robin (1972). "Cicero and the Word Popularis". The Classical Quarterly. 22 (2): 328–338. doi:10.1017/S0009838800042117. ISSN 1471-6844.
• Taylor, Lily Ross (1949). Party Politics in the Age of Caesar. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-01257-8.
• Yakobson, Alexander (1992). "Petitio et Largitio: Popular Participation in the Centuriate Assembly of the Late Republic". The Journal of Roman Studies. 82: 32–52. doi:10.2307/301283. ISSN 1753-528X.