Populares
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Populares ("favoring the people", singular popularis) 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[citation needed] 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.
A historian of the Late Republic cautions against understanding the term populares as a form of ideology:
| “ | Our chief contemporary witnesses to the political life of the late Republic, Cicero and Sallust, are fond of analyzing the political struggles of the period in terms of a distinction between optimates and populares, often appearing with slight variations in terminology, such as Senate, nobility, or boni versus People or plebs. But what precisely is denoted and connoted by this polarity? Clear enough, one who is designated in these sources as popularis was at least at that moment acting as 'the People's man,' that is a politician — for all practical purposes, a senator — advocating the rights and privileges of the People, implicitly in contrast to the leadership of the Senate; an 'optimate' (optimas), by contrast, was one upholding the special custodial and leadership role of the Senate, implicitly against the efforts of some popularis or other. The polarity obviously corresponds with the dual sources of institutional power in the Republic — Senate and People — and was realized in practice through contrasting political methods … and distinctive types of rhetorico-ideological appeals suited to tapping those alternative sources of power … . It is important to realize that references to populares in the plural do not imply a co-ordinated 'party' with a distinctive ideological character, a kind of political grouping for which there is no evidence in Rome, but simply allude to a recognizable, if statistically quite rare, type of senator whose activities are scattered sporadically across late-Republic history … The 'life-long' popularis … was a new and worrying phenomenon at the time of Julius Caesar's consulship of 59: an underlying reason why the man inspired such profound fears.[1] | ” |
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Brunt, P.A. "The Roman Mob." Past and Present 35 (1966) 3–27.
- 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.
- 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.
