Populares

As Populares (Latin popularis, dt: folk friendly, popular) was, in contrast to the Optimates, the group referred to in the late Roman Republic, which was based on the People's Assembly and thus partly relied on the will of the people. The Populares were senators and often heard, just like the Optimates the nobility to. But you were not a party in the modern sense, but they had a certain way to make policy.

Formation

The term Populares first appears in relation to the time of the reforms Gracchan from 133 BC. It can be found inter alia in Cicero and Tacitus, meaning there both popular and folk friendly and demagogic. The Ciceronian tradition shows the procedure of the populares as consistently negative. Cicero's firm rejection of the Populares resulted from the fact that the people apparently more disenfranchised than him according to the old order, the mos maiorum, approached. He was a typical representative of the Roman system, which was marked by political ambitions and join a group, namely the Optimates connected felt, as he had done with the help of powerful senators to rise to the consulship and now the values ​​of its sponsors and the continued existence of old res publica sought to uphold.

Political orientation

The Populares it was only a loose grouping of politicians of the late Republic, who operates with certain practices against the ruling Senate majority and thus relied on the People's Assembly. They were not as representatives of the people, but even senators and often members of the nobility, which were based on the people to achieve their most completely selfish goals - which does not exclude that the people benefited from and so the Populares but to his lawyers were. They often relied on the powers of the tribunes of the people. A different but basically similar definition looks as populares simply those senators whose actions were rejected by the Senate majority. Since about 1965 is often spoken of of popular method, on the one hand to prevent the presentation of a party, on the other hand do not capture populare also basically politicians can, however, which brought typical populare resources and laws. The Populares were in the era of the Roman civil wars, in contrast to the Optimates, the Party of the best, the other group of the senatorial aristocracy. Remarkably, populare politicians - like the Gracchi or Caesar - often just a mighty and prosperous; they fell for that very reason in conflict with the other senators and searched about backing the people.

The populare policy was not only obstructive as a whole or even destructive. The Populares took quite some problems that shook the Republic at this time particularly strong. Problematic for their peers and the majority faction in the Senate it was ultimately just that: They announced the hitherto generally accepted apparent concordia Senators and went new and different ways, which were considered more than skeptical.

Known representatives

Among the most famous Populares are the two brothers Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, Marius, and finally Gaius Julius Caesar, next Appuleius Saturninus and Cinna. However, they pursue quite different goals. While it might still walked the Gracchi not only their private interests, but also to real reform for the benefit of the middle classes, Caesar was probably only remain in power growth at heart. Measures in support of the lower classes it was after this view was already represented, among others, by Eduard Meyer, only a means to an end.

Another well-known representative of the populares was Livius Drusus minor, but which has a controversial position in the history of the group. Of the Optimates it was originally counted as her, but he used in his projects the populare method that brought him into conflict with the Optimates quite fast. The Caesarian Mark Antony and Octavian can be attributed to the Populares - the latter finally put his claim to power over the Senate by force and built as Augustus the Roman Empire ( Principate ).

Swell

• M. Tullius Cicero, In Verrem
• M. Tullius Cicero, Pro Sestio