page_title: Populares
section_title: Ideology
hierarchical_section_title: Populares / Ideology
caption_attribution_description: English: C. Augurinus. 135 BC. AR Denarius (19mm, 3.88 g, 12h). Rome mint. Head of Roma right, in high relief, wearing winged helmet, ornamented with griffin’s head, the visor in three pieces and peaked, wearing single-drop earring and pearl necklace, hair arranged in three symmetrical locks; ROMA downwards to left, X (mark of value) below chin / Ionic column, surmounted by a figure holding scepter in right hand and grain ears in left; the shaft is formed of torus-shaped blocks; to the capital is attached a tinnabulum (bell) on either side; at base of column are two lion heads, each surmounted by a stalk of grain; on left, togate figure of L. Minucius Augurinus, togate, holding a dish and a loaf, left foot on modius; on right, togate figure of M. Minucius Faesus, holding lituus in right hand; C • A VG above. Crawford 242/1; Sydenham 463; Kestner 2195-6; BMCRR Rome 952-4; Minucia 3. Near EF, attractive cabinet toning, tiny flan flaw on reverse. Well struck. From the Archer M. Huntington Collection, ANS 1001.1.10591.
context_page_description: The Populares were a political faction in the late Roman Republic who favoured the cause of the plebeians.
  The Populares emerged as a political group with the reforms of the Gracchi brothers, who were tribunes of the plebs between 133 and 121 BC. Although the Gracchi belonged to the highest Roman aristocracy since they were the grandsons of Scipio Africanus, they were concerned for the urban poor, whose dire condition increased the risk of a social crisis at Rome. They tried to implement a vast social program comprising a grain dole, new colonies, and a redistribution of the Ager publicus in order to alleviate their situation. They also drafted laws to grant Roman citizenship to Italian allies and reform the judicial system to tackle corruption. Both brothers were murdered by their opponents, the Optimates, the conservative faction representing the interests of the landed aristocracy, which dominated the Senate. Several tribunes of the plebs later tried to pass the Gracchi's program by using plebiscites to bypass senatorial opposition, but Saturninus and Clodius Pulcher suffered the same fate as the Gracchi.
context_section_description: A historian of the Late Republic cautions against understanding the terms populares and optimates as formally organized factions with an ideological basis: 
  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.
  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. In particular, T. P. Wiseman has rehabilitated the use of the word "party" to describe the political opposition between Optimates and Populares, 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 ("people"), making land available to those outside the senatorial elite and debt relief.
  Politicians adhering to Popularist rhetoric or implementing Popularist policies usually did so not out of genuine belief in the cause or out of altruism, but rather to ingratiate themselves with the masses in order to achieve their own goals or those of patrons. Julius Caesar exemplified this once he became Roman dictator, involving himself in attracting teachers and doctors and the replacement of slaves on farms (important issues to the poor), but also disbanding clubs fellow Popularist Publius Clodius Pulcher used to maintain his own infuence, seeing him as a threat to his rule.
  Those in the Populares tradition also tended to oppose the use of the death penalty, and accepted the ascension of novi homines into Roman politics.
  A true distinction between the populares and optimates usually only showed intermittently, however, mainly in relation to some contentious measure.
caption: 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 in favour of the grain dole.[21]
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