Populares
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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 revertedTemplate:Fact 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.
