Optimates and populares
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"“Against your opinion, messer Pietro, I wish to cite only one argument; which is, that of the modes of ruling people well, three kinds only are to be found: one is monarchy; another, the rule of the good, whom the ancients called optimates; the other, popular government. And the excess and opposite extreme, so to speak, wherein each one of the forms of rule falls to ruin and decay, is when monarchy becomes tyranny; and when the rule of the optimates changes to government by a few powerful and bad men; and when popular government is seized by the rabble, which breaks down distinctions and commits the government of the whole to the caprice of the multitude. Of these three kinds of bad government, it is certain that tyranny is the worst of all, as could be proved by many arguments; then it follows that monarchy is the best of the three kinds of good government, because it is the opposite of the worst; for, as you know, the results of opposite causes are themselves opposite."--The Book of the Courtier (1528) by Baldassare Castiglione |
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Optimates and populares are labels applied to politicians, political groups, traditions, strategies, or ideologies in the late Roman Republic.
The traditional view comes from scholarship by Theodor Mommsen during the 19th century, in which he identified both populares and optimates as modern "parliamentary-style political parties", suggesting that the conflict of the orders resulted in the formation of an aristocratic and a democratic party.
