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Updated: June 24, 2025
The pack of the Populares threw themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam.
There were, moreover, the Populares strictly so called, the honestly credulous narrow-minded radicals, who staked property and life for the current watchwords of the party-programme, only to discover with painful surprise after the victory that they had been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase.
They had made common cause first with the popular and then with the senatorial party, and gained equally little by either. They had been driven to the conviction that, while the best men of both parties acknowledged the justice and equity of their claims, these best men, aristocrats as well as Populares, had equally little power to procure ahearing for those claims with the mass of their party.
V. III. Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power According to the legend king Romulus was torn in pieces by the senators. IV. II. Further Plans of Gracchus V. III. Senate, Equites, and Populares V. II. Metellus Subdues Crete V. II. Renewal of the War V. II. Sieges of the Pontic Cities V. II. All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans V. II. Syria under Tigranes
The fall of the Gracchi left the people without a leader, and the optimates easily kept possession of the government, though they did not yet feel disposed to proceed at once to carry out their own wishes fully, for fear that they might sting the populares beyond endurance.
But these Optimates and these Populares of the beginning of the seventh century were far too indispensable for eachother to wage such internecine war; they not only could not destroy each other, but, even if they had been able to do so, they would not have been willing. Meanwhile the commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and was verging towards utter disorganization.
According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the "Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community. Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites.
Honest populares, like the Gracchi, who saw the evils of senatorial rule, tried to win the popular vote to compass its overthrow. Dishonest politicians of either side advocated conservatism or change simply from the most selfish personal ambition; and in time of general moral laxity it is the dishonest politicians who give the tone to a party.
Cicero defended him, and spoke at length on the state of affairs as he wished the world to believe that he regarded it. "In the Commonwealth," he said, "there have always been two parties the populares and the optimates. The populares say and do what will please the mob. The optimates say and do what will please the best men. And who are the best men?
V. III. Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power According to the legend king Romulus was torn in pieces by the senators. IV. II. Further Plans of Gracchus V. III. Senate, Equites, and Populares V. II. Metellus Subdues Crete V. II. Renewal of the War V. II. Sieges of the Pontic Cities V. II. All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans V. II. Syria under Tigranes
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