Optimates Or Populares

[pompeius magnus]

Since there seems to be a lot of variance in opinions and people tending to side with one view or another, lets find out who is where. I have it on good source that I am a populares for my dissaproval of Caesar's march on Rome, as well as my varied opinions on Marcus Antonius. What are you.

[Germanicus]

PM, I would have thought you were an Optimate for dissapproving of Caesars march on Rome, because he had popular support, but anyway, I am a populare

[Ursus]

Gee, I feel like I do in real world elections where I don't entirely agree with either of the two main factions, even if I lean one way.

 

In my opinion the entrenched Senatorial oligarchy had to go to make a functioning empire. I'm not sure how much of a populare I am, though. When it comes to lifestyle, religion and economics I certainly don't consider myself a radical.

 

That's why I like Augustus. He may have been fairly "radical" in coming to power but once in power he tried to restore some of old traditions of Rome. The main difference is that those traditions were open to a wider pool of contestants from the provinces rather than just a narrow band of Consular families from Rome. Augustus actually sharpened the class distinctions, but the "new men" from the provinces now had a stake in the Roman class system

 

Thanks to Augustus and some of his more reasonable successors, Rome slowly became a cultural ideal rather than just a town on the Tiber. If the narrow minded Senatorial oligarchy had had their way I think Rome would have been regarded as just another imperial parasite and oppressor rather than a lasting influence on Western civilization. It might have even collapsed long before it ultimately did, and we most likely wouldn't be here now singing odes to its glory.

 

Anyway, I voted "not sure." I'm not sure if the Optimate/Populare distinction is entirely meaningful to imperial politics.

[P.Clodius]

What the majority wants, the majority should get. The idea that a rich select few should govern me ticks me off to know end.

[Augur]

What the majority wants, the majority should get.

 

 

Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it. Such as, for example, when the majority wants to enslave a minority, or perhaps simply to kill it. One needn't look too far to find frightening examples of both.

 

Which is one reason why this life-long greener-than-green liberal found himself siding with the Optimates in this string. Why? Because, by its very nature, a misdirected majority can be far worse than even the most abusive aristocrat. The primary reason is that fully empowered masses have no restraints on their conduct, they usually insist they don't need the aristocracy at all, and often would be happy to elimate it altogether. The exact opposite is true for the aristocrat, for whom the central reality is that its privileges, power and wealth are totally dependent on the continuing control and productive well being of the masses. For the aristocrat, any abuse of power that goes beyond what the masses will tolerate is suicidal.

 

So, for the aristocrat the central question must always be: what is the limit of how much can I get away with? Likewise, if the aristocrat exceeds this limit, the critical question becomes: what must I do, what must I concede, to get the masses back under my control? Thus, for the aristocrat, the genius of the successful use of power becomes an unending game of push and pull, challenge and response.

 

No one played this game with greater skill, and with greater long-term benefit to all, than the Roman senatorial class -- at least until the Gracchi. Thereafter things become dominated less by Populares and Optimates than by

[Zeke]

I don't like the idea of Caeser destroying the Republic,

yet if he would have marched on Rome I would have been one of the idiots to wave my hands in the air and shout in the streets of Rome,

 

"Hail Caeser" because I am a fallower of great men. So I would support the Republic yet I would be on Caeser's side lol.

 

So I put not sure.

 

Zeke

[Q Valerius Scerio]

Hrm, neither really. I think we all should abandon this life of city-dwelling and become ascetic monks... But if I had to choose I would probably be... Damn, this is just too hard. People are just too untrustworthy.

[Virgil61]

What the majority wants, the majority should get.

 

 

Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it. Such as, for example, when the majority wants to enslave a minority, or perhaps simply to kill it. One needn't look too far to find frightening examples of both.

 

Which is one reason why this life-long greener-than-green liberal found himself siding with the Optimates in this string. Why? Because, by its very nature, a misdirected majority can be far worse than even the most abusive aristocrat. The primary reason is that fully empowered masses have no restraints on their conduct, they usually insist they don't need the aristocracy at all, and often would be happy to elimate it altogether. The exact opposite is true for the aristocrat, for whom the central reality is that its privileges, power and wealth are totally dependent on the continuing control and productive well being of the masses. For the aristocrat, any abuse of power that goes beyond what the masses will tolerate is suicidal.

 

So, for the aristocrat the central question must always be: what is the limit of how much can I get away with? Likewise, if the aristocrat exceeds this limit, the critical question becomes: what must I do, what must I concede, to get the masses back under my control? Thus, for the aristocrat, the genius of the successful use of power becomes an unending game of push and pull, challenge and response.

 

No one played this game with greater skill, and with greater long-term benefit to all, than the Roman senatorial class -- at least until the Gracchi. Thereafter things become dominated less by Populares and Optimates than by Opportunists on both sides.

 

Thus, this Head Count vote for the Optimates.

 

 

Ok Sir Clive, put the pipe down and take the smoking jacket off! While your explanation seems the height of realpolitik, it's really just apologetics for the expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfrachisment of the majority. If society is lucky some of that power is directed "for the good of the state", but even if so it is always to the benefit of the aristocracy. The history of the pre-Gracchi Senate isn't just a history of a group embodied with doing good for the benefit of Rome, but also a group for whom a large portion of power was dedicated to adjusting the constitution and laws of Rome to their benefit. After all, what's good for General Motors...

 

Most of those dreaded uprisings from that majority mob you fear are the result of the pressures, burdens and sometimes plain extortions from that aristocratic class. The emerging lawlessness or lack of restraints isn't the act of a group of feral sub-humans (or "misdirected majority") but the result of a lack of institutions or release for popular or factional pressures- institutions, political traditions- you name it- that weren't allowed to take root or were dismantled by that aristocracy.

 

In any event, the frightening examples (of the misdirected majority) you speak of rarely occurred in such simplistic terms. Cambodia and Rhwanda are often spoken of as examples, but any close examination shows they aren't. The two largest revolutions most often pointed by the popular press as resulting in bloodbaths by the "mob" were overdramatized or no such thing. The French and Russian revolutions were expropriated by factions, Jacobins and Bolsheviks respectively, who proceeded to settle scores [though Parisians- the mob- did dispense justice for a time]. The previous noble classes had the luxury of their being born into their positions; their ancestors having solidified it by violence and war, oppression or whatever and then writing the histories that romanticise or justify. The Jacobins and Bolsheviks had the historical misfortune to exist in eras where literacy rates were high and allowed mountains of written documents to become available and a much brighter historical light to shine on them- less of an opportunity for them to be looked upon as the 'noble' optimates are today.

 

To paraphrase a previous statement, the bulk of the Senate's history isn't of a group embodied soley with doing for the benefit of Rome but a group for whom a large function of their positions was dedicated to interpreting the constitution and laws of Rome to their benefit. The lesson here isn't to beware of the "mob" or even of opportunists, but to beware the eventual outcomes resulting from those who cloak their actions in false claims of protecting the Republic or the consitution.

 

Me? Populares of course. (I'm sure you'd a guessed it by now)

[Augur]

Ok Sir Clive, put the pipe down and take the smoking jacket off! While your explanation seems the height of realpolitik, it's really just apologetics for the expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfrachisment of the majority.

 

"Sir Clive

[Virgil61]

Ok Sir Clive, put the pipe down and take the smoking jacket off! While your explanation seems the height of realpolitik, it's really just apologetics for the expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfrachisment of the majority.

 

"Sir Clive�" with a "smoking jacket"� allegations of "realpolitic." ...and even a pipe to puff. Oh my. Sorry, Virgil, just a T, tennies and cutoffs boy here, perhaps you should check at the mansion next door? Anyway, that was a beautiful and enthusiastic rebuttal, but I am a little confused about what is being rebutted? [puff puff] Let�s see�

]

 

 

Didn't mean to come off as crotchety as I did, I suppose I should take off the the ol' workers cap myself, red star and all. Although it did seem you were supporting those Optimates, I should have phrased it differently. I wrote it while at work and was jazzed up about a political issue (I work in downtown D.C.).

 

While you're absolutely correct in stating a fact (reality really); what a ruling class must weigh in a sort of political cost-benefit analysis [the push-pull thing], I'm not so sure that acceptance of it as the only route is the way to go. Acknowledgment of it should be encouraged of course (Machiavelli- who's been unfairly maligned for calling a spade a spade- caught on before anyone). I've nothing against elites per se- hell I wish I was in the elite 35% tax bracket- I just don't think they're generally as beneficial. [This conversation leads me to think that back to the old adage that history should be a tool for avoiding the mistakes of the past.]

 

An elite that comes to its position fairly through merit is fine with me, it's the subsequent generation's mechanizations that fix the game so they stay on top that I'm not a fan of, whether it's Rome, Tudor England or the U.S. Short of bloody revolutions, getting fresh blood in often, rather than a long established rule of one class, seems a better route. I'm sometimes not so sure our present day American system is all that good at it, better than most but not optimal (and based on previous posts on Cato, a discussion of our system vis-a-vis the Republic is pretty relevant). And I guess this partially explains my "enthusiastic indignation" especially towards the Republic; idealized, flawed versions of it and it's downfall have been accepted as dogma by many parts of our political society (Cato Institute, National Review, Libertarians, etc.). How many times I've heard the fall of the Republic compared with the U.S. in today's world here in this town I can't keep track of.

 

Perhaps the Romans wouldn't have understood what we were talking about at the same level, but I think both the Gracchi and even Julius Caeser had a sense of it. And I think it was precisely the mis-management of the process by the Optimates that led to the fall of the Republic, although that one may be argued long after we're gone. "I am from the head count" (a big "me too" on that one), I'd forgotten that term. I think I'll use it in a sentence one of these days!

[M. Porcius Cato]

Ok Sir Clive, put the pipe down and take the smoking jacket off! While your explanation seems the height of realpolitik, it's really just apologetics for the expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfrachisment of the majority.

 

And here I thought the admirers of Cato were, in your words, "intellectual equivalents of the mullet-wearing-camaro-driver". Or does the brandy-snifting, pipe-puffing, Bristish aristocrat who likes Cato also wear a mullet and drive a Camaro??? To avoid muddling the colorful stereotypes, perhaps you might just refrain from painting all of us with such a broad brush? Isn't it possible that some of us regard Caesar's DICTATORSHIP as the ultimate "expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfranchisement of the majority"?

[Primus Pilus]

Ok Sir Clive, put the pipe down and take the smoking jacket off! While your explanation seems the height of realpolitik, it's really just apologetics for the expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfrachisment of the majority.

 

And here I thought the admirers of Cato were, in your words, "intellectual equivalents of the mullet-wearing-camaro-driver". Or does the brandy-snifting, pipe-puffing, Bristish aristocrat who likes Cato also wear a mullet and drive a Camaro??? To avoid muddling the colorful stereotypes, perhaps you might just refrain from painting all of us with such a broad brush? Isn't it possible that some of us regard Caesar's DICTATORSHIP as the ultimate "expropriation of power by the few and the mass disenfranchisement of the majority"?

 

Must we search out old threads to rehash the same reoccuring argument? I don't see anything wrong with stating ones case, but this has turned into a rather 'tit for tat' discussion.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Must we search out old threads to rehash the same reoccuring argument? I don't see anything wrong with stating ones case, but this has turned into a rather 'tit for tat' discussion.

 

Agreed. I'm done.

[Emperor Goblinus]

I voted not sure. The Roman Republic was quite something in an age where any form of democracy or republicanism was unheard of throughout most of the world. But the republic was just not suited to ruling the vast territory, whereas the imperial system was, if imperfectly.

Edited December 30, 2005 by Emperor Goblinus

[Tobias]

It is a rather difficult decision. Although politically, i am a conservative, i have no support whatsoever for the actions of the Optimates in the late republic. But rather then allow my vote to be governed by one group of ultra-conservatives in history, i will look at this in an unbiased way.

I'm populares