Political Conversations in Late Republican Rome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Rosillo-López
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Political World ◽  
The People ◽  
Present Book ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Perspective

We are familiar with the notion that the Roman political world of the Late Republic included lofty speeches and sessions of the Senate, but also need to remember that another important aspect of Late Republican politics revolved around senators talking among themselves, chatting in the corner. The present book intends to analyse senatorial political conversations and illuminate the oral aspects of Roman politics. It argues that Roman senators and their entourages met in person to have conversations in which they discussed politics, circulated political information, and negotiated strategies; this extra-institutional sphere had a relevant impact both on politics and institutions, as well as determining how the Roman Republic functioned. The main point of this book is to offer a new perspective on Roman politics through the proxy of conversations and meetings. Orality has represented an important component in analysis of Roman institutions: oratory before the people in assemblies and contiones, addresses and discussions in the Senate, speeches in the law courts. Orality was also crucial in rumours and public opinion. The present research posits that, in Rome, oral was the default mode of communication in politics, especially outside institutions. Only when they could not reach each other in person did Roman senators and their peers resort to letters. The book suggests that the study of politics should not be restricted to the senatorial group, but that other persons should be considered as important actors with their own agency (albeit in different degrees), such as freedmen and elite women.

Optimates/Populares

Classics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Rosillo-López
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Marcus Tullius Cicero ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The People ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
Similar Term ◽  
Bellum Iugurthinum ◽  
Late Roman

Populares and optimates are two political denominations, especially used in ancient Roman politics during the 1st century bce during the Late Roman Republic (although the sources apply them sometimes to the 2nd century bce). The basis of such differentiation is Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce), Pro Sestio 96, which defined populares and optimates as two distinct political categories. Popularis (adjective, singular of the plural populares in Latin) is an ambiguous term: it could connote “pleasing to the people” or “in the interest of the people”; the term to define the opposite of the senatorial majority, a combination of a certain political strategy and a certain type of political eloquence (eloquentia popularis) or, finally, a certain political tradition. Many politicians termed populares were tribunes of the plebs and some of them died or were murdered in violent confrontations with the Senate. The term optimates, or boni (a similar term, not exactly a synonym), rarely occur in the sources. People ascribed to this group in modern scholarship are those who believed in senatorial authority and/or those supporting the interests of the wealthy. However, identification can be also problematic. Some of the main sources are Cicero, Pro Sestio 96 (takes a negative view; main locus of the confrontation optimates-populares); Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 20; Bellum Iugurthinum 31 (Memmius’s speech) and 85 (Marius’s speech); Historiae 1.55 (Lepidus’s speech) and 3.48 (Macer’s speech). Sallust’s Epistulae ad Caesarem have been considered to be both fake and authentic (latest edition Antonio Duplá, Guillermo Fatás, and Francisco Pina Polo, Rem publicam restituere: una propuesta popularis para la crisis republicana: las Epistulae ad Caesarem de Salustio [Zaragoza, Spain: Departamento de ciencias de la antigüedad Universidad de Zaragoza, 1994] considers them authentic). Best introductions in English: Zvi Yavetz, Plebs and princeps (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988); Nicola Mackie, Popularis ideology and popular politics at Rome in the first century B. C. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 135 (1992): 49–73; Margaret Robb, Beyond « populares » and « optimates »: political language in the late Republic (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010); Antonio Duplá, “Consules populares,” in Consuls and res publica: holding high office in the Roman Republic, edited by Hans Beck, Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 279–298; Claudia Tiersch, “Political Communication in the Late Roman Republic: Semantic Battles between Optimates and Populares?” in Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome. Speech, Audience and Decision, edited by H. van der Blom, C. Gray and C. Steel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 35–68.

Multiple Charges, Unitary Punishment and Rhetorical Strategy in the Quaestiones of the Late Roman Republic

Cicero's Law ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Late Roman

The anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s early De Inventione place great emphasis on the Judicial type of oratory that takes place in the Roman courts. By teaching their readers how to speak in this context through comments and examples, the two texts also provide a unique insight into the law, legal systems and personnel in the early first century BCE. This chapter focuses on the information they provide about the people involved in the Roman courts: the jurists, the advocates, and the jurors.

Conjuring the Body Politic From the Corpus Mysticum: The Post-Independent Pursuit of Public Opinion in Mexico, 1821-1854

1999 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian F. Connaughton
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Office ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

Political theory, consensus and participation have often had deeply religious motivations and inspirations driving them. And however peculiar to theology the concept of corpus mysticum may seem to us today, it has often been used in association with politics. In the late Middle Ages, the notions of political office as against personalism, continuity of sovereignty in spite of the unexpected and politically perilous deaths of monarchs, unity over factionalism, the relationship between authority and the law, and that between authority and the people, were persuasively addressed through this religious metaphor.

Public Opinion and the Arenas of Debate

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Karen Piepenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts

Chapter 5 examines the role of public opinion in Athenian debates in philosophical circles, especially in arenas such as public assemblies and law courts. It begins with a discussion of the dêmos’ attitudes and positions that occur in speeches, particularly in the political speeches and the prosecution and defence speeches from public trials. More specifically, it considers the attitudes of the dêmos towards the social and political elite as well as its positions on day-to-day politics. It then analyses the competition between orators in political debates that are held in public assemblies and in the law courts. It shows that orators refer back to alleged views of the people in order to communicate their own suggestions or petitions successfully even as they attempt to discredit their opponents, but at the same time distancing themselves from the dêmos and representing the interests of individuals.

Moneta and the Monuments: Coinage and Politics in Republican Rome

2001 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 27-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Meadows ◽  
Jonathan Williams
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
The People ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Temple

The mint of Republican Rome was located on the Capitol somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Juno Moneta. This is one of the best known but perhaps worst attested pieces of topographical information concerning the Republican city of Rome. The evidence that the coins of the Roman Republic were made there is exiguous to say the least. Indeed, there are only two literary sources that explicitly site the mint at Juno Moneta's temple. The first is Livy's account of the condemnation and execution of M. Manlius Capitolinus, the hero who had previously saved the Capitol from assault by the Gauls. Livy mentions that the people passed a law to the effect that no patrician would thereafter be permitted to live on the Capitol or the Arx, for Manlius' house had stood on the site where, Livy says, now stands the aedes atque officina Monetae, the temple and the workshop of Moneta. The second is contained in the Suda (s.v. Μονήτα), in a passage to be discussed below. These are the sole threads of evidence on which the location of the mint of Republican Rome hangs. Nevertheless, despite an attempt to impugn Livy's reputation for topographical accuracy, they should suffice.

Magistrates who Made and Applied the Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Vervaet
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Routine Application ◽  
The People ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
The Law ◽  
Historical Developments

During most of the Roman Republican era—traditionally dated from 509 to 27 BC—the magistrates of the people and the plebs demonstrably played an essential role in both the production and the application of Roman law, especially in terms of statute laws and edicts. Although the senate had a tremendous voice, no legislation would have been possible without the proactive involvement of a series of key magistrates of people and plebs. When it comes to the application of the law under the Roman Republic, there was much scope for the so-called minor magistracies, whose involvement in the routine application of the law was probably disproportionate to their attestation in the sources. Importantly, this survey of magistrates who made and applied the law in the Roman Republic never loses sight of the overall socio-institutional background and key historical developments and changes.

Conclusions

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-238
Author(s):  
Cristina Rosillo-López
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political System ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Present Book

The conclusion sums up the findings of the book and addresses the question whether the political culture of conversations could be applied to previous and later periods of Roman history. The Roman political system ran on conversation and face-to-face meetings. The main objective of this book has been to offer an extra-institutional perspective on Roman politics through the proxy of conversations and meetings. Orality has long been identified as an important component for the analysis of Roman institutions and was also crucial for the circulation of rumours and public opinion. The present book has argued that in Rome, oral communication was the default mode in politics, especially for all politics carried out outside institutions. Only when they could not reach each other in person did Roman senators and their peers resort to letters.

The People as Law-Makers: Custom, Practice, and Public Opinion as Sources of Law in Africa and England

1977 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. N. Allott
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Black Africa ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Literate Society ◽  
Law Making

This essay is an attempt to investigate, assess and compare the role of the “people” as makers of law in a variety of customary societies in black Africa on the one hand, and in England on the other. The studies that may have been made of this sort of question by lawyers, constitutional experts, sociologists, political scientists and the like have rarely, if ever, contrasted the law-making function of the people in the two types of society. Where such a contrast has been made, it has tended to be limited to the proposition that things are quite different in the two types of society. It will be one of the arguments of this essay that, although the procedures and mechanisms of the law may fundamentally differ if one compares a highly developed, industrialised, literate society such as England with a simpler subsistence pre-literate society such as anciently those of the Ashanti and the Sotho, yet in each society, whatever the forms in which power is exercised or however absolute the authority possessed by those in power, yet the people participate constantly and in a variety of ways in a continuing process of law-making. It will be the task of this paper to isolate, describe and compare those ways.

Peranan KPPU Bagi Pemangku Kepentingan Dalam Menegakkan Undang-Undang Larangan Praktik Monopoli Di Indonesia

Liquidity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-200
Author(s):  
Muchtar Riva’i ◽  
Darwin Erhandy
Keyword(s):  
Stakeholder Participation ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Law Commission

The establishment of the KPPU is to control the implementation of the Act. No. 5/1999 on Concerning the Ban on Monopolistic Practices and Unfair Business Competition in Indonesia. Various duties and authority of the KPPU contained in Article 35 and Article 36 of the Act. But in reality, KPPU does not have executorial rights so that the various decisions of the commission often could not be implemented. Therefore internally strengthening of institutional existence by way of amending the Law Commission is very appropriate to be used by the government and parliament agenda. Externally, stakeholder participation is something very urgent and that the KPPU’s strategic optimally capable of performing their duties according to its motto: “Healthy competition Welfare of the people”.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document