Optimates and populares
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Optimates and populares are labels applied to politicians, political groups, traditions, strategies, or ideologies in the late Roman Republic. It is debated as to whether Romans would have recognised
Denarius of Gaius Minucius Augurinus, 135 BC, depicting a grain distribution. Grain distribution is traditionally held to be one of the recurrent topics of popularis agitation.
Bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Theodor Mommsen, the 19th century German author of the highly influential Römische Geschichte.
Pompey
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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a Roman general and statesman who was prominent in the final decades of the Roman Republic. As a young man, he was a partisa
Optimates and populares
…the impossibility of applying such labels to many individuals, who could pretend to be popularis or optimas as they saw fit; the careers of Drusus or Pompey are for example impossible to fit into one "party". Ancient usage was also far from clear, and even Cicero, while linking optimates to Greek aristokratia…
Bust of Pompey, copy of an original from 70–60 BC, Venice National Archaeological Museum
Bust of Mithridates of Pontus in the Louvre, Paris
Denarius minted in 56 BC by Pompey's supporter Faustus Sulla
The First Triumvirate; left to right, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey