This book consists of ten linked studies of the political culture of the late Roman republic, all based on the premise that most recent scholarship has been over-influenced by the ideology of the self-styled optimates, as transmitted above all in the letters and speeches of Cicero, and has largely ignored the interests and ideological standpoint of the Roman People as a whole. Rejecting the assumption that the republic was always and necessarily an oligarchy, and keeping open the possibility that the People had a strong egalitarian ethos of its own, normally in conflict with that of the optima ... More

This book consists of ten linked studies of the political culture of the late Roman republic, all based on the premise that most recent scholarship has been over-influenced by the ideology of the self-styled optimates, as transmitted above all in the letters and speeches of Cicero, and has largely ignored the interests and ideological standpoint of the Roman People as a whole. Rejecting the assumption that the republic was always and necessarily an oligarchy, and keeping open the possibility that the People had a strong egalitarian ethos of its own, normally in conflict with that of the optimates, the book investigates a series of political episodes which have not been satisfactorily explained, and brings out, as a counterweight to Cicero, the hitherto unexploited political character of his near-contemporary Marcus Varro. Among the other themes explored are the attitudes of two lost Roman historians, Licinius Macer and Asinius Pollio; the dramatic nature of Roman satire, consistently ignored by scholars of Latin literature; the inextricable interdependence of performance space and political space in Rome; the extraordinary justification of political murder in Cicero's philosophical dialogues; and the verdicts passed on Cicero and Caesar by a great 19th-century historian who was also an orator and an experienced politician.