Consules populares

Abstract

In the Late Roman Republic politicians labelled as populares were traditionally tribunes of the plebs. In our sources we found references to the great populares leaders Tiberius and Caius Sempronius Gracchus, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Servius Sulpicius Rufus and Publius Clodius. There are also other minor figures. They are all tribuni plebis. They all proposed different measures against the interests of the senatorial oligarchy and gave a central role to the popular assembly. Along with this, we found also a few consuls populares, as Caesar in 59 BC. In fact, Plutarchus writes that Iulius Caesar, although he was a consul, acted like a tribune (Caes. 14.2). In this paper we collect and analyze all our sources about consules populares, in order to understand the different historical circunstances and the possible meanings of the word popularis as related to the consuls, depending on how it is used by the ancient authors. The paper deals with a series of consuls, which goes from the so-called consules populares in 449 BC through some consuls in the middle of the second century BC until the later outstanding figures like Caius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Lucius Aemilius Lepidus, Q. Pompeius Magnus or C. Iulius Caesar. Marcus Tullius Cicero deserves a special consideration, as he presented himself as a truly consul popularis in his speechs de lege agraria, delivered against the rogatio Servilia agraria at the beginning of his consulate in 63 BC. In our opinion, these consuls populares also allow a new insight in the failure of the social and political consensus of the last republican century in Rome and, particularly, in the crisis of the inner aristocratic solidarity. At a time of “fragmentation of legitimacy”, as R. Morstein-Marx and Nathan Rosenstein have pointed out recently, they underline the process of loss of political hegemony by the Senate. On the other hand, their different proposals, together with the strong refusal of Cicero to an agrarian law, offer an illustrative picture of the social and economic problems of that century. At the same time, they contribute to build the notion of a popularis libertas, significantly opposed tothe libertas of the optimates.