In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) was good for the republic as a whole. T. P. Wiseman interprets the last century of the republic on the assumption that the People had a coherent political ideology of its own, and that the optimates, with their belief in justified murder, were responsible for the breakdown of the republic in civil war.
T. P. Wiseman is Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Exeter.
1. Roman History and the Ideological Vacuum ; 2. The Fall and Rise of Gaius Geta ; 3. Licinius Macer, Juno Moneta and Veiovis ; 4. Romulus' Rome of Equals ; 5. Macaulay on Cicero ; 6. Cicero and Varro ; 7. Marcopolis ; 8. The Political Stage ; 9. The Ethics of Murder ; 10. After the Ides of March ; Epilogue
This book is ground-breaking for its simple suggestion that the ideology of Roman popular politics is not entirely lost to us, and for its virtuoso demonstration that, fragmentary, inadequate and intensively studied as our sources for the pe riod are, they may still have more to tell us.
T. P. Wiseman, University of Exeter) Wiseman, T. P. (Emeritus Professor of Classics and Ancient History, Emeritus Professor of Classics and Ancient History, T P Wiseman