Catiline and the "Concordia Ordinum" - Historia Antigua

16 THE PHOENIX
one or two groups control the policy and action of the party, while
the subordinate groups render support, believing that their best interests
are served by serving the best interest of the controlling group or groups.
Mutual self-interest is the guiding principle throughout. Both these
aspects of the modern political parties, structure and membership, need
to be kept in mind in evaluating the nature of ancient political life.
The two political parties assumed to be operating in the last century
of the Roman Republic (133-27 B.c.) were the populares (the people's
party) and the optimates (the party of the gentry). Gelzer, however,
in his study of Roman political life, demonstrated that during the period
of the republic the election of officials depended entirely on the personal
ties between the candidate and his supporters.4 To begin with, the
candidate had to be a member of the richest propertied class. And
within that class, preference was always given to those whose ancestors
had held the consulship or its equivalent. In fact, the highest offices
were regarded as the special preserve of the nobiles, those whose ancestors
had held the highest offices. Not only were all citizens below the
required property qualification ineligible for office, but they were also
circumscribed in the candidates they could support: they had to vote
for those aristocrats to whom they were bound by obligations of various
kinds or for candidates whom their aristocratic patrons preferred. Even
within the aristocracy, preference was dictated by ties of blood, marriage,
friendship, gratitude, and the like. Here Mfiinzer supplemented the
work of Gelzer by examining the ties of kinship between members of
the aristocracy.5 He discovered factions within the ruling class, but
their struggles with each other, in his view, were simply the result of
one or other of the kinship groups striving for dominance. On the
basis of the findings of Gelzer and Miinzer, Strasburger flatly asserted
that political parties of the modern national kind did not exist in ancient
Rome, and that terms such as populares and optimates were merely
political catchwords, employed with little real significance by political
opponents.6
The work of Gelzer and Mtinzer is unquestionably of fundamental
importance, and one must agree with Strasburger, too, up to a point.
Rome did not have national political machines with officers, conventions,
party programmes, and slates of candidates. A Roman election was
really a city election and the better modern parallel would be the local
political machines found in some modern cities.7 But that still leaves
unsettled the matter of personnel. Were Roman political combinations
mere aggregations of individuals or did groups work together for a
4Gelzer, Die Nobilitdt d. r. R.; see especially the summaries on pages 42 and 115f.
5Friedrich Miinzer, Romische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien (Stuttgart, 1920).
6Strasburger, Concordia Ordinum, Iv. Cf. Syme, The Roman Revolution, 16, n. 2
and Cobban, Senate and Provinces, 8f.
7See F. B. Marsh, History of the Roman World 146-30 B.C. (London, 1935), 21 ff.;
370-77.