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Optimates and populares are labels used to describe politicians in the Roman Republic. The standard view is that the two labels refer to political method: optimate is when a politician conducts his political activity mainly through the senate and a politician is popularis when he builds support among the people for his goals instead. Usage of these labels emerged in the late republic and are best known through Cicero's works.

Much of the work on defining optimates and populares at Rome derive from models of political culture. Models which rely on a struggle between the people and the aristocracy naturally have the most place for the labels as political parties; such models require organisation of the dichotomy and especially of the people. Models which view the republic as oligarchic in nature tend to reject such party theses.

The view that optimates and populares referred to two political parties at Rome, representing the cause of the senate and the people respectively, is largely rejected by modern classical scholarship. There were no party line votes, electoral tickets, and large-scale party organisations in the Roman Republic. Candidates at annual elections stood not on adherence to manifestos or party lines but rather on personal reputation and quality. Quotidian politics instead was largely run ad hoc with fleeting alliances – which engaged people well into the urban and electoral fabric – emerging from disparate interests on separated issues.

Interpretations

Party politics

The enduring interpretation of optimates and populares as political parties emerged in 19th century and was most influentially put forth by Theodor Mommsen in his History of Rome published in the 1850s. This view conceived of Roman politics as a struggle between a democratic faction (the populares) and a senatorial faction (the optimates) organised along lines similar to the liberal and conservative political parties of his day.

This view was influential through to much of the 20th century. Challenges, however, emerged such as Matthias Gelzer's belief that republican politics was highly oligarchical and organised not by parties but by patron-client relationships that spread throughout society. Close reading of republican careers also has driven a general abandonment of party political interpretations since the "parties" needed to fit the fickleness and opportunism of republican careers have such little party discipline they may as well not exist.

Method

Meier in a 1965 article in the Realencyclopädie put forth the influential view that the main distinction between optimate and popularis was political method: specifically, an optimate was one who was contemporaneously pursuing a policy objective through standard aristocratic channels in the senate while a popularis was one who, normally having already been defeated in the senate, appealed to the people for support. Emphasising that most politicians sought advancement and engaged in popularis methods only for a few years before continuing on successful aristocratic careers, viewing the labels in terms of method divorces labelled politicians from party or ideological commitments.

Ideology

Some scholars suggest instead that optimates and populares refer to beliefs revolving around ideas such as citizen provocatio and sovereignty against senatorial prerogative. Others suggest this ideology went further, into the scope of freedmen's rights and redistributionist policies. Agreement as to how politicians split by ideology under such a scheme is not widespread.

Other scholars, such as Robert Morstein-Marx, have argued that the scope of ideology is overstated and that differences in rhetoric and themes are best explained by venue. Noting that almost all politicians changed their rhetoric to fit their audiences and that politicians who supported "conservative" policies such as retention of public lands were similarly adept at repurposing themes of popular sovereignty to support them.