Contional ideology: the invisible “optimate” 221

freedom, emphasizing prevention of any individual’s personal domination

of the Republic, from a more positive, popularis focus on fundamental civic
rights (provocatio above all) and material benefits exploited by those who
sought to enlist popular support as a counterweight against the authority of
the Senate.76 Such a distinction makes sense of the ways in which the same
political idea could be invoked to support diametrically contrary actions.
But it obscures the fact that in contional speech any hint of such a distinction
appears to have been studiously suppressed. On the contrary, the figure of
the rex, properly emphasized, tightly reunified any divided strands of the
concept of freedom, since this stereotype was fundamentally as inconsistent
with the citizen’s Republican civil rights as it was with an aristocrat’s honor.
The clearest proof that Rullus and his fellow would-be tyrants offer of their
hatred of freedom is their assault on the People’s right of suffrage, upon
which Cicero elaborates first and at great length; next there is the matter
of their “tyrannical” legal powers, not least the (supposed) suspension of
provocatio.77 Similarly, when Q. Catulus evoked the Secessions of the Plebs
in his speech against Manilius’ law conferring the Mithridatic command on
Pompey, crying out ostensibly to the senators (but in fact before the People)
that they should flee to a mountain like their ancestors, or to some other
place where freedom could be preserved, he was quite forcefully asserting
the unity of the Republican libertas-tradition among plebs and patres, for
he thereby implicitly identified the current “struggle for freedom” fought
by himself and (ostensibly) some senators with that pursued by the ple-
beians when they had won their fundamental rights.78 The anti-regnum
appeal often used before the People against “popular” politicians does not,
therefore, involve a redefinition of the common ideal of freedom in such
a way that it was left empty of positive content for the ordinary citizen;
and for their part popularis leaders made equal use of the argument when,
as often, they denounced the domination of the “few,” or the “tyranny” of

76 This kind of distinction, echoing Isaiah Berlin, seems to underly most important treatments: see
especially the magisterial essay by Brunt 1988: 281–350, esp. 327–34 (for popular hostility to regnum,
however, see also his pp. 51–52); also Ferrary 1982: 761–67; Perelli 1990: 69–85; Vanderbroeck 1987:
105–106.
77 Cic. Leg. agr. 2.17: Hic quaero quam ob causam initium rerum ac legum suarum hinc duxerit ut populus
Romanus suffragio privaretur; see on this theme 2.16–22, 26–31. The regia potestas of the “tyrants”
comes next (31–35); note orbis terrarum gentiumque omnium datur cognitio sine consilio, poena sine
provocatione, animadversio sine auxilio (33). I part company from Thompson 1978: 31 et passim chiefly
in her claim that Cicero is promoting a specifically senatorial/“optimate” idea of libertas in the Leg.
agr. 2.
78 Plut. Pomp. 30.4; above, p. 183. Interesting also is Cn. Lentulus Marcellinus’ equation of contional
shouting with freedom: Val. Max. 6.2.6 = ORF 128.5, p. 418 (chap. 4, n. 48). The occasion is
apparently that mentioned at Cass. Dio 39.28.5 (Pina Polo 1989: 302–3, no. 317).