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2 results

  • 2 - Populists before Parties

  • Paul Kenny, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book:
    Why Populism?
    Published online:
    17 March 2023
    Print publication:
    06 April 2023, pp 24-54

  • Summary

    Ancient Greece, especially Athens, provides the best documented early example of mass democracy. With the democratic reforms of the fifth century, populism – the direct mobilization of the masses – becomes an effective path to power. This chapter looks at several examples from fifth- and fourth-century Athens, which demonstrate the use of demagoguery as an efficient, if much derided, alternative to patronage-based politics. Ancient Rome provides a somewhat different context. As a republic, Rome gave the masses a more limited and indirect role in politics. Typically, politics was a purely elite affair. Yet for those elites who found the normal insider path blocked to them, direct appeals to the masses could prove effective. However, given the limited formal role for the plebs in Roman politics, this direct mobilization could often lead to violence.

  • 18 - Early Rome and Italy

  • from Part V - Early Italy and the Roman Republic
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 485-510

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with Italy in the period from the beginning of the Greek colonization through 133 BC. It focuses on the Italian peninsula, touching only briefly on northern Italy and the islands, or the world of non-Roman indigenous cultures. For addressing the question of the rise of Rome to the most powerful polity in Italy and a leading Mediterranean power, the chapter examines the impact of wars, treaties, and the founding of colonies, Greek as well as Etruscan and Roman, reciprocal influences, forced or spontaneous transformations. It distinguishes three major periods: from the earliest Greek contacts with Italy to the middle of the fourth century BC; from the middle of the fourth century, which saw Rome's military and political ascent and its rise to economic power, to the Second Punic War; and finally, from the Second Punic War, which caused profound upheavals in the Roman economy, to the period of the Gracchi.