How did Pompey lose to Caesar?
Caesar refused, and instead marched his army on Rome, which no Roman general was permitted to do by law. Pompey fled Rome and organized an army in the south of Italy to meet Caesar. Pompey defeated Caesar in 48 BC at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, but was himself defeated much more decisively at the Battle of Pharsalus.
What was the conflict between Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus?
The Battle of Pharsalus was the decisive battle of Caesar’s Civil War. On 9 August 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, Gaius Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the Republic under the command of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (“Pompey the Great”).
Who are the optimates and Populares in Roman history?
Optimates and Populares, (Latin: respectively, “Best Ones,” or “Aristocrats”, and “Demagogues,” or “Populists”), two principal patrician political groups during the later Roman Republic from about 133 to 27 bc.
Are there political parties similar to the optimates?
Yakobson, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary writes: It is, and has been for a long time, commonplace to point out that the late-Republican populares and optimates were not political parties in anything like the modern sense.
Who are the contestants in the game optimates?
The contestants were the nobiles among themselves, as individuals or in groups, open in the elections and in the courts of law, or masked by secret intrigue. Syme’s description of Roman politics viewed the late republic ‘as a conflict between a dominant oligarchy drawn from a set of powerful families and their opponents’.
Who was the most famous leader of the optimates?
While several leaders of the Optimates were patricians —belonging to the oldest noble families—such as Sulla or Scipio Nasica Serapio, many were plebeians: the Caecilii Metelli, Pompey, Cato the Younger, Titus Annius Milo, etc. Cicero —the most famous Optimas—was even a novus homo (the first of his gens to be senator).