ABSTRACT
The senatorial nobility was linked together by ties of family and marriage, but was not by the close of the second Punic War a coherent group; its formerly strong corporate sense had been overtaken by the ambitions of individuals and factional groups. These ambitions, however, tended not to manifest themselves in the formation of ‘parties’ in a modern sense, offering a choice of policies. Rather, individuals and groups set out to rival each other simply in the amassing of voting clients and thus in their hold on power, whilst their policies could be virtually identical. It is a common error of modern commentators to attach to these factional groups such labels as ‘right wing’, ‘left wing’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘progressive’; these terms do not describe the distinctions between Roman groups.
