ABSTRACT
An oratorical text of Cicero reveals the populus Romanus to be the repository of most of the ideological spoils of a Roman political career. In Cicero's Rome, the competitive routines of civic visibility were particularly intense at the games or in the Forum. Eloquence was Cicero's greatest political asset and the De lege agraria II might be read as testimony to the power of words alone. Political dynamics had their physical expression in a great deal of noise: a crowd consisted of bodies with needs that Cicero seems never to have adequately acknowledged; popularity could be founded upon spectacles and promises more compelling than his virtus. Polybius offers great encouragement to an analysis of the power relations in the Republic by reference to a constitutional allocation of power: basing his empirical testimony upon Greek political theory, Polybius noted the existence of a democratic element in a mixed constitution.
