This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchew with Professor Douglas Boyne.

His new book is Clodia, champion of the republic.

The politics here are critical.

This is the end of the republic and the transition to Augustus, to the empire, the empire that we still celebrate

and think about and worry about and look for analogies in, 20, 200 years later. But the politics

of the moment, forgive me a professor, I'm simplifying, so you can do it more, you can parse it better.

The popularists were the regular people, the people, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the optimists were the Senate.

Those are the two big categories.

How did they interrelate?

Did they relate?

No, I think you're right here.

We've got these two words.

The optimates, the so-called best men, and we've got the popularis who are, I think,

the people's party.

And using these words, you know, if we went into, you know, a space of specialists just for a second between you and me,

everyone would start raising their hands and start kind of calling foul and pulling out red flags

because it's increased, it's very difficult to,

to understand how the Romans are describing their society in the first century.

And it's, it's difficult sometimes to separate the layers that we put on it 2,000 years later

to make it intelligible.

No one had a kind of party boss.

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