(Latin, from populus, “people”), an intellectual and political trend in the Roman Republic at the end of the second and beginning of the first century B.C. It reflected the interests of the plebeians, in particular their rural contingent, and was opposed to the optimates.

With rare exceptions, the leaders of the populares belonged to the nobilitas. The basic issues dividing the populares and the optimates were the agrarian question and democratization of the Roman state. The populares found their support in the popular assembly; the optimates, in the senate. The better known populares included the Gracchi, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, and G. Glaucia. Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar made extensive use of the political vocabulary and methods of the populares.