What made a candidate successful in ancient Roman elections? Reading ancient electoral campaigns with modern eyes
Eleonora Zampieri (University of Padova)
During the Roman Republic (509-44 BC), magistrates for State offices were elected by the popular assemblies in Rome every year; this means that ancient Romans lived in a climate of constant electoral campaign. The last period of the Republic (first half of the 1st century BC) saw electoral competition becoming particularly fierce. Without the support of political parties, candidates had to canvass using their own resources and as individuals, trying to highlight what made them more reliable and more attractive than the others. In this paper I will briefly present my Marie Curie research project, that aims to analyse the political campaigns of candidates in Rome between 78 and 46 BC, and to use some of the theories elaborated by political psychology to investigate those campaigns and the factors that brought about the success of a candidate. The aim is to stimulate a discussion concerning the possibilities offered by this new approach to the study of ancient politics; I will thus present some case studies that suggest that the choice of the voters could have been influenced by the perceived competence, leadership skills and sociability of the candidates, as well as instances of denigration of political adversaries that show similarities with modern negative campaigns.
Italiano 
English