optimates

Upper nobility who identify their wealth and status with being the best of the best.

The conservative Senate faction; the transcript renders the term as 'optimist/optimists,' likely an ASR error.

The upper nobility who defend Rome's existing order and the tradition of piety, liberty, and republica. The conservative faction Jiang says Pompey and Crassus belonged to as supporters of Sulla.

The optimates/populares conflict arises because conquest concentrates wealth while landless peasants and lower nobility become politically exploitable.

Tiberius Gracchus proposes a moderate public-land reform and is killed because the nobility treats the state itself as its property.

The factional split becomes upper nobility versus lower nobility: optimates defend the existing order and populares seek change by aligning with the mass of discontented people.

In Jiang's answer to a student, optimates and populares come from the same narrow noble-family network; the conflict is partly generational, with fathers and grandfathers resisting sons seeking power.

Caesar survived Sulla's proscription because his wealthy family could bribe Sulla, but Sulla's attempt to solve conflict by elevating the optimates failed after Sulla died.

The optimates read Caesar as a braggart and libertine whose talent and charisma served personal political advancement rather than Rome's glory.

As consul, Caesar pushes land reform and seeks Gaul for glory, while the optimates try to block him by assigning the next consul to Italy where wars and triumphs are impossible.

The optimates decide to strip Caesar's command and prosecute him because his military celebrity makes him electorally unbeatable, while his illegal and immoral acts give the Senate a real case.