This contribution vindicates Fergus Millar's argument in The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (1998) against critics who assume a priori that the republic was always and necessarily a hierarchical society ruled by an oligarchy, and that the populus Romanus had no time for politics and no interest in it. The method followed is traditionally empirical. Close attention is paid to the primary evidence and what it implies, in order to test two hypotheses: that in late-republican Rome the ludi scaenici were the occasion for popular politics, and that stage performances may have influenced later historians' political narratives.

中文翻译：

---

政治与人民：什么被视为证据？

这一贡献证明了弗格斯·米勒（Fergus Millar）在《共和国后期的罗马人群》（1998年）中反对批评家的论点，这些批评家先验地认为共和国始终是必然是寡头统治的等级制社会，而罗曼努斯人没有时间从事政治和政治活动。对它没有兴趣。传统上，遵循的方法是经验性的。为了检验两个假设，我们密切关注主要证据及其含义：在后共和时期的罗马，卢迪·斯卡尼尼奇是大众政治的借口，舞台表演可能影响了后来的历史学家的政治叙事。