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Optimates
(redirected from Ottimati)

   Also found in: Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
Op`ti`ma´tes
n. pl.1.The nobility or aristocracy of ancient Rome, as opposed to the populares.


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And while social forces dominate, Najemy still recognizes the role of individual skill and ability, as for example among those Trecento Medici who seized the opportunities in a divided papacy to establish profitable banking connections that vaulted them to power, or their Cinquecento descendents, like Pope Clement VII and Duke Cosimo I, who induced the ottimati to do their dirty work while deliberately stripping them of the very powers they were desperate to preserve.
Ganz documents how the perceived slights of Agnolo Acciaiuoli and Dietisalvi Neroni by Cosimo de' Medici contributed to the willingness of these two ottimati to take advantage of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici's relative weakness by attempting to reinstitute a purer, pre-Medicean form of republican government.
In The Art of War, as well as in the Discourses, Machiavelli expresses a sharp awareness of the negative view on the Roman model prevailing among the Florentine ottimati at the beginning of the Cinquecento.
 
 
 
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