Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 41

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User ignoring WP:ERA at Pompey

User:Robinvp11 has taken it upon himself to change the established era style at Pompey from BC to BCE, and persisted even when advised of the policy. I can't revert again without breaking WP:3RR. Can someone else help? --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:00, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I reverted to the version as of yesterday that avoids this aka nonsense in the infobox as well. Ifly6 (talk) 23:48, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your careful and considered response to this vital question. Robinvp11 (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

User:Robinvp11 has taken it upon himself to change the established era style at Pompey from BC to BCE, and persisted even when advised of the policy.

The policy quoted specifically says you can use either BC or BCE. So I'm unclear as to what "established era style" I'm supposed to have ignored.

Context; this article was flagged for additional work, including updating for modern sources. I spent about three weeks doing so and it seems strange the only thing that matters is whether I've used BC or BCE.

I haven't just looked at this article in passing, decided I didn't like the date format, and started an escalation process when I didn't get my way. Nor am I proposing to change the format on articles I haven't contributed to.

I have explained the reason for using BCE several times - it is commonly used by historians (including several quoted in the Sources for this article), schools, news organisations (eg the BBC), and other online encyclopaedia like the EB.

Since doing so is specifically allowed by the style manual, I don't understand why including modern date conventions on an article I've spent a lot of time updating somehow makes me unreasonable.

In my 10 years as an editor, nearly every time someone has quoted "Wikipedia policy" as a reason for getting me to do what they want me to do, it's always been because they can't think of a logical reason. So maybe tell me why we should be continuing to use an outdated convention like BC? Apart from "because we've used it in the past".Robinvp11 (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

These are well-established policies and your claim that both are permitted self-defeats your later statement that changing over is preferred. MOS:ERA: An article's established era style should not be changed without reasons specific to its content; seek consensus on the talk page first (applying Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Retaining existing styles) by opening a discussion under a heading using the word era, and briefly stating why the style should be changed. MOS:STYLERET: Sometimes the MoS provides more than one acceptable style or gives no specific guidance. The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change". The main reason is to prevent edit wars – such as the one you're currently engaging in – see rule utilitarianism. Ifly6 (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the revert, I want to note also that we already reached a consensus – though I make no claims to unanimity – on using {{infobox person}} for Romans and not {{infobox officeholder}}. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 39#Infoboxes for Roman office-holders. Ifly6 (talk) 18:20, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

In this context, "established" means whatever style was consistently used in the article before you started editing. Sometimes it's the style chosen by the first user to specify an era in an article; other times contributors use eras inconsistently, and one becomes established when long-standing inconsistencies are made consistent. You mentioned, or seemed to be getting at, the amount of writing/rewriting you've done, and it's true that a substantial overhaul of some articles might justify a change of era. However, this is a very big, very old article, with several hundred contributors over its history. Even if you mean to work on every section, you can't just decide to ignore the conscious choices of all the other editors.

Another editor mentioned on the talk page that the reason we don't want people arbitrarily flipping articles from one era style to the other is because it will inevitably provoke conflict, and potentially become disruptive to the encyclopedia. The same arguments would appear on, and perhaps begin to dominate, the talk pages of thousands of articles. Which is why in the case of an article such as this, it's necessary to discuss things calmly and attempt to achieve consensus for such a change. And unless there's a particular reason for changing the era in this particular article—something other than "the trend among recent historians is blah"—it's probably better not to raise the issue; people have strong opinions, and nobody's going to be persuaded either way by an argument that's no stronger here than in thousands of other articles. P Aculeius (talk) 18:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

• I think that when someone rewrites entirely an article, they are entitled to use their own era/citation/measures/English style they want, although I don't know why it's so important to use B/CE.

I really wish Wikipedia had defined its own editorial style instead of leaving that aside. So many edit wars would have been avoided and WP would have been much more consistent. T8612 (talk) 22:40, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure that's because there was never going to be a consensus for one or the other. In fact, I think there was a long, largely unproductive discussion by the community at large, which only established that there would never be agreement on this topic. The policy that emerged was the best compromise that people could agree to. A substantial rewrite is a reason for the author to chose a single style, but an article this large and important, with this many contributors over such a long time, probably shouldn't be rewritten by a single author, particularly if the goal is to get rid of sources based on their point of view. That seems like it might be the case here, with wholesale replacement of whatever was there as the product of more than twenty years of collaborative editing to build the article. P Aculeius (talk) 01:51, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Having read the original version of the article prior to the many changes which Robinvp11 made, there was frankly little of value other than producing ripe conditions of Quellenforschung from this twenty years of collaborative editing. The textual changes made were largely positive. Ifly6 (talk) 10:55, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

If you're going to claim that the article as it stood on February 13 had little of value except as a study of the influence of sources on a literary work—are you calling the article a literary work?—you're insulting a lot of people who are still active members of this project, and you may as well say that all of the work produced here is equally garbage. That would justify anyone using any format they want, since there's nothing "established" except rubbish. It's astonishing that any experienced editor would have the nerve to pronounce everyone else's contributions worthless. P Aculeius (talk) 12:16, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

It is astonishing that any experienced editor would put so many words in my mouth. Is all the work garbage done by CGR rubbish? No. Is all of the old work done circa 2007 rubbish? Not all of it and even the bad portions were probably valuable at the time. But for 2023, an article with a reference list that is largely an incessant series primary source references?

Extended content

Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.10-12 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 38.2.1, 4-7.6 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, 30.3 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Caesar, 14.2-3 Plutarch, Life of Pompey, p. 13 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.14 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Caesar, 17.7 Plutarch, Life of Pompey, 47.6 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, p. 21 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 37.2.7.5; 8.2, 5 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.13 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, 22.1 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Caesar, 14.10 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, 49.4-6, 50 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 39.9. 24.1-2 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.18 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, 51.3-6 Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 14. 4-6 Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, 23-24.1 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.17 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 39.33 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, 52.3 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.29, 33 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 39.64.1 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.19 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Caesar, 23.5-6 Life of Pompey, 53.4-6 Florus, Epitome of Roman History, 2.13.14 Seneca, Dialogues, book 6, Of Consolation: To Marcia, 6.14.3 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, p. 54 Plutarch, Life of Cato Minor, pp. 47-49 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, pp. 55-56 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, 57.1-3 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.26-29 Julius Caesar, The Civil War, 1.3 Appian, Bellum Civile, 2.30 Appian, Bellum Civile, pp. 32–33 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 41.1.1-3.2 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Pompey, 58.3-6 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 41.1.3 Appian, Bellum Civile, 32-34 Appian. Bellum Civile, 2.34-35. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 41.4-6.

This is not quality work that merits preservation (especially when some of the citations are plainly malformed). And I don't know why you are defending it beyond some kind of Microcosmographia Academica "college spirit". There is nothing offensive in saying that standards have moved beyond this and that making an article like that is no longer acceptable or valorous. Ifly6 (talk) 12:58, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

You're the one claiming that the article contained "little of value other than producing ripe conditions of Quellenforschung from this twenty years of collaborative editing." You've made your distaste for Greek and Roman sources abundantly clear. Please amend Wikipedia policy so that it says that articles should not cite them. It would save a lot of work and allow us to delete all the rubbish that's accumulated over the years. P Aculeius (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a distaste for "Greek and Roman sources"; I cite them regularly in my contributions. What I actually have a distaste for is editors putting into Wikipedia's voice assertions that are clearly wrong or questionable. Editors do this largely because, and it is clear from their reference lists, all they looked at were primary sources. My position – people should not write huge portions of articles on primary sources – is, in fact, Wikipedia policy at WP:PRIMARY: Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. Rebranding the primary sources into secondary sources – Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 40 § Caligula – does not fool anyone who read classics at university. (A similar issue persists with the pretence that an 150-year-old book is of the same reliability as well-reviewed recent one.) Ifly6 (talk) 14:32, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

• It is always open to User:Robinvp11 or anyone else to propose a change in ERA style on the article talk, especially if they have done a total rewrite. It's unlikely to get consensus (or support from me), but there you are. Johnbod (talk) 02:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Chaonians

The article has received a lot of additions lately (~250 edits in the last month, not all of them good), particularly in the Geography and History sections. The additions were done very haphazardly, material was literally just thrown in there with little regard to structure and clarity, and often to promote a particular POV. As a result, the article has become extremely cluttered, repetitive, and difficult to read for the average reader. It could really use a good cleanup, re-structuring and copyedit by experienced, neutral editors, as it appears to be zealously guarded by at least one user that exhibits WP:OWN tendencies. Khirurg (talk) 01:57, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 16:52, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Vandal Kingdom, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 22 May 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Cealia Pompeius Pulchellus?

Another article I fear is probably a hoax. A googling at Google Books returns zero results. ★Trekker (talk) 21:00, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

The cited portion of SHA has nothing on it certainly. Cealia also seems on first glance to invert the ae; looking at a Latin dictionary at hand, there are no words that start with "cea" except the island Cea.

• https://www.google.com/search?q=Cealia%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Caelius%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Pompeius%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Pulchellus%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Pulcher%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/
• https://www.google.com/search?q=Venus%20site:https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/

I also did the above searches and, on first glance, found nothing relevant. I am inclined towards hoax as well. We also probably won't get any information from the page creator, whose only contribution was this article. Ifly6 (talk) 21:39, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Yupp. Seems like a hoax. Off to speedy it goes.★Trekker (talk) 21:46, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Replied there (yes, evidently a hoax). P Aculeius (talk) 22:59, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Caius Titus (senator)?

This seems like a very odd name for a 2nd-century BC senator. Does anyone know anything about this person? ★Trekker (talk) 20:21, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It's a hoax invented by User talk:Brunomitilo. The name is implausible, no source is provided, and the only source of notability is a proverb attributed to him by the article about the proverb on Wikipedia—which previously attributed it to a speech by the emperor Titus. An anonymous IP editor changed this—without citing anything—to an otherwise unknown senator. Subsequent edits were by Brunomitilo, whose entire history is limited to that article, creating the hoax article, and making up part of a quotation from a letter of James Clerk Maxwell in the article William Dyce Cay, which is not in the original letter. I've reverted that and the attribution to "Caius Titus". I suspect that Brunomitilo is also the IP editor who changed the attribution, since hoaxes seem to be his thing. P Aculeius (talk) 20:54, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, the one in-line citation in Caius Titus (senator) fails verification[1] and the whole repetitive text looks rather like something an LLM like ChatGPT would generate. NebY (talk) 21:00, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I feared this. Seems Wikipedia will start having a major problem with this going forward.★Trekker (talk) 22:04, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

@P Aculeius and NebY: I began checking on other language Wikipedias to see if the hoax had spread anywhere else, and I came across this same hoax but from 2014 on the Emilian-Romagnol language Wikipedia, this might have originated from somewhere else and Brunomitilo may simply have made a mistake relying on false information from a source created from an AI based on a hoax.★Trekker (talk) 22:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I doubt it's an innocent mistake, given that two of his three sets of edits concern this alleged quotation and its alleged author, and for the third one he invented plausible but phony aggrandizing words that he placed in the words of a historical figure—all of these without citing any new sources, just copying the existing ones. Everything he's contributed to has been a hoax, and that doesn't seem like chance. I'm still trying to track down the author of the quotation by looking for literary occurrences prior to Wikipedia. The Masonic Review, vol. 73, No. 2 (March, 1890) at page 128 appears to attribute it to Albert Pike, but that might just be the translation, or it could be misattributed. P Aculeius (talk) 22:39, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

That Emilian-Romagnol verba volant article doesn't go into detail about Caius Titus or offer the failing citation in the Caius Titus (senator) article, an article which also makes strong claims for his importance ("he left an indelible mark on the Senate and the governance of the Roman Republic", "His expertise in law and his ability to effectively convey complex ideas made him a sought-after advisor and advocate for various political causes") without even a reference to a hoaxing source. I'm with P Aculeius. NebY (talk) 22:53, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

And now I'm finding it as verba volant, litera scripta manet in counsel's argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Church v. Hubbart (1804), and as verba volant, sed litera scripta manet, used as a proverb by John Davis, in his notes translating The Life and Times of Victor Moreau (1806). So it probably predates these by some time, but so far I haven't found a venerable source attributing it to Titus or any other Roman. P Aculeius (talk) 22:57, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Italian writers are using "verba volant, scripta manent" from at least 1845, and also around then "verba volant" alone, as if it's too familiar to state fully.[2] So yes, well-established and not, at that time, needing any "as X said" attribution. NebY (talk) 23:17, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Here it is in a work of Francis Turretin in the seventeenth century, not clearly quoted—although that doesn't mean he was the author of the saying. I can't work out the date of the specific work, as it's part of a collection of the author's works, and it doesn't look that easy to identify his individual writings in English sources. P Aculeius (talk) 23:19, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Here we have scripta manent used as if proverbial in an Italian text, 1648.[3] Then "... verba, ait, implumis volitant ludibria venti. Scripta manent ...", 1701,[4] so it seems to have already been longstanding then, and I suspect attribution was bolted on later. NebY (talk) 23:45, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Attribution of verba volant, scripta manent to Caio Titus was also added in 2008 to List of Latin phrases (S-Z) (as it was then)[5] and later changed to Caius Titus. Now removed from List of Latin phrases (V) with a mention that we might have a WP:CITOGENESIS problem. NebY (talk) 15:29, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

The article's now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caius Titus (senator). NebY (talk) 18:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Ptolemy RM

There is currently an on-going requested move discussion pertaining to Ptolemy at Talk:Ptolemy#Requested move 25 May 2023 that might be of interest to this WikiProject. Walrasiad (talk) 17:10, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Content dispute at marriage in ancient Rome

I believe that the information inserted into the lead section constitutes a minority opinion (and possibly also factually incorrect) and should not be displayed so prominently. Another user disagrees, please join the discussion so that this can be resolved. ★Trekker (talk) 22:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Requested move of Ptolemaic Kingdom

Please see Talk:Ptolemaic Kingdom#Requested move 30 May 2023, re: a top priority page. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:11, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Help needed with edit war at Byzantine–Seljuk wars

This topic is beyond the scope of my knowledge, and requires a lot of untangling. Iskandar is already there, but judging from his edit summary and the continued actions of the edit warriors, more expert help would benefit the article. Both of the editors making large edits and removals seem to be pushing extreme views of the events—one that the Seljuks were horrible invaders ruining the land and enslaving the people, the other that they were nomadic pacifists who achieved their conquest without any violence.

In theory, the article could be reverted to its state on March 29, but the section titled "Devastation of Anatolia" would still contain several excessively long quotations from Byzantine or Byzantine-oriented sources complaining about how terrible the Seljuks were, instead of a modern scholarly assessment written from a neutral point of view. Since this topic goes well beyond my area of expertise, I don't feel confident that I could fix the problem, much less stop the edit warring over it. P Aculeius (talk) 13:49, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I lack subject knowledge too, but see two things as a Wikipedian. On the one hand, the latest replacement text is copypasta interspersed with unnacceptable grammar, and is the editor is edit-warring; I've reverted and warned. On the other hand, the "Devastation of Anatolia" section is as you say, full of excessive quotation and generally overwrought. Similar material was inserted around the same time in Byzantine-Ottoman wars, Decline of the Byzantine Empire and more, by IPs whose contribution histories (eg Special:Contributions/96.55.153.186, Special:Contributions/96.55.142.25, Special:Contributions/206.47.6.162, Special:Contributions/70.71.43.151) including many emotive descriptions of Muslim atrocities (in their eyes, anyway) suggest a very particular interest and attitude that disregards WP:NPOV. We now have a parallel edit conflicts at Byzantine-Ottoman wars and though I think other editors have dealt with some other insertions, perhaps clean-up is needed elsewhere. NebY (talk) 15:38, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it would best to tell the user H20346 about his mistakes as he's resolute in pushing his personal POV so far accusing me of having a POV of Turks bringing hugs and kisses nonsense when pointing out his violations, from this I think he views history either good or bad, I wouldn't mind having my own edit deleted and would allow the admins to deal with the issue themselves, it's the issue that disrupts the neutrality of the article, he has done the same with Muslim conquest of Spain and Muslim conquest of the Maghreb having Iskandar323 and P Aculeius warning him, assuming those five accounts are related to each other as they have similar editing pattern, it's possible they're the same person, but I could be wrong, personally I would have the articles revert back before the story starts in the first place without so called Devastation of Anatolia and locking the page but its up to the admins to decide. User:عبدالرحمن4132 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:30, 2 June 2023‎ (UTC)

I would like to look into such insertions some more, but I can't do that work right now. NebY (talk) 14:22, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

hello NebY thanks for the response, I'll be waiting for any future action, the user recently posted his edits in Byzantine–Ottoman wars, but for now, I'll be refraining from reverting it to avoid engaging a fruitless edit war, once again thanks for your response and I'll be waiting regards. User:عبدالرحمن4132 (talk) 15:34, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Question re use of Italian state images of ancient objects on Wikipedia

There is an image of a famous sator square that was found in 1936, in the Grand Palestra in Pompeii on a column, by an Italian state excavation (led by Matteo Della Corte). The finding of this square changed the then consensus that the square was of Christian origin. The square was lifted from the column and is now held in the Pompeii museum, where it - and an etching of it for clarity - are shown here. Am I allowed to use these images on Wikipedia under any basis? E.g. does the Italian state copyright these things, or can a non-free use be argued? I thought that this might be a common issue in WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. Thank you. Aszx5000 (talk) 15:58, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The Italians have claimed (but I think rarely enforce) all sorts of copyright on their national heritage, including very old buildings and objects out in the open, but the Wikipedia servers are located in the US, and we follow US law. So the artist or photographer may have copyright, but you can forget about the Italian ministry. Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Aszx5000 (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Caligula

Caligula has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Battle of Hysiae (c.669 BC), a turning point in military history

Our article tells us the battle marked a turning point in military history as it caused the Spartans to adopt the phalanx of hoplites and discusses it at length. There's a leavening of "the location suggests", "apparently", "for reasons unknown", "remains conjectural", "some scholars have suggested [it] was invented" and the accurate statement that apart from Pausanias's brief mention (Argive victory over Spartans at Hysiae, dated by archon and Olympiad),[6] "nothing else is known". The article could be pruned and the sole reference isn't good, but is the battle even notable enough for us to have an article? NebY (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The Kelly paper mentioned in the further reading section will surely count towards notability; the 9-page range mentioned in Hall suggests there's enough coverage there to also count. Without looking into it in any depth at all I would expect that this is notable; however I can't see any particular reason to believe that ancientgreekbattles.net (currently the only inline citation) is a reliable source, and the article is in dire need of improvement. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:04, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. The Kelly paper's certainly about the battle. I see the 9-page range in Hall is the 2007 edition's range for his excursus chapter about Pheidon of Argos. Online searching in Hall gives brief discussions of whether Pheidon might have been involved and if so, whether he might have introduced hoplite tactics there.[7] Hall references the Kelly paper too. NebY (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Definitely looks notable, even if Pausanias is the only Greek source that mentions it, and modern historians question the accuracy of his account, or whether he understood what he was being told. I saw Hall's discussion at pp. 148, 149 about dating Pheidon, but there may be further discussion elsewhere in this source. Didn't check Kelly before seeing the replies here. I did have a peek in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, which mentions the battle both in connection with Argos (vol. I, p. 203) and Hysiae (vol. I, p. 1108), citing to the same passage in Pausanias each time. Volume II doesn't touch the history of Sparta, saying that it's too big a topic to cover usefully there. Came up empty at other sources that occurred to me, but didn't check every possible source. Even if the battle is of uncertain historicity, the fact that it reportedly changed the Spartans' approach to warfare, and is the study of speculation amongst modern historians, seems sufficient to satisfy notability guidelines. There are citeable sources mentioned in the article, and elsewhere; they just need to be cited. P Aculeius (talk) 16:45, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems like it meets WP's notability, though this claim of turning point and importance should require an actual citation to that effect rather than mere conclusory assertion. If the battle is thought to be ahistorical (or otherwise an invention) that should be noted in the article as well; if most scholars believe it to be a fake I would make sure that is signposted in the lede. I would remove the "ancientgreekbattles.net" citation. Ifly6 (talk) 16:55, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, all! If anyone fancies a go at it, you'd probably do better than me and I'm certainly not playing finders, keepers. NebY (talk) 18:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Had a bit of a go at improving the text and citations. It could use more work, but I hope it's in better shape than it was. P Aculeius (talk) 20:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

FAR for Attalus I

I have nominated Attalus I for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 13:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Lucius Calpurnius Piso (praetor)?

This article is a little confusing, it states that this man was a relative of Julius Caesar because both their mothers were Rutilias (makes no sense as the article itself states that Caesars mother was Aurelia as we know). The only Lucius Calpurnius Piso I know of who was related to Caesar and a son of a Rutilia was Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (consul 15 BC) who both already has an article and seems to have had a different career.★Trekker (talk) 14:24, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning in the direction of "hoax". The article has no dates or even vague time references (such as the man's contemporaries; it just says "1st century", which seems at odds with what it says about being closely related to Caesar). The whole second paragraph is suspicious; how many Romans have physical descriptions as specific as "a huge swarthy man with bristling black eyebrows"? That sounds rather contemporary. The idea of being murdered by a "peasant" also looks out of place, and torturing someone on a "rack" in order to obtain a confession or other information seems anachronistic. And if the peasant had been tortured, on a rack or any other device, when would he have had the opportunity to exact revenge on Piso?

The fact that one person contributed almost the whole text of the article in a single series of edits, to which only slight changes have been made since then, suggests to me that it's not merely badly written, but invented out of whole cloth. Notice that it cites both Cicero and Tacitus (but without any kind of page/section references, at least in the latter case, making it difficult to check what the source says). I'll look into it some more, though. P Aculeius (talk) 15:11, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yikes. Besides the Rutilia mystery, I see the first Tacitus citation concerns Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul 1 BC) and the only reference for "a tall, swarthy man with huge bristling black eyebrows. He served as an urban praetor" is a 2008 novel. The closing sentences are based on Tacitus, Annals IV 45 for 25 AD with obscure embellishment ("while practicing his exercises in arms") while citing a page of an edition of Cicero which doesn't support that or the other statement that references it. NebY (talk) 15:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if the law on extortion and embezzlement mentioned in the article is the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis, enacted by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (consul 133 BC)? Looking suspiciously like this is a mish-mash of references to a bunch of different L. Calpurnii Pisones... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:38, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Or possibly the Lex Acilia Calpurnia of Gaius Calpurnius Piso (consul 67 BC), a law mentioned on p198 of that edition of Cicero? Nearer in time, but about electoral bribery not embezzlement. NebY (talk) 15:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a case of Frankensteining from several sources if not a full hoax.★Trekker (talk) 15:39, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

And not that Colleen McCullough's novel is a reliable source, but they've got the page number wrong for that (it's p.105 rather than 605) and the Piso in that scene is in fact Gaius Calpurnius Piso (consul 67 BC). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No!!! :) NebY (talk) 16:02, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Given the scale of confusion, I've prodded the article - it's too confusing to CSD as blatant hoax but given the scale of the confusion I doubt there's any history worth keeping. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:08, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I fell asleep while watching the live stream of Kilauea volcano. Thanks for the great detective work! Hope I didn't include him on the list of Calpurnii Pisones based on the existence of his article... P Aculeius (talk) 17:49, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No, he's not listed in Calpurnii Pisones! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, found him.

• Lucius Calpurnius Piso, praetor in Hispania Citerior in AD 25.

Maybe unlink, and re-link if/when a new article with maybe a different title is created? NebY (talk) 18:04, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that should work. There was no link for most of the list's history, then it got linked to the hoaxy article this March, although given who made the link it's clear to me that there was no intention to further the bushy-eyebrowed impostor's cause. P Aculeius (talk) 18:40, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

There three Lucius Calpurnius Pisos who rose only to the praetorship in the 1st century. It does not seem this article speaks of any of them. Ifly6 (talk) 19:57, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I went about the search a different way. There is a single Rutilia which is relevant. She is the mother of one L Calpurnius Piso Frugi (RE Calpurnius 99). I don't know however, if this person served as praetor. MRR ends by the 1st century. I'm off to check RE. If someone more familiar with the imperial period's magistrates could jump in that would be useful. This is the consul of 15 BC. This alleged praetor probably doesn't exist. Ifly6 (talk) 05:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I've figured out what happened. The editor who created the article, who has been inactive for over a decade, was not very good at researching his topics and demonstrating notability, citing relevant sources, and struggled with other policies, for which reason many of his biographical articles were nominated for deletion. Discussions on his talk page point him to the relevant policies, and one explicitly recommends that he research his subjects more before beginning to write.

He began with an article about "Lucius Piso", cited only to the Colleen McCullough novel in which he appears, probably under the assumption that he was a historical figure. Over the next few days he went about expanding the article by adding relevant details that he was able to find in other sources—the name Calpurnius, mentions in Tacitus and Cicero—all evidently under the assumption that every Lucius Piso he found referred to the same man—or at least conflating several of them due to his lack of experience with Roman culture and history. The article remained at "Lucius Piso" until earlier this year, when a well-meaning and experienced editor, supposing it to be a valid article with a poor title, moved it to the present one.

So this article was not an intentional hoax. It was a well-intentioned attempt to write an article about a Roman mentioned in a novel, who may or may not have been based on a specific Piso, whom the original editor then conflated with several other members of his family over the better part of a century. I suggest redirecting the article to Calpurnia gens, and leaving this conversation on its talk page.. P Aculeius (talk) 12:13, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Requested move at Talk:Villa Borghese gardens#Requested move 5 June 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Villa Borghese gardens#Requested move 5 June 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 01:12, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Any of y'all know what a Bassianus is?

Emesene dynasty or any of several figures in the Severan dynasty need that sourced and added if possible. — LlywelynII 01:38, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Im not sure I understand the question, Bassianus is a name.★Trekker (talk) 01:57, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a name connected with several members of the Severan Dynasty. Looks to me as if some of the articles pertaining to this dynasty need more and better sources. P Aculeius (talk) 02:09, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Sappho peer review

Shameless self-promotion: I have opened a peer review for Sappho with the aim of bringing it up to Featured Article in the not-too-distant future. Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:01, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Guides extension

WP:MILHIST has a number of useful guides in their "Academy". We have a somewhat short page "Guides" page right now. Do you think we should develop something similar with subpages for items like the following:

• WP:CGR/Guides/Primary sources noting preference for book and section numbers, where some of those can be found (Loeb Online, LacusCurtius, Perseus, Attalus, etc), and how to {{sfn}} them with CS1 citations?
• WP:CGR/Guides/Tertiary sources noting the various encyclopaedias available (OCD, RE, New Pauly, etc), companions, and other overviews or syntheses

I think it may also be worthwhile if we came to a project consensus on a definite floor for notability. See eg WP:MILHIST "Writing a biographical article". Sadly though it is, I don't buy that every single consul or eponymous archon is notable, even if they were akin to "heads of state"; there is simply insufficient information to write an article about Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus (cos 332 BC). Ifly6 (talk) 03:12, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I disagree about notability—these are unquestionably notable persons, but notability alone does not establish whether a stand-alone article is a good idea. For persons about whom little is known, or likely to be known, the best choice may be to fold them in with connected persons, such as colleagues, or minor consuls of a particular period, or magistrates of a given year, or other Domitii. But that is different from saying that the person is not notable.

It is usually better to leave guidance broad and deal with individual articles on a case-by-case basis. The more specific you make a guideline, the more exceptions there have to be to avoid unnecessary rigidity, and the more disputes there will be over the criteria for making exceptions, in addition to debates about specific articles.

As a rule it is better to err on the side of keeping a topic with marginal notability somewhere on the encyclopedia—even if that isn't in a stand-alone article—than to delete it, resulting in verifiable facts about people or events that were significant in their day—irrespective of how little we know about them now—that cannot be found or checked at all on Wikipedia. After all, unlike a print encyclopedia, we are not concerned with space or memory limits.

I also think we need to avoid micromanaging editors to the point of telling them which among various reliable sources they should or should not use, what format they need to use for citations, what templates they should employ, etc. People are never going to agree on all the tiny details, and there's no compelling reason to require them to do so, as long as what goes into the encyclopedia comports with general standards for verifiability, including a logical and understandable manner of citation. The more unnecessary rules we create, the fewer people will be willing to contribute, and the more eclectic our coverage will become. P Aculeius (talk) 04:10, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not interested in making any guidelines outside of a notability suggestion, which is itself inspired by the MILHIST guidance on the matter. Collating the informational guides on sources which we already have, though split all over the place, into the Guides section we have in the tabs is rather useful. And if people want to cite primary sources they should know not only where to find them but also how to cite them (ie not by the page of whatever translation you have on hand). I'm not sure how you've turned that suggestion into micromanagement and source standards. Ifly6 (talk) 06:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Years of experience with editors trying to excise valid sources for bogus reasons—either general suspicion that a source can't be considered to have a valid assessment or opinion because some other, usually later source offers a different evaluation, even if there's no substantive change in the source material they consider. Lest you think this is only a problem with very old sources, it's not—I can recall several arguments in which it was claimed that scholarship dating between the 1960s and 1980s was outdated, not because anything new had been uncovered, but because something published in 2000 reached a different conclusion from the same evidence, and that the articles in question should treat whatever the most recent sources opined as established fact, either excluding or disparaging all other opinions. And while our guides praise the authority of the RE (while justifiably noting that it can be difficult to use), I've also seen people arguing that it's outdated and shouldn't be used, which again, seems absurd.

To be clear, I'm not saying that standards of scholarship haven't improved over the last 250 years. There are some truly awful sources to cite out there and they tend to be thickest in the earlier period. But there are also excellent sources from the 19th century, and most classical scholarship written in the 20th century should be treated as presumptively valid, as long as opposing viewpoints—if they exist, which in many instances they do not—are also noted. I'm not saying that we should treat Gibbon, Niebuhr, Mommsen as the absolute authorities on any particular topic; but where they have something to say about a particular person or thing, it would be unencyclopedic to exclude it. And whenever something is essentially opinion, as most things in classical scholarship are, it's a fallacy to treat whatever the most recent publication is as authoritative, even if there are other fairly recent sources, or the only thing that has changed is the passage of time—how views of a subject have evolved over time is very relevant in this field.

To the extent that guidelines can be written without explicitly deprecating sources based solely on age, and without regard to their content, I have no objection. I agree with most of what Caecilius says about citations; I try to cite most things in full, usually with a bibliography to document the exact authority. Sometimes you may not be able to identify the source as clearly as you'd like, and it's usually better to provide a citation you haven't been able to interpret than no citation at all. But I don't like being told what citation format to use—and the "sfn" template is designed for one particular format that I think is suboptimal; and for all of its "workarounds" it is still basically inflexible. Here's an example. Which of these citations will be more helpful to non-specialists?

Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, p. 125.

Cornell 1995, p. 125.

And of course this template is even less useful when dealing with Greek and Roman authors, where, as Caecilius points out, the most helpful reference is by book and chapter (rarely, IMO, line/subsection, as chapters in most sources often comprise a few paragraphs, at most, and sometimes just one or two), rather than page number in a modern edition (although this could be useful in addition to the former, in some cases). But "Livy 2010, p. 125" is not only unhelpful to most readers, who will have different editions if any, but is somewhat absurd since Livy has been dead for two thousand years (and we don't even have exact years for most works of Greek and Roman literature).

So what I don't want in a guide is a list of rules telling people what citation formats they have to use, or whether they need to use the "Sfn" template or the "Cite book" template or various other things—I usually try to keep citations short and keep bibliographic information and external links in the bibliography section, so that it's easier to read the text you're editing as you go. If the body text is full of templates that take up a full line or more, and external links to online copies of various books, it quickly becomes difficult to see what you're doing. Perhaps this isn't what you're suggesting—but there are certainly editors who want everyone to use their formatting and adopt their practices—and that's what I want any guides to avoid encouraging. P Aculeius (talk) 14:46, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I see three objections here. (1) Sfn, harvnb, etc are incompatible with standard book-section citations. They're not. |loc= and |ref= solve these issues. These are not workarounds any more than a touchpad is a workaround for not having a mouse. (2) Sfn style templates increase clutter. They don't. When I removed the old-style references in Julius Caesar and substituted sfn-style templates, the page size fell by over 20,000 bytes because those external links etc could be omitted; this hugely reduced clutter. And (3) sfn-style doesn't provide enough bibliographic data. It does: click the link it generates. On modern Vector, this takes the form of a nice pop-up.

Moreover, automated tools to ensure that sfn citations are filled in helps editors avoid the issue of a dangling citation like Smith 1995 p 123 without corresponding bibliographic entry. None of these objections are actual issues. The question of which sources to use is a separate one from "these sources exist" and I'm not interested in litigating it here. Ifly6 (talk) 15:10, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

You've set up a series of straw men here. I never mentioned "incompatibility" as an objection, and didn't mention the "harvnb" template—I objected to being told what citation format to use and what templates to use—and I will object to that no matter how much you argue that everybody must do things your way because your way is the best. If you try to force your preferences onto other editors, you will simply harm the encyclopedia by discouraging participation. I used the word "workarounds" because that is the word used by the "Sfn" documentation to describe all kinds of ways to incorporate various parameters—none of which change the fact that it doesn't allow for any alternative to its specific output. Ref tags allow your references to say whatever you want them to say, as do "efn" templates. "Sfn" is a brick and can be decorated in any number of ways, but it will always be a brick.

I never claimed that using the "Sfn" template couldn't save space—if you can delete multi-line gibberish-filled hyperlinks then of course it saves space. But it also relies on inserting templates with parameters—and some templates, such as "Cite book" are loaded with parameters that aren't necessary to include in a citation if you simply use a bibliography at the end of the article. The more code is stuck into the body of an article, the harder it becomes to edit, the more expertise an editor must have in order to do it well, and the more likely it becomes that significant errors in coding or readability will occur.

If the meat of this proposal comes down to "this WikiProject requires editors to use the following formats when editing articles in CGR, and if you do not then your work will be edited to conform", then forget it. That is micromanaging, and it will convert good editors into gone editors. P Aculeius (talk) 15:58, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I never knew I was such a tyrant! What an astonishing discovery! In more serious terms: Harvnb is linked in the Sfn documentation as part of the same class of templates because they produce the same output (Harvnb, relevantly, isn't a "brick"); Sfn isn't used with Cite book in the same reference; you did mention page numbers in Sfn as an objection (this template [sfn] is even less useful [here]... the most helpful reference is by book and chapter... rather than page number in a modern edition). Also, this is false: it also relies on inserting templates... such as "Cite book" are loaded with parameters that aren't necessary... if you simply use a bibliography at the end. Sfn, Harvnb, etc are meant to and do reduce duplication. These claims, frankly, are so baseless they just make it seem like you don't know how the template class works. Ifly6 (talk) 16:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

No, with modern works I object to using the year of publication instead of the work's name, which makes no sense outside of a specialist context. If there's only one work by an author, or there are multiple works that don't share the same name (that could happen, if for some reason you needed to cite different editions of the same work), there's no value to the reader in seeing the year of publication—certainly not in place of the work's name—in the citation. Publication data belongs in a bibliography section, and is irrelevant to most works of Greek and Roman literature, where the title of the work, together with book and chapter (or section) number are relevant, but page numbers will be different in every edition.

I never said that "Cite book" was part of "Sfn". I gave it as an example of another template that some editors insist on using, even though it tends to clutter up the editing window with disjointed scraps of text and code—typing the reference exactly as you want it to look in normal markup is much simpler and produces less clutter. Citation templates require more experience to use, clutter up the editing window more than ref tags (external links can appear with or without templates), and they all prescribe the format to be used in some fashion. Which of these is easier to work around in the editing window?

<ref>Grant, Roman Myths, p. 75.</ref>

{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Grant (classicist) |date=1971 |title=Roman Myths |url= |location= |publisher=Dorset Press |page=75 |isbn=0880290269}}

I read the proposal's mention of guidance using the "Sfn" template as possibly recommending or requiring its use in place of other citation formats, and objected to that interpretation. If that wasn't your intention, then fine—there's no problem. But your response was, "how can anybody object to this?", which suggested that what I objected to was precisely what you had in mind. I don't mind guides that allow editors to choose from among acceptable formats, or vary from them within reason. The one thing I wanted to make sure wouldn't be a part of it was telling editors how they had to cite things.

I was going to leave it there, but you couldn't let me reply before adding comments like "you don't know how the template class works", which just reinforces the idea that you think your preferences are better than everyone else's, and that you should be calling the shots because you're so much smarter. It doesn't seem to occur to you that people might have valid reasons for not wanting to do things your way—anyone who disagrees with you is wrong, so you can just do whatever you like. Get over yourself, and stop telling other people what they should be doing! P Aculeius (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

To closely paraphrase, Caecilius below, I'm really struggling to see why you think I'm trying to force you or others to use any particular citation format. But instead of accepting that, you have instead made a bunch of baseless claims about how citation templates make it more difficult to use the editor. The issue here is not whether I know everything and am cleverer than everyone else; it is whether your claims about Sfn et al's alleged drawbacks are real. They are not and the indications so far suggest that they emerge from a misunderstanding of how Sfn et al work.

But instead of assessing the veracity of those complaints, you have chosen to personalise the matter by accusing me of micromanaging other editors, that I should stop telling other people what they should be doing, and that I should get over [my]self. If you want to depersonalise these complaints, instead of associating Sfn with repetitious Cite book invocations, perhaps point to the correct template invocation and assess whether {{sfn|Cornell|1995|p=307}} (especially when duplicates do not need to be manually de-duplicated) is more or less clutter than <ref name=tjc1995p307>Cornell, ''Beginnings of Rome'' (1995), p. 307.</ref>. It is less. Ifly6 (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I already answered Caecilius' question above, but you must not have been paying attention, just as you keep ignoring the blatantly obvious fact that nobody wrote a book called "1995" or advocated putting "1995" in the citation for absolutely no purpose whatever—it's utterly useless, and you're also ignoring the point I made about editors using citation templates in general—it does nothing but clutter things up and prescribe how people have to format things, whether they want to or not.

You're the one who personalized this by supposing that I must not know how templates work, and you're still doing it—I know how they work and I think they're a waste of time that makes editing harder than it needs to be—not just for established editors who have to find the text hiding between template code, but for newer editors who may not have spent time studying template markup. You may think they're the bee's knees because you already know how they work. But you need to stop insisting that your way is better than everyone else's, and that nobody in their right minds could disagree with you! P Aculeius (talk) 20:24, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm unwilling to take this obvious bait about how you claim to believe that years should be omitted from citations. But that aside, is your position seriously that merely mentioning the existence of CS1 and the Harvard style templates (editors using citation templates... does nothing but clutter things up and prescribe how people [contra "editors" per consistent usage canon] have to format things, whether they want to or not) constitutes a command from Imperator Flavius Liliputtius Yuppius VI me that you must use them? Perhaps it may emerge from my Earth-shattering intelligence and arrogance but I cannot conceive of how this belief is at all justified. Ifly6 (talk) 20:57, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how to use sfn well for primary sources and I'd be happy to see guidance, though I can't promise I'd use it. Your two examples of citing Grant give very different results, below. The former's often easier to do and the latter's often more useful, and I'm happy to see it while editing. You seem to be arguing we shouldn't use it; I hope not. NebY (talk) 21:02, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I already said at least twice that the point was to ensure that the guides suggested didn't become a set of rules for how citations had to be formatted. The editor could simply have said "I didn't mean to suggest that", but instead went off in the direction of "my way is the best way!", while telling me that all of the reasons I prefer to do my own formatting without templates are wrong, and that I must not understand templates if I don't want to use them.

One or two citation templates in a paragraph may not create problems; six or seven make the text difficult to see when editing articles, and might even take up more space than the body text does. I don't regard the "Sfn" template as desirable because it substitutes the year for the title of the work being cited, and that can't be changed by any of the "workarounds" that it mentions in its documentation. If you want to use that format, fine—as long as you're not telling anybody else that they have to do it.

When I write or update an article, I place all of the bibliographic data at the end, with short citations that include three things: the name of the author, the name of the work, and the page or location of the cited material within the work. The year of publication doesn't need to go in the citation; it's never as helpful as knowing what the title of the work is, and it's always included in the bibliography; "Sfn" doesn't allow me to use the title of the work instead of the year of publication.

That's why I don't want to be told to use templates—and as long as the proposed guides don't do that, then there's no problem. I would have stopped posting in this discussion a couple of cycles ago if the editor in question didn't keep telling me that my reasons are all wrong, and that I just don't understand how to use templates. P Aculeius (talk) 22:25, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm really struggling to see why you think "the meat of this proposal" comes down to forcing people to use any particular citation format. The only mention of citation formats in Ifly's original post was a suggestion that we should include guidance of how to use {{sfn}} with primary sources. Guidance on how to use a particular (common!) template if you are going to is pretty far from mandating its use. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I would like to see our Guides page much more narrowly tailored towards CGR-specific stuff. Currently the first three sections are just general editing advice, with basically no CGR-specific content, and I'd be inclined to cut them entirely. The section §Finding sources and scholarship is useful, but it could probably stand to be more organised.

Agree that guidance on how to cite primary sources would be useful. We don't have to recommend any particular template system, but there certainly are best practices for what information citations should provide – mindlessly copying the citations as given in DGRBM leaving something like " Ephorus, ap. Strab. x. p. 480, &c.; Heracl. Pont. c. 3.; Hock, Creta^ iii. p. 100, &c.; Muller, Dor. iv. 5. § 3; Hermann, Griech. Staatsaltertliumer, § 22; Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterthumskunde, vol. i. p. 362, 2d ed.; Krause, Die Gymnastik u. Agonistik d. Hellenen, p. 690, &c.)" should certainly be discouraged! (I have thoughts about citing ancient sources). Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It might be because I've spent too much time starting at them in print, PDFs, and in reference lists, but I actually like abbreviated citations (like those in L'Année philologique or OCD; and probably because they reduce clutter). But I also agree that they aren't very helpful for a general audience. I would think best practice would be that abbreviated citations should link, if used, to the full bibliographic entries. Ifly6 (talk) 13:06, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes. The sight of a cite copied from DGRBM without attribution per WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is a good indicator not only that the editor hasn't read the sources but also that the editor's unattributed paraphrasing of DGRBM may not be reliable. I suppose that's helpful, in its way. NebY (talk) 18:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I see {{sfn}} being used in Julius Caesar (for example {{sfn|Plut. ''Caes.''|loc=67}} producing "Plut. Caes., 67.") in a way that seems to overcome a couple of my concerns and perhaps a couple of those expressed above. My use case is different; I tend to edit articles rather than create them, so I keep encountering it. Rather than try to deduce the method myself, I'd be glad to see guidance on using it for classical texts. NebY (talk) 00:05, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I speak {{sfn}} and {{cite}} relatively fluently, and have used them to do some moderately complex stuff – I will try to write up some guidance on some useful tricks and pitfalls to avoid for classics editors. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

In fact, I see there's already something on this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Guides/Primary sources#Shortened footnotes Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:11, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Yea, I had started drafting the page yesterday. If I have some time I'll go add to the inscriptions side. I added something talking about some of the epigraphic templates. (They auto-generate links to epigraphic databases like so CIL I, 588.) If you have anything more to add feel free and go ahead; I don't own the page. Ifly6 (talk) 17:07, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Describing gods as Sabine

The openings of 15–20 articles such as Minerva, Saturn (mythology), Sol (Roman mythology)‎‎ and Ops were changed to say first that they were Sabine gods, eg Minerva is the Sabine and Roman goddess of …, Saturn was a god in Sabine and ancient Roman religion …, In Sabine and Roman religion, Terminus was the god .... Some were reverted, for which I was taken to WP:AN but gained some consensus we could have a central discussion here. We may wish to revert others or improve them all. I see various problems.

• Not a summary of or supported by the body of the article (WP:LEAD).
• Undue prominence, akin to opening Silvio Berlusconi with “was a Milanese law graduate, an Italian media tycoon and a politician”. WP:LEAD has the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources.
• Most have no source; re-reverting, the editor (Est. 2021) sourced some to Varro’s De Lingua Latina 5.74 (“On the Latin Language” - a primary source), linking to the 1928 Loeb edition.
  • In 5.57-74, Varro discusses the origins of the names of some Roman gods. His phrasing is sometimes direct (just before, he writes “Castoris nomen Graecum, Pollucis a Graecis” – “The name of Castor is Greek, that of Pollux likewise from the Greeks”), sometimes oblique (“E(t) arae Sabinum linguam olent …” – “There is scent of the speech of the Sabines about the altars also …”).
  • The Loeb's translator is Roland G. Kent, professor of Comparative Philology, so when he takes issue with Varro in his footnotes he would seem to give us a more reliable WP:SCHOLARSHIP-compliant secondary source. He writes “It is unlikely that all the deities of the next two lists were brought in from elsewhere; many of the names are perfectly Roman” and of "e quis nonnulla nomina in utraque lingua habent radices" ("some of these names have roots in both languages"), “Quite possible, but very unlikely in the cases of Saturn and Diana”, pointing us also to the etymologies Varro’s already given for them in 5.64 and 5.68.
• Similar sourcing problems arise with the editor’s creation[8] of Sabines#Sabine gods and of Category:Sabine deities, Category:Sabine gods and Category:Sabine goddesses, which they’ve populated.
• I haven’t yet tried to find later RSs for Sabine religion; there’s a good chance somebody here is way ahead of me.

So should we include anything, and if so what, where, and how sourced? NebY (talk) 16:01, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to first disclaim that ancient religion is not my area of interest; I have little to add on sourcing than just to check the OCD (see eg for Minerva: Minerva... an Italian goddess of handicrafts [theory in RE that Minerva = Athena noted and rejected]... most scholars think her indigenous), CAH², and the various relevant Companions. Regardless, I agree in general that a claim that something or another is associated with some ethnic group should be based not on unclear implications from primary sources but critically-handled modern scholarship. Varro and his regurgitators should not be deemed sufficient. If there is evidence of Sabine origin that is widely accepted, Sabine should surely be after Roman; ordering should be in importance. But if, as with Minerva, modern scholars call the god merely Italian or of the like then just present that; polytheism is fuzzy like that. Ifly6 (talk) 16:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I seem to recall reading that the name "Minerva" is of Etruscan origin, although the Etruscans, and presumably the Romans, clearly identified her with Athena. Whether there was an independent cult of Minerva before this identification was made is a matter for speculation, as it probably predates by some centuries any discussion of her in surviving classical literature—all of which would either identify the two, or not mention the identification at all. Less certain of "Saturn" as a name; might also be Etruscan, or Italic—likely indigenous, but the identification with Cronus is still early and I don't think they're distinguished, despite their varying attributes in Greek and Roman myth. Obviously both "Sol" and "Ops" are Latin names.

I don't recall any explicit identification of any of these deities as Sabine, although doubtless the Sabines worshipped similar gods, perhaps with the same origins, but if so then describing them as "Sabine and Roman" still gives undue precedence to a comparatively unknown culture—even among classical scholars, for whom the Sabines are important, and acknowledging that the Romans considered much of their culture to be of Sabine origin, relatively little is known of them compared with Rome and other towns of Latium. If Varro says that they were worshipped in Sabinum, I'd take him at face value unless some reliable scholarship contradicts him in a logical manner—but then it'd still be worth mentioning that he, and perhaps others made or continue to make such identification.

Best I can recall, the only deities I can remember with explicitly Sabine connections—not necessarily origins, which are disputable—are Quirinus (otherwise viewed as the deified Romulus) and Mamers (supposedly the Sabine form of Mars, but this seems to have been how he was referred to in the oldest Latin writing, and then we have the Roman praenomen Mamercus existing alongside Marcus, although again, in a family claiming Sabine descent). There are probably others, but this is the first I can recall seeing any of the four mentioned at top connected with the Sabines. I would simply note that none of these cults developed in a vacuum; the Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans all identified their gods with those of other peoples and regions, and adopted foreign cults or combined aspects of similar deities; knowing what aspects are truly indigenous where is generally uncertain. P Aculeius (talk) 16:58, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with what I see as NebY's main point: even if certain divine figures that play a role in Roman religion are of Sabine origin, or if at some point (say, under Claudius) Sabine origins were touted in a way that's historically significant in terms of gens or imperial self-presentation, this kind of longing to determine origins only rarely would belong in the intro, and never in the first sentence unless the Sabine origin were to be a significant point of notability. (I can't think of an example off the top of my head other than the myth of the Sabine women, which is of course not the same thing). So I think there are considerations of undue weight, possible POV-pushing and "agenda" editing, and most of all notability regarding the first sentence of an article on a major deity like Minerva. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:29, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Obviously, whatever Sabine connection there might be for Minerva, Saturn, Sol and Ops, giving that connection the same weight as their Roman connection (as seems to have been done here) is (per WP:UNDUE) comletely inappropriate. So reverting such additions is clearly justified. As for should we include anything, and if so what, where, and how sourced?, we should add, of course, whatever reliable sources justify adding ;-) Paul August ☎ 18:21, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@Ifly6, P Aculeius, and Paul August: These deities were part of Sabine religion way before being adopted into Roman religion, and ancient Roman sources confirm that. You can find further infos at List of Roman deities#Sabine gods. As you can see, the Sabine origin of these deities also was confirmed by Varro, the greatest scholar of ancient Rome, and his statement his also shared in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.50.3 and other ancient sources. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 21:43, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@Est. 2021: Wikipedia works on the basis of reliable, secondary sources. I would suggest Brill's New Pauly as a good starting point, as it seems to mention Varro's claims, at least for Saturn and Ops (the only two I've checked for):

Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Saturnus: According to Varro, Ling. 5,74, S. had a Sabine origin.

Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Ops (3): Varro, Ling. 5,74 and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2,50,3) claim that she was of Sabine origin, and that her cult was introduced early to Rome by Titus Tatius.

As you can see, the above sources don't use phrases such as In Sabine and ancient Roman religion, and instead present the information using language such as According to Varro and claim. That is how we should be presenting the information in our articles. – Michael Aurel (talk) 22:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Remembering back to the discussion at university on polytheistic religion, the main model in the modern scholarship is one of rather similar and highly syncretic gods and practices that can in many instances be traced back to Italic and eventually Indo-European religious practice. Inasmuch as that is the case, this artificial classification of "Roman" and "Sabine", for cultures descending from largely the same branch, is of little utility. Clicking on the first link when typing minerva sabine in Google Scholar yields this 1995 thesis positing such an Indo-European pedigree. I can't say I know exactly where the scholarship has moved on this, but I don't think it's rejected that overarching framework of syncretic evolution, which would stress continuities rather than this artificial "X took god D from Y" narrative common in ancient folk-explanations. Ifly6 (talk) 22:13, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I've been reviewing two articles I worked on long ago, Lares and Mother of the Lares. Just squeezing "and Sabine" in beside "Roman religion" in the introduction is seriously WP:UNDUE, completely disproportionate to Varro's simple assertion - or his educated guesses and the remnants thereof - which besides are not automatically accepted by modern, reliable scholarly sources. See, for example, Woodard, 2006, pp.116-117, describing the Mother of the Lares (aka Mania (deity). See also the account of Feralia at the darkest edges of Etruscan and Roman religion (per Woodard) in Ovid's Fasti.

Varro is always interesting but just being Varro does not always make him right. He has the limitations of any primary source, and sometimes contradicts himself. All the more reason to handle with care, not to introject our own ideas, and definitely not to stretch the article to fit them. Was he just trying to fit particular altars and shrines into Rome's traditional foundation myth? And traditions regarding Titus Tatius? Not for us to say. There's virtually nothing known about Sabine culture or Sabine religion, save for the legendary "coming together as one" through truce. Which I suppose to be shorthand for Roman domination. Whatever "Sabine religion" on the ground was like by Varro's day, I'd guess it had long been subsumed, and become Roman "with traces of Sabine" (sorry, forgot the actual quote, but it's close. I'm sure one of you will let me know if I'm wrong or "off piste" in this.

Hardly any mainstream secondary sources make anything of the Sabine connection, let alone reckon a Sabine origin for the Lares and their Mother. They mention the possibility, and Varro as primary source for that, without further comment. This being the majority viewpoint, we should follow it. Haploidavey (talk) 08:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

List of Roman deities#Sabine gods says Varro makes various claims for Sabine origins throughout his works, some more plausible than others, and his list should not be taken at face value. It cites Anna Clark's Divine Qualities, which says Varro's particular interest in things 'Sabine' makes this not necessarily a precise indication of the origin of these gods and that his etymologies of gods' names are inaccurate from the point of view of current linguistic understanding, and Emma Dench's Romulus' Asylum, which says Amongst his claims of Sabine derivation, the most peculiar by either ancient or modern criteria are the names Minerva, Fons, Fortuna, Vulcan, and Vertumnus. Based on these it does not seem to me as though we should be uncritically accepting Varro's claims of Sabine derivation; if modern scholars have discussed the fact that Varro claimed e.g. Minerva was Sabine, we can include that with the appropriate WP:WEIGHT. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if this was a response to my mention of "taking Varro at face value", but what I said was that we could accept his word as to whether the deities in question were worshiped by the Sabines—of which he would have had first-hand knowledge—not whether they or their names were of Sabine origin, something that would only reflect contemporary opinion. And also that this only stretches to the point at which other sources contradict him. Some of these deities have names that are plainly Latin, others are thought to have Etruscan names. As Haploidavey reinforces, we know very little of Sabine culture, while Ifly correctly states that all modern scholarship—dating back at least to the 19th century if not earlier—agrees that the very nature of Roman religion was syncretic, so that we can't be certain of any god's precise origin, even if the name appears to belong to a particular language.

But to return to the original question, putting "Sabine" alongside "Roman" in any of the cases so described is indeed giving undue weight to an association that isn't the reason why the gods in question are known today. At best we would probably note in the lead that Quirinus or Mamers are thought (today, by modern scholars) to be of Sabine origin—what Varro or Cicero or any other Roman writer said of the others—any god known from Roman mythology that modern scholarship doesn't explicitly describe as probably Sabine—is relevant but not definitive, and can go in the body of the article. P Aculeius (talk) 14:07, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a minor point, given the rest of what you say and the strong agreement here from so many angles, and I may be delving too far into primary sources, but AFAICT Varro doesn't even say the Sabines of his day worship Ops, Flora, Vediovis, Saturn, Sol, Luna, Vulcan, Larunda, Terminus, Quirinus, Vertumnus, the Lares, Diana and Lucina, only that altars to them were dedicated at Rome according to Tatius's vow and the altars have a scent of the Sabine language. Whether the legendary Tatius, about seven hundred years before De Lingua Latina, vowed to specifically Sabine gods, Roman ones he hoped to win over, or common Italic gods, and whether Sabines generally worshipped them then or later, all seems unstated by Varro or Diodorus of Halicarnassus 50.3. NebY (talk) 15:04, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a response to you – it was in response to Est. 2021. I think everyone else in this discussion is broadly in agreement that (a) Varro's beliefs about the etymologies & origins of gods might be relevant, and his testimony about religious practice in his time are likely to be broadly trustworthy, but we should not assume that his beliefs about etymology and origin are accurate, (b) the purported Sabine origin of e.g. Minerva is, regardless of its truth, not why she is known today and not needed in the lead sentence, and (c) we should base our discussion on the history of Roman religion on what the reliable secondary sources say; the opinions of the ancients is potentially interesting context which should be given the weight that modern sources give it. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:07, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Two matters: (1) actual origin and (2) presentation. ¶ On (1), I read the excepts of Varro in line with NebY and Caeciliusinhorto: Varro says that they're linguistically Sabine to further an origin story. As to the theory that Minerva is Etruscan and is Athena, OCD⁴ rejects it and says that most scholars think her indigenous: Altheim (RE ‘Minerva’; cf. Hist. Rom. Rel. 235 and n. 34; Griechische Götter (1930), 142 n. 4) believes her actually to be Athena, borrowed early through Etruria (see Etruscans); but most scholars think her indigenous, and connect her name with the root of meminisse (‘to remember’) etc (from OCD Online verbatim). Inasmuch as that is the contemporary consensus I would oppose focusing on this Etruscan Athena theory. ¶ As to (2), the article should, in the lede and main portions, reflect what the contemporary consensus is then, if relevant, discuss alternative theories no longer held (Varro, Altheim, etc). If other reliable sources agree with OCD⁴ on a general Italian origin (I expect they would just on OCD⁴'s authority) it may be worthwhile to just write that and sidestep this whole Sabine–Roman dispute entirely. Ifly6 (talk) 15:32, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

• Just to support the many excellent, and more expert, comments of all above (except for Est. 2021). Not for the first sentence, or probably even the lead. Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
• @P Aculeius: Your comment touched interesting points. The Etruscan origin of some of these deities is based, but we know for sure that Etruscans and Sabines shared several deities, so one thesis doesn't exclude the other one. The linguistic part is more complicated, since:
  • the Latin names could even be exonyms;
  • many Latin and Sabin words were cognate, so they were similar in both languages;
  • in addition, you wrote Obviously both "Sol" and "Ops" are Latin names, but we know that the Norse had deities with the same names. You assumed the god-name was derived from the Latin word, but it may be the opposite... or if Latin and Norse culture, far from each other, had cognate names for their deities, the same applies to Latins and Sabines, who shared the same land.

Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 07:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

None of these go to the heart of the discussion—as all of the others agree, I think that describing any of the deities in question as "Sabine and Roman" ascribes an importance to their worship in Sabine culture that is at best minimally supported by either Roman or contemporary scholarship, and which is of undue weight when placed in the lead paragraphs of each article. To the extent that any reliable source verifiably connects them with the Sabines, that should be described in the body of the articles, not first and foremost in the lead. But to address your specific comments:

• I didn't say that the gods themselves were Etruscan. I said that some of their names probably, or possibly were: particularly the name of Minerva. I'm not sure whether the sources cited by some of the other editors above are arguing that Minerva is not an Etruscan goddess in origin, or that her name is not derived from Etruscan, because these are two distinct arguments—neither of which concern the Sabines. I was less certain of the derivation of Saturn, but in any case I was, and remain unaware of any linguistic reason to connect any of the four deities with which this discussion started with a specifically Sabine origin.
• The fact that sol and ops are Latin words does not preclude the existence of cognates in Sabine or any other language (indeed, our article on Ops gives a Sanskrit cognate), but the potential existence of cognates in other languages is not evidence of the origin of the deities in question. The fact that the Norse personification of the sun was called Sól alongside Sunna is particularly unpersuasive, as the earliest evidence of this postdates Roman civilization by many centuries, at which time Latin was diffused throughout Europe, including northern Europe as a language of scholarship; but even if we suppose a cognate there can be no possibility of the Romans borrowing from the Norse, and I am unaware of "Ops" as a Norse deity, or any plausible cognate or equivalent, which your comment implies.
• Besides this, the Norse personification of the sun is a very minor (and female) figure in Norse mythology, with no resemblance to the Roman Sol—masculine and usually treated as the equivalent to Greek Helios.
• It is not plausible that the Latin words for "sun" and "abundance" were derived from the names of the corresponding gods. The normal inference would be the reverse. The fact that multiple cultures with potential cognates ascribe divine qualities to the same features of the natural world does not make one mythology the source for the other.

But to return to the main point—none of these arguments lead towards a Sabine origin for any of the deities in question; at best we can only imagine that the Sabines might have worshiped the same gods under cognate names, but this is very uncertain. And speculative or uncertain theories do not belong in the lead—to the extent that they are discussed in reliable sources, they belong in the body of the respective articles, where the sources and context of the theories can be discussed appropriately. P Aculeius (talk) 14:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

References

Reference to Caesar in Suda kappa 958

I'm trying very hard to make sense of a section [9], [10] of the Suda which refers to a woman convincing her father (a king) to side with Caesar, but I'm finding it impossible to figure out which Caesar, woman and king is being talked about. ★Trekker (talk) 22:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Given that the note on Suda Online says only "quotation unidentifiable", I suspect that the reason you can't figure it out is because there isn't enough to go off of and nobody has! In my experience SOL tends to have fairly useful explanatory notes. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I see, well that is unfortunate then, guess it's a mystery to ponder over. But thanks!★Trekker (talk) 15:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Altiburus

An article which may be of interest to members of this project—Altiburus—has been proposed for merging with Althiburos. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 23:38, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion

If anyone has any opinions on this Talk:Labours of Hercules#Requested move 10 July 2023, please join the discussion. Paul August ☎ 00:19, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Keszthely culture

This article has been completely rewritten in a way that flatly contradicts earlier versions. More eyes would be welcome. Srnec (talk) 20:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

The notability of Roman consuls

Just saw this mentioned in the thread above, & having worked a fair bit with writing consular biographies wanted to contribute these thoughts.

First, I believe it is a defensible assertion that all Roman consuls at all periods are notable. Some because they were the legal & acting heads of state -- specifically during the Republican period -- but the rest because this was the highest civil office any Roman citizen could hold, which means any person who held the fasces was a member of the upper -- & most notable -- ranks of Roman society. They were the equivalent of a senior noble rank -- or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. However, not all of them deserve a separate article.

The reason I believe this is simple: for a great many, all that can be said is a few short sentences, basically stating A was a Roman Senator, & he was consul for a certain date with B as his colleague. So unless one & all agree that we need more permanent stubs in Wikipedia, there needs to be some criteria for inclusion. When I was writing these biographies, my rule of thumb was that unless a given consul held two other attested positions or appointments besides the consulate, I would not create an article for him. Sometimes a biographical detail or something about his tenure in the other position was sufficient to substitute for a missing post. (I have been doing instead is creating redirects to the relevant article on his gens. It's a subtle way of telling the reader "There just isn't anything more to be said about this person." And redirects suffice just in case some archeological discovery allows us to write a full article on the man.)

In a word, we don't need an entry about a notable personage if there isn't enough information to write an article about him or her. We should find somewhere else to record the information. -- llywrch (talk) 15:30, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Having created a few stubs for consuls back in the day, I think something along the lines of A stub is acceptable if the consul is known to have had at least one other magistracy (I know you said two magistracies above) in WP:ROMANS is a reasonable compromise. The guidance we have related to heads of state is only a recommendation; actual notability which is determined by coverage in sources. I think we ought to take inspiration from how Wikipedia has moved with TV episodes. That said, the purging of the Yes, Minister articles was sad. For example, List of The Expanse episodes has table with the name and a short description of the episode. We could expand List of Roman consuls to do the same. The main alternative, a massive list by nomen, groups likely unrelated people while obscuring the reason – they held senior magistracies – we bothered to include their name at all. Ifly6 (talk) 15:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, notability is not "determined by coverage in sources". Coverage in sources demonstrates verifiability, but notability itself is a separate and less rigidly-defined topic. Both the general notability guideline and the subject-specific guidelines for people—specifically politicians—indicate what criteria lead to a presumption of notability, but also caution that neither meeting nor failing to meet these guidelines is necessarily conclusive. We could argue endlessly on whether Marcus Bolonius Crescens, consul suffectus under Alexander Severus, is notable without reaching consensus; but practical consideration would indicate an article—even a stub—if there were more to say about him than would conveniently fit in the List of Roman consuls or an entry under his gens. Conversely, if nothing more is known about him then those would be the only places mentioning him would likely benefit readers.

Llywrch's criteria for inclusion seem prudent, and I would not gainsay them knowing his expertise in the subject, and having seen how meticulous his work in the area is. If you think an article is justified with just one other magistracy, you may well be correct—there are lots of reasons why someone who held only a single magistracy may be notable. But I think it would be a mistake to write the number of magistracies a Roman held into a policy, or even a guideline, if it would then be used to determine notability irrespective of other factors—such as the amount of material written by or about the person. P Aculeius (talk) 17:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I see various AfDs succeed because there's insufficient coverage directly about that executive or band or whatever; they're only mentioned in passing in connection with a different notable subject (the example at WP:SIGCOV is that "In high school, [Bill Clinton] was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice" doesn't make that band notable). We used to have a rule that footballers who'd played for a top-tier UK team were automatically notable; an early Roman consul is arguably more like a player for a fourth-division team that was later promoted. A suffect consul hundreds of years later might rate even lower than an office junior elevated by an outgoing UK prime minister does now. I don't know if any determined deletionists have ever tested CGR's norms for articles about magistrates or mythological characters, but your self-restraint looks more sustainable. NebY (talk)