Talk:Roman–Latin wars

Roman Latins

Shouldn't the introduction read in some form like "The Roman–Latin wars were a series of wars fought between ancient Rome and other Latin(s) peoples/tribes"? Seeing as Romans were Latins themselves? JanderVK (talk) 15:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Time period missing in lead paragraph

Can someone please add the time period in the lead? Wiki-uk (talk) 07:53, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Future of this article

@GenoV84: do you think we could salvage this article from deletion, like Roman–Gallic wars? The term Roman–Latin wars appears to be entirely WP:OR/WP:SYNTH, it's not found anywhere on Google Books or Google Scholar. The only exception is one tiny reference in Cynthia Damon 2016, who wrote (...) though most Latin cities came under Roman control after being defeated in the Roman-Latin Wars around 338 BCE, (...), thus apparently treating Roman–Latin Wars (capital W) as a synonym of Latin War, not as a series of wars in which the Latin War was just one out of many. Apart from that, this article is just too dependent on WP:PRIMARY sources, and the secondary sources are only invoked for details of specific events, not for an overall framework of a purported series of wars. I think there is little other for us to do but to delete this article, even though some materials could be recycled into other articles. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:39, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nederlandse Leeuw, I didn't follow the history of this article's development before stumbling upon it just now. Perhaps, it could be renamed Roman–Italic Wars and cover the broader topic of the military conflicts between ancient Rome and the Italic peoples as a whole, not just the Latins. Otherwise, the current article could be merged into the Latin War. GenoV84 (talk) 12:52, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@GenoV84 thanks for your response. I also didn't know about it until I stumbled upon it yesterday. There's an awful lot of poor writing on Roman military history going on, and I intend to do some well-needed fixes. I think Roman–Italic Wars will face exactly the same problems as Roman–Latin wars. That term isn't mentioned anywhere on Google Scholar or Google Books except 1 Academia.edu paper which has an odd phrase saying Roman-Italic wars in central Balkans.

We Wikipedians are not in a position to make terms up as we go along; everything we write must be based on RS. Sometimes we do need to invent a descriptive title if there is no term for a well-attested phenomenon, but in these cases of series of wars, known past phenomena are just SYNTHed together in an inappropriate way.

Given that the current article is mostly about events before the Latin War, I don't think merging into Latin War is a good idea. I prefer a split into multiple articles. From the current contents, I would propose:

• Merge Roman–Latin wars#First war with Rome to Ancus Marcius#War
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#War with Rome under Tarquinius Priscus to Lucius Tarquinius Priscus#War with the Latins
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#War between Clusium and Aricia to War between Clusium and Aricia
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#The Pometian revolt into Suessa Pometia
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#The battle of Lake Regillus and the foedus Cassianum into Latin War (498–493 BC)
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#Defection of the Latins from Rome (389–385) into Latin League
• Split off Roman–Latin wars#War between Rome and Praeneste (383–379) as new article War between Rome and Praeneste
• Split off Roman–Latin wars#Destruction of Satricum (377) as new article Destruction of Satricum
• Split off Roman–Latin wars#War between Rome and Tibur (361–354) as new article War between Rome and Tibur
• Merge Roman–Latin wars#The Latin War (340–338) into Latin War

Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:39, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

PS: There is also the article Roman expansion in Italy, which could serve as an overview article in which all these conflicts could be mentioned in a comprehensive narrative. But for that, the expansion article itself must also be reworked. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I thoroughly agree with both of your proposals to merge the respective sections of this article to the appropriate topics and to expand the article Roman expansion in Italy with a list or an overview that includes them. GenoV84 (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2023 (UTC)