User:Ifly6/Old drafts

The following are some old drafts I worked on.

Table edit


Draft	Current page	Date	Result	Notes
User:Ifly6/Constitutional reforms of Sulla	Constitutional reforms of Sulla	Feb 2022	Overwrote	^[1]
User:Ifly6/Populares	Optimates and populares	Feb 2022	Abandoned	^[2]
User:Ifly6/Optimates and populares	Optimates and populares	Feb 2022	Overwrote	^[3]
User:Ifly6/Overthrow of the Roman monarchy	Overthrow of the Roman monarchy	30 Apr 2022	Overwrote	^[4]
User:Ifly6/Senatus consultum ultimum	Senatus consultum ultimum	16 May 2022	Overwrote	^[5]
User:Ifly6/Roman emergency decrees	Roman emergency decrees	16 May 2022	Overwrote	^[6]
User:Ifly6/First Catilinarian conspiracy	First Catilinarian conspiracy	7 July 2022	Overwrote	^[7]
User:Ifly6/Second Catilinarian conspiracy	Catilinarian conspiracy	7 July 2022	Overwrote	^[8]
User:Ifly6/Catiline	Catiline	7 July 2022	Overwrote	^[9]
User:Ifly6/First Triumvirate	First Triumvirate	29 September 2022	Overwrote	^[10]
	Lex Cincia	7 October 2022	Rewrote	^[11]
User:Ifly6/Second Triumvirate	Second Triumvirate	25 Nov 2022	Overwrote	^[12]
User:Ifly6/War of Mutina	War of Mutina	19 Dec 2022	Moved	^[13]
User:Ifly6/Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio	Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio	30 Dec 2022	Overwrote	^[14]
User:Ifly6/Lucius Cornelius Cinna	Lucius Cornelius Cinna	16 Feb 2023	Overwrote	^[15]
User:Ifly6/Marcus Furius Camillus	Marcus Furius Camillus	11 Mar 2023	Overwrote	^[16]
	Scipio Africanus	9 Apr 2023	Rewrote	^[17]
User:Ifly6/Gracchi brothers	Gracchi brothers	12 Apr 2023	Overwrote	^[18]
	Syrian War (192–189 BC)	12 Apr 2023	Rewrote	^[19]
User:Ifly6/Marian reforms	Marian reforms	13 July 2023	Rewrote	^[20]

Notes edit

^ Rewrote along newer consensus that Sulla's "conservatism" was just branding rather than actually trying to go back to the past. Sulla's "new republic" was a very different kind of beast than the traditional republic that preceded it. Flower 2010.
^ Per discussion, there was consensus to merge populares and optimates.
^ New version does not engage in party politics. Also explains the (now over-a-century-old) consensus that populares and optimates were methods of working and ideological bents rather than Democrats and Republicans™. See generally Robb 2018.
^ New version engages with modern literature instead of repeating Livy and Dionysius uncritically. See generally Cornell 1995 and Forsythe 2005.
^ Rewrite completed with reference to newer scholarship in English. Also included more illustrations corrected a number of factual errors identified in the older article. Also excised the party-politics "populares-hate-the-death-penalty" (Cinna, Marius, Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, and Caesar – especially in his second campaign to Spain during the civil war – just really hate the death penalty don't they!) 19th century descriptions.
^ New content. While the clustering of the topics may be slightly artificial, each sub-element is not entirely well discussed alone, as the emergency decrees went together in a package.
^ The article seemed to have been written like so: someone wrote up an article treating it as if it were real; then someone realised that nobody believes that anymore and added a few hedge words all over the place; it then stayed that way for a decade. There is a consensus that the 1st CC is fictitious; the article should reflect that from root to branch.
^ Sourcing was rather poor and heavily biased towards Cicero. Rewrote based on DH Berry's Catilinarians along with other sources. Gruen 1995 includes a great analysis of who joined the conspiracy and their disparate reasons. Old article read like Catiline's conspiracy (1) popped into existence like Athena and at the same time (2) was something Catiline – DEVILISH PLOTTER! – had been planning since he was an infant.
^ Sourcing also was rather poor. It was based heavily on Sallust, which is known to be not entirely reliable in all matters: he's more focused on blackening Catiline's character than giving a truthful recollection of events. I didn't rewrite the Cultural depictions section: I'm not sure how people write these, honestly, they seem to be very ad hoc. There doesn't seem to be any academic literature which reviews Catiline's cultural legacy in toto (Beard 2015 devotes a few paragraphs but that is not sufficient).
^ Large changes. Most relating to updated scholarship and evaluations. My narrative drew largely on Gruen 1995, CAH², and Drogula Cato.
^ Rewrote based on entry in OCD online.
^ Rewrote based largely on narrative given by CAH² 10.
^ Wrote an article on the War of Mutina, taking place of jumbled and duplicated narratives at the two battle pages: Battle of Mutina and Battle of Forum Gallorum. Some further work necessary to clean up those battle pages.
^ Hugely expanded on a relatively terse article which missed a number of earlier life events and included some dubious inaccuracies (inheriting the post of pontifex maximus; claiming that he was assassinated by Gracchans). New version also provided needed context to his most famous act, killing Tiberius Gracchus, which in the original was a Gracchan-influenced morality play (which is not surprising given that Plut. TG has been hypothesised to be based on such a play).
^ Overwrote an article which was based on this ancient 1920s Bennett paper that has been largely panned by more recent scholarship: [Bennett's] more general conclusions do not seem to be consistent with the facts and he seems to misunderstand both Cinna's position in Rome and his importance in Roman politics. New version is based on CAH² 9 and a recent book on Cinna published in 2002 which encompasses a lot of the re-evaluation of the mid-century. "I followed my usual custom and took up the general cause of" – Sall. Cat. 35 – excising the unnecessary repetition of melodramatic primary source anecdotes.
^ Old version of the article was largely a paraphrase of Plut. Cam., which is simply extremely bad research. Rewritten version is based largely on four sources: the OCD⁴ article by Drummond, Cornell 1995, Forsythe 2005, and Münzer's article in RE. The last one was the most annoying: I spent about a week typing the article – in academic German (which I don't know) – into Wikisource! Later additions sourced from R M Ogilvie's Commentary on Livy.
^ It has a full set of citations for what he did now, where, and why you should believe instead of massive uncited portions that were just paraphrases anecdotes and battle scenes of Livy and Polybius.
^ Old version of the article was really bad. New version deals substantially with the archaeological remains of the period, recent research on the Gracchi, their influences per that recent research, an accurate summary of their activities, the aftermath of the reforms, their legacy, how their legacy was formed, etc. It does not include non-historians' speculations about how certain slaves owned by other people were the most virtuous.
^ Old version was very short. Substantial narrative and explanations added from CAH² 8, Badian and Gruen's journal articles and book chapters, etc. Name is not yet stable as to 12 April though, but article content is radically overhauled for the better.
^ The old version of the article repeated 19th century nonsense about fictitious reforms that never happened. Bret Devereaux rightfully wrote on the matter here. Rewrote entirely using modern sources (and had to read large portions of Cadiou, L'armee imaginaire (2018), a hard-to-get book in academic French). Took feedback on the article draft from two classicists (both of whom ended up cited in the article). Started prior to Devereaux's blog post but news of it pushed my incipient thoughts on it to completion.

Sources edit

Cornell, Tim (1995). Beginnings of Rome. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01596-0. OCLC 60236482.
Flower, Harriet (2010). Roman republics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14043-8. LCCN 2009004551.
Forsythe, Gary (2005). A critical history of early Rome. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-94029-6. OCLC 1162077736.
Gruen, Erich (1995). The last generation of the Roman republic. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02238-6.
Robb, MA (2018-12-31). "Optimates, populares". The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah20095.pub2. Retrieved 2022-03-10.

[1] Rewrote along newer consensus that Sulla's "conservatism" was just branding rather than actually trying to go back to the past. Sulla's "new republic" was a very different kind of beast than the traditional republic that preceded it. Flower 2010.

[2] Per discussion, there was consensus to merge populares and optimates.

[3] New version does not engage in party politics. Also explains the (now over-a-century-old) consensus that populares and optimates were methods of working and ideological bents rather than Democrats and Republicans™. See generally Robb 2018.

[4] New version engages with modern literature instead of repeating Livy and Dionysius uncritically. See generally Cornell 1995 and Forsythe 2005.

[5] Rewrite completed with reference to newer scholarship in English. Also included more illustrations corrected a number of factual errors identified in the older article. Also excised the party-politics "populares-hate-the-death-penalty" (Cinna, Marius, Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, and Caesar – especially in his second campaign to Spain during the civil war – just really hate the death penalty don't they!) 19th century descriptions.

[6] New content. While the clustering of the topics may be slightly artificial, each sub-element is not entirely well discussed alone, as the emergency decrees went together in a package.

[7] The article seemed to have been written like so: someone wrote up an article treating it as if it were real; then someone realised that nobody believes that anymore and added a few hedge words all over the place; it then stayed that way for a decade. There is a consensus that the 1st CC is fictitious; the article should reflect that from root to branch.

[8] Sourcing was rather poor and heavily biased towards Cicero. Rewrote based on DH Berry's Catilinarians along with other sources. Gruen 1995 includes a great analysis of who joined the conspiracy and their disparate reasons. Old article read like Catiline's conspiracy (1) popped into existence like Athena and at the same time (2) was something Catiline – DEVILISH PLOTTER! – had been planning since he was an infant.

[9] Sourcing also was rather poor. It was based heavily on Sallust, which is known to be not entirely reliable in all matters: he's more focused on blackening Catiline's character than giving a truthful recollection of events. I didn't rewrite the Cultural depictions section: I'm not sure how people write these, honestly, they seem to be very ad hoc. There doesn't seem to be any academic literature which reviews Catiline's cultural legacy in toto (Beard 2015 devotes a few paragraphs but that is not sufficient).

[10] Large changes. Most relating to updated scholarship and evaluations. My narrative drew largely on Gruen 1995, CAH², and Drogula Cato.

[11] Rewrote based on entry in OCD online.

[12] Rewrote based largely on narrative given by CAH² 10.

[13] Wrote an article on the War of Mutina, taking place of jumbled and duplicated narratives at the two battle pages: Battle of Mutina and Battle of Forum Gallorum. Some further work necessary to clean up those battle pages.

[14] Hugely expanded on a relatively terse article which missed a number of earlier life events and included some dubious inaccuracies (inheriting the post of pontifex maximus; claiming that he was assassinated by Gracchans). New version also provided needed context to his most famous act, killing Tiberius Gracchus, which in the original was a Gracchan-influenced morality play (which is not surprising given that Plut. TG has been hypothesised to be based on such a play).

[15] Overwrote an article which was based on this ancient 1920s Bennett paper that has been largely panned by more recent scholarship: [Bennett's] more general conclusions do not seem to be consistent with the facts and he seems to misunderstand both Cinna's position in Rome and his importance in Roman politics. New version is based on CAH² 9 and a recent book on Cinna published in 2002 which encompasses a lot of the re-evaluation of the mid-century. "I followed my usual custom and took up the general cause of" – Sall. Cat. 35 – excising the unnecessary repetition of melodramatic primary source anecdotes.

[16] Old version of the article was largely a paraphrase of Plut. Cam., which is simply extremely bad research. Rewritten version is based largely on four sources: the OCD⁴ article by Drummond, Cornell 1995, Forsythe 2005, and Münzer's article in RE. The last one was the most annoying: I spent about a week typing the article – in academic German (which I don't know) – into Wikisource! Later additions sourced from R M Ogilvie's Commentary on Livy.

[17] It has a full set of citations for what he did now, where, and why you should believe instead of massive uncited portions that were just paraphrases anecdotes and battle scenes of Livy and Polybius.

[18] Old version of the article was really bad. New version deals substantially with the archaeological remains of the period, recent research on the Gracchi, their influences per that recent research, an accurate summary of their activities, the aftermath of the reforms, their legacy, how their legacy was formed, etc. It does not include non-historians' speculations about how certain slaves owned by other people were the most virtuous.

[19] Old version was very short. Substantial narrative and explanations added from CAH² 8, Badian and Gruen's journal articles and book chapters, etc. Name is not yet stable as to 12 April though, but article content is radically overhauled for the better.

[20] The old version of the article repeated 19th century nonsense about fictitious reforms that never happened. Bret Devereaux rightfully wrote on the matter here. Rewrote entirely using modern sources (and had to read large portions of Cadiou, L'armee imaginaire (2018), a hard-to-get book in academic French). Took feedback on the article draft from two classicists (both of whom ended up cited in the article). Started prior to Devereaux's blog post but news of it pushed my incipient thoughts on it to completion.

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