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List of ancient Greek writers

We have a bunch of pretty odd lists of ancient Greek people, with inclusion criteria which range from "isn't this better as a category?" to "what are inclusion criteria?", but for my money List of ancient Greek writers is the worst of the bunch. According to the lead sentence, this is a list of the "most influential Greek writers" from the seventh century BC to the seventh century AD; the list itself is... not that. My concerns with the list include:

• By saying that the list starts in the seventh century BC, it makes it unclear whether Homer and Hesiod merit inclusion – they are in fact included, but our articles on them have both active in the 8th century
• On the other hand, it's not clear whether the list really does stretch up to the 7th century AD – I can't see any writers on it after the fourth century, and the vast majority are archaic or classical, i.e. before 300 BC.
• There are several people on it who are not primarily known as writers, and indeed it's unclear that they did write anything at all: Socrates? Anthony the Great? Pythagoras? Influential, yes, but influential writers?
• Even where the people listed are unquestionably Greek writers from the ancient world, the inclusion is ... erratic. Aeschylus and Euripides are listed but not Sophocles, but a bunch of lost comedians (Chionides? Eubulus?) merit inclusion. None of the iambographers are included, not even Archilochus. History is well represented, but Polybius seems an odd omission when Dinon and Duris of Samos are included. Hellenistic poets are hard done by: Callimachus is excluded, and I can't see a single epigrammatist.

So my question is: is this list worth salvaging? Do we need a List of ancient Greek writers at all when we have Category:Ancient Greek writers, the broader List of ancient Greeks and several more specific lists e.g. List of ancient Greek poets and List of ancient Greek philosophers and List of ancient Greek playwrights? Or should we simply redirect it to List of ancient Greeks and be done with it?

Well, I'm sure you know this already, but I usually prefer to keep articles like this in hopes of improving—or someone eventually improving—them. I imagine that the reason the list is presented as a selection of "important" "influential" writers is because the original author didn't have the ability to make a more comprehensive list—perhaps due to the limitations of the sources available to him or her. Surely we can expand on that now. The list can and should contain more information than a category—an idea of the type of writing, and perhaps the time period or principal location with which the author is associated (if any). While it's true that categories can cover some of this, it's difficult for any one of them to provide more than one distinguishing characteristic, and navigating between categories and subcategories can be inconvenient or confusing; a list can provide more information in one place, along with general information about the topic that can help to explain the contents.

As it presently stands, the list is pretty basic, but I can see a few ways that this could be developed usefully. There's no reason it can't be expanded to include many more authors, or the description improved so as to handle the inconsistency between the ostensible scope of the article and its actual contents. For instance, instead of stating that the list begins at one point and ends at another—although some of the included authors may actually precede the starting point, and none currently reach up to the end—a short paragraph describing the approximate beginning and ending points of "ancient" Greek literature sidesteps the issue entirely, by setting a scope that subsequent inclusions can fill up. There's no reason people who aren't known to have authored anything can't be pruned off, but bear in mind that attributed works—even dubious ones—may exist and justify their inclusion. It also might be useful to consider sorting the list by (approximate) century, and then alphabetically. That might or might not be the best presentation, but it's certainly an obvious alternative to a single alphabetical sort. P Aculeius (talk) 23:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The term "influential" is highly subjective, but I would also ask the much more fundamental question, what does the article mean by "Greek writers" if the cutoff is the 7th century CE? Does it mean writers of Greek/Hellenistic heritage/origin, or writers who wrote in Greek? Does that mean it should include Cassius Dio, who would have been considered a Roman, not a Greek? Or Cicero who certainly did write in Greek, but all of his surviving manuscripts are in Latin? Certainly during the time of the empire most educated Romans could write in both, and may have written in either language depending on the audience, so does it mean authors whose manuscripts which survived antiquity in Greek, or who were principally known as writers in Greek? I think the list is problematic and may not be worth salvaging unless it has some very concrete parameters. It would be an easier list if it was only restricted to Greek writers in the BCE period. Oatley2112 (talk) 00:53, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

As I said—or meant to say—above, I think that "influential" is a red herring here: an artifact of the list's beginning by someone who didn't have the time or resources to make it comprehensive. We're not handicapped by those limitations now, and should discard that verbiage. As for the scope, I would say that for inclusion the author should have written primarily in Greek—or perhaps, be known (as an author) primarily due to works written in Greek. This would be more useful than an arbitrary cut-off date in the middle of classical antiquity. So probably Cassius Dio, who wrote in Greek—and evidently was ethnically Greek, but not Cicero, who was both ethnically Roman and whose surviving literary corpus is in Latin, even if he occasionally wrote in Greek. There may be borderline cases, but that would be the same as in any article or category on the subject—it cannot be a good reason for not keeping the list. I would argue that Fabius Pictor could be included, since his history—now lost—is known to have been written in Greek. There can be no objection to debating the parameters of the list, or who ought to be included, but a discussion of the list's scope is not an argument for deletion. I suggest, however, that it would not take a vast amount of time or expertise to define the scope of the article more clearly, and expand it considerably and usefully; that, I think, is an argument for keeping it. P Aculeius (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Do we include Paul, or gospel writers? All who are known to have been ancient Greek poets, tragedians, historians etc and all known to have written in Greek, whether or not their works survive? Do we need a start date; who might a start date usefully exclude? Should we follow WP:SALAT and not repeat any lists that already have their own pages, such as List of ancient Greek playwrights? In that case, whhat categories would remain? NebY (talk) 09:46, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I can't think of any useful purpose in excluding categories of writers by topic—that would be arbitrary and make the list less useful to general readers, like an ostensibly round pie with randomly-arranged slices removed from it. Nor is a hard starting date likely to be useful: we don't know when Greek writing began, but we know of no individual authors who definitely or substantially predate Homer, and if his dates are fuzzy that's okay. As for T8612's concern below, I suggest that prudence might limit inclusion primarily to Greek authors who have at least stub articles on Wikipedia. I don't think that would stretch to "thousands" of entries. There are, I believe, notable authors whose works are entirely lost, except for descriptions, quotations, or excerpts in other works. But relatively few of them will have their own articles, leaving the majority to consist of authors "with at least one surviving work". P Aculeius (talk) 12:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the current start date is not just mysterious but unnecessary. The purpose of linking to other list pages rather than duplicating them is described at WP:SALAT thus: Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. ... This is best done by sectioning the general page under categories. When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See new list link. That's WP best prectice, not an arbitrary condition, and has the additional virtue of avoiding failures to include writers in both list pages. NebY (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

As to numbers, Category:Ancient Greek writers has 92 pages but many subcategories including Category:Ancient Greek writer stubs (222 pages). I've tried using Petscan to collect numbers but got odd results

• 5 pages at a subcategory depth of 0[1]
• 38 at a depth of 1[2]
• 309 at 4[3]
• 2299 at 7[4]

The first are clearly too low, the later ones include strays like Apollo and Doctor Who. NebY (talk) 13:55, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I wasn't thinking of famous works such as Favourite Hymns to Myself and Temporal Mechanics for Spartans! But sectioning the page would be better-done after cleaning up the main issues with it. And then "small-c" categories that become too large for it could indeed be moved/merged into other articles, perhaps leaving behind a selection of the most important members. I would like to have a better idea how many entries there might actually be before it reaches that point, however—as well as whether there are many authors whose works will span multiple categories. P Aculeius (talk) 14:21, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@NebY: your petscan query is limited to those with a {{citation needed}} tag (see the "templates and links" tab). Removing that, and requiring that the article's wikidata page have the property Q5 (human), there are 808 articles at depth 2 and 1033 at depth 3. There are false positives in both of those lists, but there are some valid articles which show up in the depth 3 list but not the depth 2 one, and some at least arguably valid articles I can think of which aren't even on the depth three list, so I think a ballpark figure of 1,000 eligible articles probably isn't too far off the mark. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:20, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

<slaps head> Thank you! NebY (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• I think the scope of the list is way too broad for a list. I fear it is impossible to make such a list as there are thousands of names. The thematical lists (poets, historians, playwrights, etc.) are more appropriate. I would be more inclined to keep such a list if some restrictive parameters were added, such as "writers with at least one surviving work", which should narrow the list to a few hundred entries. T8612 (talk) 09:59, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
• @P Aculeius: it seems as though the level of detail you are envisioning is similar to that on the existing List of ancient Greek poets – does that sound right? My concern is that if we do this we are essentially committing to maintaining the same information in two different places, which seems like a bunch of unnecessary duplication. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:35, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's the sort of thing I had in mind. And it would be unnecessarily duplicative, if poets were the chief constituent thereof. On the other hand, if historians, philosophers, mathematicians, physicians and soforth would account for a significant proportion of the article, then what I would suggest is reducing the number to a selection, and linking to the list of Greek poets using a "main article" template. As the others could do as well, if there are comparable and comprehensive articles for each. I'm sure in some cases at least, there are not, and for those categories this list could include everyone for whom an article does or probably should exist. P Aculeius (talk) 15:43, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• Back in the Stone Age of Wikipedia there were a lot of list articles similar to this one, created in an attempt to compile a comprehensive list of possible topics. Or so I remember. However, this article was created in 2012, long after the Wikipedia Stone Age had ended, by an anonymous IP, whose contributions are pretty much limited to this one article. I think it would be reasonable to nominate this article for deletion. -- llywrch (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Assistance required to end deadlock in merger proposal discussion

I've been editing the articles relating to the Scythians over the course of several months, and since most editors tend to favour splitting pages after they reach a certain size, I split two further pages, Iškuza and Scythia, covering the phases of Scythian history respectively in West Asia and in Europe, out of the main page covering the Scythians.

However, trying to split it has resulted into three articles, with both Iškuza and Scythia requiring large amounts of material regarding the role of the prior and subsequent histories of the Scythians in the creation and destruction of those states copied from each other and from the Scythians page to exist since they are both about immediately preceding/succeeding states created by the same continuous population group. And because Iškuza and Scythia both cover immediately preceding/succeeding but also partially overlapping parts of the history of the Scythians, multiple sections and sub-sections of each page covering the culture, population, external relations, etc of these states also had to be copied from the Scythians page (e.g. the "Background" sub-section and "Society" section in Scythia, and the "Origins," "Impact," and "Legacy" sections of Iškuza). Moreover, the Scythia page as it exists now also functions as a WP:Semi-duplicate, given that most of the information relating to this polity also is also the same basic information that is required on the Scythians page.

Given this resulting situation, I have started a merger proposal to resolve this issue, per WP:MERGEREASON: Overlap, Context, not because I support a merger for the sake of merging itself, which I do not favour, but because Iškuza and Scythia require too much context and the information on these pages is too intertwined with each other.

The problem is that, despite months having passed, the discussion for the merger proposal is still at a deadlock, with three users opposed to the merger, and three users (including myself) in favour of it. In this difficult situation, I have been advised to bring this issue to the various WikiProjects which are relevant to Scythians as a way to possibly resolve the deadlock, and all good faith assistance to reach a consensus would be much welcome. Antiquistik (talk) 18:13, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Additional input needed at Talk:List of Roman emperors

A recent discussion concerning the future of List of Roman emperors and List of Byzantine emperors resulted in a reasonable degree of consensus that, while the latter article was imperfect, such a list probably should exist separately from the former instead of having all Roman and Byzantine emperors combined in a single list, and that accordingly the Byzantine emperors should be split off from the List of Roman emperors and merged in some way with the existing List of Byzantine emperors—possibly with the resulting article being mostly from the LoRe, but keeping anything useful already in the LoBe.

However, precisely where to draw the line—and whether there should be more than one line—has to be decided separately, and the discussion at Talk:List of Roman emperors seems to have gotten bogged down due to lack of input—there are only five or six contributors, and a monkey wrench in the works is that at least one, perhaps two of them favour splitting into three lists, with the third one consisting of some as-yet-unagreed-upon subset of emperors reigning for an undetermined span of time between Constantine and the eighth century, possibly to be called "Eastern Roman emperors" as opposed to "Byzantine", which frankly seems like a whole different issue, but clearly we cannot move forward with the limited input we have so far.

I'm sure that a lot of other editors who participate in this project must have an opinion on how many separate lists there should be—I hope without taking issue with the consensus that there should be at least two—as well as where to divide them, and whether there should be some overlap between them. If anyone is brave enough to weigh in, the feedback would be greatly appreciated! P Aculeius (talk) 23:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The Roman Empire at its greatest physical extent - 117 or 211 CE?

Hello everyone,

Some of you may have been aware of the debate raging on the Talk:Septimius Severus page about whether the Roman Empire achieved its greatest physical extent during his reign and not Trajan's, as is usually stated. The consensus for the article seems to have settled that it did (or at least that a number of recent scholars who published in the 2010s maintain that it did), and the page has been updated accordingly. So this now poses the question of concordance with both the Roman Empire and Trajan articles. Do we open up this can of worms and move away from the established Trajanic view? Or is it still a matter of debate? If we are foolhardy enough to discuss it here, may I suggest that scholars who have published since 2010 form a baseline? I see no point in using material published in the 1980s or early 2000s to defend a traditional viewpoint if more recent scholarship has moved away from that position. Oatley2112 (talk) 21:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a consensus for this—I see a few editors who clearly want to break new ground, and you mostly arguing that at best the evidence is equivocal due to the ephemeral nature of some provinces, territories, and conquests. A lot of the posts in the discussion aren't very fresh, and some of the most vocal participants I recognize as people who advocated the dubious claim that Julian was widely known as "Julian the Philosopher". My first impression is that this is a case of scholarly rhetoric being turned into WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Some of the territorial claims that allow scholars to suggest great advances in the Roman frontier—vast stretches of mostly empty desert with a handful of Roman colonies at the corners, along with a much smaller swath of lowland Scotland—depend very much on how one chooses to interpret these. Can the point of view that they constitute significant additions of territory be conclusively proved or disproved? Probably not. But that still leaves it a matter of interpretation—and that means it's not time to overturn a traditional understanding of Roman history. P Aculeius (talk) 23:31, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I freely admit I am the principal editor pushing for this change. I will note that the editors mentioned above by P Aculeius were largely backing the traditional Trajanic position and I seem to be the outlier. I sincerely hope that my position is not taken as one that falls into WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It does appear that there has been a scholarly shift in recent years with respect to this deeply held belief of the empire's greatest extent being brought about by Trajan's conquests, and I am seeking to ensure that the Roman history articles here are reflective of the most recent and supported research. If a scholar such as Lukas de Blois (Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Radboud University, Nijmegen) has made this statement on several occasions over the past decade (and I hold him in great respect), then I think it is time for us to reconsider this most sacred of Roman cows. You can read my reasoning on the Talk:Septimius Severus page, but one contrary argument that really shouldn't be entertained is the dismissal of the Severan conquests as ephermal/quickly abandoned, and thus not be considered as being a legitimate conquest, while the Trajanic conquest of Mesopotamia which barely lasted a year, continues to be included in the description of the empire's greatest extent. Yes, the transitory Trajanic conquest of Mesopotamia is far more impressive than the transitory Severan conquests into the south of Mauretania Caesariensis and Africa Proconsularis, but this question is purely one of defining what territory constituted the limits of the Roman imperium at the close of the two reigns. That limit is definable for both, and only hangs on whether scholars now consider whether those additions by Severus were legitimately considered by him to have been permanent additions to the empire. The more recent scholarly opinions seem to be, yes he did consider these to be part of the imperium. Oatley2112 (talk) 02:06, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I certainly did not mean to suggest that you were the one out to RGW. As I read the arguments, it sounded as though that's what the other editors were doing, as they have with Julian—and it sounded like you were being more restrained, which is why I found your post here confusing. However, I will assume that I've misread the argument and somehow reversed the positions. I'm not really interested in arguing that certain conquests are "legitimate" while others aren't—merely that what did and did not constitute the practical boundaries of the Roman Empire at various stretches of time cannot always be stated with certainty, because besides the uncertain reach of Roman power at those boundaries, there is the matter of how to treat client states. I don't think that you can prove the actual boundaries beyond scholarly debate, and at that point you are dealing with writers of history making the points that they think will get their work noticed, and perhaps lauded as "revolutionary". Which is why it is generally best to follow the advice at RGW: Wikipedia is best suited to follow, not lead, when it comes to changing interpretations of history. Here I think we don't really have a change in scholarly consensus, so much as an unprovable rhetorical argument by Severan scholars, which few if any other historians have felt it necessary to refute. P Aculeius (talk) 02:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• I don't think a few scholars writing recently are enough to move a consensus that is backed by hundreds of references. It is fine to mention it in the Septimius article, but not to change Wikipedia. In Septimius Severus, there should be a mention that this view (that under Septimius the Empire reached its greatest extent) goes against the common opinion with Trajan. T8612 (talk) 03:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Wreaths and crowns in antiquity

This draft, which was created by banned user GPinkerton (banned more or less for incivility and bludgeoning, nothing content-related), looks like it is more than ready for mainspace (ref section clearly establishes notability, and it's already reasonably well developed). However, since I'm not familiar with the topic area I'm hesitant to move it myself. Could editors here please take a look at it? Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Pinkerton was a good, if pretty bad-tempered, editor, & I'd say it should be moved to mainspace straight away. I'm sure it's as good as many of our articles. I saw a draft of his on "Gothic churches" go red just now, & wondered what was in it. Johnbod (talk) 17:23, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the move to mainspace. M.Bitton (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Now in mainspace. Johnbod (talk) 17:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Caligula

A {{primary sources}} template was placed on Caligula in May 2022. Well, duh. I don't consider, for example, Suetonius or Dio Cassius primary. It's not like they knew him. I was tempted to simply delete the template as silly, but am bringing the issue here in case there might be a wider problem, or in case some sort of consensus be needed.

(IMO, if someone's name has survived from Classical Antiquity, they're ipso facto notable whatever the state of the sources.) Narky Blert (talk) 14:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The {{primary sources}} template isn't questioning Caligula's notability – I don't think anybody disputes that! (Though I think you'll have an uphill battle if you want to make the case that every name that has survived from classical antiquity is inherently notable, even if all that can be written about them is "was an ancient Roman mentioned in a single inscription".) I do think that while many of our articles on ancient figures were originally written largely citing the ancient sources, it is increasingly the expectation that we should use more modern scholarly literature and less ancient texts.

From that point of view, Caligula does look pretty heavy on the ancient sources to me, and quibbling about whether they are really "primary" is I think missing the point of the objection. I haven't read the article thoroughly, and this isn't particularly my area, but a quick skim certainly reveals areas where I'm not convinced about the use of the ancient sources: e.g. we cite Suetonius for the claim that "Caligula also made a significant attempt at expanding into Britannia", before acknowledging that both ancient and modern sources disagree on what exactly happened, and that it may have only been a scouting or training mission. Possibly the scholarly consensus is that Caligula's invasion of Britain was a genuine serious attempt to expand the empire, but given the uncertainty this seems like the kind of thing where we need to cite a modern source which discusses the historiography, rather than one of various not fully compatible ancient accounts. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 17:08, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the above. The guidance is a bit confusing, but there is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using primary sources#Are ancient historians primary or secondary source?, which concluded "Whether they "are" primary or secondary or even tertiary in any given system, you need to "use them" as if they are primary sources." TSventon (talk) 17:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I also agree with Caeciliusinhorto and TSventon. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed that the "primary sources" tag is absurd. As you point out, the historians were not directly involved in events or chronicling themselves. Rather, these are the main sources of information for all scholars since antiquity. However, only modern sources can place what they said in context, analyze it and attempt to figure out what really happened based on clues in other resources (including archaeology). So keep everything that Suetonius, Cassius Dio, and other Greek and Roman historians had to say about the subject, but add modern scholarship where it has anything to add. I'm sure some scholars will back up or refute or contextualize nearly everything in the ancient ones.

Notability doesn't seem to be a problem here, although I will add that we can avoid having to make a definitive answer to whether that idea—everyone whose name survives from antiquity being notable—in the case of Romans, because we have separate articles about Roman gentes, each of which contains a list of known members. If you know a Roman's nomen gentilicium, that person can go in the list, even if all we have is an inscription or a passing mention by some Roman writer. For practical reasons I haven't actually tried to expand the larger gentes using epigraphy: if the list of members is sufficiently large or impressive, or there are, say, over a hundred instances from epigraphy alone, I usually don't try to add more. But feel free to add otherwise obscure Romans you run across in literary sources, without worrying about individual notability! P Aculeius (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I think the template is appropriate. In ancient history, primary sources doesn't mean contemporary sources, but sources from ancient times. And yes, the article is on several points almost a paraphrase of Suetonius, hardly an impartial source on Caligula. The primary sources template has nothing to do with notability. T8612 (talk) 22:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment There seems to be a school of thought amongst Wikipedians that all use of primary sources should be avoided. (I've come across this enough times to know it's not what just the output of one or an oddball few Wikipedians.) What gets overlooked is that primary sources are invaluable for stating facts, while expert secondary sources explain these facts.

  For example, Suetonius is our source for the birth & death dates of the 12 men he writes about: these are simple statements, which are either right or wrong. (I think it's reasonable to accept them as true unless an expert can show that he is mistaken in some way.) However, when we turn to motivations, there Suetonius should be cited, at most, as contemporary opinion about those motivations. It might even be more accurate to say they are evidence of Suetonius's opinions, & his alone. There is a subtle distinction here, which I feel many overlook -- although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between facts of a primary source & the interpretations of a second one.

  In the case of Caligula, we must struggle with the received opinion a few generations later: was he the debauched & spoiled manchild Suetonius makes him to be? Or is this just Senatorian gossip that circulated amongst the elite to justify his deposition? I'll note that, after looking at more primary sources than the usual historians, modern experts have redeemed Domitian's reputation: he wasn't another bad emperor in the mold of Caligula & Commodius -- although he definitely had a cruel side -- but a competent administrator who alienated the Senate & equites by his successful efforts to curtail corruption. -- llywrch (talk) 00:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I actually came across this birth dates matter when rewriting the article on Marcus Junius Brutus. Tempest 2017 has a long note on when specifically he was born (pp 262–63), which is "disputed" (p 20), and comes from two sources. Cic. Brut. 324 says he was born 10 years before Q Hortensius Hortalus debuted (b 85 BC); Vell. Pat. 2.7.1 says Brutus was 36 when he died (b 79-78 BC); but Cicero's text might be corrupted and itself implies youth at times, Cicero's age is more in line with the cursus (but violations of the lex annalis were common at the time), Vell. Pat. regularly gets dates wrong, etc.

This long summary goes to my actual point though. If I had read only Cic. Brut. 324, I wouldn't have known about the page-long (in tiny endnote font) literature review Tempest does on disagreements of his birth year. This is not only with birthdays either. When Livy writes Verginia was killed by her father to save her from the deprivations Appius Claudius in the Second Decemvirate, reading just that does not engage with the regularly-held view among scholars at the Second Decemvirate is fictitious; when Sallust relates that the First Catilinarian conspiracy happened, reading just that does not engage with the consensus that it is a fiction. We can avoid all these problems by looking in the first instance at, for us, the secondary sources and citing the secondary source directly. Ifly6 (talk) 19:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Re primary sources. Specifically with relation to classical studies, literary sources that survive from the ancient world are primary sources. "Primary sources in Classics are the literary works (poems, plays, and histories, for example), and artifacts (pottery, coins and sculptures, for example) and other materials from the ancient world". McLean, Valla. "Subject Guides / Classics / Primary Sources". MacEwan University. Retrieved 2022-05-10. Eg Appian, Plutarch, etc categorised under primary sources:

• https://guides.library.georgetown.edu/classics/primary
• https://libguides.luc.edu/classical_studies/primary_source_collections
• https://guides.library.lincoln.ac.uk/c.php?g=664812&p=4705537
• https://libguides.lib.umanitoba.ca/c.php?g=297880&p=1987265
• https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282804&p=6351945
• https://umb.libguides.com/c.php?g=350822&p=2467977
• https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/c.php?g=156841&p=1028163
• https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/classics/primary-sources
• https://libguides.macewan.ca/classics/primarysources

They are called primary sources because they are the primary sources for us. Moreover, the idea of historical inquiry which writers of the ancient world followed is very different from what is done today in the mould of modern historiography. The ancients did not have the same critical apparatus that modern historians are trained in; while they could argue plausibilities (Livy eg re early republic), they largely were credulous. Ifly6 (talk) 05:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Re notability. I don't think mere mention of someone's name in an ancient source is sufficient to establish notability. A person by the name of Bellinus is attested to by name in one place: Plut. Pomp. 24.6 (other mentions in Cic. Leg. Man. and App. Mith. 93 are not by name; I've checked). And the only thing it says about him is that he was praetor (implied before 66 BC) and was kidnapped by pirates. Is this really significant coverage in the sources? Look to the consuls listed in MRR 1; for many years all that is said is that Aius Bius Cus was consul in XYZ BC. Can we really write a meaningful article about Publius Servilius Priscus (cos 463 BC; MRR 1.34 cf index MRR 2.619) who is noted to have done only two things: be consul and die of illness? What of Marcus Aemilius Papus (dict 321; MRR 1.151) and Lucius Valerius Flaccus (mag eq 331 BC; MRR 1.143) both of whom are noted only to have held those offices? Ifly6 (talk) 05:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I personally oppose the direct insertion of primary sources into works, in citation or prose; unless it's being quoted and then explained or discussed by a secondary source, and even then inserted only in prose. Many of the sources were utterly un-critical, biased, or corrupted; it is only with the critical, hopefully unbiased, and corroborative effort of the secondary sources that they can truly work to allow us to build articles. Personally, I favor notability for ancient figures as including someone being mentioned by a few major sources, or else having done or been something very important. Obviously a very subjective measure, but I think it helps in certain situations. Should Wikipedia have articles on a commander that fought one battle and was never heard from again, and of whom we know nothing else? Probably not. This might easily apply to consuls whose only achievement was being a consul. For certain, they were important back in the day, but if being consul and dying are their only achievements, a comprehensive list of consuls could easily encapsulate that information. On the other hand, critical figures like members of the royal family who are obscure, but had the potential to be important, such as heirs that died young, should be kept, I would think. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 05:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Re sourcing, I agree. We should not base our articles on the uncritical primary sources when we have so many better alternatives available. There are lots of modern, well-sourced, well-written sources for most things. The CAH for example provides most of the detail that is needed for most of the broad topics. For more biographical sketches, New Pauly and assorted monographs are usually sufficient. And if there is truly nothing written on some topic in the classical studies literatures, it might actually be worth while to check whether it is judicious to have an article on that topic. Ifly6 (talk) 18:57, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree too, but I'd say it's essential for a good article, while basing itself on good secondary sources, to cite the primary sources also. As a historian, wanting to understand a tangential subject, if I find I'm reading a paper or encyclopedia article that doesn't at least show awareness of the primary sources, I stop reading and look for something better. Andrew Dalby 10:11, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to add a couple of comments to Andrew Dalby's response. One is that students of history who consult Wikipedia are taught to value primary sources over secondary ones; if there are no citations of primary sources, then, as Andrew points out, they will not value Wikipedia articles. Primary sources are closer to the event described, & what secondary sources base their accounts on; if primary sources should be discarded as unreliable, then secondary ones must also then.

But in my opinion, a more pressing reason to offer citations to primary sources is as a service to our readers, who will then find reason to begin their research by reading/consulting the relevant articles on Wikipedia. Offering these helps our readers, reducing the time they need to track down information with links to these passages. One could raise the objection that secondary sources also provide these links, but leaving that information to secondary sources forces the student to take a longer path, where providing them in a Wikipedia article saves them time. There is also the issue that, in many cases, secondary sources are harder to obtain -- either thru libraries or purchase -- than primary sources, especially for topics of Classical Greece & Rome. For example, one of the best commentaries on Tacitus is Ronald Syme's Tacitus, in 2 volumes. It retails new on Amazon for $229.97. (I just checked.) I was excited to find my local public had a copy, only to be disappointed to find that the second volume had vanished years before, & my public library had a policy that they will not borrow a copy of a book that is in their collection, even if it is an incomplete multi-volume work. (And they have been purging books they deem are not read by enough people.) I went hunting online for a used copy, & managed to find one for $60 or $75 plus shipping. On the other hand, one can buy a copy of Tacitus' complete works at almost any book store (or Amazon), borrow it from almost any library, or use the online version at the Perseus project website. If you consider that most of our audience will simply want to confirm the facts in an article -- not necessarily care about explications on the subject -- then citations of primary sources is again important.

So by omitting any reference to primary sources, we are short-changing our readers. Not only by forcing them to look at history thru multiple filters when they could be much closer to the events with intelligent use of primary sources, but by making it less convenient for them to access information in them. -- llywrch (talk) 00:01, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we should cite the primary sources. If I could just "get my way" though, I would require every primary source citation to be closely linked with a secondary source citation. The reason for this is to stop this strange predilection on Wikipedia to write about ancient Rome with only the primary source at hand. This might have to do with the expense you noted above. (You're not the only one! I've run into this with research on the Gracchi; Roselaar's excellent Public land is 210 dollars on OUP!) It seems more expensive to get a modern history than it is to find Livy on Wikisource, Polybius on Perseus, or Plutarch on LacusCurtius (all of which are free). The problem is that when people do that, they do not know what they do not know.

They do not know that Livy on the early republic is reporting myths and not credible history. They do not know (I just noted this on your talk page; we must have been typing comments at the same time) that Polybius is wrong when reporting Marcus Atilius Regulus' death at Cannae. They do not know that Plutarch's story about how the rich are buying up all the public land and driving the rural plebs into starvation is unsupported by archaeological evidence.

They do not know that Plutarch's story about Cinna being killed because he threatened Pompey is nonsense. They do not know that Plutarch misattributes Pompey as the victor over Lepidus' forces outside Rome in 77 BC. They do not know that Plutarch (and Suetonius) saying the senate was to depose Metellus Nepos from his tribunate in 62 BC is constitutionally impossible. They do not know that Plutarch's narrative of the First Triumvirate's formation is incompatible with Cicero's letters. They do not know that Plutarch confuses the lex Vatinia with a normal senatorial provincial assignment. They do not know that Plutarch's claim that the senators boycotted the senate during Caesar's consulship in 59 is also incomptable with Cicero's letters.

All of these things that an editor would not know would be things that editor would know by reading the modern secondary sources. The credible modern sources would all also do the proper citations to the primary sources. Here specifically, it would be Cornell 1995, Forsythe 2005, Klebs 1896, MRR 1, Roselaar 2010, Drogula 2017, Golden 2017, and Morstein-Marx 2021. And these can now all be found for nothing if you are willing to look in the Wikipedia Library and around the Internet. Ifly6 (talk) 00:25, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

But the solution to incomplete or potentially misleading citations is to add context from other sources—never to delete relevant and important sources merely because they appear to be the wrong kind. If you see an article that's cited primarily to Roman historians, but you know that additional analysis is available in secondary sources, then by all means create parallel citations to those sources and add what they have to say, without deleting the citations to the original histories in which they're mentioned. And of course, if you see an article that's cited entirely to modern historians without any clear references to the Greek and Roman authors who informed the modern writers, it's a good idea to add citations to the originals, so that anyone consulting our articles can easily find the cited material, whether or not they have access to the recent, and frequently difficult to obtain writings (remember, only some of us have access to, or the knowledge and experience to use the Wikipedia Library; readers who don't edit Wikipedia themselves presumably don't). More context is nearly always better than less. P Aculeius (talk) 02:55, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

More context is nearly always better than less. I agree. That's why people should stop writing articles which are based only on primary sources (especially one primary source). As to the audience: the average reader is not a PhD historian who is seeking primary source references. The average reader is a lay person who should be directed to reliable sources and not the unprocessed raw material. This cult of the primary sources – to be clear, what I mean by this is writing an article with primary source priority in the research process (eg starting an article on Caligula by reading Suetonius instead of CAH² 10) – actively dis-serves average readers by diverting them from reliable sources (academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history). Ifly6 (talk) 06:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, it seems that we're just talking past each other and aren't getting anywhere. P Aculeius (talk) 12:04, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I admit I'm a "PhD historian", so maybe that means I'm not a "lay person" or "average reader" any more. I guess I can face it :) But let's not direct readers to a particular category of sources. Let's encourage them to be critical -- of us, of primary sources, of secondary sources whether inside or outside a consensus, and of other encyclopedias. Andrew Dalby 14:12, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Some of this has been said before, but to recapitulate. In historical scholarship, 'primary sources' without exception refers to sources written by historical figures (including ancient historians), as opposed to 'secondary sources' written by 20th-/21st-century scholars (modern historians). In this context, to answer Narky Blert's original concern, figures like Suetonius or Dio Cassius are unambiguously 'primary sources'.

Another established principle in historical scholarship is that, contrary to what llywrch claims above, primary sources do not state facts: rather, they state one version of events, and it is the task of the modern historian to sort out which version is most likely. For this reason, Wikipedians should never use primary sources for historical facts. The only acceptable usage of historical primary sources on Wikipedia is when the primary source is used to illustrate something about the source itself, for example by quoting what the primary source is literally saying in the context of a secondary source that is precisely discussing that source and how we should understand it. Thus, historical primary sources can be used on Wikipedia to illustrate what secondary sources are telling us about them, or simply as extra references beyond the secondary source which actually verifies the info, for the research-oriented reader.

All other uses tend to be original research. For example, Wikipedians can assemble all dates given for a particular figure by different historical sources, and state that person P died in year X (according to A) or Y (according to B) or Z (according to C). But this is properly the task of historians, who might have good reason to regard dates X and Z as impossible. Or in some cases for example, date Z may be tendentious, because it originates in some claim that C would like to make about P, but which modern historians find unlikely. That's why with historical subjects we always need secondary sources, who know what they are writing about. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:23, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Maps of the Social war

Hello everyone. Do we have any good maps of regions, towns, etc that were involved in the Social war? Something like Boatwright et al (2012)'s Social war map I think would be best. Ifly6 (talk) 21:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Requested article

Is there a "wish list" page? If yes, would like to add ancient Roman pools of Gafsa ar:الحوض_الروماني_بقفصة, Wikidata:Q42764187, and I think la Bassin Romain de Gafsa or Piscine Romaine in French. No rush obviously but working on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and water and food are usually related! Thanks for all you do. jengod (talk) 19:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Merge senatorial and imperial provinces

There are two articles Senatorial province and Imperial province. I feel like these articles should be merged or otherwise placed in a single article. My initial thought was something like Senatorial and imperial provinces but a more sensible location might be in Principate or Constitutional reforms of Augustus. What do you think?

There are an absolute multitude of other poorly maintained articles and sections that touch on similar topics as well: Constitution of the Roman Empire, History of the Roman Constitution, History of the Constitution of the Roman Empire, Augustus#First_settlement. That's before getting into the highly duplicative, poorly sourced, and largely unmaintained constitution articles; I had filed some teeth years ago on Constitution of the Roman Republic but there are at least four for each periodisation, an overarching article that tries to summarise all of them (I think it should really be about fluidity and continuities), followed by "History" articles for each one. These really require clean up. Some reorganisation of this material along an agreed-upon schema might also be worthwhile. Ifly6 (talk) 15:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Or combine the two, and expand with the later arrangements. The articles give a snapshot from Augustus's period - what happened later? Or we must have Roman province. Johnbod (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we do, but it's already really listy. Johnbod (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean or are suggesting. Could you rephrase? Ifly6 (talk) 18:31, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Combine them into something like Senatorial and imperial provinces or merge into Roman province. Either way add something on later changes, or did the situation remain like that for a very long time? All later expansion seems to have been into imperial provinces, but it is hard to see the wood for the trees in the timeline there. Johnbod (talk) 04:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

A merge into Roman province seems the best option to me. T8612 (talk) 09:45, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I don't see the benefit in keeping imperial province and senatorial province as separate articles in their current state; I'd merge them both into Roman province. Someone can always recreate the article if they want to write an actual article. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll probably do the merge into Roman province some time after I create or trace a map for the provinces around the time of the Augustan division. Ifly6 (talk) 13:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

M. LICINIVS DRVSVS LIBO?

An edition of PIR I found has a on page 270 a mention of a M. Licinius Drusus Libo but I can't find mention of this supposed person anywhere else but in copies of PIR online, is this likely to be some kind of typo? ★Trekker (talk) 16:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I suspect this is an error for Marcus Livius Drusus Libo, consul in 15 BC. I checked the C-S Datenbank for epigraphic examples of "Drusus" with "Licinius", and did find an obscure person named Gaius Licinius Drusus in an inscription from Bononia, but otherwise did not see the combination (though a number of inscriptions contain both names, attached to separate persons). The main list of Licinii in PW goes from Licinius Donatus to Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus, although I did not check the various appendices, as that can be quite time-consuming. But the fact that there was a consul named "Marcus Livius Drusus Libo" makes me feel fairly certain that Licinius is an error for Livius. P Aculeius (talk) 17:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you that makes the most sense.★Trekker (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @P Aculeius:, do you happen to have the link to the inscription for the Gaius Licinius Drusus you found?★Trekker (talk) 12:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's CIL XI, 6859, top of the page when I searched for "Licini" and "Drus". The same inscription records a Gaius Licinius C. f., perhaps the father of Drusus, Adulescens, and Marcus Licinius Proculus, all of whom share the same filiation, although it's possible that the one without a cognomen was the eldest brother, and of course it could be that they were not brothers at all, although they were certainly related somehow. It looks like Licinia C. l. Myrene was a freedwoman of the family, perhaps of the first-named Gaius, and was dead, as was Marcus; it could be that this is a funerary inscription and that all of them are buried there, although some of them may have been living at the time the tomb was built. There's no way to tell how Pomponia Q. l. Grata, mentioned at the end, might have been related to this family (possibly by marriage). P Aculeius (talk) 16:27, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @P Aculeius:, is there any way to tell around what time the inscription was made?★Trekker (talk) 21:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not dated in the C-S Datenbank, and clicking on it doesn't tell me much more (though there is a picture). However, from the names, and based only on my own experience with Roman epigraphy, I would guess first or second century. It's from Italy, all of the men have praenomina, and it looks to me as though some of them are brothers who share the praenomen Gaius, but can be distinguished by their cognomina, which have assumed the "diacritical" function of praenomina, although one member of the family, who could be another brother, has the praenomen Marcus, so evidently this family could and occasionally still did choose different praenomina. By the third century I think this would be less common, praenomina sometimes omitted altogether, and an increasingly high proportion of inscriptions from outside the ancient cities and towns of Italy. These trends only increase as we move toward the fourth century and beyond, but pretty much everyone in the inscription has a very traditional Roman name. P Aculeius (talk) 00:53, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you again @P Aculeius:. I really appreciate your knowledgeability.★Trekker (talk) 02:02, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

List of condemned Roman emperors

The list of condemned Roman emperors has been slated for merging into Damnatio Memoriae for 8 months now. I outlined some thoughts on the topic at Talk:Damnatio_memoriae#List_of_condemned_Roman_emperors, but would really appreciate the input of specialists in the area. Felix QW (talk) 17:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Featured Article Save Award for Diocletian

There is a Featured Article Save Award nomination at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Diocletian/archive1. Please join the discussion to recognize and celebrate editors who helped assure this article would retain its featured status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Lead images at the pages of the Gracchi Bros

Hey y'all. There has been some contention between me and @Ifly6 on the articles Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus. Since 2021, he has repeatedly attempted to keep these articles from having a lead image, on the fact that there was no period depiction and dismissing posthumous ones as "fantasy" (I'm also mentioning @Avilich since he was the one who first removed the lead image on Tiberius' article). Nearly two months ago, I added 19th century busts to the lead (since the argument for Tiberius' page was that he had a beard, which no Republican Roman would have). A month later, he moved that out of the lead. I reverted his changes since he was using a segment of MOS:LEAD, Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and **not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic., to justify his actions, and I saw his interpretation to be extremely bizarre, wrong, and subjective, something that didn't seem to have consensus given pages like St. Augustine, Jesus, John IV Laskaris, etcetera, which all feature posthumous depictions. @Ifly6 told me to take it here, which heightened my suspicions that this may be some local WikiProject guideline. I would like the input of the folks here to see if posthumous portraits should be included in the lead. Crusader1096 (message) 14:29, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

There is certainly no policy or guideline forbidding artistic portrayals of any era in WP:CGR articles. Quite a number open with images from Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum, which appears beneath the infobox at Tiberius Gracchus. It is incorrect to state that no Romans had beards during the Republic; certainly in the early Republic many Roman men wore beards, and likely older men did so even in later times, although the beard shown on Tiberius Gracchus, who was a younger man, is improbable, and certainly an invention of the artist. Nonetheless, it is an appropriate image to use for the lead or in the infobox, unless you can find a better one.

What constitutes "better" of course is a matter of opinion. A nineteenth-century bust might be a good choice, although if the image is poor or it just doesn't seem to convey what you think Tiberius Gracchus means to history, you might still go with a drawing, or a painting, or a coin. I don't think editors should be limited to using the type of image that one would expect in modern, glossy, image-heavy publications. Excellent reference works in an earlier period, when any illustration added expense and many could not be reproduced in high quality, made extensive use of drawings, and their use is still appropriate today when they provide a reasonable illustration of the subject—and that judgment should not depend exclusively on how certain the images are to depict accurately someone of whom few, if any positively-identified contemporary depictions exist.

I would say that either the PII or the commemorative sculpture are appropriate images to illustrate the article. There are probably others, as well. I take issue with the description of medieval or modern artistic portrayals as "fantasy"—the Romans themselves illustrated figures from history and mythology the way they imagined their subjects might have looked, and frequently produced images that looked very different from one another, just as modern artists do. And this has been the general trend throughout all of history; paintings from the Renaissance onward at best only depict people the way the painters chose to do so, and even in the age of photography people can look very different depending on various circumstances. For most of history all we have are later interpretations of how someone might have looked, and in the absence of something definitively better, that's usually good enough. P Aculeius (talk) 14:59, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Removing artistic representations is disruptive as far as I see it and a hinderance to readers ability to remember the text. Its a well known phenomenon that people remember text better if there is an illustration together with it.★Trekker (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree with both - in fact I'm sure most casual readers are more likely to read the full text in the first place if it has images - almost any images. The most popular treatment of the family after the Renaissance is Cornelia with her children, and one of these "fantasy" images should be added too. On the other hand I think Ifly6 did write a good deal of the article & I tend to defer to main authors. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• I have no objection to having images, including fantasy depictions or anachronistically drawn ones, somewhere in the article (I would myself prefer nearer to the end, under artistic depictions). Nor do I have an objection to images in general. In fact, I recently made a map of Gracchan distributions (sourced from Roselaar 2010) and added that to the article. I have read many high-quality reference works: there are basically no depictions in such reference works for republican men, except coins (Lucius Junius Brutus, for example, even though it is also a fantasy depiction) and extremely rare busts (Caesar's Tusculum portrait).

An image in the lede is not required and should be of the type people expect to see. It should be a natural and appropriate depiction. Frankly, using the fantasy depictions from PII is this strange thing only people on Wikipedia do. It is not something you would expect to see if National Geographic were making an illustrated history of the Roman republic. I am not sure how to make this clearer, but PII is in actuality like the cartoon depictions of people on the ASOIF or LOTR wikis. PII just looks older (in all the wrong ways) and coin-like.

As to the 19th century depiction, it is perhaps more acceptable inasmuch as it is not of obviously low quality; I would still object to this one, because the view that Tiberius and Gracchus qua brothers were a blood-fraternity of insurrectionists, proto-socialists, or whatever is no longer broadly held among classicists, who view their politics, tactics, and goals separately. This is in fact why I moved that 19th century depiction of the two brothers together to the Legacy section of the article. Regardless, if we reach a general consensus on this matter here, I'm willing to accept it. Ifly6 (talk) 16:13, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for the ping. If I recall correctly, my contribution was to remove the Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum image because it is not an important, well known or accurate depiction. Neither that nor the proposed new one seem to be "the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works" (MOS:LEADIMAGE), and in this case there don't seem to be any works of art which are important enough and in which the topic features prominently enough. That does not mean the image(s) in question cannot be placed anywhere else in the article (most of the complaints above seem to be about images in general, not lede images specifically). Avilich (talk) 16:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that the point those of us who agree with the original poster here are making is that the article needs an image at the beginning, in the infobox, and the two images that have been there recently are both acceptable if you can't find anything better. I suggest that as Iffy seems to have contributed the most to the article recently, he might be the best person to choose between them—or a third option—but in the end some image needs to be there, and there's really nothing wrong with the ones that Knightoftheswords281 was using. I'll point out that the reason why Renaissance engravings resemble modern fantasy depictions is because modern fantasy art is deliberately designed to resemble authentic medieval and Renaissance works—the argument that PII should be avoided because it resembles modern fantasy art is simply backward.

The argument that views of the Gracchi have changed since the nineteenth century is also a straw man; the depiction of Tiberius Gracchus does not tell us anything about the political views of the nineteenth century. It merely tells us what the artist imagined he might have looked like. Unless there is a compelling reason having to do with the artist or his artwork, whatever views of the Gracchi were held by scholars of the time are simply irrelevant. My only concern with the sculptural image I saw on the page history is that it was rather dark compared with the PII image. However, a sculptural depiction might draw the reader's eye better than the engraving, so I would lean in its direction. And if there are paintings, perhaps one of them would be an even better choice. There is no reason why the article cannot include a variety of depictions in different styles and from different eras, although only one of them can go in the infobox. P Aculeius (talk) 17:29, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the core issue in this discussion is whether the following is true: the article needs an image at the beginning, in the infobox. The way I read these comments is basically that some editors are demanding an image, any image, to be placed in the info box field (for various reasons). I certainly do not believe we need an image at the top. We should place a good image there, not just any image that could be asserted as vaguely depicting the target.

Second, I don't think you understood my point. I'm not criticising PII in terms of "PII resembles modern fantasy because modern fantasy takes visual design cues from the Renaissance". I am criticising it in terms that it is fantastical, ie not real and made up (and separately is of low quality that nobody today would put in a NatGeo "Rome: illustrated history" kind of book); I'm not referencing fantasy qua genre, though I can see how my then mentioning ASOIF and LOTR may have led to that impression. Perhaps another way to clarify is that the PII depictions are no better than my going into Midjourney and typing in "Tiberius Gracchus" and uploading some aesthetic outputs (unresolved copyright issues etc aside). The only cachet with PII is that it is older than the Internet and looks vaguely like a coin.

Separately, the issue with the 19th century statue is not that it is from the 19th century, that it reflects something about the 19th century, or that it reflects views from the 19th century. It is that it depicts the brothers together and posed in a manner that suggests concerted political action together; if you made a statue today with the same depiction I would object on the same grounds. The Team Gracchi paradigm is outdated and no longer held in the scholarship, so much so that scholars like Harriet Flower explicitly say that analysing them separately is better and more enlightening. It is not suitable because it just doesn't seem to convey what you think Tiberius Gracchus means to history, as you said, above. Ifly6 (talk) 19:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

But I think you've misunderstood what I said. You're reading something into the sculpture that isn't there, just because the two of them are depicted together—and if you believe that modern scholarship doesn't treat the two of them together, or regard their social programs as two attempts at urgently needed reforms motivated by shared background and stifled by reactionary forces, then I think you are misinformed. A work of art depicting the two brothers together—which they would surely have been on countless occasions, even if not at the height of their moral authority or the time of their downfall, is not significantly different than a depiction of say, John and Robert Kennedy together, or for that matter, most depictions of the founding fathers in group settings. Even when we know that some of them were in the same place at the same time, the paintings are largely the product of an artist's imagination.

There is only so much that can be achieved by a demand for absolute fidelity to truth, and in this case the result is an article that begins without an illustration, although various illustrations are readily available. I would actually be surprised if a National Geographic article of any length focused on the Gracchi did not include modern depictions such as the one in PII or the sculpture that has been rejected, although if a single article tried to treat a substantial amount of Roman history, then I would not expect any illustration of the Gracchi at all, simply because there would be no room for it set against more compelling images of other persons and events. But no illustration is going to provide an accurate record of what either of the Gracchi looked like (or most other Roman figures, for that matter), and since various images intended to represent them are available, it makes no sense to begin the article without one.

If you cannot abide either of the two images under discussion, then by all means find another better suited to the purpose—but if you can't find anything else, then choose one of these, or allow another editor such as KnightoftheSwords281 to do so, and don't remove it unless you can find something better to replace it with. P Aculeius (talk) 19:50, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Two men depicted, holding each others hands, themselves holding the same paper.

You've seen the images of this sculpture, right? It isn't just two brothers standing next. It's two brothers standing next to each other with their hands on each other both holding the same paper with muscular poses. The obvious connotation of the posture is that their objectives are the same. I'm well aware that Plutarch started this trend and that other people have written books looking at both of them: Stockton 1976, Perelli 1993, ia. The scholarship has moved towards treating them separately rather than together, which is noted both in Flower 2010's discussion and Roselaar's 2015 Oxon Bib entry. (The reforms were also successful and not merely attempted.) As to these two images: I have in fact seen the French 19th century sculpture... in reference works on classical reception. I have never seen a single image from PII anywhere other than Wikipedia; using them seems an amateur's vice.

As to whether there must be an image, your reply assumes there must be a lede image. There doesn't. The high quality (and high production cost) reference works like DH Cline's The Greeks do not provide images for all sorts of people in the narrative. They provide them when the depictions are period – fragments of a bust of Phillip II – or when the images are good and the association is well-established. People without a good depiction generally do not get a depiction. This is not uncommon. Britannica depicts nobody at TSG. Nor does the Encyclopaedia of Ancient History. Or Encyclopedia.com. Ifly6 (talk) 23:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I note that this statuary is precisely the kind of image that predominates in Roman funeral effigy. At the size it's displayed here, it would be difficult for anyone to know that it wasn't a genuine Roman artwork without a caption saying so—and for that reason it seems to be a perfectly reasonable image to use in cases such as this. Like most sculpture, the image doesn't depict a specific moment in time; it expresses the sculptor's idea of how someone might have looked. So the brothers didn't act in perfect unity at the same point in time for precisely the same goals. That doesn't really make the sculpture a bad illustration of them. And there's no reasonable expectation that most art is a perfectly accurate depiction of people as they looked in everyday life—even most great photos are posed.

Wikipedia has been a highly visual resource since its inception, far more than any traditional print encyclopedia, even in a modern digital incarnation. The fact that traditional media are very restrained in their use of images does not mean that Wikipedia should limit articles to one or two images, or eschew them altogether when the fidelity of those images to life is disputable.

A majority of editors here seem to think that there ought to be an image of some sort in the infobox, since suitable images exist. What seems unreasonable is that you cannot find even one image to use instead of either of the two that have been used up until recently, and yet you refuse to permit either of them to be used in the infobox, even though they can occur later in the article. The incongruous result is an infobox without an image immediately followed by an image of the kind typically found in infoboxes. How does this make sense? Does it really achieve anything to keep the image out of the infobox, if it's fine for the image to occur immediately beneath the infobox? And I shouldn't have to say it, but deleting or moving the image away from the infobox at this point just to avoid answering that question will not resolve the issue. P Aculeius (talk) 02:23, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

PII and the 19th century busts (hereinafter Brothers) are getting muddled. I think the PII image should be deleted and did not do so as a silent paean to compromise; I've already explained my reason for moving the Brothers image to the Legacy section rather than keeping it in the lede, where I feel it is unsuitable. For that same reason, I have done nothing about the insertion of Brothers to Gracchi brothers, which displays it at the top and is externally accepted by a few "sources" (the standard internet sources of dubious reliability that may or may not be Wikipedia mirrors) as a depiction of the two. Back to images writ large: encyclopaedias don't have an image on every page; encyclopaedias don't need an image on every page. Even when traditional print media specialises in pictures, as with DH Cline's Greeks, they do not use images with zero provenance unless they are well-established (which both are not).

Reviewing this conversation, I do accept some of the points made so far, the most important one being that people really really want an image to be there, not only there, but at the very top. I feel there is far too little regard as to what the lede image is: the culmination of your argument has nothing to do with Instagram filters but seems to be that if I hired a mason to carve your face (or my face, KOTS' face, Avilich's face, etc) into a block of marble and chisel TI SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS at the bottom, this is an acceptable depiction to put into the info-box. (Jokingly, I'm sure that we'll all have to be togate.) I don't accept that, even if I trace the image so it looks like a medal on a wood-print or wait a hundred years. No image is still better than that; nor is there any material difference between hire-a-mason and PII or Brothers. If there really is a consensus that we need an image – I dispute that there is – I would prefer Brothers with traces of the other cropped out. (They are fortunately not in a socialist fraternal kiss.) Ifly6 (talk) 03:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Sub nom Louvre.

Sub nom Vienna.

• Does any of the above apply to the infobox image of Athena? It was recently changed from a Roman copy of a Greek original to a more modern (C20?) one. NebY (talk) 22:34, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Not so much in my opinion—both are high-quality images with their pro's and con's. On the one hand a classical-era original is ideal, but when I look at the previous picture I'm getting hung up on the odd posture, while the modern image portrays the goddess in tremendous majesty—but perhaps not exactly as we might imagine Greek statuary to look (though there is reason to believe that statues were adorned with gold, as well as brightly-coloured paint that nobody associates with classical sculpture nowadays). So both images serve to illustrate the subject, and which one you prefer is really a matter of opinion, not fact. And that's just my opinion—I think other people here will disagree! P Aculeius (talk) 23:48, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I think both Vienna and Louvre are acceptable, but that we ought to prefer Louvre, as it would better reflect the perception of Athena in terms of how the people who believed in Athena would have perceived her. Both are inaccurate largely in the same degree in terms of how the ancient statues were painted; for me that is a tie. (I also inserted the two images at right in a relatively small size.) Ifly6 (talk) 03:59, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I would prefer an ancient statue, not necessarily that of the Louvre. Many pictures on Commons. T8612 (talk) 11:52, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't mean to say that only Louvre and Vienna are acceptable! Some other option may be better than Louvre. My reply in this instance was only with regard to the two options presented above. Ifly6 (talk) 16:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Notes

References

AfD on Roman–Gallic wars: additional opinions wanted

Nederlandse Leeuw and I have been having a spirited debate over whether this sort-of-listy article satisfies notability guidelines or falls afoul of synthesis and original research policy. Somewhere in the discussion, I think that deletion is being confused with questions about the article's name, and whether the subject of the article represents a distinct and valid topic. I spent quite a long time yesterday working to improve the article and deal with some of the concerns about its sources, although I do not dispute that much more could still be done. However, the two of us have taken the argument about as far as we can by ourselves, with only a couple of other editors participating. We could certainly use more input, and I know that there are wiser heads than mine here in this project. P Aculeius (talk) 07:08, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Name of the war between Rome and Antiochos III

There is an ongoing discussion about the name of the war between the Roman Republic and the Seleucid king Antiochos III here. T8612 (talk) 15:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Ancient pagan writers on Christianity

A few days ago, I have written about "ancient pagan writers on Christianity" under "Tasks". More details there. It would be cool if somebody could look into it, even if it's just to write down your first impressions on the respective talk pages. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've already done! Corneille pensive (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Battle of Lade

Battle of Lade 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) 22:29, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The Tasks page

Does anyone actually use the project's Tasks page in any way? Currently there are nearly 30 pages listed as "requests from other members" of which nearly half have been listed for a decade (cf this revision). There's also our "current" project collaboration, which has been Theatre of Pompey since 2012; our article alerts (also transcluded on the project main page) and a table of article importance/quality ratings (also transcluded on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Assessment).

I had been leaving it well alone as not actually hurting anyone, but occassionally people do add stuff to the "requests" list (see the thread above this one) and if nobody is actually looking at it that is just wasting their time as well as cluttering up the project. If people do actually use it I'm happy to keep it where it is (and perhaps clear out some of the clutter), but if nobody does then maybe we should just remove it from Template:WPCGR/Tabs and mark it as historical? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll admit I had a real chuckle when I read that we've been "collaborating" on the Theatre of Pompey for over a decade. I feel like we perhaps ought to try to revive doing something about it (if it ever was alive)? Ifly6 (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The criteria section is also outdated. T8612 (talk) 00:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Translation request

Could anyone kindly do: QVEM GENVIT RUSSI FIORENTIA TUSCA JOHANNIS / ISTUD SCVLPSIT OPVS INGENUOSA MANUS, a 15th-century inscription on a work by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo, or "il Rosso" (redhead), "Nanni" being short for "Giovanni". The mixture of V and U is per the source. Thanks in advance, Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Nice. "The respectable hand of Giovanni the redhead, a child of Tuscan Florence, carved this work." *With "ingenuus" he is claiming, I think, to be a respectable but not noble citizen, but others knowing the Florentine context may have a better translation than "respectable" for this claim. Andrew Dalby 09:29, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Great - you think "ingenuosa" is a social statement, rather than relating to artistic talent? I'll go with yours, thanks very much. Johnbod (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Andrew Dalby's Latin is certainly far superior to mine, and he has more knowledge of medieval Italy. The explanation suggested seems plausible. But if an outsider's perspective is any help, ingenuosa appears to be a superlative, so it looks like it might be praising the hand, i.e. the craftsmanship, of the sculptor, after all. Then it would be translated as "most noble", "most skillful", "most clever", "most ingenious", or even "most delicate". Any of these could be a reasonable interpretation, although I would lean toward "skillful" as the likeliest to convey the author's intent. Assuming, of course, that it is not merely a roundabout way of describing his social standing! P Aculeius (talk) 14:54, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I did wonder - I think the Italian (and English) equivalents are often found in Renaissance criticism with those meanings, and perhaps a dash of "creative" and "imaginative" too. Thanks both. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

As an addition to the previous answers, I think that this text is in ancient Latin verse, more precisely an elegiac couplet. --Corneille pensive (talk) 14:42, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Nice spot. I count thirteen syllables in each line, assuming that "Fiorentia" is four syllables (/fyor-en-ti-a/), and this looks deliberate, as does the slightly inexact rhyme of "Johannis" with "Manus". P Aculeius (talk) 15:35, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Someone with better Latin than me may be able to confirm, but "INGENUOSA" looks a little peculiar to me. Are they suggesting that he is not from Genova? Half a pun? Theramin (talk) 23:15, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

That seems improbable—the irony alone stretches credibility, but then the root adjective is ingenuus, which is turned into a superlative, ingenuosus, "most skilled". As manus is feminine, so we have ingenuosa (if you're confused by the endings, ingenuosus is an ordinary second declension adjective, but manus is fourth declension, and is feminine even though it looks like a masculine second declension noun). The Roman name of Genoa is indeed "Genua", but while I am uncertain what the inhabitants were called (CIL V, 7749 suggests a couple of possibilities, but my Latin is not quite good enough to sort through the various forms of the name used in this inscription), I am certain that they were not Genuosi; and in any case ingenuosa is feminine—it goes with manus, but not with Johannes Russus. P Aculeius (talk) 23:35, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks. I think the inscription comes from the Basilica of Saint Nicolas, Tolentino, in Marche, which I think was in the Papal States, so perhaps the shifting political rivalries between Genoa and Florence and Venice would be less of a concern. Theramin (talk) 00:25, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

No, It's in San Fermo Maggiore, Verona (at that time ruled by Venice) and I don't think Genoa is anything to do with it. Johnbod (talk) 02:49, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

My mistake - I should have read the article on the artist more closely. I can imagine reasons why an inscription in a place associated with Venice might want to disassociate it with Genoa. But I agree is does seem a bit far-fetched, and perhaps not here either.

The thing that was bothering me is that "ingenuosa manus" is unusual, so I wondered if there was a reason for using that rather than the more typical "ingeniosa manus". And looking carefully at the best image we have showing the inscription - this one I think - I believe the transcription above is not quite right. At full size, the inscription is still somewhat indistinct on the bottom of the sculpted frame, but the Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali [5] and some other sources also have "ingeniosa" instead: "ISCRIZIONI cornice, lato inferiore - QVEM GENUIT RUSSI FLORENTIA TUSCA IOHANNIS/ ISTUD SCULPSIT OPUS INGENIOSA MANUS - a solchi - latino". And a close look at the inscription in the image suggests there are rather more Vs than Us too. ("QVEM GENVIT RVSSI" etc) So. Theramin (talk) 23:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I expect it was because the author was deriving ingenuosa from ingenuus, rather than from ingenium, which is the source of ingeniosa. The meanings are similar, related, probably derived from the same root, but it may be that they carried slightly different connotations for the author. Or it may simply be that the author regarded the spellings as interchangeable, which I suppose they were, there being no official body governing the spelling of Latin. P Aculeius (talk) 02:00, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Theramin here – I think one can see quite clearly on the picture he linked that a vertical I is all that separates the N from the O. So it should really be transliterated "ingenIosa" as in the source Theramin provided.

So it is. I could not see the inscription for quite a while, but it is visible in the picture linked above, if you're looking in the right spot. It clearly says ingeniosa. Although I am uncertain whether this should make any difference to the translation. P Aculeius (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Johnbod, could you explain in the article that Giovanni the redhead means Nanni di Bartolo? The current wording t is confusing as both first and second names are different. TSventon (talk) 09:41, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Not if you read the article (the bio) from the start, I hope. All is explained there. I've added it at the church article. Johnbod (talk) 15:57, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for these helpful contributions, and impressive display of effort and scholarship! I'll switch to the Italian reading: QVEM GENUIT RUSSI FLORENTIA TUSCA IOHANNIS/ ISTUD SCULPSIT OPUS INGENIOSA MANUS, and I think "ingenious" in English - let the reader make of this what they may. Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

You are welcome. The same text is quoted in San Fermo Maggiore, Verona too, but I'll leave it as you think best. Theramin (talk) 00:21, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah, forgot to change it there - now done. Johnbod (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Having done my bit of translation I flew off to Greece. Now I'm back, and I see from the image provided by @Theramin: that we didn't need to worry about what "ingenuosa manus" meant, because it's definitely "ingeniosa manus" -- the obvious phrase indeed. Yes, it's an elegiac couplet, as @Corneille pensive: points out: this is why the word order is so strange. It's really interesting to read the discussion at this stage -- a case study of how Wikipedians soon get things right!

The error "ingenuosa" isn't just a howler, because the phrase "ingenuosa manus" really occurs in two early modern Latin texts (according to Google). But it's a mistake here. The error is found in a quotation of this same inscription "Russi+Florentia+Tusca+Johannis"&source=bl&ots=COvJVjwH9C&sig=ACfU3U2-ovSIPOpj1C_K4XJr6ZC5UsTJ4A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCg8HIms3-AhWLVKQEHe9mDgIQ6AF6BAgKEAM#v=onepage&q="Russi%20Florentia%20Tusca%20Johannis"&f=false on this page (by David Drogin, published in 2017). I suppose that both Drogin and Wikipedia got it from Seymour (1966) p. 100 as cited in our footnote. Andrew Dalby 19:04, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Julius Caesar infobox: electric boogaloo

There were recently changes at Special:Diff/1152362194 alleging the emergence of a consensus to delete most of the infobox. I am unaware of this, and feeling that I am too heavily involved in the talk page have exercised some discretion in doing nothing about it. Could someone inform me of whether this alleged consensus exists or, if otherwise, take action on the deletion? Ifly6 (talk) 20:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Gaius Julius Caesar (name)

There is an article entitled Gaius Julius Caesar (name), which describes separately each part of his tria nomina. I question the relevance of this article considering that everything is already in Julia gens or the main Julius Caesar article. Moreover, most of the article was moved from citizendium.org in 2009 and contains large parts of original or poorly sourced material. I would like to make a redirect of this article to Julius Caesar. Any other suggestion? T8612 (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I usually favour preserving articles having any utility, or at least merging them to preserve page history. There might be something mergeable here about the name "Julius", although I think that the parts about "Gaius" and "Caesar" that are credible are covered in other articles—and some of this page does not look credible, since Caesar's name was well-established in his family and does not seem likely to reflect positive or negative propaganda relating to his birth, appearance, or character. I also think a connection between "Julius" and a woolly worm seems dubious.

Some of the claims don't look like they're cited to a good source, or require more explanation. However, the information about Caesar using an elephant as a symbol on his coins does look like something worth mentioning under Julia gens, since that article quotes a discussion of the surname that mentions the claim, but concludes that too little is known about the Moorish language to conclude whether it is a likely origin. I might try to work that into it following the quotation. So I guess merger is the right procedure, even if only a few details of the article need to be added elsewhere. P Aculeius (talk) 12:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I think a merge would be appropriate. Ifly6 (talk) 15:32, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed with all of the above: redirect the article to Julius Caesar and merge anything useful/relevant into that article or Julia (gens). Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:39, 2 May 2023 (UTC)