Talk:Bavius

Poor quality

I've never marked a page for clean-up before but I have not the slightest clue about Bavius. I came across this while clicking "random article". It would seem that this article does not meet wikipedia's quality standards. For example, calling them "stupid" is clearly a bit off. Moreover, the grammar and style needs attention. shotwell 00:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

‘need’. Not ‘needs’.

• No, indeed. The grammar and style are fine. The point of the article is that the man is known only for being stupid. There are some critics lampooned in Classical literature because they were critics of the great poets (Homer, Virgil, Horace). This figure is mentioned in two works of 17th century literary criticism and the greatest satirical poem in English, Pope's Dunciad. Those who encounter the name in any of those places will need to know to whom it refers. This article explains it. If you have a specific of what in the "grammar" and "style" is incorrect, please indicate what it is so that it can be fixed. Geogre 12:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

This was my very first edit to wikipedia. I was unaware of how to do things or what policies were relevant. When I found the article, it just called them "stupid and malevolent", which has since been changed. My only suggestion would be that this article be renamed to "Bavius and Maevius". Is this appropriate? shotwell 17:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I was ill-tempered. I apologize. It's just that I'm not a fan of the templates instead of more detailed comments. The blame for the confusion was probably due to a muddle of reasons. First, I had stayed close to my source, Lempriere, who was full of 1780's circumlocutions, because we get a fair number of ports of public domain reference works. Then, someone else added Roscommon, which is entirely welcome, but the combination of Lempriere's tortured syntax, my straightforward contemporary English about Pope, and then Roscommon's poetry didn't make the whole read smoothely at all.

As for the name change, what I think might be appropriate is to have a redirect from Maevius to this article. It's far more likely that readers of Virgil and Horace will search for his name alone and readers of Pope search for Bavius alone than that either group would search for the combined form.

Again, I apologize for being snippy. Geogre 18:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It looks like Maevius already redirects here. I don't think you were being rude; you were responding in a straightforward fashion to my very ambiguous and ill-informed criticism. I would have responded similarly. Cheers, shotwell 18:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)