User talk:P Aculeius/Archive 2

Please explain for your deletion for Marcus Lollius (father of Marcus Lollius consul 21 BC) article

Hello P Aculeius again,

Could you please explain why would you want to nominate this article to be deleted?

Instead of you being negative towards this article being put on Wikipedia, you should be happy I am writing an article about ancient Roman History. I can't see why you would want to nominate this article from being deleted. For me to put this article together, I had just had enough reliable information to put together to do this article. Everything in this article is cited from reliable sources. I had even provided in the article Latin inscriptional evidence about him from Rome. I have not broken any Wikipedia policies and procedures on this article.

There is no article available on the internet nor on Wikipedia, about Marcus Lollius the father Marcus Lollius, the consul in 21 BC. Although this man was a minor nobleman in the Roman Republic, he was the father of a prominent politician and general during the late Republic into the reign of Augustus, the paternal grandfather of a Roman solder, a Roman consul during the reign of Augustus, the paternal great-grand father of the Roman Empress Lollia Paulina and her sister Lollia Saturnina, and was an ancestor of the powerful politician Marcus Lollius Paulinus Decimus Valerius Asiaticus Saturninus of the Flavian dynasty and the early Nerva-Antoninian era and Saturninus' son.

Please at least consider in changing your mind about deleting this article.

Thanking you,

Anriz.

Annaea

I was doing some mindless bannering by category (the gentes), exclaiming inwardly about the massive work you'd done (even though I'm still in A), and came upon Annaea. I wondered why it wasn't named Annaea (gens) (a redirect). In the old days, I would just copy the Annaea content, paste it into the redirect, change Annaea to the redirect, and call it a day. Then I became aware that I was supposed to worry about incoming links and page histories. So thought I would just inquire of you first. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:44, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

That's where I originally put it, but last December a user named Neelix moved it, on the grounds that the title was unique and therefore required no disambiguation. I didn't want to start an argument about the MoS and page titles, since the rules don't seem to be very flexible. So while I continue to use the same style for new articles, I chose to leave this one where the other editor moved it. If you think it should go back, on grounds of consistency (as well as clearing the current title for a female member of the gens, or a disambiguation page), your decision would carry more weight than mine, since my revert would look more like ownership. That's the kind of charge I was trying to avoid by leaving it alone! P Aculeius (talk) 13:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

That sort of thing makes me want to head for the shooting range, even though I've never been to such a place, to vent my frustration. I'd be taking my daughter's Nerf rifle, though, so I'd look pretty silly. That could be said for most of the gentes articles, and the result would be confusion. I should've have some inkling of that when we were first discussing your choice of how to name this set of articles, but at that point I think I was merely annoyed with the dab police for not accepting that Roman nomenclature created a special set of problems, and less well-versed in their mysterious ways. We've dodged the police by structuring pages about same-named Romans as prosopographical lists, and categorizing them accordingly. What we should've done, I now see, is name the pages Aemilia gens and so on, even though Latin would more naturally be gens Aemilia—in English order as "the Brown family". I was recently in a perfectly intelligent dab discussion, so such things are certainly possible, but good grief, how I hate arbitrary applications of internal taxonomy that doesn't serve the reader. What do you think of my proposed (admittedly unsatisfactory) solution? Cynwolfe (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, forgot: working on List of Pontifices Maximi. Broughton has no Fabius Ambustus as Pontifex Maximus in 390 BC. He says the person killed by the Gauls was M. Folius, possibly Flaccinator, in Livy, and that it's Plutarch who names him a Fabius. See also Rupke, Fasti Sacerdotum (I haven't actually read all his notes yet). If you know of any reason I shouldn't fix this (it involves an article called Marcus Fabius Ambustus (pontifex maximus 390 BC)), let me know. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

If you should ever want to do another gens article, we seem to lack Pompeia (gens). Pompeius is just a list of men who have that nomen. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:43, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Lucius Tarquinius Priscus

The page Roman mythology discusses him briefly in relation to legend. His page also names him a "legendary" king of Rome, as do all pages about the seven kings of Rome, since the kings of Rome were mostly only discussed in Roman legend, and not as much in actual history. If the word "legendary" is included before "kings of Rome", it should link to the page on Roman mythology since that is what 'legendary' entails. If you believe that the seven different pages about the kings of Rome should not link to the page on Roman mythology, then the word "legendary" should be deleted from all of those pages. Since that's a pretty major change for all seven articles (discussing them as complete history instead of semi-legend), I would suggest bringing it up on the talk pages of those articles. - Samuel Peoples (talk) 05:48, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be equating the words "myth" and "legend," although they're not the same thing. "Legendary" indicates that he was a larger-than-life figure, or one about whom various stories and traditions were told. However, it doesn't imply that he wasn't a real person, any more than describing Babe Ruth or George Washington or Henry VIII as "legendary" does. If you describe them as "mythical," however, you imply that they only exist in stories told to explain the origins of things, and have no separate existence. If you want all seven pages to link to Roman mythology, that's fine. But try to do so without linking ordinary words like "legendary" describing the kings in the lead paragraph to mythology. Most, if not all of the kings, are widely accepted as actual persons, even though many of the traditions associated them are dubious, and might well be described as mythical. P Aculeius (talk) 12:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't equating the words. I'm aware of there's a difference, albeit slight. I'm also aware that the kings of Rome are generally accepted to be historical figures, but I'll also restate that if the word "legendary" is used, the full meaning of that in context of the subject needs to be clarified in the article or link to a relevant page. Roman mythology is the most relevant page to link to since the kings of Rome are discussed in the mythology as legend. I'm probably not as knowledgeable of the subject as you are, so I don't have an opinion on whether or not it is prudent to link to the Roman mythology page. But if not, the context of what makes the subject "legendary" at least needs to be explained in the article itself, or remove the word legendary. I'll also direct you to the other pages of the seven kings of Rome if you want to remove the link to Roman mythology and/or the word "legendary" from those for the sake of consistency. - Samuel Peoples (talk) 07:31, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Part of the reason for not linking "legendary" to "Roman Mythology" is that it's just being used as an ordinary description with its precise meaning. Linking it to another article effectively overrides the intended meaning by suggesting that something completely different is meant; in this case that Tarquin is not a historical figure. That's the exact opposite of what was intended. A link to "Roman Mythology" is perfectly appropriate elsewhere on the page; if there's not an obvious link, then in a "see also" section at the end. But the lead sentence here is intended to inform readers of Tarquin's identity, and anything suggesting that he's not a historical figure is erroneous in this context. Putting it another way, by linking "legendary" to "Roman Mythology," you effectively place the gloss "mythical" on the word, substituting an unintended meaning for the ordinary meaning of the word.

I haven't reviewed the other six articles because I wasn't a major contributor to them. But as always, consistency must bow to factual accuracy. If they uniformly imply that all of the kings are mythical personages rather than historical ones, then that should be changed. Opinions may reasonably differ on the historicity of the earliest kings, but the majority of sources seem to accept all except for Romulus as at least semi-historical figures, around whom various traditions have collected, many of which may be mythical, although the kings themselves were not. And even Romulus seems to represent at least a plausible figure at the beginning of Rome's earliest history; his name may perhaps be an etiological myth (but we can't prove that), and it's unclear which of the many traditions about him and his kingship might actually have been attributed to him, whatever his real name was. But that some unifying figure preceded Numa Pompilius is at least probable, and that later generations knew him as Romulus doesn't convert him into a fictional character. So while Roman Mythology is certainly relevant to each of the kings, none of them can properly be described as mythical persons; links to "Roman Mythology" need to be placed in an appropriate context, without implying that the kings themselves were mythical. P Aculeius (talk) 12:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Two notes from a stalker: I sometimes get around this with "semi-legendary". The article Roman mythology does emphasize that in contrast to Greek mythology, Roman myths are preoccupied with legendary history and moral tales, so it's fine as a link when needed for "[Roman] legend" or "Roman tradition". As P Aculeius points out, there's no need to link when "legendary" appears in the general sense, but the kings usually have sections or explanations of their legendary status (that is, their status in Roman myth as "narratives that express and shape Roman identity without regard to historical fact"). Roman mythology would probably be of more use to readers as a link within one of these explanatory sections. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Quartus?

In the article on the rare praenomen Nonus you mention a feminine praenomen (?) Quarta. Is the masculine praenomen Quartus unattested? There was a Quartus who knew the apostle Paul but is that Quartus really a Roman praenomen? If a Roman praenomen Quartus is in fact unused or even very rare, why would that be, given that every other number from one to ten is used as a praenomen? Does the number four carry any inauspicious connotation in Roman culture? Contact Basemetal here 01:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any inauspicious connotations. But the praenomina Primus, Secundus, Tertius, and Quartus are all but unknown in Roman inscriptions, except from the provinces. Apparently odd praenomina like this are found in Cisalpine Gaul. Maybe they were common before historical times, but they don't seem to have been used at Rome in historical time. The feminine forms are all attested. Perhaps this is because feminine praenomina didn't have the same importance as masculine one; they weren't needed for public life, since women didn't really participate in business, politics, or the military. So ordinal numbers that were usually skipped over for boys were commonly given to girls. It wasn't that girls were being slighted; it's just that praenomina had limited importance, and weren't very relevant outside of public life, so for women, there wasn't necessarily a reason to use anything more than a "placeholder" as a praenomen. At least, that's one theory.

I wavered between including "Nonus" as a praenomen because I didn't have any clear examples. I didn't originally include it. But it was pretty apparent that it must have existed at some level, since "Nonius" is a patronymic. There are examples of the feminine, and I think there's a chance that Novius is actually cognate with Nonus. So there seems to be enough to say about it to justify its own article. Perhaps some of these could be combined into one longer article, but that might have the disadvantage that examples of each name's use, or other technical points, wouldn't be easy to fit in. I don't think the case for Quartus is as strong at this point, but if I find enough material I might add it later.

The Quartus you mentioned almost certainly didn't have it as a praenomen. It might have been a cognomen, perhaps a personal one. It could also have been a pseudonym, rather than the man's actual name. P Aculeius (talk) 03:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

This would also be my guess, I don't know why. (I'm adding this later as I've just noticed this small oddity: you'd expect the Greek transcription of Latin Quartus to be stressed on the penultimate like so Κουάρτος, not as it is on the antepenultimate. Is there a Greek accentual rule that would preclude that, given that in Greek where there is no labiovelar equivalent to qu the transcription must be a three syllable word? I do know Greek accentual rules depend on vowel quantity not syllable quantity and that that α must be short based on the short a of the Latin name, but that's all I know.)

Yet the text (Romans 16 21-23) contains other names which are used there alone and which are elsewhere attested as Roman praenomina (and others which may not be): Ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς Tιμόθεος ὁ συνεργός μου, καὶ Λούκιος καὶ Ἰάσων καὶ Σωσίπατρος οἱ συγγενεῖς μου. Ἀσπάζομαι ὑμᾶς ἐγὼ Tέρτιος, ὁ γράψας τὴν ἐπιστολήν, ἐν κυρίῳ. Ἀσπάζεται ὑμᾶς Γάϊος ὁ ξένος μου καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ὅλης. Ἀσπάζεται ὑμᾶς Ἔραστος ὁ οἰκονόμος τῆς πόλεως, καὶ Κούαρτος ὁ ἀδελφός.

Leaving aside this particular case, how did early Roman Christians address and refer to each other in early literature, letters, in inscriptions, gravestones, etc? Using praenomina alone would be at odds with general Roman usage, but one could, a priori, see a religious justification for this.

On a different note: you mention ordinal praenomina did not necessarily mean "Nth son" but might mean "son born in the Nth month". Now the fifth to tenth month have names based on the ordinal whereas the first four do not. I wonder if that may have anything to do with why ordinal praenomina would not have been used for children born in the 1st to 4th month?

Incidentally is the fact ordinal praenomina may have been used also to refer not to the order of birth but to the month of birth based on modern data analyses or on ancient sources stating so? Contact Basemetal here 15:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Change of date of battle of Lake Regillus and title of Octavius Mamilius‎‎

I note that you have reverted the changes that I made to the date for the Battle of Lake Regillus in the article on Octavius Mamilius‎‎. I have not made the change arbitrarily, but rather based on my reading of what I considered to be an acceptable text on the subject i.e. Sinnigen and Boak, "A History of Rome to AD 565", 6th Ed. I also note that the actual Wikipedia article on the Battle comes to the conclusion that the Battle most likely (or "traditionally") took place around 496 BC.

Now I do realise that all the dates around this time are subject to much academic controversy and rely on sources that were written many years after the actual events supposedly took place. I am not about to suggest that I know better than specialists in ancient Roman history. All I am trying to do is create a bit of consistency in the dating that is used in describing the Latin wars and, in particular, the Battle of Lake Regillus. So I thought it would be helpful to use what is considered to be the traditional date for the Battle.

Now I understand that Octavius Mamilius‎‎ was killed during the Battle. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me that his date of death should be at the same time as the traditional date for the Battle. I also changed the reference to him being a dictator as I understood from my reading on ancient Roman history that the term dictator was only used for Roman citizens who were specifically chosen by the Roman Senate or by their consul colleague.

I'm more than happy to be corrected if my various assumptions as outlined above are incorrect. All I want to do is try and get some consistency rather than start any new controversies.--Chewings72 (talk) 12:55, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long to reply. Had a few other things to work on and couldn't get in the right frame of mind. At any rate, there are two main sources for the battle: Livy and Dionysius. Livy is the better-known of the two, is more readily accessible, and of course has the virtue of actually being a Roman. That doesn't mean that he's more likely to be correct about the date; but there's no reason to believe that he's less accurate, and there are good arguments for following Livy primarily and using Dionysius as a supplement. Livy himself noted that the date of the battle varied according to different authorities. However, he concluded that the battle probably occurred the year that Postumius was dictator, not the year he was consul.

Accordingly, the description of the battle in Livy discusses the dictator Postumius and the magister equitum Elva, and this is how the article was written; stating first the date of 498 (since amended to 499 by UrgWriter), then 496 as an alternative, with other proposed dates following. I know because I've been patrolling and editing this article for more than four years, and it was consistent with the biography of Mamilius, which I wrote in 2009. The article doesn't say that 496 is preferred or thought to be more accurate; since there are only two sources, and they haven't changed in two thousand years, Sinnigen and Boak were merely expressing their own preference, rather than any new evidence. If we follow Livy, then both the battle and the death of Mamilius probably occurred in 498. If we follow Dionysius, both probably occurred in 496. But the articles were written or revised with the intention that they would be consistent; I saw to that myself.

As for the title of "dictator," although we're familiar with it as a Roman term, the same word seems to have been used by or for the military leaders of other Latin towns. I don't have all my sources ready at hand, but I thought my copy of Livy expressly referred to Mamilius as "Dictator of Tusculum" in one passage, although elsewhere he's described (in English) as "Prince of Tusculum" or "the Latin General." I note that in the DGRBM, which I did have at hand while writing this, his descendant Lucius Mamilius is described as Dictator of Tusculum in 460 BC. Unfortunately I've misplaced my copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, which might have shed light on the origin of the term. At any rate, while some terms, like "consul," seem to have developed at Rome, "dictator" appears to have been a general term for a military leader. P Aculeius (talk) 02:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The Ass in the Lion's Skin

I have deleted your para on the apparent reference to this fable in The Last Battle. As in so many additions to do with popular culture, the main interest is devoted to minutiae of the work discussed rather than to the subject of the article. The point that there may be a hidden reference here, and a political message, seems to fall foul of WP:IPC and in particular the Content section where the guidelines suggest that 'passing mentions in books, television or film dialogue, or song lyrics, should be included only when that mention's significance is itself demonstrated with secondary sources.' Without a scholarly source to substantiate your claim, what you say will be counted as Original Research WP:OR. If there is such a trustworthy source, however, the application of the fable to 20th century politics would be significant. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 20:38, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you're reading far too much into WP:IRC. We're not talking about "minutiae of the work discussed." We're talking about the influence of a relatively obscure fragment of Latin literature on a widely-known and culturally significant work of literature. C.S. Lewis is hardly a minor or insignificant author; the work is part of one of the best-known works of 20th Century literature; and the fable supplies the chief element of the plot. It is not a passing mention, or a mention at all; it is used as the primary driver of the plot, and WP:Useprimary makes quite clear that a novel is an acceptable source for its own contents. That does not constitute original research.

You're confounding two different issues here; notability of Lewis' use of the parable, and the allegorical significance of that motif. The work itself is notable and relevant to the article; it requires no further sourcing than the novel itself. The question of its interpretation should, indeed, have scholarly sourcing; but since scholarly mid-century literary criticism and analysis isn't the easiest thing to come by on the internet, it may take a few days to come up with it. That doesn't mean that the statement should simply be excised on completely irrelevant grounds such as WP:IRC. A notation that reliable sources are required would have been sufficent; in many articles such notices remain for months or years before reliable sources are added or the material excised. It certainly could have waited for a few days. But even if the interpretation of Lewis' use of the fable ultimately fails this test, his use of the fable is itself notable, relevant, and adequately sourced.

Moving this discussion to the article's talk page, which is where it really belongs. P Aculeius (talk) 23:04, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

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Kuwait oil fires

Seen as only you and I are editing the above named article, I though I'd give you a courtesy notification that I've edited the article a good bit more since the last time you were there and I've changed it substantially, but don't worry I didn't get rid of any references, I'm simply trying to improve the article as your recent edits have done.

Let me know what you think on the article's talk page! I hope you'll be supportive of the changes! 31.200.144.195 (talk) 11:19, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Reversion of Edit on Gens, 'Licinia'.

Aculeius, you are correct about the redundant nature of my edit generally but, as an attorney, I am trained to be precise. The reason I used the phrase, "and of Etruscan descent respectively" was because the younger Tarquin was first a ROMAN, but also was a Roman of Estrucan descent. The elder Tarquin was a Etruscan, (born in Eturia), that migrated to Rome to become a Roman.

Therefore, I believe my version is correct. With all respect, is there a higher authority than you that we can appeal to? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leecorp1 (talk • contribs) 17:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

As a lawyer myself, I can appreciate your desire for precision. But in this case I believe the phrase unnecessarily complicates what could be relatively straightforward. It's true that the Tarquins themselves probably considered themselves "Roman," but in their appeals to Etruscan cities to restore them to the monarchy, they clearly relied on their status as Etruscans, in what had become a mixed population at Rome. Perhaps as importantly, subsequent generations of Romans chose to regard them as Etruscan interlopers, with perhaps a grudging acceptance of the elder, not the younger Tarquin.

In other words, it's true that Tarquinius Superbus was of Etruscan descent. But it's equally true that he was an Etruscan, ethnically and culturally, which necessarily presupposes that he was of Etruscan descent; this makes it unnecessary to separate the two as if they had two different ethnic or cultural origins, when in fact they did not. Stating that one was Etruscan while the other was of Etruscan descent implies that there's an important distinction; but in reality this distinction isn't at all important to the article in which it appears.

If I understand your argument, you're trying to distinguish being a Roman as meaning that you're not an Etruscan. But that's not how the Romans saw it. To them the Tarquins never stopped being Etruscans, whether they were Roman or not. And I think that's the simplest way to describe the dynasty; trying to distinguish degrees of Etruscan-ness seems like hair-splitting, especially in an article about the Licinii, in which the Tarquins are only mentioned in passing. I'm not trying to say that it's not possible to make a distinction; but in my opinion it isn't necessary or desirable to do so in this context. I don't normally resort to quoting Wikipedia policy, but I would say that this gives undue weight to a distinction that really isn't relevant to the article.

In the past I might have suggested my friend Cynwolfe as a good arbiter; her opinions were well-thought out and insightful, and if she disagreed with me I would readily accept that. But she doesn't seem to have been active for several months, and I don't have as much faith in the other editors I used to see working on CG&R topics. Perhaps I've convinced you by now, and we won't need to go any further. I do appreciate your willingness to discuss the issue, as I've found other editors becoming less flexible recently. P Aculeius (talk) 04:11, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Publius Clodius Pulcher (apostrophe on nouns ending with an s)

Hello Aculeius. This is a complex issue and, as far as I can understand as a non-native speaker, still unresolved in English. Wrt to the case of "Clodius" vs "Clodius's", I noticed an inconsistency throughout the article (6 instances of the latter), and since my primary source (Billows) makes extensive use of the "...s's", I tried to repair that inconsistency. I see you reverted this particular edit but, since you have fixed the inconsistency as well, I appreciate your edit.

One thing I would like to ask you is what do you think about the sentence "Nothing was too outrageous for him, and he carried everything off with high-handed arrogance on the assumption that a Claudius was essentially above censure" in Billows work (p.102). My humble opinion is that "high-handed arrogance is different enough than a simple "arrogance" and it should somehow stay in the article. This is way I used the term "high-hand arrogant" (I thought that I should not use a participle there, it turned that I was wrong). Nitpicking anyway.

Keep up the good work. --Dipa1965 (talk) 21:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that the article was inconsistent in apostrophe usage to begin with. It isn't one of "my" articles, although I recall making a few edits to it before, and have to refer to it often enough to have it on my watchlist... anyway, we all have our preference, and mine is strongly for s-apostrophe. I know that's not really grounds for making a change, but I thought that's what you had done, so I was just trying to roll it back, as I would expect someone else to do if I had done the same. Apologies if I ruffled your feathers by doing it.

I think that the original quote would be fine. Perhaps slightly redundant, but acceptable. The previous wording wasn't grammatical, and if that had been the original then it would have been better paraphrased. But since the original is grammatical, I'd just try to work it into the sentence as it is. "High-handed" is an adjective, and can modify "arrogance" (but not "arrogant," another adjective). "High-hand" isn't a phrase in English. Pretty much any participle can be used as an adjective in English; but the phrase "high-handed" is itself the combination of an adverb (which can modify an adjective), "high" and an adjective, "handed". It's not a verb itself; you can't "high-hand" something (well, maybe there's some sport in which "high-handing" is a technical term). Note that "high" can also be an adjective, but because it modifies "handed" it has to be an adverb. Confused yet? That's English for you! Anyway, go ahead and rewrite the sentence if you want. P Aculeius (talk) 23:03, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Hair-splitting?

Re [1]:

Hi there. To say that something "is not necessary" presupposes that it is, nevertheless, possible. Well, that was the whole point of my edit. I don't know what your level of understanding of Russian is, but let me assure that it is NOT possible to add a definite or indefinite article to a Russian noun, because such animals as articles do not exist in the Russian language. Would one say that it is "not necessary" to sprout wings and fly to the Moon? Hardly. One would say it is "not possible". Big, big difference. Nothing remotely like "hair-splitting".

Over to you for consideration and response. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

It's true that saying that Russian doesn't find articles necessary isn't the same thing as saying that articles don't exist in Russian. But the distinction between saying those two things is minute in the context of a Wikipedia article about a piece of music, in which one brief section discusses the various forms of the piece's name as translated into other languages, and whether an article should or must be used in those languages. It would have been sufficient merely to note that the Russian title doesn't contain an article, without providing any explanation whatsoever. The explanation that articles aren't necessary in Russian provides some context, but it's completely unnecessary to go into greater detail by explaining that Russian doesn't include articles, and that it is therefore impossible for the Russian title to contain one.

The issue being explored by the section discussing the article's name is whether an article should be used when translating the title into English. French and Italian translations have been included for comparison, but the only essential fact about the title in Russian is that it doesn't contain an article. Any more than that is gratuitous, and further details of Russian grammar are irrelevant, since at no time was the possibility of adding an article to the Russian title at issue. In other words, the fact that articles are not merely unnecessary in Russian but that they do not exist at all is no more relevant to the article than the reasons why Russian contains no articles, or why other languages do use them. Insisting that one true statement be converted into a more detailed and precise one merely because it is equally true, although not relevant to the point under discussion, is hair-splitting. P Aculeius (talk) 06:17, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Any more than that is gratuitous, and further details of Russian grammar are irrelevant, since at no time was the possibility of adding an article to the Russian title at issue.

Except, you've now created, in the minds of some readers, by your choice of the word "unnecessary", the possibility that articles do at least exist in Russian, even if not used in this particular case. That is creating a misleading impression. It's not hair-splitting on my part to seek to obviate such a false impression. If saying articles don't exist in Russian is "gratuitous" or "irrelevant", I lay exactly the same charge at the feet of "unnecessary". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

It is hair-splitting, because you're using an extremely improbable conclusion to justify rewriting a perfectly acceptable sentence just because you'd prefer a greater degree of precision. Readers aren't going to leap to the conclusion that articles exist in Russian merely because the sentence didn't explicitly state that they don't. The article isn't about Russian grammar; the section of the article in which the statement appears isn't about Russian grammar; it's about translating a Russian title that doesn't contain an article into English, which also doesn't require an article, at least not in this case, although some people have inserted one on the theory that if Russian doesn't use them and English does, then all English nouns somehow require articles, despite the fact that place names usually do not... the parts of speech that do or don't exist in Russian is entirely irrelevant to that quesion. It is no more correct to say that articles do not exist in Russian than that they are not needed in Russian. The former statement merely adds more precision, which is not necessary to explain the basic point of the section. That's why it's splitting hairs. P Aculeius (talk) 12:32, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'm not going to continue this, but I will go to my grave arguing for greater precision rather than less, particularly in an encyclopedia. If you don't think that's a worthy principle, you have my sympathy. Is it possible we can come up with a form of words we're both happy with? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:58, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for not having gotten on this earlier. I reworded the sentence in a way I think will satisfy us both. Also added an explanatory note as the discussion seemed to be getting more detailed than strictly necessary, but perhaps it would be better in the main text. Since the citations are listed under "notes" I added the explanatory note under that section, unsure what else to call it. But you might find a better way to do this. P Aculeius (talk) 14:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

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Reversion of Roman Naming Conventions

I'm not quite sure I understand your point on the reversion of my change to the Roman Naming Conventions page.

It had said "Marcius from Marci filius", but that is patently incorrect. Rather, Marcius means that, insofar as it is an adjectival form: "belonging to Marcus", but that's not the same kind of linguistic claim as "from". The adjectival ending -ius does not necessarily imply filiation at all. I agree with you about filiation in the nomenclature, but of course that became necessary because the nomen didn't actually imply filiation (or once it didn't, at any rate). Perhaps a complete rewording along the lines of "Marcius meaning 'belonging to Marcus'." or "indicating the son of Marcus" or "implying"? - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 19:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

At first blush this seems to be about how patronymic surnames originated, but of course it's about the meaning of the words "from" and "mean." Patronymic surnames were certainly derived from the practice of filiation, although it might be debated whether they could be considered contracted filiations or merely adjectives that happen to fulfill the same role. It's not necessary to resolve that. In my opinion, "from," while inexact, is preferable to "meaning," which implies a direct equivalency that patronymic surnames either never had or ceased to have as soon as they became distinguishable from filiations. There may be a better way of wording the sentence, but it should indicate the functional relationship between filiation and surname, without suggesting that one is merely a translation of the other. P Aculeius (talk) 22:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree about the origin of these -ius words. Surely, however, Marcius does not in any way come from the phrase "Marci filius", even if it might be functionally equivalent to it. The goal is to make that clear without being misleading. I don't see the need for all the examples currently in the text, when one should suffice to make the point. So how about replacing the whole of "Many common nomina arose as patronymic surnames; for instance Marcius from Marci filius...Luci filius" with "Many common nomina arose as patronymic surnames; for instance Marcius from the praenomen Marcus"? That provides an easy to understand example without committing to a particular linguistic interpretation of the nomen. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 23:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Been a while. :-) This page still has the misleading language. What did you think about my proposed replacement language? - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 19:55, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, kind of took a break after this. Will try to look over it again tomorrow and get back to you. P Aculeius (talk) 02:26, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

No problem. Obviously I haven't been on top of it either. The text does need to be changed though, so your thoughts are appreciated. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 15:43, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I've made an attempt to incorporate your suggestion, although I adjusted the sentence more extensively, and revised the presentation of the additional examples to simplify it (also splitting it from the initial part of the sentence) without reducing the number (also added a footnote, since I didn't mean to imply that only a few praenomina gave rise to patronymic surnames). Have a look, and see if you like what I came up with. P Aculeius (talk) 02:24, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Nicely done. Thanks. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 14:28, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

James Horner at/in

FWIW, I very rarely see someone "born at (city)"; it's virtually always "born at (specific location) in (city)", like "born at General Hospital in Port Charles, New York." —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 19:37, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Technically either preposition can be used. But I believe "at" is traditionally used to indicate a specific location, while "in" must be used for general areas. I think this dates back to antiquity, where a sharp distinction was drawn between the use of "in" meaning "physically inside" or "moving into", and giving a location, which was done using the locative, at least with respect to cities and towns. In other words, at Columbus but in Montana. In this instance, "at" is also preferable because it follows "into" and precedes "in" in the same clause. P Aculeius (talk) 00:35, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

You're correct re specific v. general but, again, this would be more accurate were it, as an example, "born at Kaiser Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles". This is particularly true of a city like Los Angeles, which is quite sprawling and incorporates several dozen communities (I'm originally from South Gate, one of them). Even then, specific/general tends to lean toward the likes of, "I shop at Super A Food Market in South Gate." "Into/in/in" may be repetitious, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I, for one, see "born at Los Angeles" and think, "born at Los Angeles what?" —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 02:31, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

History of Crayola crayons

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Ancient families

Unless you're suggesting that some families have arrived here from outer space, they're all as ancient as each other. --Dweller (talk) 20:53, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your definition doesn't make sense. In order for "all families to be as ancient as each other" you must mean that a family exists from the time that its first ancestor in the male line is born, even if that ancestor is unknown and lost to history. Of course, by that definition, we're all a single family and it would make no sense to distinguish one family from another. You could make that argument from a philosophical perspective, but it makes no sense in the context of Roman gentes, which can only be said to exist during the period of time that they occur in history, or at least claimed to have originated. By definition, a gens included those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. Not all gentes were of equal antiquity; new gentes came into being throughout Roman history, and by comparison a gens that is attested from or before the beginning of the Republic is ancient. If you're going to argue that all families are the same age as the human race, then you're going to spend a lot of time trolling through history and literature removing references to "old families." P Aculeius (talk) 23:48, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Now that's interesting, and thanks for the cogent reply. You mean that in the case of the gens, the name had a lengthy history? --Dweller (talk) 09:48, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

It all comes down to how you're defining "family." I think that from a historical perspective, when you speak of a family, its age necessarily refers to the time that it first appears in history. If you say that all families are equally old, because they all had male-line ancestors at every point in time since the first humans walked the earth (if we can even draw the line there), then it becomes difficult to make any statements regarding a particular family or the age to which it belonged. I don't think that definition is useful for history, but you'll find many references to "old families" in historical and literary works. P Aculeius (talk) 17:25, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

There's plenty of stuff in historical and literary works that we don't tolerate on Wikipedia for all sorts of reasons, but back on the main point here, a name that dates from ancient Rome is by definition "ancient". Saying it "was an ancient family" implies it was ancient in Roman times, so is the article saying that the name was in use six or seven centuries before Christ? Also, (and forgive the pedantry, but I get the impression you might enjoy this!) saying "are thought to have settled at Rome in the time of Romulus" implies that Romulus is a historical, rather than mythical figure, which I'm not sure is something many historians would agree with. A similar sort of usage is in the first line of the lead. Anyway... vale for now. --Dweller (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I've always been under the impression that Wikipedia was pretty tolerant of ordinary English, as long as it's properly sourced, relevant, and doesn't advocate a point of view. Even the policies clearly state that they're technically advisory, not hard and fast rules. A common phrase like old or ancient family shouldn't run afoul of any reasonable policy as long as it makes sense in context and is factually supported. This isn't a debate over whether Romulus was an actual person or a figment of someone's imagination. In Roman tradition, he lived in the eighth century BC, and if other tradition ascribed the origin of a particular family to that period, or for that matter in the seventh or sixth centuries, then it was indeed ancient compared with the majority of families found in first century sources.

The Hostilii, for example, are supposed to have originated not just in the time of Romulus, but in connection with him, since the legendary founder of the family was Hostus Hostilius, the Roman champion who fought against Mettius Curtius (after whom the Lacus Curtius is said to have been named) during the wars in which the nascent Roman army fought under the command of Romulus. It's impossible to describe the origin of the Hostilii without referring to Romulus, but discussing the historicity of Romulus himself would be going off on a tangent that wouldn't be particularly relevant to the Hostilii. Tullus Hostilius, the third King of Rome, who would have lived in the middle of the seventh century BC, is supposed to have been the grandson of Hostus; and his historicity is less controversial than Romulus', probably because, as one source suggests, the Hostilii of later times were not important enough to have inserted one of their family into the list of Roman kings; the name is best explained as an authentic artifact of the Roman kingdom. So by any criterion, the Hostilii were an ancient family.

The time period is clearly indicated in the article; and since this and the other articles in the series are about Roman gentes, it should be fairly apparent to the reader that the comparison is with other Roman families, not the Smiths who live in the bungalow on the corner. P Aculeius (talk) 22:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

By the way, I like the work you're doing on Crayola stuff. I think there's a very strong argument for Crayola crayons not to be a redirect. --Dweller (talk) 09:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad you like it. I've been worried about the reception my changes would get, and wondering how long it would take for someone to challenge the usefulness of the table format I set up or the recombination of old and new colors, or perhaps to dispute whether the depictions of various colors are properly sourced. I did my very best to get colors directly from Crayola's site (past or present), but for older colors I had to rely on swatches. I think that still meets the sourcing guidelines, the same way that a photo or a drawing of something is an appropriate illustration. But I'm happy to replace any of the values if we can get a better source that disagrees with the ones posted. Anyway, for now I'm happy to sit back and pick off the occasional mistake when I spot it. There's not a lot I have to add, unless I get my own copies of some of the rarer old crayons to compare swatches with! P Aculeius (talk) 17:25, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Question, what do you think of my decision to depict the colors in order of hue, rather than alphabetical order? I started with red, which I think is instinctive, although Crayola red is slightly bluer than pure red, and proceeded through to violet. I left the pinks until last, since in hue they mostly fit between purple and red, but grouped them all together, even if the hue was slightly redder, since it would have looked odd to have one or two pinks separated from all of the others. Then I moved to the browns, which overlap red to yellow in hue, but again I didn't think mixing them in was a good idea, since I think most people associate browns with each other more than with red, orange, or yellow. I placed the metallic colors and neutrals at the end, since like pinks and browns they tend to be grouped together instinctively. By putting white last, the only color I couldn't use white text on didn't come between any of the "normal" colors (I added the olive text on the lemon yellow later). P Aculeius (talk) 01:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Proscription

Thank for for the explanation. That was very kind of you to respond in such detail. Which Hazel? (talk) 05:59, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Fuficia (gens)

The article Fuficia (gens) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No sources about that family, or that it even existed as a gens, apart from what we have about Gaius Fuficius Fango

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.  Sandstein  17:16, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Disambiguation link notification for December 13

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On Roman titles

You do an awesome job cleaning up the gens-related articles, but I was curious about something: in Postumia (gens) you fixed consul suffectus as consul suffectus. If 'consul suffectus' is one title wouldn't both of the words be italic as both are apart of the Latin-language title (albeit consul is also an English word)? Psychotic Spartan 123 10:14, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I understand why one might want to keep both halves of the office the same, but there's simply no good reason to italicize "consul", "praetor", or similar words that have long been familiar in English, even when it's paired with a Latin modifier. Of course, we could use the English "suffect consul" or "urban praetor", but to my eye those semi-translations stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe that's just because I'm used to "consul suffectus" and "praetor urbanus". They're fairly transparent, and don't seem to need a translation, so translating them just grates on me, and I suspect other readers. More importantly, from the standpoint of consistency, "consul" won't be italicized anywhere else on the page. Suddenly treating it as a foreign word when it's paired with an adjective would be stranger, I think, than simply italicizing the modifier.

I know that these things can be a matter of taste. However, I tried to build the gens articles to be consistent and predictable. There are a few cases where I've wavered from the original format, removing superfluous italics from "gens", "praenomen", "nomen", and "cognomen", and shortening section headers by removing the redundant "of the gens". Or where I've used familiar English titles like "military tribune" in place of tribunus militum. But there we have one version that's clearly English and one that's clearly Latin. That's not the case with "praetor peregrinus", which has a certain elegance to it that "traveling praetor" doesn't (is there even a regular translation?), or "consul suffectus", where we have one word that's as good in English as Latin, and another that's obviously Latin. To my eye, treating them accordingly is a better solution than treating "consul" as English when it appears alone, and Latin when it's paired with a modifier. P Aculeius (talk) 15:14, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

SPIs

Hi P, I'm not sure what happened when you opened the most recent SPI report for Caidin-Johnson, but much of the SPI formatting, which includes the section for user comments, for patrolling admin comments, the SPI case status template was missing. I'm not sure if you're creating the cases manually, but it would be helpful if you'd please go through WP:SPI, expand "How to open an investigation:" and submit your sockmaster's name there. This way, the SPI will be pre-formatted. Many thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:11, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

There was already a report there, and I don't know how to add one report to another. The whole process of reporting a sockpuppet is quite cumbersome to begin with, since it's not nearly as simple as filling in a form, and then one has to search for the instructions (which can be quite time-consuming) and read through them to make sure you're doing it right, and even then I'm never sure It's been done right. I didn't feel like spending half an hour trying to figure out how to report someone without making a mistake, while Caidin was free to continue making disruptive edits, so I copied and pasted the open investigation, changing the name as needed. There really needs to be an easier procedure for reporting things like this. There's way too much to pay attention to that isn't even relevant to most reports, which I suspect discourages a lot of reports from ever being made. P Aculeius (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Kings of Alba Longa

I have to say, I really love what you've done with the article kings of Alba Longa. I felt like I reached an impasse with the article and couldn't find a way to really tie it all together. I feel like you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together and, best of all, kept the information relevant and accurate. A minor problem I had was working around the table I included. The table really broke up all of the information regarding each king, and was only included to seem consistent with the king of Rome article. So anyway, after seeing you put all that work into it I feel like I need to apologize for not properly articulating my thoughts while writing the article. Psychotic Spartan 123 18:24, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Acili

Sorry for the trouble, I have a question about the Acili. Article says they appeared in the 3rd century BCE. I have an impression that they were somehow related to the Valerii from the story of Valeria Luperca of Falerii and therefore a gens of great antiquity.Aldrasto11 (talk) 12:44, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, the first person mentioned in the article appears toward the end of the third century BC (and presumably was born 20-40 years earlier). There's no telling how much earlier his ancestors bore the name; it might have been a recent gens, or perhaps very old and just not important enough to occur in any surviving records. The lead, which is probably taken more or less verbatim from the DGRBM, or at least written in the same style, probably refers to when members occur in history, rather than the birth of the earliest ancestor to bear the name (which is unknown and probably unknowable).

Being related to the Valerii wouldn't necessarily make the gens very old. After all, the Valerii were a very large family, which flourished for centuries, and in every generation its members had to marry somebody! So they were constantly becoming related to other families, without making those families equally old. But I can't see anything in the story of Valeria Luperca to identify such a relationship, or provide an early date for even a legendary Acilius. There's no article on English Wikipedia; there's one on Italian Wikipedia, which I translated, but it doesn't appear to be available in any other languages. It doesn't mention any Acilii, as far as I can tell, and doesn't say when the miracle is supposed to have occurred; and the heroine's name is even in doubt, as the lead says that her name might have been Julia Luperca, rather than Valeria. So I really can't say that this demonstrates anything about the Acilii, based on what I know.

Perhaps there's more to the story than presented in Italian Wikipedia. If so, could you tell me what else there is, which would suggest a connection to the Acilii, or a date for the event? At least then I might be able to say whether I agree with your impression. But even if it's a very old story, and implies the existence of Acilii (at Falerii, rather than Rome), it might only suggest a legendary figure who might or might not have existed, with no demonstrated connection to the Acilii of history. A bit like Proculus Julius announcing the death of Romulus, two generations before the Julii are supposed to have come to Rome, and centuries before the first historical figure by the name. Maybe he existed, maybe he didn't; it's worth mentioning him in the article about the family, but not very probative about the family's occurrence in history. P Aculeius (talk) 13:55, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. In fact the connexion was proposed by scholars, I suppose, mainly because some coins issued by a Valerius Acisculus may have depicted the hammer of Valeria Luperca. Also an epgraphist's integration of the Lapis Satricanus (quoted by G. Sarullo in an article) that BTW is the only one epigraphically acceptable because it makes use of the initial 'i', reads : "Acil]iei steterai...". On all this you can read J. Poucet 's article "Valeria Luperca" online: he is negative. I think the Valerii were in fact connected with Falerii and the Acilii, so it is probable they made use of the story.00:46, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, absent evidence that Acisculus is synonymous with Acilius, I wouldn't expect a connection there; the two names don't look that close. A lot of variations would make sense, but there are two many in one place to reach that conclusion without some really clear evidence. I have no idea whether the Acilii were from Falerii or connected with the Valerii; I just don't have any information. However, what we're really missing here, if the claim is that the Acilii are a very old family, is evidence of when Valeria Luperca lived. Because if the first mention of her occurs in the second or third century BC, and there's no more specific time reference in the legend, then it doesn't make anyone connected with her particularly antique. P Aculeius (talk) 03:05, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes I just would have to dig further to seek whether there is a sounder basis for this association. About Valeria L.'s date I suppose it must go back to prehistoric times but as far as all such legends are concerned you wrote very well that one cannot say anything certain: i.e. for a similar heroine, what was the time of Iphigenia and/ or similar characters?05:40, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

But what basis is there for assigning any particular period to the legend? Miraculous occurrences at Rome were reported throughout Roman history. As for Iphigenia, she was the daughter of Agamemnon, and so would have to be assigned to the period of the Trojan War; i.e. early twelfth century BC. P Aculeius (talk) 12:51, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. From an anthropological standpoint such legends belong to the time of the abandonment of the practice of human sacrifices within the community (children excluded, cf. excavations at Gabii): Iphigenia is a good instance and belongs to the late Bronze Age, I recall Menoeceus the son of Creon who had to be sacrificed by the counsel of Tiresia (Euripides Phoeniciae). Poucet cites 3 or 4 Greek instances in which the victim was saved by divine intervention. In general before the onset of the Iron Age I would say. Certainly long before the times of the conflict between Faliscans-Etruscans and Rome.

Another curiousity about the Lapis S. (obviously I agree it has a very low probatory value): Acili]ei is the only proposed integration which satisfies the need to fill a five letter space: if we do not count the 'i' which was read only by Colonna and confirmed by Sarullo's study there are five letters missing. 13:09, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think you can make an assumption about date solely from the context of human sacrifice. Roman history contains several examples of human sacrifice carried out in historical times (although always condemned as highly irregular and the product of desperation). One of the more obvious examples was the burial of two Greeks and two Gauls in the Forum during Hannibal's invasion, said to have been carried out on the instructions of the Sibylline books. The similar manner of executing "unchaste" Vestals might also be considered a form of human sacrifice, and the Roman practice of Devotio, said to have been carried out by three generations of Decii, is certainly connected with the practice.

Human sacrifice was not a regular occurrence, but it was not formally prohibited until 97 BC, and even after that some considered the execution of foreign military leaders, as well as gladiatorial combat, to be forms of human sacrifice. At the same time, Iphegenia's sacrifice was exceptional, as human sacrifice was clearly not an accepted practice at the time, according to the legend. So while it may be tempting to assume that any story involving human sacrifice must belong to the distant past, we cannot really assign a legend to a particular period on that basis alone. Bear in mind that it is a legend, and not an established historical fact; we cannot even be sure that a girl named Valeria Luperca existed, or performed the deeds attributed to her. Even if some actual events formed the basis of the legend, they may not necessarily have resembled the form that the account later took.

As for the reconstruction, I would say it has no value whatever if the only basis is the length of the name. If there is no known association of the Acilii with the place or story independent of this inscription, then there is no reason to reconstruct the inscription on the basis of the letters in ".....ei" or "....iei", if I understand the argument correctly. The number of known Roman nomina is not a few dozen, or even a couple of hundred; if you delve into the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, you'll see countless additional nomina representing other possible names that might as easily have filled the same space; since I take it this event took place at Falerii, many other names not passed down in history seem equally probable. Without more to go on, I'm afraid that what we have here is speculation piled upon speculation. P Aculeius (talk) 13:34, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Well I cannot agree with your interpretion about the story: I think one thing is the sacrifice of innocent people belonging to the same community in order to appease a god and another the sacrifice of enemies or the self immolation of the devotio, not to mention the punishment of the unchaste vestals who had infringed a sacred law, or the gladiators who were not members of the community and as a rule slaves. From the anthropological pov a very different context/matter. Here we can only compare Iphigenia or the victims sent to the Minotaur etc. etc. (see Poucet). That she existed or not and the story is true or invented: this is not so relevant for the religious historian or anthropologist, what matters is the pattern or meaning in religious terms: and this has numerous parallels, not only the sacrifice of an innocent but also the way the god saves the victim, the substitution oof an animal and the miracolous healing hammer. On the rest I was the first to say this has no probative value, just a curiosity.14:38, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that there is no clear basis for dating the story, either from its contents or, as far as you've written, according to Plutarch. The question of whether it's historical fact is relevant insofar as whether it's possible to date it at all, as well as to whether persons or names appearing in connection with the legend present actual or merely traditional associations with later families. From what you've told me, there's no convincing epigraphic evidence to connect the Acilii with the legend; and even supposing such a connection, and further supposing the legend to represent an actual occurrence at a particular period of time, rather than a story belonging to no particular time, there is no way of judging how old this would make the family. P Aculeius (talk) 14:59, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Tinctures

From WP:LEDE: "If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence."

Relegating the article's title to the end of the first sentence is one of several poor points of style in your edit. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:05, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Instead of inappropriately using an edit summary to carry out a personal attack, and vaguely pointing me to the entire manual of style, then carrying the attack over to my talk page, you should consider reviewing WP:NPA. It is completely inappropriate to describe someone's prose as "poor writing style" in an edit summary, and nearly as bad to carry the attack over here, vaguely referring to "several poor points of style in your edit." Before rejecting valid reasons for a particular wording, you should consider discussing them on the article's talk page. Specifically:

• Tinctures do not "provide" a palette of colours used in heraldry. They constitute the heraldic palette. This is not a "point of style", poor or otherwise; it is a matter of the wrong word.
• However, the use of the term needs to be qualified, since as the article subsequently makes clear, the term is not universally given this meaning by heraldic authorities. In fact, a number of heraldic writers do not use a single term to describe metals, colours, and furs (or metals, tinctures, and furs). So while this use of the term is widespread, the sentence should be written in such a way that makes clear that "tincture" is merely one means of referring to these colours. Again, this is not a "point of style", but rather a question of necessary qualification.
• There is no reason to link to the word "palette". This is an example of the policy found at What generally should not be linked: "everyday words understood by most readers in context". Most readers know what the word "palette" means, and the specific palette here referred to is the subject of the article in which it occurs, so it is not especially helpful to link the word to an article about palettes (much less a disambiguation page for different uses of the word).
• The word "heraldry" is generally understood to mean "European heraldry", without this being specified. The article on heraldry is not titled "European heraldry", nor does it cover any other type of heraldry, nor are there articles on "non-European heraldry" under such title, except perhaps for "American heraldry", which is really just one branch of European heraldry, rather than an independent discipline. The only completely non-European art generally considered heraldic within heraldic scholarship is the Japanese Mon; but outside of the context of European heraldry, the term "heraldic" is not normally applied to it. This is why I didn't write "European heraldry" in the first place; it seemed unnecessary and redundant to differentiate it from some purely non-European heraldry that, for all practical purposes, does not exist. I did in fact consider doing so for the sake of variety, and it would not be terrible if it said so, but it is not "poor style" to avoid saying something that is more or less redundant. P Aculeius (talk) 01:19, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Responding to comments about the lead sentence:

• If you feel that "provide" must be replaced with "constitute", that is a reasonable change.
• It is not necessary for the opening sentence of the article to explain fully all the various uses and qualifications of the subject of the article. The opening sentence should provide an initial anchor point for the reader. The article will supply the depth.
• Palette has more than one meaning in English, even in art. It is not so widely understood a term as you believe.
• "European" was added for geographical context of the article, and was added to the sentence that also provided the temporal context. The standard tinctures were not developed in Africa, or South America, or some other location. Their origin is European, and this geographical context is important enough that it should appear in the article summary somewhere. This same information could be provided in another way, but adding "European" as I did was the minimal change I could have made to the existing prose.

Responding to accusation of "personal attack":

• It is a far stretch in my thinking to equate "poor prose" with racist, sexist, ad hominem, Nazi-themed, vandalistic, threatening, persecutory actions.
• I see no reason to think that describing prose as "poor" is a personal attack. Prose is not a person.

--EncycloPetey (talk) 05:39, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

The introductory paragraph provides only a brief overview; it was written solely to explain the significance of the topic, with further details given in subsequent sections. However, it cannot contradict the contents of those sections, and should not give an impression of the terminology that is at odds with what is explained shortly thereafter. That is why I think that the opening should be phrased carefully so as to avoid stating as a fact something which is then strongly qualified in the next paragraph.

Palette certainly does have multiple meanings in English, but the meaning in this instance would be immediately apparent to most readers from the context. Directing readers to a disambiguation page listing various meanings for the word in no way helps them, when the only palette described by the word in this instance consists of the contents of the article they were already reading.

I agree that adding "European" to "heraldry" in this one instance is a minimal change, and not important enough to fight over. But I feel that it is inappropriate to describe the decision not to so label it as "poor writing style" or "one of several poor points of style in your edits". That decision was supported by reasonable considerations; although the article concerns heraldry that developed in Europe, the heraldry practiced in Africa, South America, or other locations (to use your phrasing) is the same heraldry that was developed in Europe, and the topic of this article (the heraldic tinctures) applies equally to heraldry as practiced in all these places, and was developed at the same period of time, no matter where it is practiced now; so it does not really add anything to say that the heraldry being discussed is European, although it does pose at least a small risk of creating, instead of dispelling, confusion.

Lastly, I did not intend to suggest that your comments were racist, sexist, Nazi-themed, vandalistic, threatening, or persecutory. But when you describe someone's contributions as "poor writing style" and then allude to "several poor points of style" in that person's edits, you are saying that the person is a poor writer, which is hardly justified in this case, even if you think that I should have phrased the lead sentence differently. Moreover, when you say such a think in an edit summary, that comment is displayed every time someone looks at the article's history for the remainder of its life; which is why edit summaries should be phrased as neutrally as possible, even when you have strong feelings about the changes being made.

I've spent more hours than I care to admit on this and its parent article over the last three days, and plan to finish both of them as soon as I am able, although that may take several more days; and if the effort doesn't kill me, then I plan to work on some related topics, since I've been studying heraldry for many years, and would like to think that I can improve the quality of Wikipedia's treatment of the subject. I believe that most of my prose is a distinct improvement over that which it replaced, and that I've simultaneously been able to improve the documentation and reliability of the information provided. If I can figure out how to create vector graphics in my graphics editor, I intend to make some better diagrams for some of these topics; some of the existing ones are good, but a few look very dated, and there are some useful diagrams that ought to be made and haven't been. So all in all, I would be more grateful for some patience while I work to improve these articles than for critiques of my writing ability. P Aculeius (talk) 06:32, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I can understand how you might have interpreted my comment about "poor style" as reflecting on you or your writing as a whole, but honestly I had no basis then nor do I now for any such sweeping statement, and was referring exclusively to the first sentence of the lede. My apologies if you were hurt. Your ability was not critiqued, only a single portion of one instance of prose was wanting. I too have studied heraldry for many years, and I also understand about working over the long term. I saw that you were proceeding in stages, and that is why my edits were focused on the opening sentence and on linking the tincture names.

For what it's worth, I made the original set of fur illustrations at the dawn of Wiki-heraldry (although these have since been replaced with better versions). I also have extensive notes somewhere that I had intended to use for rewriting the article on tenné, though I have not seen them since my last move (they were handwritten, not digital, as a result of working in manuscript rooms). Heraldry is a topic of great interest to me, and for which I have an extensive personal library with many books in many languages. Unfortunately, I have little time to devote to Wikipedia or to heraldry anymore, as my hobby time is spent on Wikisource, where I am curating the collection of English works about ancient drama and the important English translations of Greek drama. --EncycloPetey (talk) 07:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I accept your apology, and am grateful for your willingness to let my revisions proceed naturally, since they're clearly taking much longer than I had anticipated. I would like to make sure that whatever I write is supported by the best authorities, making note of disagreements when necessary, but discarding claims that are not clearly made by any authority, or which appear to have been synthesized from unclear writing in sources of dubious value. As I'm sure you've noticed, not all books on heraldry are equally well-researched or systematic!

Fortunately, I've had time to read through many of the more widely-available books, including most of those cited by these articles, and in fact own copies of most, although I never managed to acquire "A Treatise on Heraldry", which I now realize would be an excellent addition, as it covers much material quoted by Fox-Davies in its original context, and some examples and illustrations that even he didn't include in "A Complete Guide to Heraldry," although in other respects his examination of certain matters is more comprehensive. I'm finding Boutell's a bit less useful, but like to cite it occasionally as an earlier "scientific" treatment of the subject. I had hoped to get some use out of Franklyn's "Heraldry", although I am finding it less organized and more opinionated than other sources, and perhaps should try to get hold of his "Shield and Crest" if it is available, as I don't think I've ever seen a copy. I already had Neubecker's hefty tome, which is replete with wonderful illustrations and charts, but I find it a bit disorganized at times and less concerned with the technical details that Woodward and Burnett and Fox-Davies discussed. Slater's "The Complete Book of Heraldry" is a nice source to cite with regard to whether anything has changed in recent decades, and again full of illustrations, but like Neubecker a bit disorganized and untechnical. Pastoureau's relatively small volume gives a slightly continental perspective, as does Neubecker's, I think, which is useful for keeping the subject balanced. Peter Gwynn-Jones "Art of Heraldry" isn't a technical manual, but it does provide clues as to recent developments from an insider's perspective. Somewhere I have the Oxford guide, but I wasn't able to locate it when I looked. As I recall, it's not the most useful source, as it doesn't treat the subject in a manner like Woodward and Burnett, or Fox-Davies, focusing on each separate element of heraldic design, and it's not full of illustrations or diagrams, like most of the others. But it's hard to evaluate it fairly when I'm not sure what it's buried under.

I'm definitely interested in what you can recall about tenné, as the so-called "stains" are a topic about which I have always been curious. However, what I can gather about them from all the sources I consult, including the College of Arms itself, is that the articles here seem to be mistaken in claiming that there is any authority for splitting sanguine and murrey into separate articles, or for that matter tenné and orange. It is a little easier to draw this conclusion with murrey, which is portrayed in two different variations in recent grants by the College of Arms, which seems to prefer this word to "sanguine"; I could not find any recent grants on their website of tenné, brown, or orange, but the only authority for splitting them appears to be the differing lists of heraldic tinctures in some of the more recent books; and these are inconsistent, without as a rule explaining this inconsistency using clear or explicit language. For example, Neubecker uses a different system of hatching for orange and tenné, which he equates with brown; but apparently he is following the system of Marcus Vulson de la Colombière, which does not mention tenné, rather than that of Petra Sancta, which includes a distinct hatching for tenné, but not "brown" or "orange" (to say nothing of "water-colour"). Slater, on the other hand, following Petra Sancta, gives tenny as orange, using his hatching, and considers brown an additional colour, using Colombière's. Neither really discuss the matter, but the older authorities who did clearly agree with Slater and not Neubecker in this regard, although they also do not consider "brown" to be one of the heraldic tinctures (notwithstanding its admitted use in a few instances of chiefly continental heraldry).

At any rate, I think that, at least with respect to the metals and colours, there is not enough material on each to justify splitting them into separate articles. Matters such as hatching and attributed symbolism are better discussed together, than in nine (or eleven) separate articles (or more, depending on the current treatment of the rare colours mentioned as occurring in some instances). So it was my intention to attempt to fold such information as the articles contained back into this one, once the rest of the article was satisfactory. Of course I'd need to go through them all carefully, but I doubt there's much to favour retaining a split of tinctures into so many articles. The furs might benefit from it, but mainly to the extent that there are so many different variations of vair; the four (or five) regular variations of ermine probably do require a separate article, and I'm not sure there's enough to say about plumeté, papelonné, or kürsch to justify separate articles on them, either. But of course, I need to finish this article before I try to reform, merge, or redirect any of those, so I haven't gone through them all yet. P Aculeius (talk) 14:44, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Just looking through the separate tincture articles quickly, I think that it would be difficult to merge vert into the tincture article, and perhaps sable, but the others will largely duplicate material in this one, except for vair and perhaps ermine. P Aculeius (talk) 14:53, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

At present, perhaps, if one only considers the content of the individual articles in their present stages, but the individual articles could very well be given much longer articles than they currently have. My studies on tenné convinced me of that.

The article on azure in particular would have been my next target if I hadn't moved away from the Bay Area and the terrific libraries there. I've come across at least two well-researched studies on azure, including one in which modern chemistry and interferometry (if I remember correctly) were used to analyze the particular compounds and visual appearance of azure in medieval heraldic depictions. I might be able to pull a bit more about the use of azure from my two volumes on heraldry of the Polish rody in the 14th through 16th centuries. By far the most common fields in Poland at the dawn of their adoption of heraldry were either azure or gules. However, as I've said, I really don't have the time to devote to research and writing on heraldry, or certainly not as much as I would like. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:02, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

In that case, perhaps I'll leave them where they are for the time being, and just clean them up a bit. However, I would like to know if your study of tenné supports folding orange (heraldry) back into tenné. At present I cannot see the point of treating it separately, or regarding it as a distinct colour; Neubecker is the only source I have at my disposal suggesting that tenné should not be considered synonymous with orange, and I think he is writing from a German perspective, in which Brown apparently replaces Purpure; Neubecker equates tenné with brown, but not with orange, which he depicts as a separate colour; he ignores sanguine entirely, and perhaps oddly, since he gives the various symbolism associated with each metal and colour (assigning tenné's to brown, but none at all to orange). Also I can find no authority for distinguishing between sanguine and murrey; the "Flags of the World" web site is very good for finding obscure flags, but cannot be regarded as a valid heraldic authority. P Aculeius (talk) 16:38, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 6 March

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Hernican vs. Hernician

Well, if it so important for you to say "Hernician", you can have it. But it's simply not true that both forms are "equally" acceptable. "Hernican" gets 17,300 hits on Google, while "Hernician" only gets 4,870. That's 80% vs. 20%. Not exactly equal. More importantly, I have been in the field of Historical Linguistics for nearly 50 years (including 15 years at Harvard), with a keen interest in Old Italic languages, and have alway heard and repeated "Hernican" (not that it comes up a lot, of course, but when it does, it's "Hernican"). So, you might want to take my word for it. :-) Pasquale (talk) 17:55, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Nomen est omen

Dear P Aculeius, I was wondering if you could shed some light on the following matter. The expression 'nomen est omen' is used these days by speakers of various languages. But was it actually an expression used by the Romans themselves? And if so what did it mean? I can find a reference to a work written by Plautus, although he actually wrote "nomen atque omen". See http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3638416 I'm working on the Nominative determinism article and I am getting more and more suspicious about this "nomen est omen" actually being used by the Romans. I would appreciate your insights. Regards, Edwininlondon (talk) 19:59, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the expression, but Wiktionary has an entry which seems like a cogent explanation of both the origin and the meaning. P Aculeius (talk) 20:59, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Re: Articles on Roman gentes

Hi, I was wondering if there was anyone still active working on the articles about Classical Rome & Greece. Now I know the answer. But to your points.

(1) I was unaware that there are any policies concerning articles about the gentes. After seeing your message, I had a look at the pages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, & a few other places that seemed obvious, & failed to find anything. Could you point me to where those policies are set forth? Or at least discussed? I am serious: I am trying to bring some order to a jumble of articles which reflect the widely-varying skill levels of countless editors, & would appreciate something definite to work from.

(2) My modifications to the footnotes were based not on personal whims, but on a number of criteria. To begin with, is it really necessary to link to every mention of "Titus Livius" or his "Ab Urbe Condita" to its respective article? This overlinking has been discouraged for many years, & IIRC is part of the MOS. Then, calling an ancient authority by his full Roman name, versuses the more common English form -- Titus Livius vs. Livy -- not only smacks of pretension, but burdens the average reader with unneeded complexity: far more people have heard of Livy than Titus Livius, & those who know the later form are equally familiar with the first. Moreover, at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) there is this direction: "If a particular name is widely used in English-language sources, then that name is generally the most appropriate, no matter what name is used by non-English sources."

As for "Livy v. 1–3" vs. "Livy 5.1-3", I have no strong opinion about which form to use either; I was was merely modifying the article from the far-too-common mimicking of 19th century practices to reflect what appears to be the practice in contemporary academic literature, such as Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Latomus, or Classical Quarterly. (By the way, in performing a sweeping reversion of my edits to Sulpicia (gens), you broke at least one link that I had fixed. You may want to compare the two versions to see what other useful changes I made are worth salvaging.)

(3) As for whom to include in a list of members of a gentes, I fail to see the usefulness of adding people who are known only because of the filation of an individual. So X is the grandfather of a certain consul; unless there is something identifiable to be said about X -- & by something, I mean anything beyond this one genealogical fact -- who honestly cares about said grandfather? Yes, it makes the lists look more complete & comprehensive, but it also makes look amateurish. Consider that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information: listing every possible member of a gentes makes it harder for reader to find information on those people who fall into that grey area who fail notability (or we haven't yet gotten to write an article about), yet are important for some single act or fact. Sometimes having too much information is worse than not enough. Then again, I might be overzealous in stripping these shadowy names from the article due to having to deal with the genealogical cruft that the now-banned User: G.-M. Cupertino stuffed into an amazing number of articles.

But if there are guidelines or best known practices set forth somewhere that reflect a consensus of involved people, I would like to know where to find them. Because there are some pages here that badly need work, & I'd rather not annoy people while trying to fix them. -- llywrch (talk) 23:19, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

There's not a written policy anywhere because I created and maintain most of the gens articles, and revised the ones I didn't create to create a consistent format. The project is admittedly a bit stalled; I tend to work in bulk for a period of time, then leave it for a while, then come back to it when time permits, often working deep into the night to finish an article, so that Wikipedia's coverage of any particular family won't be half-finished or badly written for any longer than necessary. I do tend to check for new edits on a daily basis to make sure they fit within the articles as a whole, which is why most of the edits by experienced editors pass through unmodified. But others do insist on changing "BC" to "BCE" and adding lots of genealogical information. It's not necessary or desirable for these "stubs" of entries to state that A was "the son of B, the husband of C, and the father of D, E, and F." If the individuals in question have their own articles, that's the place for those things to go.

As I already stated, I don't mind your condensation of the footnotes. I would have done it myself when writing them, if I had been able to think of a good way to do it for different sections from the same source. But that requires a good deal of thought and preparation, and my goal at the time was to get the articles accurate, comprehensive, and useful. I'm sure you understand that any method of citing to various sources is likely to evolve to fit the needs of different articles, in light of each editor's experience. So I've tried to leave your edits alone insofar as they simply condense the sources and make the page size smaller.

Most of the articles use Roman numerals for books because it's how the most useful source material does it, but also because it has the distinct advantage of treating books and chapters separately, thus making it easier to identify the source and less likely that the reader will become confused when seeking it. So the preference is a practical one. Moreover, since it's been consistently followed throughout each article, changing the format of only some citations makes the citations inconsistent and more confusing. So, no complaint from me with respect to reducing the overlinking. But please don't alter the citation style in the process.

I entirely understand and sympathize with the desire to clear articles of genealogical cruft. But they were written to exclude it, and I quickly excise it when people add it back in. This needs to be contrasted with the inclusion of individuals belonging to a gens. They're included because it gives an idea of the size of the family, and how it changed over time. Since the praenomina and cognomina used by a gens are among the main topics of interest in each article, each distinct individual adds value to the article. Often these names reflect the legendary ancestors of a gens or family (not to imply that they didn't exist), or clues to how the different branches of the family might be related, which again, is one of the things these articles should do.

Lastly, I reverted the changes you made today because the things I needed to restore were too complex and mixed in with the other edits to repair manually, which is what I spent the better part of an hour doing yesterday and today in other articles. While I would have been fine with keeping the changes to the various links in the citations, it didn't look like those could be easily sorted out from the rest of the changes, since there were a number of intervening edits. P Aculeius (talk) 00:23, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Romulus

Did you seriously state with a straight face that Romulus being mythological was "PoV"? Ogress 03:41, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Why yes, yes I did. Did you seriously ask me that with a straight face? There are several issues here. The question of Romulus' historicity is one that has been pondered since Roman times. Even historians who assume that the name cannot have belonged to a historical figure generally concede that some person underlying the legendary accounts of Romulus must have existed, even if we can only speculate as to which traditions represent actual events from this time period. But a passing reference to events traditionally ascribed to the period during which he's supposed to have lived isn't the place to explain this; "the time of Romulus" is a perfectly ordinary way to describe the time period during which Romulus was thought to have lived, even if historians question whether Romulus himself was a real person. It's not merely wasteful to insert words intended to interject an opinion on the matter into such a passage, but doing so gives undue weight to something completely irrelevant to the paragraph, and so does not belong.

Furthermore, and underscoring the notion of both PoV and undue weight, the use of the words "mythical" or "mythological" are particularly problematic, since in common parlance these words are used to imply "fictional" or "imaginary", which is certainly not appropriate here. If a description were warranted, "legendary" would be preferable, since that word is still understood to apply to historical as well as fabulous personages. But no description is warranted, since the passage merely describes the time period, and is not meant to discuss Romulus or the matter of his historicity or lack thereof. I'm sure you must be aware of the tendency of certain editors to browse through articles looking for references to something about which they have a particular point of view, and edit them all to conform to that perspective. So I hope you'll understand if I keep a close eye on articles such as this, to make sure that the language doesn't become a potential snowball for irrelevant arguments. P Aculeius (talk) 04:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Appositive phrases and commas

Sorry, I meant to leave a comment in the edit history when I reverted your reversion, but the option didn't come up when I clicked the "revert" link. No matter; I can explain myself more fully this way anyway.

Anyway, in my understanding, commas are only used with appositive phrases when the phrase is nonrestrictive. Our article on apposition agrees with this. Here the phrase is restrictive; we have no idea who the Roman champion is until the name is given and the sentence would not make much sense without it.

If you disagree, can you find a style guide that backs up your opinion? - furrykef (Talk at me) 23:27, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I think you've misinterpreted the first example given in the article. As the explanatory note makes clear, in that example the phrase "Alice Smith" is used to identify which of various friends is intended; but in the subsequent example, "my sister, Alice Smith, likes jelly beans," the phrase is used to describe the phrase in apposition, rather than to limit it to a particular sister. Of course the phrase could potentially do both, but as you may find in the Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers (2nd Ed.), section 7 l 3 (p. 199), "most appositives are nonrestrictive, which means they are not necessary for identifying the noun being renamed... Sentence XI: The victim, Joe Jones, asked to speak to his lawyer."

Here we have the same type of sentence and appositive phrase. Yes, it is possible that there could be other victims, but there is no evidence that the phrase is being used to specify which of several victims is intended; if it were, we wouldn't use commas, because we don't pause when we use names this way in spoken English. We're not identifying which of several Roman champions is intended: "the Roman champion Hostus Hostilius (as opposed to Marcus Stultius or Octavius Hippopotamius)". We're simply naming the person to whom the phrase in apposition refers, not limiting the phrase to one of several possibilities. In other words, it's just as if we were saying, "the Roman champion, a man named Hostus Hostilius," in which case the non-restrictiveness of the phrase is more obvious. P Aculeius (talk) 04:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I think what's happening is you and I are parsing the sentence in different ways. I was about to rhetorically ask what happens if you leave out the name altogether, in which case I thought the sentence would no longer make sense, but after trimming it down, I found it actually did: "the Roman champion ... who fell in battle against the Sabines under Titus Tatius". If that's sufficient information to identify Hostus, then the "who" clause could be considered restrictive and the name could be considered nonrestrictive. I was parsing it the other way around, which I still think is a more logical way to parse it. In any case, I've decided to rephrase things to avoid the issue altogether. - furrykef (Talk at me) 08:45, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Re: P. Servilius Structus

You know, we (as a group, not just you & me) are going to need to decided on which version of the names of many of these ancient Romans will be the standard one, so we don't waste our time over details like this. For example, in this case, Livy calls him P. Servilius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus calls him P. Servilius Priscus, the Chronicon of 354 & Fasti Hydatius call him P. Servilius Priscus Structus, & Cassiodorus T. Survilius. (And the Fasti Capitolini is missing at this point.) I forget which version Brougham uses -- although he is occasionally wrong. And I can't believe I bothered to catalog all of these variants for the same person. -- llywrch (talk) 17:16, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

When working on these articles, I usually start with DGRBM, since biographical entries are grouped by family, and usually include all consulships for the less important individuals, and additional information for anyone about whom something other than the date of a consulship is known (such as which command he received in a war, or some noteworthy event). I have Broughton, volume 1, but it's more useful as a supplement in case there's a conflict in names or dates, or if I want to check a filiation. In this case, we seem to have the oldest branch of the family (in terms of appearance in history) using both Priscus and Structus, with others perhaps branching off from it. From their filiations, the first individual known is Publius, who appears to have been the father of Publius, Quintus, and Spurius, the latter being the one in question. It furthermore looks as if Spurius was the father of Publius, consul in 463, and grandfather of the dictator, who acquired the surname Fidenas. So logically he should be Priscus Structus if those surnames were used by both his ancestors and descendants. It might be that the Servilii Ahalae were descended from a fourth brother, Gaius, but Broughton doesn't give his filiation, so probably it's not found in the sources he consulted, and this is just one possibility. He might have been related generations further back. The only reason that there's a Structus section without another surname is because it's not clear whether the consular tribune of 368 was part of either of the earlier branches. He's not found with an additional surname, apparently, so he could be from either. The use of Gaius in his name and filiation suggest the Ahalae, but he might just be from some obscure line not otherwise in evidence, as the Ahalae aren't known to have used Spurius. P Aculeius (talk) 19:03, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

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Re: List of Roman Consuls

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying to your note. I saw it late last night just before I went to bed, & my responsibilities for Father's Day kept me from being on-Wiki. But to your message: when it comes to orthography, I'm basically agnostic about matters such as i/j or u/v, although it can be pushed to absurd extremes. I just want to see consistency, so we aren't faced with lame edit wars over petty details that waste time & burn out editors. One reason for my comment about "standardization" above; another is that I am finding some inconsistent, if not just odd, article names. So it would be nice to allow people to avoid stepping on each others feet. (FWIW, I'm wondering if Julii Julus might be preferable to Julii Iulus. Just a thought.)

And about the article... we definitely need more of them. Although by my count there are almost 1200 articles about Republican & Imperial consuls, I believe there are 3000 consuls whose names are known, most of whom an article could be written about. And my own interests in not with the Early Republic but with the consuls at the other end of the list, the ones after AD 300. Best, -- llywrch (talk) 07:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Hope you had a great Father's Day! Glad you don't mind about the I/J issue. The more I thought about it, the more worried I got. I think standard English orthography should prevail for article titles and most of the articles' bodies, but there's certainly a place to indicate that they would be spelled with an "I" in classical Latin. Although for me that's in the article about each gens! I really don't foresee an edit war over the list of consuls, as it hadn't received a lot of attention before you started working on it.

As for "Iulus/Julus", I agree that the distinction is somewhat idiosyncratic, and comes down to what "looks right" to an editor. For what it's worth, in his translation of Livy, Aubrey de Sélincourt uses "Julius Iulus", and I think I've always seen "Iulus/Iullus" spelled with an 'I' in connection with Marcus Antonius. Really, Latin orthography runs a whole gamut of choices when it comes to writing in English, and there are those who insist on pure classical Latin for every word and name on one side, and those who think that if we use English forms at all, then we should use them for everything. I suppose it's all a matter of producing something that will "look right" to most readers. In this case, I think everyone but the most hard-core Latinists will pronounce "Julius" and "Juventius" with a 'J', so it only makes sense to use one there. But it's not that hard to pronounce "Iulus" with an 'I', and I don't think it will make people's skin crawl suggesting it by using that orthography. So there's one way to view it...

I've been working on the Julii, since I discovered some really unpleasant "prosopography" pages competing with the intended anchor page, Julia (gens). When I worked out the basic layout for Roman gentes, they were intended to help identify and disambiguate all of the members, usually sorted by family or branch of family, and then later persons (Imperial era) with the same nomen, who might or might not have been descended from them (hard to tell, usually). So all of the Julii Iuli and all of the Julii Caesares were already there. Then some old pages that had been largely disambiguation got bulked up into multiple-person biographies, with all the persons named "Gaius Julius Caesar" having one page and all the people named "Sextus Julius Caesar" having another, omitting of course the ones so important that they already had their own pages, and then a separate page on the Caesares, with some absurd nonsense about being descended from a "Numerius Julius Caesar" (I finally tracked down a probable source for that), and all of the women in the family listed as "Julia Caesaris", which isn't a name at all, but was being given authoritatively as one.

So there was massive duplication and rather odd choices in sorting, most of it ignoring the presence of the gens page itself. I've been setting up individual biographies and doing some work on the main page to get it up to a better standard than it was in when I last worked on it (my own techniques have improved thanks to your efforts). When it's all done, I probably should break up most of the redundant prosopography pages or return them to disambiguation, but I might ask for input on the main project page first. And then I can turn to the Junii, or start adding new gentes, as it seems I last worked to finish the letter "F". I was quite surprised not to find a proper page for the Geganii or the Genucii, as I thought I had cherry picked most of the old patrician families first...

Anyway, I will probably wind up making biographies for a lot of Republican consuls, but it's really not necessary for many of the ones about whom nothing more is known than that they were consul in this or that year. I could probably have skipped a few of the Julii, but they already had some sort of article, albeit mixed together with other persons of the same names, so I went ahead and made them. But my first priority is to give them anchor pages where they can be found quickly, together with all of the other members of their gentes. And I'm working on a possible table for Dictators and Magisters Equitum, since there's been a clamor for a table of the latter, although I don't think it makes any sense to list them separately.

Thanks again for your hard work, and let me know if I can help! P Aculeius (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

BC style

I don't mean to quibble with you -- I'd rather respond to your post above, but I'm still trying to think thru what I want to say -- but I've never seen "BC" placed before the year; after all, "X BC" expands to "year X Before Christ", whereas "BC X" expands to "before Christ X", which sounds clunky. I'm honestly surprised DGRBM or Harper's would use that style. And while I hate citing the manual of style -- it's a long, tedious story -- even there it encourages placing "BC" after the year. See WP:ERA. -- llywrch (talk) 15:17, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

As a much more experienced editor than myself, I'm sure you know that most of these policies are intended as guidelines, rather than hard-and-fast rules. And in this case the policy was written by editors using the convention with which they were the most familiar. I've thought of trying to amend the policy in this case to account for what is obviously a formerly widespread practice, but the process of doing so seemed likely to be both tedious and contentious; where am I going to find a style manual for the period when this was a regular usage?

Both of the sources I mention feature extraordinary prose, better than anything that most of us editors can write. It's a bit dated in cases; I admit that. But the occasional—and perfectly transparent—archaic construction gives it a very scholarly tone, which is often wanting in more recent sources (which is not to say that it is always more accurate). And one thing it's particularly good at is avoiding cliché and repetition. The use of "BC" before a date may be old-fashioned, but it's perfectly transparent to the reader, and varying the form helps break up the repetitiveness of stating the era over and over again, which is sadly necessary when giving a great many dates.

I'm not trying to precisely duplicate the prose style of the 19th century, although it will bleed through in articles that are based on or which quote or paraphrase these sources. But I do think it's perfectly appropriate to emulate the clearer and more varied sentence structure, vocabulary, and useful phrases of those scholars in articles on these topics, provided that the language is still fully accessible to modern readers. P Aculeius (talk) 15:40, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

I almost didn't respond to this, but I feel there are three points concerning this style for "BC" you insist on using, which you should think about. (Not argue with me, since you are determined to go your own way about this, just think about these points.)

• There are a lot of articles written & squatted on by cranks here in Wikipedia. One can usually identify them by their unusual grammar & punctuation style. (And other editors at Wikipedia have often given up trying to save these articles, leaving alone these articles with their unusual touches as a subtle warning to observant readers.) By insisting on this non-standard usage, do you want to risk people thinking this article -- which otherwise is well written & sourced -- is one of those articles?
• Since it is a non-standard usage, there will be other people who will change the style to the more accepted form. Do you feel so strongly for this usage that you are willing to revert each & every one of them?
• It just looks odd.

And this is the last I will say about the issue. We both have better things to spend our time on. -- llywrch (talk) 06:34, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Your points are well-taken, but I would not like to give up on what seems like a good way both to preserve a perfectly acceptable and formerly mainstream phrasing, and to avoid the constant repetition that comes with giving numerous dates in an article, without seeing whether it may stand the test of time. Perhaps I'm on the vanguard of a revival? It's happened before. But if the complaints pile up from people other than cranks, I suppose I'll give up eventually. You're quite right that I have better things to do than worry about whether my grammar and style choices get changed constantly. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't make the case for them, within reasonable boundaries. P Aculeius (talk) 06:40, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

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Roman name disambiguation

Could you please reconsider your position on this revert. "(Undid revision 741916598 by Almonaster (talk) Gender neutrality not applicable to Roman magistracies, none of which were ever held by women.)"

The policy section as written is not specific to magistracies. I refuse to believe that there were no notable Roman females. If there is a separate policy for them I do not see it, and so the language of the policy should be inclusive, even if there are relatively few applications.

(Please note that I left the section on generals untouched, based on the reasoning you gave, i.e. no applicability.) Almonaster (talk) 20:12, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

You might want to reread the language that you edited, then. It reads:

"Highest office. Men who had a public career should usually be distinguished by the highest office held: Lucius Cornelius Scipio (praetor).

If more than one man by this name held the same office, add a date for disambiguation: Quintus Fulvius Flaccus (consul 237 BC). If a man held the office more than once, use only the year of his first term."

On no occasion was any public office at Rome was held by a woman, and if there were there would be no need for disambiguation. Roman women are never disambiguated this way, because they did not hold public office, and because their names are different and easily distinguishable from those of Roman men. The guidelines in question do not apply to women; if rewritten to be gender-neutral they would imply that it might be possible for such a thing to happen, which would be nonsensical given that we're dealing with (literally) ancient history. Wikipedia's preference for inclusiveness does not mean that we ignore facts or common sense. P Aculeius (talk) 20:39, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Distinguishable from men, yes, but not necessarily from other women. Are you claiming that there is never any need to disambiguate Roman women? If there is such a need, the policy for so doing should be contained in this section. Women could not hold political office, but I believe they could hold religious offices. The section you quoted would then reasonably apply unless you use circular logic.

If you think it would be better to have a separate section on disambiguating women with different rules, then fine, but I would think it preferable to keep them consistent. Either way, women need to be covered. Almonaster (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

This section exists because of the fact that many Romans with similar names held various magistracies over many centuries, and this is the most convenient method for disambiguating them. That's why it's written the way it is. It leaves absolutely no doubt about whom it applies to or why. While many women were priestesses in Roman times, relatively few of them are mentioned in ancient sources — just as relatively few Roman priests who held no magistracies are ever mentioned in ancient historians. While a high percentage of Romans are known solely due to the magistracies they filled, or the deeds they performed while holding public office, the same is not true of Roman women, who never held public office in the sense that phrase is used in this policy.

The policy you decided to edit applies only to Roman magistrates and officials; not to farmers, shopkeepers, soldiers, or relatives of other important persons. It has no bearing on men or women who did not hold public office. It makes no sense whatever to apply gender-neutral language anachronistically to a group of individuals who were exclusively male, any more than it would make sense to use gender-neutral language to describe the disambiguation policy for articles on queens of England, as though there might have been some male queens. Nor does the lack of a specific disambiguation policy for other individuals of either gender prove the need for one specifically applying to Roman women. It means that ordinary rules for disambiguation have so far proven sufficient for this project. The fact that a policy that applies exclusively to a group of men uses the word "men" rather than the nonsensical "persons" does not prove the need for an equivalent policy for disambiguating members of some as-yet unidentified group of women. P Aculeius (talk) 02:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

OK, I think it is now clear I took the wrong approach, although I still feel there is a change required. (Thank you for reverting Naming conventions (numbers and dates), btw. That is where I got into this, and in the discussions here I forgot it was a parallel change). I am in no way disputing your expertise on Roman history. My concern is with the wording of the policy. I disagree with your assertion that it is 'leaves absolutely no doubt about whom it applies to' without the information you have supplied here. I now have two suggestions, and would appreciate your opinion on which would be appropriate, or would welcome any alternative you may care to offer.

• Re-title the section to Disambiguation (men).
• Add a sentence immediately below the title, something like "Since there are relatively few known Roman women, no special rules apply. The following policies are specific to Roman men."

(If nothing else, this should serve to avoid a useless repetition of this debate further down the line!) Almonaster (talk) 10:59, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

But that's not what I said. The policy you edited to make "gender-neutral" isn't "the policy for Roman men." It's the policy for Romans who are known primarily as a result of having held magistracies or other public offices. Your position appears to be that if a certain policy applies to a group consisting entirely of men, then an equivalent policy for women must be created in the interest of fairness, even though there is no equivalent group consisting of women requiring similar disambiguation. Or, put another way, "if you refer to men three times, then you must refer to women three times in order to avoid sexist bias."

Magistracies is not mentioned in the text of the policy and as I pointed out earlier there are other public offices which could be held by women. Almonaster (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

That would be an absurd result; leaving aside for a moment the argument that you can't impose the values of the present on historical figures, equivalent treatment for men and women in historical articles does not imply that there must be an equal amount of material written about men and women at every time or in every culture, or that the discussion of men or women in these cultures must somehow be achieved using "gender-neutral" language, even though the group being discussed is not gender-neutral. I believe that you have misinterpreted Wikipedia's policy on gender-neutral language to require some measurement of equivalent volume even though no justification exists for a functionally-equivalent policy applying specifically to Roman women who held public office: a group that, depending on whether one includes priesthoods, is either very small and easily disambiguated without the need for a special policy (in terms of the number of notable persons about whom sufficient information is known to warrant a biographical article), or practically non-existent.

Straw man. Almonaster (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

If you want to argue for the creation of an equivalent policy applying specifically to only a subset of Roman women (since the policy you want to change only applies to a subset of Roman men), then the burden is yours to demonstrate that such a need exists. Are there many articles about Roman women who can best be disambiguated by their highest public office or year of holding it? A glance at some of the larger Roman gentes (the ones from which there are a number of women whose articles, when they exist, necessarily require some sort of disambiguation), reveals that very few of them are primarily notable due to having held any position; nearly all are notable because of their relationship to other Romans (wife, mother, daughter, sister); and they are disambiguated on that basis with no need for a special policy.

I was not arguing for a special policy, it was you who said that the section could only possibly refer to men. Almonaster (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Please try to understand that this is not a commentary on the goals of gender-neutral language. It is entirely appropriate for text of general application to be written in such a way as to avoid the false impression that it applies only to men or women. But inclusivity does not operate according to the rules of Newtonian physics: for each policy applying to individuals who happen to belong to one gender there does not necessarily have to be an equal and opposite policy applying to the other. Insisting upon the creation of one where no equivalent need or justification exists is not inclusiveness. It reduces an important and worthy concern in scholarship to petty tokenism; a symbolic gesture without any underlying purpose or meaning. Surely there are more useful and logical ways to go about achieving these goals. P Aculeius (talk) 14:33, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. However you yet again are evading my point. Let me try one last time to get through to you. When an editor without your illustrious level of understanding in this field discovers that they need to to disambiguate the name of a Roman woman, then the current wording is unclear, as witnessed by the fact that we are having this discussion. Fix that or don't as you see fit. I'm done here. Almonaster (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Talk: List of Roman Consuls

Earlier today I saw some comments about the current appearance of this article, & offered my responses. You are welcome to contribute to this exchange. -- llywrch (talk) 00:23, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

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Vivianus

Hello P Aculeius. If the information is attested by that source it's important to mention precisely where that information is attested or at least put a footnote indicating this possibility. The PLRE, that is the main source in the article, doesn't mention such names. Cheers.--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 01:06, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Had you waited another five minutes, you would have seen the source added. It was actually identified in the page history, but I checked it myself for more information. I would think very carefully before deleting more names merely because they're not attested in PLRE. PLRE may be an important source, but it's not always comprehensive and it's certainly not infallible. Plus, new information frequently comes to light, as seems to be the case here. The fact that an individual's name appears one way in PLRE doesn't mean that that was his full and definitive nomenclature; only that it's what the editors of PLRE decided to give. It doesn't refute any and all other material. While unsourced material may be challenged and removed, it shouldn't be removed merely because the source isn't identified. It's one thing to delete clearly inaccurate or unreliable information, and another to delete potentially accurate information merely because you can't tell what the source is. The best practice in cases like this is to look for the name in other possible sources, or, as in this case, to find when it was added and by whom, which gives you some indication of whether it's likely to have a reliable source. P Aculeius (talk) 01:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the information. I always check the information when I translate it, but in fact there wasn't anything indicating such thing and I doubted that could be something wrong. Just after you reverted me I saw in the summary the explanation of such adding. Anyway, I found another source, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy that mentions this new piece of text found. Thanks again.--Renato de carvalho ferreira (talk) 01:42, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Demon Sheep

What is your actual objection to my edit? – Smyth\^talk 15:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, let's start with randomly excising a helpful transitional clause in the first sentence without explanation; then awkwardly moving a phrase meant to refer back to Barbara Boxer to become a description of her, necessitating repeating her name two sentences later (the very thing the phrase was intended to avert the need for), and then creating a new paragraph for a single sentence. All of which was deceptively hidden under the canned edit summary, "copyedit", implying that you were merely correcting mistakes in spelling, punctuation, or making minor fixes to grammar, such as ensuring subject-verb agreement, when in fact you did none of these, but instead rewrote several sentences to reflect your own preferences. P Aculeius (talk) 17:28, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I removed "either because, or perhaps in spite of the "Demon Sheep" ad" because I felt it excluded the third possibility that the ad had no effect at all.

I reordered the references to Boxer because the first reference to a person should identify who she is, which it currently doesn't.

I created a new paragraph to separate the 2010 and 2016 elections.

But all of these things are relatively unimportant compared to dealing with this wonderful sentence:

During the same election cycle in which he created the "Demon Sheep", Davis also created a spot for Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for the Special Election for the U.S. Senate Seat in Delaware that had been vacated by Vice President Joe Biden in 2008, featuring a clip of O'Donnell denying that she was a witch.

I hope you at least agree I improved that part.

As for the edit summary, if you look at the article on copy editing you'll see that the term does cover exactly this sort of thing. – Smyth\^talk 21:26, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but I think you're mistaken on each count. First, if the ad had no effect at all on the outcome (which isn't really plausible), then the outcome would still have been "in spite of" the ad. Not a third, neutral possibility. Secondly, Boxer was clearly identified in the previous sentence, and the context makes it clear that she was the democratic incumbent. Your edit introduced unnecessary clarification of a phrase which was rendered superfluous by the very act of clarifying it. Thirdly, just because there were two elections in different years doesn't lead to each needing a separate paragraph. If there were much more to say about Fiorina's 2016 campaign in an article about a 2008 ad, then maybe there would be justification for a separate paragraph. As it is, there's not. It's one brief sentence, and there's no need for a whole paragraph to say it.

I hadn't noticed your edit to the last paragraph, since the difference between versions view made it look as if the paragraph had simply been moved. However, the original wording was intended to emphasize the similarly unusual nature of the ad, instead of simply mentioning it by a title. That emphasis is greater when it says that the ad featured footage of O'Donnell denying that she was a witch, than it would be to say that he designed the "I'm not a witch" ad for O'Donnell. The sentence might benefit from splitting, but not from changing the emphasis. Just as importantly, the link you created to "I'm not a witch" was recursive, redirecting to the article on O'Donnell, who's already linked in the very same sentence. If there's not a separate article on the ad, then there's no reason to make those words form a second link to the candidate. P Aculeius (talk) 21:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I won't press the other issues, but I'll try another rewrite of that sentence. – Smyth\^talk 22:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Re: Gnaeus Afranius Dexter

Hi P, I noticed you disagreed with my edit concerning Afranius Dexter's murder. According to the Fasti Osteienses, fragment Ha (which equates to their entry for 105) first there is the statement that Afranius Dexter became consul on the kalends of May with C. Julius Bassus. Then there is the statement, XVI k. Aug. Q. Caelius Honoratus loco Dextri ("15 July Q. Caelius Honoratus in place of Dexter"). At the end of the consul list appears the statement: VIII k. Iul Afranius Dexter cos. in domo sua exanimis inventus ("22 June Afranius Dexter, consul, was found dead in his house.") I'd say based on this primary source Afranius Dexter was killed while in office. Does that appear to be right? I often make mistakes translating the Roman manner of dating, so I might be wrong. (In any case, I got the date for his death wrong & will correct the article.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It wasn't intentional. I refactored the entry and then adjusted the wording because I had implied something I didn't know. I'm sure you're right. However, ante diem viii. kalendas Julias is June 24, not June 22. Remember, the kalends and ides refer to the phases of the moon, so the preceding period of daylight was technically ante diem i. kalendas, even though we (like the Romans) consider the kalends to be the first day of the month. The last day of any month is a.d. ii. kal., or simply pridie kal. In other words, the eighth day before the kalends of July is the eighth day before the night of July 1, not the day of June 30. P Aculeius (talk) 22:52, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

As I said, I still don't have a handle on Roman dating. -- llywrch (talk) 04:08, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Julia (gens)

How do you know File:Julii Gens Genealogical Tree.png is unreliable? i.e. "Genealogica Antiqua or Mythological and Classical Tables, Compiled from the Best Authors, or Fabulous and Ancient History." by William Berry, London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1816. https://books.google.com/books?id=Dk4MAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA4&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=snippet&q=julius&f=false" seems to match a number of other well accepted sources. JMvanDijk (talk)

It doesn't give any sources or authors, lists several clearly imaginary individuals not found in any ancient records or inscriptions, connects branches of the family for which there is no solid evidence of relationship, confuses individuals whose relationships are known from other sources, and in short fails to provide the slightest grounds to suppose it accurate in any degree. This was dealt with months ago when the articles in question were overhauled, and the problems with this completely unencyclopedic source are mentioned in a rather detailed footnote to one of the articles in question. You might notice that it's not cited as evidence of relationships by any scholarly sources, and I doubt you can find evidence of any individuals contained in it but not mentioned in the current Wikipedia articles in any ancient authors or any modern scholarly sources. P Aculeius (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. JMvanDijk (talk)

numbers

There is no requirement in the MOS to use words instead of numbers in text vs tables. It is entirely optional regarding which to use. So I am not reverting your edits. Hmains (talk) 02:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC).

The MOS may not express a preference, but most style manuals explicitly state that numbers under one hundred should be spelled out in text; the use of figures is informal. It's a standard convention in English, which is why I object to arbitrarily changing numbers into figures. P Aculeius (talk) 04:37, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Re: Additional consul

Hi P Aculeius! Norbanus presents a puzzle: both AD 102 & 103 are complete, AFAICS, & from a glance at one of my working copies of the Fasti Ostienses -- that's the Fasti you mean, right? -- while it was known when DGRBM was written & it is fragmentary for 103, I don't see how his name could be restored from what survives. It's very possible that Norbanus was a suffect in 104 -- there is no certain evidence for the suffects of that year. I'll need to look at DGRBM to figure out why they placed him there, but he wouldn't be the only name that should be included yet cannot. (There are a number of consuls references from the 19th century & pre-WW II mention yet can't be fit in. I don't know if they're misdated or just phantoms; the archeological evidence is much fuller since WW II, but if there is a primary source attached then the personage just can't be discarded.)

In the future, if you encounter something like this, feel free to add him to List of undated Roman consuls with a citation; this is where I park problems like this. That's not to say that list is less reliable than the List of consuls, just that it allows me to keep people whose year of office is uncertain until the opportunity appears to delve more deeply into the problem. -- llywrch (talk) 00:11, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

A thank-you note

Thanks P Aculeius for not just a few minutes ago, I appreciate it since it confirmed some suspicions on my own part. I will be more circumspect in the future when editing. My editing was just inconsistent for that I apologize it, I don't like to see sloppy work and thanks for pointing it out in my own ham-fisted attempts at editing. I'm still quite new to editing and there's a lot that I ought to know by know. Cheers!

Re: Acilia (gens)

I puzzled at part of your edit here. Several of the periodicals in this article are provided in the same style as the citation from Chiron that you changed. Did you mean to change all periodical citations to that format, or did you think it was from a multivolume work? -- llywrch (talk) 04:41, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the other citations until you pointed them out just now. I started this article (or at least the present version of it) a long time ago (when I was working on the letter A), and haven't converted it over to the short citations/bibliography format that I started using last year yet. At that stage, I would have put all of the journal citations into a consistent format and added citations for the individuals who were linked to articles (or might reasonably have been, based on my judgment at the time I wrote the article; I think I've gotten much more careful and systematic since I started this project). In this case, I just didn't look to see if other citations had been added in other formats before converting this one. Since you're concerned about it, I'll wait before doing anything with the others. The citation style I've been using for periodicals of any type, however, is:

Author's Name, "Article Title", in Journal Name, volume no. in journal's preferred or usual style, if known, page numbers of article, (date).

I realize that it's not the only citation style, and that really it's a matter of personal preference. But I try to keep these articles relatively consistent. Not all that many have seen a lot of additions since I wrote them, so I don't always think to look for added material when I go through edits. This article definitely needs to be revised along the lines that I'm writing new ones in now, which will mean a lot more citation, but I want to put most of my effort into getting through the rest of the alphabet first, then cleaning and improving up the earlier entries in the series. P Aculeius (talk) 05:08, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I went ahead and reformatted the rest of the article, as I saw a lot of other things that could stand to be cleaned up. I haven't added all the individual citations yet, but I will eventually. Would you look over the periodical citations when you have a chance, and see if they look alright now? P Aculeius (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Re: Quintus Nonius Sosius Priscus

Er, that was just a note to myself to investigate that entry further -- & a few others listed in Nonia (gens).

The issue goes back to that long comment I made at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, that to understand why secondary sources disagree, one needs to understand the primary sources. In this case, if the inscription or literary source shows the gentilicum was missing, then I could conclude that a later (& presumably better) reading corrected it. But to do that requires devoting a measure of focussed attention to this problem, which I don't have. (Every time I start to get hung up on some detail that is otherwise "good enough", I think of articles that badly need more attention, for example those about the Volusii (such as Quintus Volusius Saturninus), or those that cite Settipani without mentioning the exact page.)

Lastly, although I've been working on the Lists of Consuls, & think they are as good -- if not better -- than any offered by other reference works, I know they aren't perfect, & don't want to sabotage the reliability of these articles with hasty conclusions. I was planning on making a general statement about this on the project talk page -- there are portions that are far more reliable than others -- so everyone could use my work appropriately. -- llywrch (talk) 00:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Re: Publius Ostorius Scapula

Hi P Aculeius! First, I'd like to point out that DGRBM, for all of its virtues, is rather old & there have been a lot of archeological finds since its latest revision that invalidate its information on consuls of the Empire. For example, the Fasti Ostienses, which is a major primary source for information on the suffect consuls for the Empire up to about AD 160 hadn't even been understood at the time; a few fragments had been published in the relevant volume of CIL, but it wasn't until the 1950s that enough pieces had been identified to show just how useful it was for recovering the series of suffect consuls. And more recently there has been a lot of work on military diplomas, which has helped to fill in the gaps.

Anyway, you brought up a good question, so now I'll show you a bit of the work that lie behind the consular lists. Sorry if I go on too long about it, but this is a matter that has been on my mind (for obvious reasons), & it does show more goes into producing the lists & assuring the facts are correct than to simply copy-n-paste from the latest secondary publications.

Gallivan notes that P. Ostorius Scapula is recorded as suffect in a number of surviving sources with P. Suillius Rufus "during November and December of an unknown year. (AE (1973), 152; ibid. (1949), 250)" That Publius is attested having a colleague with a different name than C. Selius Rufus shows that he & Quintus are not the same person. Gallivan then compares the attested date against the range of years they possibly held the fasces to find Publius & P. Suillius Rufus can only fit in the years 41 or 45, then provides some reasonable arguments to put the pair in November/December 41. (If you're not convinced by this argument, you're not alone: Anthony Birley in his Fasti of Roman Britain (1981) offers contrary arguments for when P. Ostorius Scapula & concludes he was consul anni incerti. Since Gallivan's argument makes sense to me, I can simply cite him as a reliable source & be done with the issue. ;-)

But I hadn't heard of this pair of suffect consuls. Consulting L'Année épigraphique via my public library's access to JSTOR, I find the following comments on AE 1980, 907 (machine translated from the French & cleaned up a little by me):

This pair of consuls is not known. We know certainly a Q. Ostorius Scapula, who was the first prefect of praetorium designed by Augustus in 2 a. v. with P. Saluius Aper (Dion Cass., LV, 10, 10 - G.D.P, II, 113, p. 440; E. Stein, R.E., XVIII, 2 (1942), col. 1671, s. v. Ostorius 5). According to Stein, he was then prefect of Egypt, between AD 3 and 10 (A.E., 1938, 136: AD 4). We also know P. Ostorius Scapula, cos. to 42, Governor of Britain between 47 and 52 (A. Birley, Fasti of Boman Britain, 1981, p. 42), who must be the son or grandson of the prefect of the praetor of Augustus. We'd be with rather to this second possibility, assuming a Q. Ostorius Scapula son of the prefect of the Praetorian and father of the consul of 42, who was suffect consul in the reigns of Augustus and Claudius. Yet precisely in AD 17 Tacitus, Ann., II, 41, mentions as consuls L. Pomponius Flaccus and C. Caelius Rufus (A. Degrassi, Fasti consolari, p. 8). Is it possible that a fault of engraving be assigns the name of Caelius? In this case, we would have a new pair consular by 17 AD

Based on the shapes and the dimensions of the stones, as well as on the similarity of the forms (a consular date at the beginning, then a name in the nominative case), the A. close this Tunisian document of the terminal of Ksar Mahidjiba (A. Piganiol, and H. G. Pflaum, Rec. Soc. Arch. Constantine, 68, 1953, p. 217-228 = A.E., 1955, 202). In the latter case, it was a duumuir charge of the distribution of land. It is possible that such has been the role of M. Papius land distribution. It is possible that such has been the role of M. Papius Rogatus area Hannah Romana, or settlers have been instalies at the time of Augustus, in dependence of Carthage.

This is the point where, from sifting thru the secondary literature, I can tell that the editor of AE is guessing. With the exception of AD 22 the consular lists are complete up to 38, & it appears we might be able to complete 22 by inserting the two undated consuls already on our list; there really isn't any room for this new pair. On the other hand, there is room in the consular list for a son of the latest known Ostorius Scapula (suff. 97), or perhaps one of the three consular Ostorius Scapula had a brother Quintus. Getting all of this to make sense in a simple & clean way can be very frustrating. What I might just do when I add this pair of names is to quote the source literally & give them the obviously wrong date, or acquiesce to the need for plausibility & date them to "1st century AD".

In any case, thanks for bringing this pair to my attention; the more complete the consular lists are, the more useful the Wikipedia articles will be. -- llywrch (talk) 08:08, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting that the DGRBM be regarded as "the authority" here, just that the inconsistency there was the reason I was paying attention when PIR and the Thuburbo Maius inscription suggested that the consul listed for AD 41 was either listed under the wrong year (PIR, agreeing with DGRBM) or the wrong name (Publius instead of Quintus, with Publius being consul in or about 46). Since the Thuburbo inscription was a relatively recent discovery, it seemed like a good clue, although the fact that Gaius Selius Rufus and Publius Suillius Rufus don't quite match is a concern. However, I don't buy the argument that Gaius Selius Rufus is more likely to be an error for Caelius than Suillius. I would like to know more about the fasti that assign Publius Ostorius to 46 and why Gallivan rejects that date, since it's much more in line with his becoming governor of Britain the following year.

If Quintus and Publius were different men and both consuls in the 40's, then I think they're more likely brothers than father and son. The description of Publius as a general dying worn out with fighting during his administration of Britain doesn't make it sound like he was a young man who could have been the grandson of the praetorian prefect. I think there are three more likely possibilities: the Quintus who was consul with Gaius Selius (or Suillius) Rufus was 1. the prefect in his old age, rewarded with a consulship for his service; 2. the elder son of the prefect, and brother of Publius; or 3. identical with Publius, and assigned the wrong name in the inscription. I think his being the son of the prefect and father of Publius makes less sense than any of those.

By the way, I'm curious why you respond to messages left on your talk page on my talk page. Doesn't that make it harder to follow discussions, if you have to switch between talk pages with each response? P Aculeius (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Gallivan's reason for 41 over 45 is simple: he doesn't believe such a senior position would be assigned to someone so recently promoted to the consulate. And considering that at the time the British garrison comprised 4 legions & an equal number of auxillaries, the Emperor would prefer a very senior & loyal ex-consul.

Attractive theory about the inscription error -- they do happen -- but Tacitus in his Annals (12.31) calls the governor "Publius" proving it wasn't an error. And I believe "Publius" appears in several other inscriptions. Further in the same section of the Annals Tacitus mentions his son "Marius Ostorius", which contradicts some of my speculation above. In any case, Quintus could be a brother of one of the known Ostorii; I'd like some opinions about the date of the handwriting inscribed. The final word would be to consult Birley's revision of his Fasti, the Roman Government of Britain which was published after this discovery in 2005.

As for my practice of replying, it's partly out of force of habit (it's how I've responded to messages on my Talk page since I started contributing to Wikipedia long before Wikipedia had the ping template), & partly because of the message you'll see when you edit my talk page. I should change my habits one of these days; it's beginning to be difficult for me too. -- llywrch (talk) 18:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I did read your message, but I forgot. I'm almost through the Ostorii I can find in inscriptions, and while I found a couple of freedmen of a Publius Ostorius Scapula, I've got nothing so far to suggest the date of his consulship. However, I did find an inscription marked RMD-03 141 [edit: Roxan, Roman Military Diplomas] and dated to AD 99, which refers to the consulship of Quintus Bittius Proculus and Marcus Ostorius Scrapula [sic]. Now, Scapula appears in the List of Roman Consuls under AD 97, but with Publius Cornelius Tacitus as his colleague. The top of the inscription, however, states that Trajan was (had been) consul for the second time, which apparently occurred in AD 98. There is a partial date, a.d. [...] Kalendas Octobres (i.e. between September 14 and 29, September 30 being pridie Kalendas Octobres), immediately preceding Bittius and Ostorius, but it doesn't look like the date they entered into office; however it implies that they were in office at that time. So going by this inscription alone, it looks like Ostorius wasn't the colleague of Tacitus in 97, but of Bittius in 98. P Aculeius (talk) 16:05, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Note, just found an inscription from Pompeii naming the consuls as Publius Suillius Rufus and Quintus Ostorius Scapula, mentioning something occurring on a. d. iv. Idus Novembres (November 10) immediately before naming them. So looks like Gaius Selius is probably a mistake for Publius Suillius after all, but this also seems to confirm that his colleague was Quintus Ostorius Scapula, and not Publius, who was governor of Britain, and who therefore probably was consul closer to 46 (the date supposedly given in some of the Fasti, will see if I can find those for more details). As you say, an important position like he held would probably have been given to "a senior ex-consul", but it's entirely possible that he was already a respected general and administrator, and was given a consulship in order to beef up his résumé before sending him to Britain, don't you think? P Aculeius (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I took the date for P. Ostorius Scapula's consulate from Gallivan's article in Classical Quarterly; if you'd like, I can send you a copy in pdf form. He explains his reasoning for the date. (Of course, more has been learned since he published back in the mid-70s, but his article is a good place to start, considering that the alternative is to fall back to Attilio Degrassi's work which was published in 1952, & nothing has been published since then.) But going forward, you're about to see some of the problems I've been tangling with.

First, I found a copy of RMD-03-141 online here, which is a site worth bookmarking for your future use, although the problem with that site is that none of the commentary is included. Looking at the transcription, though, I notice that the pair of names are given as "[Q(uinto) Bittio] Proculo / [M(arco) Ostorio] Scrapula" -- which means that we can't be 100% sure that those are the correct names. (Which is why I'd like to see the commentary: it's where these restorations would be defended & explained.) There is an indication of the year, though, at the top of the military diploma -- after Trajan's second consulship & in the third year he held tribunican powers, which points to AD 99 -- if Trajan counted his years of tribunican power as starting during Nerva's reign. There is a gap in the suffects for September/October of 99, which [...] Proculus/[...]Scapula would fit into, & is tempting to do just that, & call it a day.

However, if you look at the list of undated consuls, you will find a pair of suffects "Q. Fulvius Gillo Bittius Proculus/P. Julius Lupus", dated to AD 98. Was RMD-03-141 intending to refer to this pair? Maybe. However, E. Mary Smallwood, on whom I used for this year, only provided the names but not the rationale for the dates associated with them; her work is considered reliable, which is why I used it. (And why I did despite that it was published in 1966; the section AD 98-137 is a patchwork from different authorities because I could not find one reliable source to base that section on. I didn't like doing that, but it is better than 40 years without a citation.) And it may be that she simply copied that information from Degrassi's work, which means I would need to consult a work in Italian (which I don't read) to try to make this all match up.

This is one reason why I'm glad of the Wikipedia rule that one doesn't worry about the information being right or wrong, but that you can provide a reliable source for it. I can use that as an excuse not to be too worried about sources I cannot properly access, & continue my work elsewhere. (And if someone is able to properly investigate those sources, I'm willing to admit I didn't finish the job & complement that person for doing just that.)

But winding back to your original question about Ostorius Scapula, while I'm basing my opinion that it was Publius Ostorius Scapula who was consul & governor of Britain on Tacitus' statement, I know the evidence isn't decisive; he could be wrong, or the text faulty. It just well be that it was Quintus Ostorius Scapula who was consul & governor. I think the only answer that is likely to satisfy both of us lies in Birley's 2005 book. -- llywrch (talk) 20:02, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I was able to view Birley! Here's the relevant passage (the rest concerns only his career in Britain).

2. 47–52 Publius Ostorius, Publii(?) filius, Scapula (cos. before 47)

Tacitus is the only source for Scapula's governorship, but his account in the Annals is very full.

[omitting Tacitus, Agricola, xiv. 1, Annales, xii. 31, 1–40 (selected passages), given here first in Latin and then in English]

Nothing is known of Scapula's previous career, except that he had been consul. He was presumably son of P. Ostorius Scapula, prefect of Egypt, attested there between 3 and 10/11, and nephew of Q. Ostorius Scapula, one of the first joint prefects of the praetorian guard in 2 BC.⁴⁴ But this reveals nothing about the governor's date of birth. The fact that he died in Britain, 'worn out' (Ann. 12. 39. 3), need not prove that he was an old man. The year of his consulship is not attested.⁴⁵ He presumably arrived in 47, when his predecessor held his ovatio at Rome, so he must have been consul before that year. Syme suggested 45, guessing 'that Scapula . . . . had won merit . . . under Claudius in the campaign of 43', assuming that he was the Ostorius Scapula attested as the consular colleague of P. Suillius Rufus at about this time—but he turned out to be Q. Ostorius Scapula, presumably the governor's brother or cousin.⁴⁶

Previous service in Britain is surely excluded by the expression 'with an army he did not know (Ann. 12. 31. 1). Still, it may be inferred from Tacitus' phrase beginning gnarus (Ann. 12. 31. 2.) that he did have military experience—even if the remark about Plautius and Scapula, 'both outstanding in war' (Agr. 14. 1), simply meant that they performed well in Britain. A possibility for Scapula is command of the Lower German army; or service in it as legionary legate.⁴⁷ He might have been chosen for Britain on merit, but powerful connections perhaps helped. An inscription at Rome names C. Sallustius Utilis and his brother Phosphorus, freedmen of Calvina and sons of P. Ostorius Pharnaces, freedman of Scapula. Syme conjectured that the feeedmen's patroness, Sallustia Calvina, was married to a P. Ostorius Scapula, and that this couple were the governor's parents.⁴⁸ Scapula's son had estates on the borders of Liguria.⁴⁹ But the nomen Ostorius is commonest in regio IV, in the mountainous back country of central Italy; origin there is more plausible, perhaps even at Amiternum, home of the historian Sallust.⁵⁰

Scapula arrived in Britain late in the year . . . .

44. The guard prefect and the prefect of Egypt were long assumed to be the same man, Quintus Ostorius Scapula, until a new papyrus, A. M. Hanson, ZPE 47 (1982), 243 ff., showed that the prefect of Egypt was Publius Scapula, taken to be the guard prefect's brother.

45. PIR ² O 164.

46. Syme, JRS 60 (1970), 28=id., RP ii. 807, based on the then available evidence, Ostorius Scapula as colleague of P. Suillius Rufus. Suillius' colleague is now known to have been Q. Ostorius Scapula: see PIR² O 166. M. Christol and S. Demougin, ZPE 57 (1984), 173 ff., argue that the governor was grandson, not son, of the prefect of Egypt, and consul at the end of Tiberius' reign or under Caligula; likewise that the consul Q. Scapula was grandson of the guard prefect. That date for the governor's consulship is plausible; but in PIR ² O 164 and 166 the postulated extra generation is rejected.

47. Cf. W. Eck, Die Statthalter der germanischen Provinzen (1985), 112 ff.: no consular legate of this army is attested between 28 and 40/41 or between 40/1 and 46. A slight hint that Scapula had served on the Lower Rhine might be squeezed out of his broadcasting the fate of the Sugambri (Tac. Ann. 12. 39. 2, quoted above) as a precedent for what he planned to do to the Silures.

48. Syme, Historia, 17 (1968), 79=id., RP ii. 666, inferred from the name Sallustia Calvina that 'either Sallustius Crispus [the powerful equestrian adviser of Augustus, grand-nephew and adopted son of the historian] or his son Passienus had . . . married a descendant of the nobilis Cn. Domitius Calvinus (cos. 53 BC)'. Hanson, ZPE 47 (1982), 246 ff., takes Calvina to be the wife of the elder P. Scapula, likewise Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (1986), 301. See also PIR ² O 165; and P 146 on C. Sallustius Crispus Pasienus (cos. 27, II ord. 44), taken to be Calvina's adoptive brother.

49. Tac. Ann. 16. 15. 1, cf. CIL v. 6547, Novaria, an Ostorius Eugrafianus. The Ostorii may have produced wine on these estates: CIL v. 8112. 69, x. 6695. 79, amphorae stamped PQSCAPULAE. The family also produced bricks: CIL xi. 8113. 18, stamped de pr(aediis) III Ost(oriorum) Sc(apularum).

50. Hanson, ZPE 47 (1982), 247, proposed Amiternum, the historian's home town, Jerome, Chron. p. 151 Helm. Cf. Schulze, LE 334, citing Opsturii, a variant form, in CIL ix., including one at Amiternum (4187). Apart from Ostorii at Rome, mostly libertine, others are attested by CIL iv. 2508. 27, P. Ostorius, a gladiator at Pompeii; ix. 3174, 3252 (Corfinium); x. 2814 (Puteoli), 4042 (Capua), 5947 (Anagnia); xi. 3989 (Capena); AE 1975. 317–18 (Marruvium, one of them a P. Ostorius).

Based on this, I would go with what Birley suggests, which is that the Quintus Ostorius Scapula who was consul with Publius Suillius Rufus was a different man than Publius Ostorius Scapula, the consular and governor of Britain. I have no objection to keeping Quintus Scapula and Suillius where they are, in 41, per Gallivan. But Publius Scapula was also consul in a different year, perhaps 45 (this is where those fasti might come in handy; did they really say 46, or were they, as you suggest, imperfectly understood until after that was written, and really should have been interpreted as 45?); at any rate, probably closer to his administration of Britain. Perhaps not an old man, despite the description of his being "worn out", but I still think not a young man either, as that just doesn't seem probable, especially if, as PIR, we decline to insert another generation between Publius and his father, probably the prefect of Egypt toward the end of the reign of Augustus. As Birley says, Quintus was probably the governor's brother, or perhaps his cousin (depending on whether he was the son of Publius, governor of Egypt, or the son of Quintus, the praetorian prefect, and of course there's still some uncertainty as to which of them was the father of our Publius Scapula, the governor of Britain). P Aculeius (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

You are right about Q. Ostorius Scapula being the suffect consul in 41, & I should have seen it sooner. One of my sources for the list of consuls, an article Camodeca wrote in 1991 on the waxed tablets of Pompei, gives that exact name -- no restorations needed. So I need to correct that entry. As for Publius, there is sufficient room for him in the 40s: from 39 to 45, there are openings for 19 names & we know of 16 who could be placed in those openings, although 2 could also be put somewhere after 47. We can narrow this space a little. First, there are already 3 candidates to fill the last empty spot in AD 39, so it is unlikely he was suffect in that year. The gaps in 40 & 41 are definitely filled by two of three known pairs of suffects. This leaves openings in 42, 43, 44 & 45 that a P. Ostorius Scapula could be placed. As you said, Publius' history prior to 47 is a blank -- Birley notes he could have been a legionary legate in Lower Germany in any immediately previous year except 40/41. I'm sure there are lots of other gaps a career could be hidden in. (I've been unable to find a source for senatorial offices for the Principate, for some odd reason.) Good work. -- llywrch (talk) 21:52, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Oedipus Rex

FYI, see WP:NOTBROKEN. Maybe save yourself some time? †dismas†|^(talk) 20:15, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Even though I've been editing for years, this is the first time I can recall seeing that. In this case, it might have saved some time, but since the article title itself had changed since most of the links were created, and they were created as they were mainly for the purpose of linking to the older title, it might still have been desirable to change many, perhaps a majority of them, to the new title. As long as I've been editing, I've avoided linking to redirects whenever possible, since they risk becoming double-redirects if the article ever gets moved. But I'll keep this in mind going forward. P Aculeius (talk) 20:30, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you in that I prefer to link to the actual title instead of a redirect. And I don't always strictly follow it, for instance if I'm doing other edits and notice a redirect being used. Have a good day! †dismas†|^(talk) 21:06, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

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Moved to "Historicity" Section, with respect to Plutarch's criticism of the legend

That being said, what is a more common hypothesis about the core and how it was later fictionalized? Somebody founded the City of Rome; it's not like Rome had always existed. Keep in mind that we are talking about the incorporated city as a legal entity, not about the physical presence of every building in the city (hence why that old proverb is irrelevant). The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:51, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm reverting your addition again, for reasons briefly mentioned in the edit summary, and which I'm happy to discuss at greater length here. Your addition to the Romulus article, under "historicity", was:

According to criticisms of the legend by Plutarch and other Ancient Roman authors, the Romulus of the core was the son of a prostitute raised by his biological mother. Although Classical Latin had unambiguous words for "prostitute," the very early Archaic Latin that people of Romulus' era would have spoken only had "Lupa," the word for female wolf. Due to this ambiguity and the embarrassment Romans felt that their founder was a prostitute's son, the founder was later fictionalized as one raised by a wolf. The name "Romulus," however, is an epithet meaning "The Little Man of Rome," implying "The Little Man Who Founded Rome." The historical founder's real name has been lost to history, a loss which is possibly symbolized by the murder of his entirely fictional (not "legendary" in the sense of being exaggerated, but invented from whole cloth) twin brother.

There are several issues with this addition. First of all, it provides no source, other than "Plutarch and other Ancient Roman authors", which isn't very precise. Where does Plutarch say this? What other authors? In his "Life of Romulus", Plutarch only says that "some" people say that there was no she-wolf, but that the term "lupa" might have referred to a woman of loose morals. He doesn't say that this version is true, nor does he say whether other words could have been used, or anything else about the vocabulary of Archaic Latin versus Classical Latin. Plutarch doesn't say anything about the Romans being embarrassed by Romulus' origin. Then again, the term "fictionalized" is practically pejorative here, assuming a motive not in evidence and then passing judgment on it. It's also jarringly modern for describing a mythological dispute.

Your etymology is also highly suspect. "Romulus" certainly appears to be a diminutive formed from "Romus", and I recently read (possibly in Mary Beard's S.P.Q.R.) that "Remus" might have been the original name of the legendary founder. But even if we suppose that "Romus" or "Remus" meant nothing other than someone from Rome, or more accurately, someone after whom Rome must have been named, an English phrase such as "The Little Man of Rome" is highly misleading. Even without the diminutive, "The Man of Rome" sounds like a title, not a name. And "The Little Man" suggests an image of a dwarf. These are connotations that aren't contained in the name "Romulus". I add that the distinction between a diminutive and a derivative suffix was not always very sharp: "Romulus" may have been closer in meaning to "son of Romus" or "descendant of Romus" than to "little Romus".

The final sentence is pretty clearly a synthesis. Plutarch doesn't say that the name of the person the Romans knew as "Romulus" was lost to history. He seems perfectly content to state that Romulus was the founder. We don't know that there was a single founder or moment of foundation, of course. And your references above to incorporation and the city as a legal entity are completely anachronistic in this context; those are modern concepts, not ancient ones. The idea that the murder of Remus was concocted as a symbolic device representing the loss of the true founder's name makes no sense, and would absolutely have to have a credible source. And while modern scholars generally suppose that Remus' murder may have been a convenient explanation for his "disappearance", and that he might never have existed as a separate person, it's still inappropriate to describe what remains purely conjecture as if it were established fact, and describe it in terms that compare the myth to a fraud perpetrated by some unscrupulous huckster who knew perfectly well that it wasn't true.

Lastly, I can't really make head or tails of your post here. You begin with "that being said", which doesn't refer to anything; the following clause also seems to refer to something it doesn't clearly explain. Your assertion that "somebody founded the city of Rome" seems like common sense, but in fact is arguable; if, as archaeologists suggest, there had been scattered settlements on the septimontium since long before the time of Romulus, and and they gradually amalgamated with one another through mutual agreement of the inhabitants or the town elders or simply grew together and stopped behaving as separate villages, was there a "foundation"? Perhaps there was not a particular moment or date or individual responsible for the city's founding. Or maybe "Rome" was the name of one of the settlements, and it was founded by one person at one time. We just don't know. But at the same time, why make this point at all? As far as I recall, the article doesn't assert that Rome wasn't founded by anyone, or that it had always existed; so why argue these points? Even if it did dispute whether there was a person or a time of founding, where is it asserted that the physical presence of every building at Rome is relevant to the occasion of its founding? Your oblique reference to "the old proverb" must, I suppose refer to "Rome wasn't built in a day". I'm just guessing, since it's hard to figure out the point you're making, and you didn't bother to say what you were referring to. But nobody asserted that this proverb had anything to do with the time that Rome was founded, or by whom. So why bring it up at all?

If you're going to contribute to this article, I suggest you review your sources and see precisely what they have to say on the topic, that isn't already said or suggested in the article. You must cite them in a way that would allow readers to consult these sources at some point and see what they have to say. You can't add your own opinions or combine a group of related ideas into one grand theory about the origin of the myth; you can only report what reliable sources (such as credible scholars) have to say about it. And of course, you need to avoid judgmental terms and phrases such as "fictionalized" and "invented from whole cloth" when speaking of myth and legend; these terms simply do not apply. P Aculeius (talk) 04:16, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I admit that I need to be more prompt. The bad habit of thinking I can go back and find full citations (in this case to Plutarch's "Life of Romulus") doesn't work on heavily trafficked Articles. So yes, I do admit fault in that respect.

The "That being said" was supposed to refer to the rather lengthy Section Header.

Your assertion that incorporated cities are not an Ancient concept is absolutely wrong. Alexander wrote decrees proclaiming the foundings of the various cities he created. Classical Latin has separate words for different types of incorporation, such as Urbs for "City" and Oppido for "Town." Even in Antiquity, there existed local entities capable of passing city ordinances.

The City of Rome is called Roma in Latin (and also in Modern Italian, even though that's a little off-topic). The name "Roma," I thought, was taken from the Goddess Roma, although she isn't attested as early as I had assumed.

Even if the City of Rome was a merger of smaller settlements, somebody was the first King of the City-State of Rome once it became a unified monarchy. To say that the real name of this original King has been lost is less of a synthesis and more of an acknowledgement of the more likely etymologies of the name "Roma." The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:18, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

The section header in question seems to be "historicity". It's hardly lengthy. Or are you referring to something completely different? And you still don't seem to understand the problem with your use of "incorporation", which is a modern legal term, and, as they said in law school, "a term of art". The concept of a city as a legal person with its own rights and the ability to act or be acted upon through representatives is thoroughly modern. Incorporation has absolutely nothing to do with "foundation". It refers to the creation of a legal entity that exists quite separately from physical surroundings, inhabitation, or even government, all of which can exist without there being anything resembling incorporation as that term has been applied to cities since the development of that doctrine. I'm not saying that a city didn't exist, that it didn't have leaders, that they didn't pass laws. I'm saying that the concept of "incorporating" a city, literally declaring through law that the city is embodied as a legal person with the capacity to act, sue, and be sued separately from its individual leaders and inhabitants is a complete anachronism as applied to Rome or Roman times.

It doesn't matter what you assume to be the source of the name. No matter how well-reasoned your opinion might be, it's not a reliable source and can't be used in Wikipedia. What makes this and the other things you posted a synthesis isn't that they're not logical. It's that they're your conclusions based on a set of facts, conjectures, and opinions that may or may not be attested individually in reliable sources unknown; conclusions that said sources do not actually state. In this case a whole pile of conjectures, suppositions, and speculations some of which could be true, although it's also entirely possible that none of them are true.

I grant you that, historians generally agreeing that there were kings of Rome, and that at least some of the persons named among those kings probably existed, although their names and the record of their accomplishments may have been heavily embellished in the centuries before their history was first written down, there must logically have been a first king. But we do not know who he was or when he lived; we do not even know whether his name has been lost: it could conceivably even have been Romulus, Romus, Remus, or some other eponymous name; it might have been Numa Pompilius or Titus Tatius; Numitor or Amulius, or almost any of the other figures whose names date to this period of Roman history or the list of Alban kings. In order to state that his name has been lost, you must assume that it could not possibly have been Romulus or a person whose name eventually assumed that form, that it was not one of the other persons recorded among the kings of Rome, or, to take the words literally, any of the other figures from that time whose name has been transmitted, although its original significance is forgotten.

We may take for granted that there was a first king. But we do not know if he was the predecessor of Numa Pompilius (whose existence is also doubted by some, but not all modern scholars), or some earlier figure, perhaps generations earlier in a line of kings from which all of the names are either forgotten or mistaken for other persons in Roman myth. And just as importantly, we do not know that the first king, whoever he may have been and whenever he lived, was the "founder" of Rome. It could easily be that each neighborhood of early Rome had its own leader or leaders, and that they formed a council or league which eventually became a unified city at some time before they decided to elect a king. It could be that each neighborhood sent representatives to the nascent senate, and that the leader of the senate eventually was given the title of king. It may be that some warlord swept in and conquered the city, making himself king. All of this is speculation, and there are doubtless other possibilities that do not involve the predecessor of Numa Pompilius founding a city on the septimontium with himself as king. Absent clear statements by some scholarly and credible source, it cannot be added to an article on Wikipedia. P Aculeius (talk) 02:50, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

This lengthy Section Header: "Moved to "Historicity" Section, with respect to Plutarch's criticism of the legend."

Anyway, I will cite Plutarch immediately whenever I get around to this endeaver again, rather than promising to dig up the citation at some point. That will avoid most of these issues. Plutarch was a renowned scholar in his lifetime, and as well he still is.

Quick side note on the existence of Numa Pompilius: We no longer have an Intermediate Period between the months of December and March. Instead, we have January and February. Given the existence of January and February and the lack of an Intermediate Period, at the very least the greatest accomplishment attributed to Numa (his calendar reform) did take place, even if other aspects of him were exaggerated or fictionalized. (This is more than can be said for the Prophet Moses, for example, given that there were no mass migrations in the Sinai Desert in 1300 BC, or within several centuries before or after that date. He too is possibly exaggerated from a core as opposed to completely made up, under completely different arguments that there was a core, but that is another topic entirely.)

I would also argue that the first King of Rome is by definition "Romulus" even if the subsequent list is inaccurate. (If.) Again, however, I will be prompt in the future and not use Edit Summaries as promissory notes or IOUs for eventual citations. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 03:55, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Assistance with proposed move

I've proposed moving Medical cannabis in the United States to Medical marijuana in the United States. My position is that there is no such thing as "Medical cannabis" in the US. Frankly, it's not much of a thing elsewhere. The only reason for the current title is that at some point, for what are no doubt reasonable motives, all pages on WP use cannabis per MOS:CONSISTENCY. To me, arguing for the move is MOS:JARGON, WP:TITLEVAR, WP:COMMONNAME, MOS:COMMONALITY, MOS:STRONGNAT, & WP:IGNORE. It may not be in your wheelhouse, but if you could point me toward any useful essays, policies or discussions, or if you'd like to comment or vote, it would be much appreciated.

I do not assume your support. Agree or disagree, your involvement would be most appreciated. Thanks Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 02:40, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

marcus porcius cato(father of uticensis)

I read the article about the father of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis. It states that upon the death of Cato she married Quintus Servilius Caepio. I thought it was the other way round with QSC divorcing her for adultery with MPC.

Apologies for brevity, I am a new signup and I am on a mobile phone.

Thanks Stanley3141 (talk) 21:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

No ancient source clearly states whether Cato or Caepio came first, and different modern authorities interpret the evidence differently. The idea that Caepio divorced Livia due to adultery with Cato is merely a conjecture to explain how she could have married Cato while Caepio was still alive, but it relies on the premise that Caepio was her first husband. On the other hand, Cato the Younger was raised in Caepio's household, which would make much more sense if Caepio were his stepfather. On the whole, that seems to be the more logical interpretation, so that's how the article is written. However, there's a footnote that explains the alternative possibility. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of evidence either way. P Aculeius (talk) 01:10, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for poking this hornet's nest again. I've edited the page for Marcus Livius Drusus (tr.pl. 91) extensively. There, I settled on the other choice: that Livia Drusa married Caepio first, then Cato. In order to avoid confusion for any readers clicking between the articles, I think we ought to bring the information into line. I have three main points:

1.) Cato Uticensis was not raised in Caepio's household, but in Livius Drusus' (see Plutarch, Cato the Younger 1.1), contra your comment above. As a result, I'm not quite sure it is still the 'logical interpretation' for Caepio to be the kindly stepfather / ergo second husband, as you argue above.

2.) It is highly likely that Servilia, Caepio and Livia's first child, was born before 100 BC, judging by the probable birth year (c.85 BC) of her son, Brutus the Conspirator (this is based on the ages Brutus likely held his magistracies: see the Brill's New Pauly pages for Livia, Servilia, and Brutus, all of which take this view). This means, of course, that Caepio married Livia before 100 BC.

3.) On a similar line, Cato Uticensis was likely born in 95 BC, based on the ages he probably held his magistracies (again, see Brill's New Pauly encyclopaedia page on Cato Uticensis). This clearly requires Cato Snr. to be Livia's second husband.

Considering these three factors, I reckon Ernst Badian is probably right ('Caepio and Norbanus: Notes on the Decade 100-90 BC', pp.325-327) to reconstruct the following chronology:

* pre-100 BC: Caepio and Livia marry.

* c.101 or 100 BC: Livia gives birth to Servilia .

* c.98 BC: Livia gives birth to Caepio Jnr.

* 97 or 96 BC: Caepio and Livia divorce, allegedly because of an argument between Livius Drusus and Caepio over a ring (see Pliny NH, 33.20)

* c.96 BC Livia marries Cato Snr.

* 95 BC: Livia gives birth to Cato Uticensis.

* c.94 BC: Cato Snr. dies, leaving Servilia, Caepio Jnr., and Cato Uticensis in the care of Livius Drusus (as per Plutarch).

I don't have particularly strong feelings about this, and will gladly defer to your auctoritas if you think differently. I only comment that the above option seems to be far more prominent in scholarly literature (e.g. as well as Badian and the various Brill's New Pauly articles, I've found it preferred by Munzer and Gruen). Perhaps we should follow this line too, so that Wikipedia is not at variance with (what seems to be) the dominant historiographical opinion?

Best, Drivingrevilo (talk) 18:32, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree, the fact that Servilia must have been older than her brother Marcus is persuasive. Revised the article to reflect that this is the more likely scenario based on chronology, and placed the alternative school of thought in a footnote. P Aculeius (talk) 22:29, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Need sources?

I noticed that you're waiting on approval for access to JSTOR at the Wikipedia Library. JSTOR currently has a waitlist due to lack of available accounts. In the meantime, the Resource Exchange can help! We connect content creators with reliable sources. If you need a specific article or passage from a book that you don't have access to, drop by and leave a request. We're happy to help you access paywalled and print sources to the extent allowable by copyright law. Please let me know if you have any questions. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:17, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Re: Elizabeth Gray vs. Mrs. Hamilton Gray

The problem with referring to her as Mrs. Hamilton is that it is an obsolescent usage; I haven't heard any woman refer to herself by her husband's name in decades. Which means it's very clear that this is an old authority -- which might mean this source is seen as unreliable, even if it isn't. (Although I'd be reluctant to use an authority that is almost 200 years old.) Moreover, it could be considered sexist to refer to a woman by her husband's name, which would lead to Yet Another tedious edit war on Wikipedia, waste everyone's time, & might force you to accept the edit anyway. So I'd like you to reconsider that reversion. -- llywrch (talk) 21:57, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I usually go with what the author citing it uses, unless I've already got a citation format for a particular source. In this case, the article citing it used, "Mrs. Hamilton Gray", and I had to search for quite a while to find out who she was and whether to cite her at all. There's no Wikipedia article; every possible person seems to be somebody else. When I was satisfied that it was a good source, I cited it under the name that appears on the cover and title page: "Mrs. Hamilton Gray". Her full name is given in the bibliography. But if someone searches for her on the internet, the best way is under "Mrs. Hamilton Gray"; that's much more likely to produce the right work. It's both the name by which she's best known, and the name by which she chose to be known, so quaint or not, it seems like the best way to cite her. P Aculeius (talk) 00:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Maria (gens)

Bona Dies, magister.

I'm translating in Italian the page about the gens Maria. There is a little problem: there is a "Broughton" in the references but the full name is not indicated. Is he Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton? Thanks for an answer. --Carlo Morino aka zi' Carlo 08:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed it is, but I'm not sure why he was missing from the bibliography. I've corrected it now, with a full bibliographic citation. Apologies for the omission; thank you for bringing it to my attention. Vale, P Aculeius (talk) 13:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Gratiam tibi ago. Vale. --Carlo Morino aka zi' Carlo 09:58, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

p.s. the triumvir monetalis are also in: Michael H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, Cambridge, 1974.

Cr. 148 - pp. 218-219 for Quintus Marius: he struck a 6 pieces full series of AE coins fron As to uncia

Cr. 378 - pp. 391-394 for Marius Capito: he struck denarii serrati. More than one hundred variations are known.

s. c:Category:Gens Maria

-- Carolvs Civis Romanvs Optimo Ivre :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlomorino (talk • contribs) 10:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Question about Roman names

I've got a random question about Roman names, and I figure you might be the person around here to ask. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius—would you happen to know if "Manlius" is a praenomen or something else (the article notes that it denotes "lineage from the Manlii Torquati of the Republic")? I know that "Anicius" is the gens name, and I'm assuming "Boëthius" is the cognomen. "Severinus" was given to him "in honour of Severinus of Noricum" according to the article, so I assume it functioned like another cognomen? Any help would be great, thanks!--Gen. Quon (Talk) 18:01, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, well, that's a tricky one. You know about the tria nomina of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen, but in Imperial times this system could become much more complex, at least among the Roman aristocracy. Frequently the maternal grandfather's full nomenclature would be prefixed, suffixed, or just mixed in to the normal paternal name. If this happened for multiple generations, names could get quite long, and often only the most important — or impressive — names were kept for everyday use. And not necessarily in any particular order!

Since his paternal ancestors seem to have borne "Anicius", that's probably what we normally think of as the nomen. "Manlius" may have come in through his mother's side. But it could also have been inherited from an earlier paternal ancestor. Either way, this "second nomen" indicates at least a putative descent from the Manlii, although whether he was descended from the Manlii Torquati I can't tell from the name alone (perhaps, I'm not looking at examples of people who are thought to have been his recent ancestors ATM). Unless there was a Manlius Torquatus living at some point near when he might have been born (i.e. within a generation or two), I would consider it speculative unless some ancient source specifically states that he or his family claimed descent from the Torquati.

The way the gens articles were set up, anyone who could possibly have been in a gens due to the nomen is included, even if it occurs only due to adoption or in a collection of nomina probably belonging to female lines. And that might be just as well, since even if Boëthius wasn't technically a Manlius, someone might miss the possible connection if he weren't listed. I don't think he was strictly a member of the Manlian gens, but he was probably descended from it, and we can't really be sure. Severinus and Boëthius are both cognomina; even in Republican times multiple cognomina were used in some aristocratic families. If he had a praenomen, it's not mentioned in any known sources. But after the mid-fourth century, praenomina begin to vanish even among the old Roman aristocracy. So it could well be that he didn't have one. Hardly any individuals known to have borne praenomina lived at this late period, although the number who actually were given them may have been higher. Hope this helps you figure out the name! P Aculeius (talk) 21:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes it does! Thank you so much for your help. Early Roman names sort of make sense, but once we get past AD 200 or so, it all just starts to confuse me. I really appreciate your thorough response.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 14:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Sympathy - at least

I just saw your question at WT:MOS and wanted to offer support. I'm no grammarian who can give a good answer to your question, but I've experienced edits of that kind and shared your frustration. The word choice I made sounds better to my ear, but someone else, thinking they are improving it, sometimes systematically, chooses something which sounds wrong or implies something else. I've let go of trying to get things just right when there's still so much to do. Keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  04:07, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I appreciated your comment when I first saw it, but I appreciate it all the more now that I've seen what kind of reply I got. Not only did nobody agree with my position, but most of those posting were quite disparaging, and some downright insulting! I think I even got accused of violating Wikipedia policy by arguing my point . . . It's clear that it was a mistake on my part to ask in the first place, but I didn't realize how much some contributors want you to feel bad about choices they disagree with. Well, enough sour grapes from me. I got a fairly sympathetic treatment from one apparently clear-headed person, even though she didn't agree with my point, and that gave me just enough courage to walk away. Thanks again for your vote of support too! P Aculeius (talk) 23:05, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I monitor WT:MOS regularly and sometimes participate when my hubris overrules my good sense. Too often it is not a nice place. Respectfully, "at" sounds wrong to my ear too, but I understand the distinction you were trying to make. I work with insect species, and many of them are named after Roman gens, so I have some contact with that. Regardless, do keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:17, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest

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Marcus/Lucius Domitius Calvinus

Hi, P Aculeius! If you don't mind, I'd like to hear your opinion on something.

In Domitia (gens) there are two entries for praetors in 80 BC, one Marcus Domitius Calvinus and another Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, proconsul in Hispania Citerior. I think they're both the same person, presented in Marcus Domitius Calvinus (praetor 80 BC) (that includes an explanation for both praenomens). The problem is the identification of Lucius as one of the Ahenobarbi in the list but completely absent in the article. What do you think? Thank you in advance. José Luiz ^talk 00:17, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree, after reviewing the sources, I think what's happened is that some scholars have inferred from the praenomen Lucius that he had to be an Ahenobarbus, rather than a Calvinus. They do seem to be the same person, and I don't see any particular reason to leave him under the Ahenobarbi, except as a partial entry noting that he's probably the same person as Calvinus. The DGRBM lists him as Ahenobarbus (No. 15), but doesn't show where he fits into the stemma, as if he was added as an afterthought, perhaps after hesitating between there and the Calvini. The Calvini don't have a stemma, but he would logically be the father of the consul Gnaeus, based on the latter's filiation. So he doesn't really seem to fit into the Ahenobarbi, and that makes it seem likely that Lucius is a mistake in Plutarch and Eutropius. Fixed it in the Domitia page. P Aculeius (talk) 01:14, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! José Luiz ^talk 15:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

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