Request for comment on Wikipedia article on the classics journal LustrumEdit
Latest comment: 16 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, I started and DYK'd the article Lustrum (journal) about the classics review journal, but I am looking for some outside perspective when it comes to this journal's notability and this article's use of citations. This article is not (yet?) AfD'd but any classicists' advice on what might improve this article or thoughts on notability is welcome in on its talk page: Talk:Lustrum (journal). Thank you very much for your time and any feedback which might help remove the "cleanup" tag! Umimmak (talk) 23:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Latest comment: 6 days ago7 comments5 people in discussion
Is it desirable to describe Augustus' predecessor as "Position established" or similar (eg "reign established"), or Constantine XI Palaiologos' successor as "position abolished" or similar (eg "reign abolished"). There's been some back-and forth editing of infobox fields there and at Romulus Augustulus and Julius Nepos, without any talk page discussion. Maybe discussion here instead would better establish consensus. Pinging Sleyece, Tintero21, NormalRichard. NebY (talk) 17:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would not include "position established" for Augustus. There's a somewhat lively scholarly debate on the topic which focuses on continuities and places the formation of such an office later. Eg A E Cooley, "From the Augustan principate to the invention of the age of Augustus", JRS 109 (2019) pp 71–87; Drinkwater "The principate – lifebelt or millstone around the neck of the empire?" in Crises and the Roman empire (Brill, 2007) pp 67f. We make Augustus the first emperor for teleological reasons and not because he would have necessarily been seen in his time as having created such an office. Ifly6 (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't think a "position abolished" (or similar) would fit Constantine XI either, since there was no official "abolition" of the office like, let's say, France. It just takes space. Tintero21 (talk) 18:36, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've never seen anything similar to "reign established / abolished" in literature, monarchs' infoboxes almost always say something like "monarchy" or "state abolished". Tintero21 (talk) 18:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
These seem like strange and unusual ways to describe events—a formality that nobody had thought of at the time, for which there is no evidence of deliberate intention, and which took no distinct form separate from the events that established/disestablished them. This isn't how these are usually described, so I don't think Wikipedia is the right place to do it now. P Aculeius (talk) 23:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hey, I'm not married to my system of "reign abolished" or whatever, but I think for the continuance of the reign from Constantine XI back to Augustus, that "position abolished" is not really Encyclopedic enough. I also think the current standard where there is just nothing on Augustus and CXI to indicate the start and end of such an endearing reign of royalty is not very Encyclopedic. -- Sleyece (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It's not usual to speak of a reign as continuing in that manner; instead, recently, Queen Elizabeth II's reign ended when she died and Charles III's reign began. It is also arguable to what extent there was continuity between Augustus and Constantine XI, so tendentious to modify the use of infobox parameters to express one. As for whether it's encyclopedic to not make such a statement in an infobox, not only is it entirely appropriate and a sufficient statement to simply leave predecessor and successor unstated if there wasn't one, per Wittgenstein, but also infoboxes themselves are not encyclopedic (cf the Encyclopédie, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Chambers's Encyclopaedia, etc). NebY (talk) 17:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Can anyone help me out with a second edition (pdf) of:
Caligula
The Corruption of Power
By Anthony A. Barrett, 1989
I already have a pdf of the first edition but apparently much of it has been substantially revised, updated and corrected since then. Haploidavey (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've never heard of a tribus Atia before; as far as I recall, the articles on Roman tribes in classical encyclopedias don't mention the creation of any others once the number thirty-five had been reached under the Republic. Is there a source that specifically says that others were established? The Atia gens was certainly Roman, so it seems improbable that a voting tribe named after them would be Greek. It could be that the word tribus is used in its generic sense to describe a homonymous group in Greece, without having the technical meaning assigned to the word at Rome.
If, as the discussion at Atia (mother of Augustus) suggests—if I'm not misreading it—the basis for such a tribe is purely epigraphic, how clear is the epigraphic evidence? Even inscriptions that include voting tribes don't usually state that they're tribus (note, 4th declension feminine, so nominative singular and plural are both tribus), so it would be unusual to see the word used in its legal sense in epigraphy, although it might occur in a longer inscription. It could have been used thusly by mistake, or metaphorically speaking, so if it occurs only in epigraphy, there had better be a fair number of independent examples. Could you elaborate on the case for a tribus Atia? P Aculeius (talk) 13:07, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Similar tribes have been mentioned in StarTrekker's edits for Publius Vatinius (see discussion) and Agrippa. Taking ST at good faith I wouldn't dismiss them as fictitious or misunderstandings. I think it's more likely they refer to phylai[1] given the example of Hadrianus at Athens. This somewhat older PDF discusses on page 23 some ten Corinthian tribes (among them Atia, Agrippia, Livia, and Vatinia) which operated within the municipal government much in the same way colonies or states many times model their constitutions on the metropole's (eg US states implementing US-style presidential government; former British colonies adopting Westminster style parliaments).[2] As a separate note I think this rather neat that this mini-Roman republic continued functioning until the fourth century. I wouldn't, however, think them to be Roman tribes. Ifly6 (talk) 13:50, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, though as Corinth was a newly-minted Roman colony (est 44 BC), I would imagine they set up their own tribus system rather than recreating old Corinthian phylai and adding to them. NebY (talk) 14:24, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That makes sense: they're local tribes, an entirely different political structure, like the local senates or magistrates in places other than Rome. Although if the inhabitants were Roman citizens, wouldn't they still have been enrolled in one of the thirty-five tribes? Or was that system not extended to colonia at this period of time? P Aculeius (talk) 15:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Re NebY, I don't mean to say they are identical to the phylai just that they serve a similar role. Re Aculeius, by the imperial period one could have multiple citizenship (eg Paul); in Cicero's day, Italian towns did not recognise multiple citizenships but Greek or Hellenistic towns did.[3] Presumably a Roman citizen was still enrolled in tribes but by the imperial period they had lost their political relevance anyway. Regardless, re the tribes Atia, Agrippia, Livia, and Vatinia, I think if we talk about them they should (I would go so far as "must") have jurisdictional disambiguation (eg tribe of Corinth or municipality XYZ) because they are so obscure. Ifly6 (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This is wonderfully informative, thank you all so much.★Trekker (talk) 16:30, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
