Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 44

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Archive 45

Lycurgus (lawgiver) and propagandistic content

This article really needs work. It needs critical appraisal, supported by a balanced, representative set of sources, by historians more modern than Plutarch. It currently contains text like the following uncited paragraph:

Some further refinements of the Spartan constitution came after Lycurgus. It turned out that sometimes the public speakers would pervert the sense of propositions and thus cause the people to vote foolishly, so the Gerousia reserved the right to dissolve the assembly if they saw this happening.

How wise and benevolent and utterly proof against conflicts of interest. And, for instance, it says that the helots were attached to the land, but that's about all. It does not say how many they were or how they lived or were ruled. So the vast majority of the people who lived under laws attributed to Lycurgus rate barely a passing mention.

I have no expertise in this area, but still know enough to know that this article is problematic. Some other articles on Sparta seem to have some similar problems; for instance, helots has uncited content on eugenics. HLHJ (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

probably most of the article should be nuked and stubified. while Plutarch is definitely going to need to be cited in the article, he shouldn't be considered a secondary source for, well, anything. so this is all WP:OR. it would be nice to have a policy that nothing before the 19th century should ever count as a secondary source for our purposes but I'm not holding my breath with this crowd... Psychastes (talk) 00:42, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I was partially wondering if this was content from the DGRBM but no, it seems even that article is in better shape than this one. Still well over a century old, and *far* less critical of reports of the Spartan constitution than I've ever seen a modern historian be, though. So probably still better to stubify this article than use the DGRBM. Psychastes (talk) 01:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Psychastes. I agree Plutarch counts as a primary source. Modern historians will, I'm sure, discuss his statements on Spartans, and I have no objection to such discussion being covered in the article. I seem to recall some Classical authors were a bit skeptical of the value of Plutarch as a source, too. If you'd like to nuke and stubify, go ahead.

Since the broader problem of panegyric accounts of Sparta seem to have links with 20th-century fascism (see, for instance, Agoge#19th – 21st centuries), I think I will also ping K.e.coffman, who has done a lot of good work in that area. HLHJ (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Stubify done. I've kept the first couple sentences. Probably some small amount of the info I removed could be added back, but it's all tangled up with uncritical citations of ancient authors so I erred on the side of not having wrong information. Also, agreed that the links to fascism make this the sort of misinformation that should be removed with more enthusiasm. Psychastes (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I've actually cut a bit more, since I'm not sure if his reforms were military-oriented or not, and I know there is a serious historical arguement the Spartan constitution was not actually effective at promoting equality (even just among the tiny minority of Spartiates), military fitness (as measured by, say, military skills or performance), or even austerity (among Spartiates). I've also edited the template message.[1] HLHJ (talk) 02:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

You've taken a C-class Level 4 Vital article that was twenty years old with over 800 edits, and reduced it to four sentences with a single source. This was undertaken in the course of a few minutes, without any prior discussion on the article's talk page, or any involvement by any of the more active editors in this WikiProject. This has to be the most extreme example of its kind that I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

So the article cited Plutarch: it also cited a lot of fairly well-regarded modern historians, now consigned to the dustbin (I'm no expert either, but I recognize J. B. Bury, N. G. L. Hammond, and Michael Grant; I'm currently reading one of Grant's books, though not the one that was cited). The remedy for uncritical statements is to substitute more critical ones, or place them in context; not to delete everything so that there's no information left. You said that the DGRBM article was in better shape than this one; that's not hard to believe, since those articles were written by the finest classical scholars of their day, and relatively little that is new can have been "discovered" about Lycurgus since that time, although certainly attitudes toward history have changed (and of course that has to be accounted for). But you could do a lot worse than cite the DGRBM; in fact, you have: now readers searching for information on Lycurgus will find nothing.

WP:TNT is supposed to be used only when there is nothing worth saving in an article, and that's a heck of a conclusion to reach given the number of experienced editors who've contributed to it over the last two decades. TNT is just another form of deletion, and deletion, as is rightly said, is not cleanup. One of you claims to have no expertise on the subject, and neither of you seem to have any prior involvement with the article. Do either of you intend to rewrite it from scratch, or are you just planning to leave it a pile of rubble in the hopes that someone else will come along and write something? I certainly wouldn't want to make the effort, given what was just done to the article. I realize that just voicing this opinion will probably result in some very angry replies. But I'd like to hear from other members of this project: was this "stubification" a good idea, and was this the right way to go about it? P Aculeius (talk) 05:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

In my view, a (real) discussion should have been had. A rewrite should have been done. The rewrite then should have replaced the original text. I wouldn't oppose reverting stubification; but at the same time I'm unconvinced that the original text had much of any value. I have no idea why WP:TNT is at all relevant; that, and WP:TNTTNT, relate to real deletions – those purge page history – and not stubifications. Ifly6 (talk) 05:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

If we had to rewrite every bad article on this project before removing a bunch of bunk, we'd never get anything done. Deleting most of the content in a poorly researched article full of WP:OR encourages people to add material in a collaborative project, one person pledging to go off on their own and rewrite the article results in no changes to the actual article people read until they get around to finishing it (which, let's be honest, most of the time is "never") Psychastes (talk) 16:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Who are we? Ifly6 (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

(and FWIW I'm similarly confused about the invocation of WP:TNT. the content is all still there in the page history, if there's anything worth scavenging from there, which there probably is, it can just be copied from a prior version) Psychastes (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

This isn't an important point, and I don't intend to argue it, but WP:TNT is effectively what was done here. That essay doesn't say that it refers to the deletion of the entire article, although that's one way to implement it; it also refers to deleting the contents, and keeping the title, and subsequently it mentions "stubifying". Since practically everything in the article was in fact deleted, including perfectly good sources besides Plutarch (although as everyone here seems to admit, Plutarch does need to be cited alongside what modern writers say about him), the article was pretty much "blown up" (in fact, the discussion above expressly refers to "nuking" it; I don't see any productive reason to quibble over the type of explosive used). P Aculeius (talk) 18:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Plutarch is not "well-regarded" among modern historians. Plutarch is a primary source, and interpreting primary source data is a job for historians. not for wikipedia editors. it's vaguely concerning that you don't seem to grasp this. Psychastes (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

PA said So the article cited Plutarch: it also cited a lot of fairly well-regarded modern historians, now consigned to the dustbin. Ifly6 (talk) 16:49, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I started some work on a rewrite some time ago here: User:Ifly6/Lycurgus (lawgiver). Many other projects intervened (and I realised I like Roman history much more than Greek). This partial deletion is tough medicine indeed; I don't find it particularly objectionable given that the original article was rubbish but a replacement should (probably must) be worked on promptly. However, I do find the mere minutes-long discussion here objectionable. Practically no time was given for basically anyone to weigh in. Ifly6 (talk) 05:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I made a WP:BOLD edit. you're certainly welcome to revert it per WP:BRD, but whining about how your permission wasn't granted before someone made a change to a page sounds a whole lot like WP:OWN. Psychastes (talk) 15:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Different WikiProjects have different cultures; this one is more dicussion-oriented than most. That stubifying an article and then refusing(?) to contribute to it irks people shouldn't be surprising. Calling it whining and ownership is unnecessarily inflammatory. Ifly6 (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether completely unnecessarily personalising a discussion by characterising people who disagree with you as whining is more or less unhelpful than characterising somebody not reverting you as WP:OWNERSHIP, but I am sure that neither is productive. Let's not. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

On the actual content, I largely agree with Ifly6. The Lycurgus article wasn't great; the stubbing it was probably overly aggressive; given that a discussion had been opened here the issue probably wasn't so urgent that it couldn't wait for some people to actually weigh in. Glancing at Ifly's draft it doesn't have the reliance on ancient sources of the previous text; I'm not seeing any obvious issues with what's written there and it's clearly more comprehensive than the current stub. Does anyone have any issues with promoting that to mainspace? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It's hugely incomplete and mostly focuses on historicity with almost nothing on what the figure is alleged to have done. I suppose it could be a starting point for a new article but an {{under construction}} is definitely needed. Ifly6 (talk) 17:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but it's less hugely incomplete than the four sentences we have currently! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, I've been putting some effort into it today (fortunately it's been a very slow day at work). I don't mind others editing the draft I have up already. Though I would probably want someone to take a look at it before moving the text over the existing now-stub. Substantial portions remain unfinished. Ifly6 (talk) 01:21, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Ifly6's draft looks much better than the old article, and I strongly support moving it into the mainspace. It covers pretty much all the points the old article did (attributed educational reforms aside), and it does so in a much more balanced way, with much better sourcing, and proper critical analysis of the ancient sources. I'm sure Ifly6 sees all the shortcomings, but it is already a vast improvement.

So don't want to give the impression that I am in any way unhappy with this outcome, but I apologize for the offense given by the speed of the discussion. Stubifying wasn't exactly urgent, as recent versions were similar, until you go back about a decade ago, when the "Lycurgus" article was much better. While it was still rather Plutarch-centric, it repeatedly drew attention to the fact, and included caveats like "Again, this section is taken mainly from Plutarch, a writer in Greek in the Roman period, and should not be taken as offering verifiable facts about Lycurgus' life, so much as thoughts of a later age about Spartan institutions and government." It wasn't anywhere near as good as Ifly6's current draft version, but it was more useful that the recent or current version.

The Great Rhetra article is strongly related in topic, and covers the writtenness or otherwise of Spartan constitutions and laws. I'm not sure I understand how it relates to the "Political and military" section of Ifly6's draft, which seems to refer to a single written text, preserved in fragments.

If the old article's "Depictions" section is to be preserved, it might make sense to put it in a into a separate List of depictions of Lycurgus article, and merge in Lycurgus of Sparta (David), an article cited to a single source which seems to be a blog post (and actually has an extensive gallery of artistic depictions of Lycurgus, together with a text retelling Plutarch).

Categorizing Spartans by century, and people by birth and death centuries, presents some difficulties for categorizing this article. Suggestions?

Could we discuss a few more articles? Sparta#Notable ancient Spartans lists a number of other biographies, many with similar problems. There are also problems in other articles at Template:Ancient Sparta; for instance, the lede description of Crypteia would fit many universities pretty well, and its body discussion of what the Crypteria was names three 18-hundreds historians, with their opinions decribed in the present tense.

What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history? HLHJ (talk) 03:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Re Great Rhetra. That article confuses the Great Rhetra with the other rhetras. (The tradition calls them this because they're supposedly divinely inspired from the Pythia.) The former alone is the Spartan constitution. There are supposedly three other rhetras: (1) that laws should never be written, (2) that houses should be built by axes and saws alone, and (3) that Sparta should never fight the same foe over and over again so not to teach them how to fight. *insert chuckles here* See Plut. Lyc. 13 cited by OCD Online. Ifly6 (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh no, you broke the first rhetra! And I'm sure I've broken the second. No container for the plaster, no stick to stir it, no rock for a hammer, no chisel to shape a mortise, no way to bore a hole for a trunnel? This seems like a rule made by people who had never actually built a house (though Wikisource:Plutarch's Lives (Clough)/Life of Lycurgus restricts the rule to ceilings and the surface finishing of gates and doors, which seems more managable). The third... "if you fight an enemy long and repeatedly, you may lose" seems like a very unfalsifiable oracle.

Thanks for the clarification. HLHJ (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Lycurgus is just as far outside my area of expertise as it is that of the people who deleted the entire thing, along with the work of everyone who ever contributed to it. But anything would be an improvement over what there is now. If reverting it and working on cleaning up each section is not an option for the people who plan to work on it, then perhaps a viable strategy would be to look over the last stable version of the article, finding sections or topics that need to be covered in the new version, and working on rebuilding them one section at a time, saving anything useful from the old version and then building on it.

I'm tempted to pitch in, but I don't want to make things worse if there are people like yourself who have considerably more knowledge of the field and who plan to do some of this. It's just my basic strategy: use the most comprehensive scholarly article on the subject as a starting point, then build on it using other sources and what they have to say, including what the Greeks themselves had to say, and what standard modern reference works say about that. But you already know how to do this, so I won't harp on the subject! P Aculeius (talk) 18:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I was intending to come back and restore-with-rewrite the "Historicity" section, which I think contained the most decent refs, but Rotideypoc41352 did it first; it's currently part of the mainspace article. I've copied over some material from the old article into the draft, for Ifly6 to retain or remove as they see fit (one of the sources is 19th-cen, though used for a very basic claim). Is there is any other content anyone would like to salvage, from any old version of the article? The word pelanors is cited to a source which may be solid, but we don't have much solid content on the topic, and I'm not entirely clear that pelanors actually existed. Since the new draft is far better, and being made with more expertise than I can bring to bear, I don't want to obtrude with less-informed edits, but I'm happy to do some tidying-up as needed. HLHJ (talk) 22:51, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

No objections here, that certainly looks better than a stub. Psychastes (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

What to do about obsolete or original research articles

@HLHJ: Re What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history? There have been discussions on this board on this topic before that all do not end up with any kind of consensus. Relevant threads, among others, include:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 41#Guides extension
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 41#User ignoring WP:ERA at Pompey (See my comments starting with Having read the original version of the article...)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 40#Caligula

There are usually two prior disputes. The first one is whether something like Plutarch is or is not a primary source. The people who think Plutarch is a secondary source rather obviously never read classics. The second is whether we should write, or contribute to, articles today based solely on primary sources. I think policies etc say no.

What you have brought is very new. Before, we were having discussions about whether it is acceptable to just overwrite an WP:OR and WP:OLDSOURCES article. Now we're having discussions about whether we should just stubify them. That's a massive shift in the Overton window. Ifly6 (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Having introduced the topic... I'm not comfortable with this just-stubify approach. At the same time, I accept that having bad content is probably worse than having no content. If we want to do things quickly we also cannot really wait for time-consuming in-depth rewrites. I've done a number of these; each one can take weeks. Rewrites of lower quality based on acceptable academic sources (rather than bad popular press or ancient secondary sources) should probably be preferred. If you want to do this, this is not something only one person can do.

Re Could we discuss a few more articles? Sparta#Notable ancient Spartans lists a number of other biographies, many with similar problems. There is, very simply, an insufficient number of editors who can (at all promptly) rewrite all those articles. We have to settle for third-best, which is probably a slow series of rewrites in order of importance. Your help in doing the work itself would definitely be appreciated. Ifly6 (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the links to the local discussion history, Ifly6. I share your unease. I was a bit startled by the proposal to stubify, but not as startled as people familiar with this Wikiproject, because I have seen similar approaches to similarly OR articles on other projects. When I thought it over, I came to the conclusion that I didn't really have a good reason to oppose stubification. I did not agree to stubification because it was inadequately cited (the editing community seems to be forgetting this, but uncited content is perfectly okay for anything except a WP:BLP, which this isn't). I agreed because most of the content was so poor that it was actively misleading, and it honestly seemed easier to start from a stub and re-introduce the salvagable sentences.

So I think source quality is a related but separate issue here (and I've added a section accordingly). The main problem is people unfamiliar with Classics writing really bad content (often because they vastly overestimate their expertise; it may not be co-incidence that Randy in Boise is an amateur Classicist). I don't think this is in dispute; no-one seems to have been of the opinion that the Lycurgus article was just fine and contained no problematic content, nor that such problems are restricted to that article.

The controversy around the wholesale deletion of the bad content seems to be on where the borders of acceptability lie; I think we probably all agree that no content is better than sufficiently bad content, not least because it discourages people from writing good content.

Policy is that we should remove content that cannot be verified by the balance of reliable sources, which generally means statements that are wrong. We are also supposed to flag content we think is unverifiable, and otherwise give other editors time to verify it. A decade is obviously too much time. Minutes is too short.

I, too, do in-depth rewrites, and indeed doing a decent job takes time. If I were familiar with the topic, I could write a decent overview quickly, but if I have to actually represent the balance of reliable sources, I have the read and understand them first. I'd love to fix every article on Wikipedia that is wrong, but I can't, and it also makes more sense for me to work on topics where I have some background expertise, or at least a strong interest.

So I'm asking "What should, generally, be done about Classical articles which are largely original research (usually uncritical and unbalanced), or seriously outdated history?". Specifically, what should I do when I come across an article which has really obviously problematic content of this type, and I don't have the time, background, or will to rewrite it entirely? What would help the encyclopedia most? I am completely open to suggestions.

I'll throw out a few suggestions of my own. Would an essay on the specific pitfalls of citing Classical sources be useful? We could link to it from an edit warning template given to editors who are blundering through those pits. Is there a more specific article template than the one I slapped on Lycurgus? Would removing the least-salvagable content a week or so after adding such a template be acceptable, at least in cases where it leaves more than a stub? Should digging throught he history to find a better version be part of the proceedure? HLHJ (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Would an essay on the specific pitfalls of citing Classical sources be useful? Many people over the years have intoned against writing primary-source-based articles. (I am among them: 1, 2.) I doubt that consensus can be formed but an essay is not consensus. It would probably fall into {{WikiProject content advice}}. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

There is the problem that many recent historical sources are outrageously expensive. There are also many topics where the sum total of sources is a few hundred words, and just quoting a translation of them in the article vastly illuminates the arguments of modern historians (who of course assume that every reader has the sources memorized); an old professional PD translation is often perfectly suitable, especially in the context of modern commentary. I'll read through some more of the arguments and have a further think about it.

We already have some consensus for Classics-specific applications of general rules, like "don't assume that Augustus is a neutral, unbiassed source for his own reforms". But just an essay could get new editors thinking about the sort of issues Classical historians breathe; informed disagreement would be a huge improvement over unthinking ignorance. HLHJ (talk) 03:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Most of the newer sources are available via Wikipedia Library. OCD's move online and the work that has followed that has also created a lot of publicly accessible high-quality overview articles that are very valuable. Ifly6 (talk) 23:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Is there a more specific article template than the one I slapped on Lycurgus? The usual template to throw on to articles that overuse primary sources is {{primary sources}}. I've thrown it on articles I don't really have any intent to rewrite. I don't think anyone is going through and rewriting (or doing anything to) articles so tagged. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

We could make a specific Template:Classical primary sources or Template:Ancient primary sources or some such, pointing at a rough primer to the isssues. I think we could get consensus that there are things people need to be aware of when citing Classical sources. But this sounds like a possible later step, if warranted. HLHJ (talk) 03:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The standard {{primary sources}} template looks rather complicated. You might want to talk to someone who knows how this kind of coding works. Ifly6 (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Would removing the least-salvagable content a week or so after adding such a template be acceptable, at least in cases where it leaves more than a stub? It would depend on the content. If what's is being cited is Ciceronean letters describing what Cicero thought of some topic, I don't see any immediate need. If what's being cited is the fantasy about the Alban lake's supernatural rise during the ten year siege of Veii and the prose describes it all as truth, I would remove it immediately. Ifly6 (talk) 05:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's about how I would judge it. Unfortunatly, I'm likely to be absent for a bit now, but thank you very much for rewriting Lycurgus. I think it's now better than our article on Sparta. HLHJ (talk) 05:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

On sources which are superceeded or require expert interpretation

I think that arguing over whether Plutarch is a primary or secondary source is maybe a bit moot, a logomachy that obscures a more fundamental issue.

Plutarch may technically be secondary or tertiary or even quaternary, in the sense that he is basing his writings on other sources, which aren't always identifiable. But that in itself is not reason to consider him reliable. He is often inaccurate, as noted even by other Classical authors, as well as subsequent historians; his biogs are written to be moral examplars, not accurate historical accounts. But that's not the problem either. Thucydides, by contrast, is a conscientiously exact source, and outright states that he is a primary source, writing from his own observations, on many of the topics he discusses. That is also irrelevant.

The key issues are shared by both Plutarch and Thucydides. Firstly, both pre-date all the substantial scholarship on their work, meaning that they are not the last word on almost any topic, and they are not in any way guaranteed to represent the current scholarly consensus.

We can see dramatic shifts in consensus on far smaller timescales; for instance, a 1985 news story stating that the US is not selling any weapons to Iran was already obsoleted by the 1986 revelation that actually, yes, the US was breaking its own arms embargo. It is just as possible for a new archeological discovery to falsify a statement by a Classical author.

Secondly, interpreting Classical sources has become a skilled task. We've literally centuries of scholarly work on how best to interpret them, because it really isn't as simple as it looks. They are written in dead languages, human languages have ambiguities, translations are by their nature capable of being misleading, and cultural context (like an understanding of the authors' perspectives, biasses and conflicts of interest) can also cause us to misinterpret a text.

This is not a new problem. If I remember correctly, in the 13th century BCE, an Egyptian medic felt it necessary to add glosses to the Secret-book of the Physician, a trauma-treatment manual written around 1600 BCE, because students were failing to understand it. What had been clear a few centuries earlier was now confusing (though 1600 BCE collarbones broke and healed ~just like modern ones).

It isn't adequate to just have any old modern source discussing these authors. Anyone can read a translation of a Classical author and spout uninformed opinion; pop culture does it all the time, as in medicine. Such sources are unreliable. Uncritically accepting the views of an ancient historian (especially Plutarch) is just not something a topic expert or reliable source would do.

My interpretation of yesterday's news story leans on the expertise of the journalist. The news story should not be missing any significant info, and it should not mislead the average modern reader (or it isn't RS). My interpretation of Plutarch is far less reliable. Plutarch is out-of-date and was not writing to be understood by the modern reader. Even experts lean on him with caution, through a hedge of caveats, as Wikipedia should do.

A reliable source gives expert appraisal of what can currently be known. A source is reliable only if it has throughly considered the information currently available on a topic: major primary sources on the topic (including sources not available to the Classical authors, like archeological excavations, or, say, DNA testing of victims of the Great Plague of Athens), and significant previous interpretations and other non-primary sources, which may have useful insights. No Classical source can do any of that. Most pop sources can't.

So two problems; Classical sources are superceeded by later work; and, interpreting them is a job for an expert. Reliable sources need to give state-of-the-art information (even if no-one has done any work in the field for a century), expertly interpreted for the modern reader. HLHJ (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

This is quite the manifesto. But basically, flag stuff you question with "citation needed"; fix the stuff you can; and do the work you're interested in doing. And if enough people do that, eventually the encyclopedia will be better. What's stopping you from carrying out these improvements within the articles themselves? I'm unclear on what the issue is. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that HLHJ thinks that there are some articles which are being written mainly by paraphrasing some ancient sources (ol' unreliable Plutarch especially) and ripping from DGBRM. I don't know whether – and, frankly, doubt that – this is still happening. I know it happened in the past, though. That we have done so little to fix it, however, may call for stronger impetus. Ifly6 (talk) 23:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless you're deep into the scholarship, you have to have a foundation on which to build an article. Even old sources and primary sources can provide that, if used carefully. When it comes to bare facts—who held what magistracy, what form of worship was paid to a god at which town, what omens were said to have preceded a battle—there's no harm in reporting that a source said it. That's not interpretation or original research. Those come into play when an editor fails to distinguish between fact and opinion, or attempts to draw some novel conclusion from the sources.

The remedy for too much reliance on old or primary sources is rarely to remove them; instead we should find and report what other and more modern sources have to say on the topic. Sometimes that will mean rebalancing or replacing what the article previously said, but that doesn't make the previous version worthless, or justify blowing it up and starting from scratch. That should be done very, very rarely. If you can narrow down the point you're trying to verify, a lot of sources are available over the internet (which is not to say that sources not available on the internet are any less valid; they're just harder to find). The older sources are easy to find and read because they're in the public domain (and some, though not all, are very well written); publications less than fifty or sixty years old are harder to come by, though if you search for just the right ones you can often find at least partial texts online.

But my advice remains the same: take what exists as a foundation, and improve it, section by section and paragraph by paragraph. If you don't have the time to put into revising an unsatisfactory article, it's still almost always better to leave it until you or another editor finds the time to work on it. I know I'm unhappy with some of the things I wrote years ago, but they're a lot better than nothing, and I can afford to be patient while I find time to gather material to replace them. P Aculeius (talk) 01:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

We have full text for probably a majority of reputable books and journals published in classical studies in English via Wikipedia Library. Inability to access the modern scholarship is not a compelling excuse. Ifly6 (talk) 18:21, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Following the classical antiquity new article alerts makes it rapidly apparent that some people still do create articles by just copying and pasting from DGRBM. All of the low-hanging fruit has already been done though, so these are mostly poets known from a single epigram in the Greek anthology and minor mythological figures mentioned in one line of Apollodorus – in most cases I assume nobody is ever going to read the article anyway! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I can't say I was aware that people are still doing this. Very frankly, that should be proscribed. Ifly6 (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I thank P Aculeius for saving me the time of saying that. I agree with Caeciliusinhorto that no harm is done by copying over little articles on obscure topics, however unsporting it may be to lay claim to having created a new article in this way. I came upon one this morning that was created in 2006 and still reads mostly as copied and pasted. It's nearly incomprehensible but not fundamentally wrong. I was not involved in the first wave of article creation (I started mid-2008), but I think the groundwork was laid for comprehensive G&R coverage by going through those standard reference works in Classics that were PD. Not sure there was a better or more efficient way to have gone about it. After leaving WP for about a decade, I have the impression that the overall methodology for creating G&R articles is infinitely improved. I'm more irked by content decontextualized from contemporary RS of good quality but twisted by contributors to fit their own ahistorical belief system. "That doesn't sound like something this or any classical scholar would say," I think, and sure enough, I check the cited source and it says nothing of the sort. RS can become a fig leaf for agenda-pushing. Not a fan of proscriptions, though. :) Cynwolfe (talk) 14:14, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there was much ground to object to copying PD sources in the Wiki stone ages because the alternative was a blank page and editors had few resources. Neither are the case anymore. We have pages on most topics; we have university-library level access. Wikipedia is biased towards modern reliable sources. Those modern reliable sources are mostly not in the public domain, unlike modern sources from over a hundred years ago and the primary sources. We should be encouraging people to use the resources that the site, foundation, etc has with so much effort acquired for us.

Also, people who use sources wrong will always be a problem: if I wanted to push the POV that the patricians were a masculine Aryan master race that had defeated and subjugated the effeminate Mediterranean plebeians, I would definitely start with DGRBM (The patricians must be regarded as conquerors who reduced the earlier inhabitants of the places they occupied to a state of servitude), Niebuhr 1837, Bernhoft 1882, Bachofen 1861, and Binder 1909. Then I would tell you can't remove my Aryan master race "content" because these old sources are were written by the finest classical scholars of their day and nothing new has been discovered since and that you can only add modern stuff that provides different theories.

Even someone acting in good faith, rather than being a Stormfront plant, would be far more likely to put this kind of nonsense into the encyclopaedia if that person started their research with these old sources instead of starting with the modern sources we have access to. Encouraging people to use modern sources – which to be clear other parts of Wikipedia already do – is the best way minimise this agenda pushing, fringe content, and original research (whether intentional or otherwise). Ifly6 (talk) 20:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

In trying to prove your point, you've actually engaged in exactly the kind of source manipulation that you're criticizing: you've taken a single quotation out of context (and from a different source than the one you attributed it to in order to criticize it, I add) in order to accuse the authors of advocating racial theories that had not yet been developed, much less become the stuff of twentieth-century Nazi ideology. Yes, you're saying that it would be wrong to use it to support such rubbish—but you're basically saying that it does, when in fact it doesn't.

And again, you miss the point of the preceding comments about distinguishing between fact and opinion in sources, something that is just as important with "modern" writers as with older ones. It would be an act of supreme arrogance to suppose that whatever the prevailing opinion of scholars is today must be regarded as incontrovertible fact, while that of scholars from fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years ago is wrong simply because it is old and contradicted by more recent opinions—because we can say with virtual certainty that the opinions of scholars fifty or a hundred years from now will differ just as radically from that of today.

What I've been trying to say here is that all sources, ancient, older modern, or the latest scholarship available, need to be cited carefully so as to distinguish between fact and opinion, as well as to note, when possible, the differences in opinion that have prevailed in the scholarship of different eras—not necessarily to declare all opinions equally valid, but simply to note that our understanding changes with time and (occasionally) with new discoveries.

And none of this changes the fact that it is fine to use primary and older modern sources as a foundation upon which to build, as long as one takes care to distinguish between fact and opinion. If an earlier analysis has been superseded, then cite the scholarship that supersedes it, if you can. If a source has been cited wrongly or an interpretation placed on it that is not grounded in reliable secondary sources, then fix it. If you have access to more recent sources, cite them. Nobody's telling anyone not to use the most up-to-date scholarship available. This discussion is about the urge to delete older modern scholarship and primary sources simply because of what they are, instead of because they are no longer relevant to an article, and whether it is better to demolish entire articles with no immediate prospect of replacement, merely because they don't cite enough recent scholarship. The consensus here is that it's not: in nearly every instance, an article that needs a lot of work is still far better than none at all. P Aculeius (talk) 21:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I confused DGRBM ≠ DGRA because they are interchangeably obsolete sources accessed through basically two portals (Perseus, LacusCurtius). The 19th century fables of patrician conquest – DGRA, Niebuhr – are now covered in textbooks in the quantity zero. They are covered in specialist books like Bradley 2020 in two sentences. It is the other things cited – Bernhoft, Bachofen, Binder – that say that the specific incontrovertible conquerors (that are now universally denied) are the Aryan master race. How is removing mention of the incontrovertible fact that the master race conquered the barbaric plebs, who "were an amorphous rabble and lived like wild beasts" (Cornell Beginnings [1995] p 243), consistent with your other remarks?

The whole matter as to what theories of patrician aetiology were prevalent in the 19th century is irrelevant to the core matter – "Should we use obsolete and primary sources?" – which we have disagreed on every time. Every time, you inject truth and recentism.

But neither truth nor recentism are relevant. Wikipedia does not deal in truths, it deals in WP:HQRS. I, and I think I am not alone, cannot be mind-tricked into believing these Smith's dictionaries are HQRS. We should be giving them the same regard and impact factor that modern scholars do. That is what supremely arrogant Wikipedia requires (WP:AGEMATTERS; WP:DUE; WP:BESTSOURCES). Nor are we engaged in original research to spin a narrative of how beliefs have changed over time or summarise all the versions in the primary sources. Even if I wrote a scholarly-level article on the emergence of the patriciate citing Livy and DH it was nowhere out of place in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, policies say it should not be included. Nor should a novel literature review discussing all the various theories presented through history for their emergence be included. Such contributions simply do not comply with WP:PRIMARY and WP:OR. Ifly6 (talk) 01:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Again, missing the point completely: you took one sentence out of context and spun a whole narrative about outmoded beliefs from it, utterly disregarding everything useful in these sources—as well as the point about distinguishing between fact and opinion in using any source from any era. Yes, the article you linked cites Niebuhr—though none of the other sources you built your "Aryan master race" straw man around. They're not mentioned in our article either, so I'm not sure why you're injecting them into the argument because of a hypothetical view that isn't in any of the sources actually cited or likely to be cited in Wikipedia. Apparently you cribbed all of them from a footnote in Cornell!

But failing to mention the views of scholars such as Niebuhr because some of their conclusions are no longer widely held would be just as harmful as pretending that they had all the answers—something that nobody here has ever advocated! And the article in question is citing Niebuhr not to claim that the patricians were a "master race", but to explain how they came to possess political power in early Rome.

The narrative that they were the whole of the original populus, and that the plebeians arose from those who were added to the city through conquest seems simplistic, but it is consistent with what the Romans themselves believed in the late Republic, and we would be as negligent to disregard the fact that this was once widely accepted in classical scholarship as we would if we asserted that whatever opinions are held by Cornell or Forsythe are the "truth", and whatever they disagree with is "outmoded" or "obsolete" merely because it is older.

I am most emphatically not attempting to argue that recent scholarship is wrong. My point remains that the sole remedy for a lack of currency or balance in an article is to provide more context, not to substitute one set of opinions for another and pretend that we have all of the answers. That would do a greater disservice to our readers than merely citing sources inadequately.

Older sources are fine when used carefully. The examples you're giving are not instances of proper sourcing, and they would be just as inappropriate citing recent books as with older ones. If a source is being cited for something that it does not support, or it is contradicted by other sources, then fix it. That would be so much easier than trying to formulate a one-size-fits-all solution based entirely on the age or classification of a source, instead of paying attention to what it's being cited for. P Aculeius (talk) 04:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless you want to accuse me of being an actual believer in the Aryan master race hypothesis who has placed such material actually in Wikipedia, the fact that it's not on Wikipedia has been something I disclosed immediately at the start: if I wanted to push the POV... So too could a Nazi have read or discovered those same sources in Cornell Beginnings (1995) and push the same POV with the same sources. I make and made no claims of originality in this literature review; in fact, I said such originality would violate WP:OR!

These paeans to more context are not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia policies say all articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (WP:BESTSOURCES). WP:SCHOLARSHIP says:

• However, some scholarly material may be outdated... or largely ignored by the mainstream academic discourse because of lack of citations. Try to cite current scholarly consensus when available
• Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible.

The opinions that should be cited are the scholarly consensus. The way the Niebuhr et al should be cited is not "Oh, this is one just one theory". One way to do it respecting guidelines would be to cite Bradley Early Rome (2020) citing Cornell Beginnings (1995) citing Niebuhr with a sharply negative tone as is taken by both sources. So it is too with Romulus appointing the first senators. It should be presented. But it should not be presented as "Romulus did this". It should be framed by Bradley 2020, Cornell 1995, Forysthe Critical history (2005), Lomas Rise 2018, etc all citing whatever the relevant passages are; then mentioning that that modern scholars, unlike the Romans, do not believe this. Presenting "Romulus appointed the patricians" as fact or as a theory scholars believe is WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE.

You'll then say that doing that is adding context because that's what you said last time. But the real problem is that it needed fixing in the first place. It would not have needed fixing if the editors that first broke it followed existing Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It is extremely unlikely that a competent editor could write an article saying Romulus appointed the patricians and they were the Aryan master race when starting with current scholarship. But a competent editor could, but for anti-racism, write such an article when reading only Smith and those books Cornell cited.

There are too many articles to rewrite already and too many editors who are – astonishingly still in 2024! – adding obsolete line noise into the encyclopaedia. This noise is far in excess of editors' ability to fix. Saying we can't take away the crutch that is paraphrasing Plutarch or copying Smith is burying the fixers under a Monte Testaccio of broken articles that is far beyond our meagre ability to fix: it is going through the store, breaking all the merchandise, and telling me I can't stop anyone from doing that but I should content myself with putting it back together. Ifly6 (talk) 05:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

That's kinda how WP works, though. I am puzzled and saddened by the heat of this discussion, since I have never seen P Aculeius in my many years of watching WP enter anything into the encyclopedia that wasn't constructive, have never seen Ifly6 make anything but good-faith edits, and have never read a G&R article in WP that asserted that the first Romans were an Aryan master race, which seems completely contrary to … everything. But if I wanted to prevent people from making edits unless they do it the way I might like, exactly how would such prophylaxis be implemented beyond existing policies on RS and weight? And why would it be my prerogative to insist that my way is best? Do we get to provide our credentials as classical scholars so we can boss everybody else around? That seems rather contrary to the WP spirit. So I'm not seeing a clear goal stated here, let alone an actionable proposal. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:36, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

What we need to do is actually enforce Wikipedia policies and guidelines on use of primary and secondary sources. Enforcement moves beyond contesting editors' prerogatives to overwrite existing content that does not use them. It moves beyond just saying that people should use good ones. We need to actually remove and actually discourage P&G-violating content. Enforcing these policies is not tyranny.

We should start a project-wide effort to go through and remove violating content along with an effort to promptly rewrite the bad articles that our ratings say are important. We should be making efforts to train new and existing editors on responsible sourcing. None of this is currently being done even though other WikiProjects regularly do this. Naturally, if I recall correctly, all of it has been lambasted by the other interlocutor as tyranny. In fact, even mentioning that {{sfn}} exists makes me Imperator Flavius Liliputtius Yuppius VI. Ifly6 (talk) 15:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I see. I would just reiterate that I continually see and make use of P Aculeius's valuable contributions to Roman prosopography, so I think the proposed reeducation might be better directed at other editors, such as the ones grinding their ideological axes. But the more problematic the contributor, the least likely they are to submit to tutelage. (Also, I thought student projects were a nice idea until I saw the actual results in articles.) Which is why I'm not sure there's a problem here that can be fixed through dictates. Like, how do you compel individual project members to improve problematic content? I'm only going to spend my time researching and rewriting problematic content that interests me and relates to other problematic content I'm working on.

If I violate policies, you can direct me to the relevant policies and/or remove my content. If my contributions are disruptive or deleterious, you can have me blocked. If you find a top-importance article in desperate need of improvement, you can bring it to the project's attention and issue a call to arms. Why do you think your fellow project members aren't enforcing policies and guidelines? Are you saying they are intentionally negligent or lackadaisical? In addition to questions of practical implementation, that rhetorical strategy may not be optimal for rousing action. However, I am interested in learning more about what you are proposing. Could you link to some examples of the admirable ways other WikiProjects are formalizing the process of amelioration? Cynwolfe (talk) 18:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have often thought our hagiographic Xenophon needs a major rewrite. It uses primary sources heavily (e.g. treating the Anabasis as gospel truth, at great length) along with nineteenth-century praise of him as one of the greatest writers of antiquity, with no awareness that "no work of ancient literature has in this century suffered so sharp a decline in reputation as Xenophon's Hellenica" (George Cawkwell, 1979). But I know a serious rewrite would be strongly contested, I don't have the stomach or energy to push it alone, and the discussion above reinforces my sense that I'd be alone in wanting comparatively recent scholarship (say, the last fifty years) to be our foundation. NebY (talk) 18:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Not quite seeing how you got that from this discussion. That isn't what I'm trying to say, anyway. I'm saying that the age of the source doesn't necessarily mean that the factual content is wrong, and the content need not be deleted simply because of the age of the source. When I revise artefact articles, I try not to leave any of the PD content from handbooks and encyclopedias. I replace it all, but I don't delete it unless I can offer replacement text. (I do delete content that misrepresents the source, but it's staggering how often that happens under cover of an elaborate Harvard citation apparatus.) On the other hand, I had been going to great lengths to avoid citing Buckland's 1908 book on Roman law as it pertains to slavery, since I'm aware that some WP editors think there's something wrong with citing older scholarship. That was hard to do because I kept seeing everybody still referencing it (as in "I won't go into this here, but see Buckland …"), and then in the introduction of a 2023 book I've been using, the editor stated flat-out that Buckland is still a standard work on the subject. So I went to the source, and finally I understood the full picture of what they were talking about because I had read the scholarship their assumptions were based on.

But the regard in which an author is held is an opinion that changes over time, and the reasons for that kind of changing view are themselves revealing in what they say about the uses of Classical antiquity. The neutral factual statement, based just on what you say here, would be something like "while Xenophon was regarded in the 19th century as one of the greatest writers of antiquity, the reputation of his Hellenica in particular declined in the 20th". The factual statement is not "the Hellenica isn't as good as people thought in the 19th century cuz Shmoe said so in 2011." But alas, we live in times when everyone who doesn't think exactly as I do is supposed to be my enemy, so I should probably shut up, since I don't like to edit high-traffic or contested articles either.

I hope you will work on Xenophon. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:24, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't so much trying to argue for or against someone's position as to introduce another example, one that is as much about an article being formed from an unquestioningly adulatory conception of the subject. (Although my "sense that I'd be alone in wanting comparatively recent scholarship (say, the last fifty years) to be our foundation" does respond to this discussion's "it is fine to use primary and older modern sources as a foundation".) That Xenophon article, though ... it can't simply be fixed by inserting balancing statements. A couple of examples, without doing serious work on it: for the first part "while Xenophon was regarded in the 19th century as one of the greatest writers of antiquity" may not be a good summary of its one source anyway, and the late 20th-century counterpoint is by no means restricted to the Hellenica; we present an unsourced list of thinkers who praise his philosophy but not "his philosophy is second-hand and second-rate". The second half of our lead's first paragraph doesn't need extending with balancing statements or qualifications; it's empty cherry-picked gilding. It's a wild exaggeration to claim that Xenophon's books inspired Alexander to conquer the the Persian empire, but that's in our lead. A large part of our narrative is unquestioningly based on Xenophon's account of his vital leadership in his Anabasis, with nary a hint that other accounts of the Anabasis found barely any occasion to mention him at all; WP:PRIMARY meets WP:UNDUE. And on, and on .... I expect you'd find much more.

Could it be fixed? In theory, but in practice it would probably be a struggle - I tasted a little last year at Talk:Xenophon#Xenophon as a Thucydides co-author - and too much for my abilities alone. To bring it back to this discussion, I do also fear that however much I cited WP:PRIMARY, WP:SCHOLARSHIP, WP:NPOV and WP:DUE, others would be pointing to the norms of other CGR articles. NebY (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

NebY, even if wanting our articles to be POV neutral and based on what current scholarship cites is tyranny, I'm still with you. Ifly6 (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

As to the scholarship that is old but still regularly cited, which I think is Cynwolfe's point, I don't recall anyone advocating a minimum publication year. There are old books that scholars still regularly cite: RE and MRR are among them. Maitland and Dicey on the common law and British constitution are similar examples. Citing such books not only is okay but is best practice because they are current. "Current" is what the scholarly community is citing, not some arbitrary year.

And as to what other people are doing, the obstinate retentionism of obsolete content that NebY attests makes fixing things controversial is part of the problem. Establishing norms such as rewrites are okay and obsolete content should be removed helps fix things and create up-to-date content. Establishing norms against adding obsolete content and primary source paraphrases reduces the influx of line noise that needs fixing while providing enough stick to get editors to change. We can do these things, just as WP:MILHIST has. (I do not buy the argument everyone will drop off the face of the earth if people have to cite current scholarship; WP:LIBRARY exists; WP:CIR.) Ifly6 (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Caesar's civil war, the episode with Metellus before the aerarium

There's an on going discussion about, I think, whether the episode between Caesar and Metellus in March-ish 49 BC should be described as showing that Caesar's casus belli of defending the tribunes was a sham. A lot of text has been generated on it.

I cannot for the life of me understand what the other interlocutor is saying. A third opinion, along with feedback on the proposed text that I brought up there already, would be appreciated both to clarify matters and form a consensus. See Talk:Caesar's civil war#Tribunician rights. Ifly6 (talk) 20:19, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

"Mistresses of ancient Roman royalty"

There's a category by this name, and yet none of these women seem to have been mistresses of the kings of Rome. Am I being a pedant if I insist that the term "royalty" is inaccurate for Roman emperors of the Principate, at least? If we must have such a category, can it not be "Mistresses (yuck, still) of Roman emperors"? I don't want to go through the procedural rigamarole if even members of this project don't see this as wrong. Nor do I want to get into an argument about whether the imperial family was "really" royalty because we know what royalty is and they fit "our" definition – there are better things to do in life and on WP. Thoughts? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Link it, FFS: Category:Mistresses of ancient Roman royalty. Johnbod (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Apparently there were only 7 of them, which seems remarkably restrained! There's a whole tree leading up to Category:Roman royalty, mostly set up by User:StarTrekker around 2020. Most seem rather incomplete & oddly named. Some actually do restrict themselves to the early monarchy, like Category:Roman princes. I think the whole lot need a good sorting out. If only to avoid confusion with those around the kings of Rome, there should be no difficulty devising proper imperial vocabulary. User:Marcocapelle, what do you think? Johnbod (talk) 17:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I created these categories several years ago and it was mainly done to try to collect articles related to Roman monarchy, as I understand it now there is some (that I don't quite understand) resistence to seeing the Roman emperors and their families as truly monarchical or like royalty. I'm not sure what to do with that honestly.★Trekker (talk) 17:37, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the specific objection might be that "royalty" usually pertains to kings and queens, monarchs in the modern sense, as distinguished from Roman emperors, for whom there's not really a corresponding noun, though we would use "imperial" instead of "royal" as an adjective. We might use "royalty" of modern emperors, but it seems wrong with Romans, who went to such pains to avoid even the trappings of kingship or monarchy, even as the emperors came to resemble them in power and influence. To a lesser extent there's some discomfort with the word "mistresses", which has a rather tawdry connotation as well as potential gender bias (unfortunately, that may be difficult to avoid prior to modern times). "Concubines" would be inaccurate in at least some instances. I definitely agree with the sentiment, though I think we may be stuck with "mistresses", and I'm at a loss for rephrasing to avoid "royalty". P Aculeius (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Even if a case can be made that the Principate was monarchical, therefore royal, using such an unconventional term's not good communication. Also, I think the current members of the category are all paramours of emperors, not of members of imperial families ("royalty") so "of Roman emperors" would be appropriate and precise (as opposed to, say, "Imperial Roman floozies" or Roman imperial floozies", which would also both be very wrong). So "Paramours of Roman emperors" or even "Mistresses of Roman emperors" would be a much more meaningfully named category. NebY (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Ooh, "paramours" might work very well—I don't think it's any more euphemistic than "mistresses", and it's less pejorative and non-gendered. I'm not a crusader against gendered language in principle, but in this instance there's a lack of balance, where the feminine term has negative connotations, and masculine equivalents are not as familiar. I agree that "Imperial Roman floozies" would be wrong—but the thought of finding a category called that did make me laugh! P Aculeius (talk) 23:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

"Mistresses" seem to be the general term used for pretty much all female lovers of monarchs in the category trees.★Trekker (talk) 01:24, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• Suggestions: "Roman imperial mistresses" or "Mistresses of the Roman emperors"? T8612 (talk) 11:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  At this stage, "Mistresses of Roman emperors" (minus "the") seems like the most natural wording. Though probably a certain someone will come along and insist that it be moved to "Mistresses of ancient Roman emperors"... but I think that'd be pedantic. "Concubines" might be technically correct in some cases, but not others. "Paramours" is not a bad alternative. "Lovers" seems both vague and a bit trivializing. I'm still amused by "Floozies of Roman emperors", though!

  As for Johnbod and Cynwolfe's comment about the number—I'm sure there were many, many more than we have articles about. We probably just don't have enough information about them, and of course it's probably not one of the first topics that editors come to and think, "oh, I really want to write about that!" Perhaps during the Clinton administration this would have been a more popular subject... P Aculeius (talk) 13:42, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Ha! You might be surprised. I've been putting off rescuing Caenis from her contubernial squalor. But for now, reason to consider scope carefully in terms of what a "mistress" is. Servilia gets described as a "mistress" of Julius Caesar, right there in the second paragraph of her article and with a long and rather ridiculous section about it. Adding to my horror is the discovery of categories called "Mistresses of Julius Caesar", a subcat of "Lovers of Julius Caesar", and even better "Women of Julius Caesar", which I'm pretty sure is or should be the title of a series of historical romance novels. "Mistress" seems a nonsensical thing to call a Roman woman of the same social status and rank as her lover, especially the formidable Servilia, as he had no control over her and she was in no way dependent on him and had her own family and house which she seems to have had well in hand, thank you very much. I can't help thinking of that line in Young Frankenstein: "He vas my boyfriend!" – a clip that all in all is not a bad description of the way upper-class Roman women worked behind the scene. And is Servilia the same thing as the mistresses (puellae and playfully dominae) of the elegiac poets? And Servilia ≠ freedwomen concubinae who were "mistresses" of the emperors. These are three very different roles. So what is a "mistress", encyclopedically speaking? It seems to be any woman who was not a prostitute but who is presumed to have had sex multiple times with a man she isn't married to. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  It certainly was not my intent to insult or diminish Servilia, or any other womem, by adding the "Mistresses of Julius Caesar" category to their articles, as far as I could tell it is just what they tend to be called in English writing, a female partner who one is cheating on their wife with (as far as I can tell Caesar was indeed married for the majority of the time he spent with the other women in the category).★Trekker (talk) 17:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Yep, I didn't take it that way. Literally the dictionary meaning of "mistress" (in both Merriam-Webster online and Oxford Dictionaries) is a woman who has ongoing sex with a man she isn't married to. So that wasn't meant to be a screed against use of the word. Only that it's less informative than may be ideal as an encyclopedic label for women who may not have all that much in common. The mistresses of the emperors seem to be concubinae. They would've been expected to be monogamous to their guy, and they were financially supported by him. Also, as freedwomen they were under patronage (originally that of the deceased Augusta, it seems). None of that is true of Servilia and upper-class women in the late Republic. That's why I'm trying to find some more specific terminology to distinguish these roles. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

  It feels as if Lovers of ___ might be the kind of generic label we want at the category level. I'm aware this is already the case with the categories Lovers of ___ and Mistresses of ___ already existing. I agree that the implication of dependence is somewhat misleading. Paramours seems reasonable but I don't know if we want to categorise so deeply. Ifly6 (talk) 15:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm so glad I asked this. Lively answers! Like Johnbod, I wondered at how few they were. StarTrekker, the resistance on my part is the blurring of the conventional periodization of Roman history: royalty, the Regal period; republican, the Roman Republic; imperial, the Roman Empire. These are just chronological labels, and I won't go into the rest, but as P Aculeius said, culturally it isn't unimportant that the Romans avoided the word rex. Some minor figure or other got assassinated for fears that's what he was trying to be, from which his successor learned good lessons in how to maintain an extraordinarily long run at the top. There's a technical difference between monarchy (one-person rule) and royalty, which generally implies bloodlines, as with the British monarchy, not just succession, and encompasses hereditary privileges in sprawling offshoots of the impenetrable genealogies. Like NebY and P Aculeius, I'm delighted by "paramour", a word I first learned when I was 15 and read a historical novel about Katherine Swynford, who except for her eventual marriage to John of Gaunt probably has a lot in common with our ladies (a word I choose cautiously, as in ladies of the court) here, especially Caenis, who was a part of Vespasian's life for something like 40 years. Paramour might be a little droll, but on the other hand it's probably the best translation of concubina, which is what these women were. Most if not all of these were freedwomen of the imperial house, some of the Augusta herself. I've been puttering about with concubinatus for a while (still some issues unresolved there), which is how I ended up at that category. "Mistresses of Roman emperors" isn't terrible. I'm just always wary that when we use language that delivers so much connotation, we obscure the particulars. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:00, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

And btw, the Caenis article is wrong in its use of contubernium, as the most cursory glance at the two articles concubinatus and contubernium will show, owing to a misleading reference to contubernalis in regard to Caenis. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:04, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked too. Much scholarship has gone into recovering and almost re-assembling Romans from passing literary mentions, quoted fragments, inscriptions (sometimes literally fragmented), unearthed letters and the like. We now have articles on wonderfully many, categorised by their period, family, defining achievements and so on, rather than how we know of them: Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius is in Category:Latin historians rather than Category:Sources of Livy. That's in keeping with our Categorizing articles about people guidelines and the notion of defining characteristics. Now that does include the characteristics the person is best known for but I'm deeply uncomfortable with defining a woman by who she's rumoured to have slept with (e.g. Junia Tertia, quite possibly libellously), or placing a woman who was never Caesar's slave, child or even wife in Category:Women of Julius Caesar. Wikipedia's categorisation is difficult anyway, but are we perhaps trying to be too precise here? Cleopatra is in Category:Mistresses of Julius Caesar, but Julius Caesar is merely in Category:Cleopatra. NebY (talk) 17:52, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

The absence of Category:Lovers of Cleopatra may be due to the old Wikipedia:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth policy. Even without the SMALLCAT policy, not all potential small categories would help readers navigate to articles. TSventon (talk) 18:51, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

For Caesar, I might suggest Category:Sexual liaisons of Julius Caesar, since let's just be honest about the prurient interest of such a category, and abolish both "mistresses" and "lovers" as categories interpreting forms of emotional and social dependency that may not be accurate (and the absurdity of listing Mamurra as a "lover"). I take your point on Cleopatra, TSventon, but Category:People associated with Cleopatra (on the model of Category:People associated with Julius Caesar) actually could be readily and more neutrally populated by several articles already under Category:Cleopatra.

Category:Women of Julius Caesar puzzled me too, NebY. I thought at first glance that it meant "Women who played a significant role in Julius Caesar's life", but his mother and daughter aren't in it. It seems to mean "women with whom Julius Caesar is known to have had sex, maritally or not", while women of in a Roman context would indicate a dependency (as in familia Caesaris) and not women such as Servilia. I am aware of no idiomatic English usage that would support the statement "Servilia was a woman of Julius Caesar." Might this be be better rendered as Category:Women associated with Julius Caesar so as to include relatives? Cynwolfe (talk) 13:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I personally do not see the appeal of these proposed changes at all. They are not in line with any established category trees.★Trekker (talk) 14:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Category:Women of Julius Caesar is itself an outlier, with Category:Women of Claudius now the only other Women of <mortal man> category I can see (maybe there were more when you created those two, I don't know). Wikipedia does have several Women of <Greek god> categories, but otherwise the Women of categories are largely of place and/or time - simple search result here. I don't know why this cluster's restricted to CGR topics; curiously enough, among the very few Men of categories Category:Men of Poseidon is similarly egregious. NebY (talk) 15:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, both Caesar and Claudius were deified, so technically all such categories belong to deities! As for "men", I suppose there are probably more competing words to describe them in most instances, but I see no reason why there couldn't be more. However, I've always thought that "women of (person)" was annoyingly vague and perhaps evasive, and possibly the same could be said of "men of (person)"... P Aculeius (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

References

P Aculeius (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Questions about Quintus Sertorius

Hi guys, I'm a relatively new editor who recently overhauled the Quintus Sertorius page. I want to take it to good article status, but have ran into a few conundrums. Namely, my being new, I was surprised at how short the 'Sertorian War' section was for the article, and gave it a massive rewrite. I learned belatedly that this was excessive, given the Sertorian War article already exists. I know the article is too long as it is now, and intend to trim it significantly (from the Sertorian War section), and this is where I seek advice.

I ask here what, in terms of the war, should remain on the page as compared to going over to the Sertorian War? Compared to the article as is, what I wrote for the Sertorius page is the war from Sertorius' perspective, his anecdotes during the conflict, his actions and movements etc, along with the general events.

In terms of what I need to move over to the 'Sertorian War' article, the other problem is that I am obviously biased into preferring how I wrote about the war. I still find the Sertorian War article very bare (and it lacks some details, what comes to mind immediately is the Livy fragment of book 91) but should I just delete all that I wrote for a shorter, more concise summary on the main Sertorius page and port over the details of importance to the Sertorian War article? I would obviously prefer not to, given how much work I put in, but Wikipedia's standards are more important than that. The other thing I could do is port over what I wrote in the Sertorian War section of Sertorius' article to the current Sertorian War page, or merge mine and the existing writings. I would appreciate any guidance and clarification. Harren the Red (talk) 18:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

You could certainly move whatever isn't needed for a summary on Sertorius to the article about the war. Technically that would be a partial merge, but I don't think it matters what you call it. It's just a matter of moving material to the best possible place. Some may be redundant, and you'll have to decide which statement to keep, or require rewriting. But you don't have to do it all in one go. It may be that the merged article is based more on your writing than the original version, by the time you're done. Of course, you'll have to use your judgment. Maybe other contributors here will have better ideas. P Aculeius (talk) 18:32, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll start merging slowly with the War article. Harren the Red (talk) 18:48, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Just in case - do be aware of WP:COPYWITHIN if moving/copying material other editors wrote. NebY (talk) 18:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I would merge. The topics are sufficiently different. The article on Sertorius should concentrate on Sertorius; the article on the war should take a broader view. I am not, however, entirely sure about the quality of the sourcing in the article on Sertorius. Matyszak isn't great; Telford is unreliable; there seems to be a bit of a heavy reliance on primary sources as well. I think there are also some issues with dated historiography. Something that jumps immediately just from the info box is "populares": no such faction or political party ever existed; it is a 19th century historiographical fiction. Further on the page itself probably should be on the relevant talk. I am unsure also as to close paraphrasing. Inasmuch as such problems exist, I would fix them and then do rescoping. Ifly6 (talk) 18:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Funny enough, the Telford citations come from citations already present before I worked on it, or those I ported over from the original Sertorian War article! I've heard her work on Sulla leans towards hagiography in any case so I wasn't sure if it was completely reliable, so I'll edit that.

As for Matsyzak, the only reason I relied on him is because I have access to an online copy of his book but only physicals for Konrad and Spann (and don't always have them with me when I'm at my PC). I can certainly look over those citations and change them where appropriate to these two more comprehensive and thorough studies, and do so for the primary sources as well.

Also, when you mean it should concentrate on Sertorius, do you mean aside from his anecdotes the major things he did during the war? Like battles shortened to what he did in them, his actions in general? I would appreciate a bit more detail here! The issue I'm struggling with is figuring out what parts of the war (and in how much detail) are really necessary on his page for an accurate summary. Harren the Red (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The articles should reflect what modern academic sources (WP:ACADEMICBIAS) say of the topic. CAH vol 9 (2nd edn, 1994) for example has some relevant chapters; a search of the more recent scholarly corpus will however be necessary since those chapters, written largely in the late 1980s, are now some 30 years old. As to his anecdotes, in general, anecdotes of the sort that ancient sources were very interested in are generally ignored; but when modern academic sources focus on them, relevant sometimes in terms of contemporary or later narratives (eg the "Scipionic legend"), they should absolutely be discussed. Ifly6 (talk) 19:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

If however you mean anecdotes in terms of what, where, and why Sertorius was doing something, then it should be covered. Of course, it should be covered in the way that the modern academic sources also do so. We should thereto defer rather than make ad hoc subjective decisions of our own. Ifly6 (talk) 19:03, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

• Sources are not good enough for the article to be promoted to GA status. I suggest using CF Konrad's Commentary on Plutarch's Sertorius. It is the best academic source on the subject, alas hard to find. T8612 (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

  I have a copy and have been using it to revamp the citations! Do you happen to know of any other recent treatments of Sertorius and his career that are of similar thoroughness? Harren the Red (talk) 00:29, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Questions about Quintus Sertorius, again

Hello all. It is the same, less new editor who made the previous post checking in again about the Quintus Sertorius article. In the week since the first post, I've been working with others to revamp it up to par (still aiming for GA!), and to that end I would like to thank (but not ping, lest it bother them) Ifly6, T8612, and TheUndercoverClassicist for their help in myriad things. Ifly6 in particular regarding matters of formatting and cleanup, and TheUndercoverClassicist for help regarding the page image.

I would like feedback on the article as it exists now. I believe we have come a long way, but more work remains to be done. Formatting, as always (lots of references to be sfn'fied). I am of the opinion the Sertorian War section can still be shortened, and I am also inclined to say some details might be superfluous. Although the quality of sourcing of the article has greatly increased, I am sure more can be added. My major concern is the prose, which I feel I cannot evaluate in an unbiased manner, may be too obstructive or formal for summary style. But at the same time, any reading about Quintus Sertorius, an otherwise obscure figure in Roman history, are probably quite interested in classics and may be able to bypass said prose.

I appreciate all feedback on this, particularly improvements (both specific and general) to make it reach GA status. Harren the Red (talk) 22:30, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

An explanation of domi nobiles would be helpful, possibly as part of nobiles. TSventon (talk) 15:02, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Requested move - Greek love → Cultural impact of Classical Greek homoeroticism

Comments at Talk:Greek love welcome. Johnbod (talk) 13:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Battle of the Yarmuk

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Good article reassessment for Battle of Plataea

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Good article reassessment for Artaxerxes III

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Requested move at Talk:Macedonia (ancient kingdom)#Requested move 9 September 2024

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Requested move at Talk:List of New Testament minuscules (2001–)#Requested move 22 August 2024

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Maps

Trade map

Since maps provide information and don't just illustrate an article, shouldn't the information be verifiable somehow? Like listing the sources used to create it on the Commons page. I don't know enough about trade routes to challenge specific information presented on this one, but it seems misleading. Textiles are absent. Slaves are coming only from the Baltic region and sub-Saharan Africa, and the slave trade is shown only as external routes. "Grapes" are on there a couple of times, but no wine. I don't know about the pigs, though they sure do look happy. There are some other things I find confusing about it. But it's used on two English WP and several other language sites. Just wondering what the policy is. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:21, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

It certainly is idiosyncratic! I'm not sure there's a policy that would require us to remove this map from articles, any more than we delete articles that lack sufficient sources and otherwise need a lot of work. Sources can be added to files as well as articles, and no map, however detailed, will be perfectly accurate. But we could certainly use a better map to illustrate commerce. The fact that this one has been around for fourteen years means that nobody has gotten around to making a better one, and that's an argument for leaving it for the time being.

I've always wanted to make my own historical maps, but haven't really had the graphic skills to do so. Maybe this will inspire me to work on that, though I can't say whether the results will justify replacing this map! But I know we have other people who could probably make a better map with identifiable sources for its claims. P Aculeius (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I totally agree that maps should be verifiable somehow. I want to emphasise that this is also the same with diagrams. For example, File:Constitution of Rome.jpg and File:Principate.jpg have a number of typographical and factual errors. Ifly6 (talk) 23:19, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out those two. Apart from any questions about the quality of information, I would question whether such text-heavy graphics really accomplish the purpose of having a diagram to convey info spatially at a glance.

The map isn't fundamentally terrible in that it does convey the "busy-ness" of trade in the Empire. I have thoughts on my ideals for such a map or series of maps, but practically speaking for now, the difference between this and an article needing improvement is that we can easily label the article's deficiencies and flag where citations are needed. Thanks! Cynwolfe (talk) 17:37, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

We do have {{Image reference needed}}, demonstrated above (you put it with the caption text).

I see that at Roman commerce that map's captioned "Principal Roman trade routes, internal and external in 180 AD". That claim could be tagged {{cn}}, or edited to "Some Roman trade routes ...", "A few Roman trade routes ..." "Some of the Roman trade routes for selected commodities ..." and so on.

This map was in some articles. The details at Commons showed it was uploaded a few years after that 2018 appearance (which I don't think was the first) by someone claiming it was their own work, created just before uploading, and that they were the copyright holder. Commons has a more free-form system for breaches of copyright than en.wiki, and it works. But I hasten to add that quick checks on the above trade map and on File:Constitution of Rome.jpg haven't shown any such problems. NebY (talk) 18:55, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I asked at WT:V whether Wikipedia:verifiability should mention {{Image reference needed}} as well as {{citation needed}}, which started a bit of discussion about such images that might interest some of us. One recommendation is If those two images are doing their job of illustrating the article, then their contents ought to already be in the text of the article (in some form, not word for word),[2] maybe quite a high bar for historical maps. A more detailed one is

There are two types of images:

1. Images that are used to illustrate information that is stated in the article text

2. Images that are used to present information in an article.

In the first situation, the important thing is that information in the article is reliably sourced. Consensus can determine whether the illustration accurately depicts that verifiable information, and is captioned appropriately.

In the second situation, the caption needs to include a citation to a reliable source, to establish that the information being presented in the image is verifiable.

[3]

I've also found Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid entering textual information as images, which would seem to apply to much of the File:Constitution of Rome.jpg infographic. NebY (talk) 19:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree that for some maps it's too much; a lot of maps are also guesses as to, for example, where some borders end. For some diagrams on the other hand it's not horrid. For example, my diagram here is sourced to a number of different places which are also separately referenced in article text. Ifly6 (talk) 13:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Athena has an RfC

Athena, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. The title of the RfC is RfC Athena's Lake Tritonis origin. NebY (talk) 16:03, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Women and archaeology at Women in Red

Hello fellow editors, Just a quick note to say that Archaeology is one of October's themes at Women in Red and you're cordially invited to join us! Lajmmoore (talk) 18:04, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Adriatic Sea

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Good article reassessment for Stoicism

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Parentage at Comus

Since 2004 Dionysos has been credited as the father of Comus in the article on him. Comus is a late Classical creation anyway and there does not appear to be a scholarly source for the claim. However, Milton claims him as the son of Bacchus in his masque (line 54 ff) and it is possible that he knew of one. Can anyone throw light on the genealogy before the claim is removed from the article? Sweetpool50 (talk) 10:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

For context, see the discussion between myself and User:Sweetpool50 at Talk:Comus#Son of Dionysus. – Michael Aurel (talk) 10:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The body of the article says that Milton invented his descent from Bacchus. DGRBM does not mention it; nor does the Realencyclopedie seem to (with the caveat that I don't read German, so I'm relying on machine translation here). Brill's New Pauly omits him except for a brief mention in the article on komos that it was "the name of a satyr"; Oxford Classical Dictionary doesn't have anything at all (there's an article on the komos, but no mention of a related satyr or god). Searching google scholar, everything I can find about Comus as the child of Dionysus is in the context of Milton's masque, so I think it's reasonable to assume that this is indeed the source, but I haven't been able to dig up anything which explicitly says so. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

(And now having read the talkpage discussion which Michael Aurel links to, I agree with him that the current lead implies that Comus was considered the son of Dionysus in antiquity, and shouldn't unless we have a source for that.) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

On looking again at the Comus article, I note at the end of the References section that the (original) text is ascribed to Theoi. But the parentage claim is not backed by the quotation from Philostratos there. Sweetpool50 (talk) 11:14, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Judging by their attribution of the parentage to "Other references", I suspect that Theoi derived the claim from Milton, whose genealogy they do note near the end of the page (describing it as a "post-classical invention"). – Michael Aurel (talk) 11:29, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Question on two "Roman era history articles" at the Teahouse

Hi! Not sure if the question at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Request for third party feedback fall under the scope of this WikiProject; if they do, please feel free to respond at the Teahouse instead of here. Thank you! Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 18:34, 15 November 2024 (UTC)