Talk:Attia gens

Merger proposal
Joyous! | Talk 18:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC) Based on what I can find, there is no real reason to think that these two different spellings represent separate gentes.★Trekker (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Would be inclined to agree, but can't immediately think of any particular evidence one way or the other. I suppose the 'smoking gun' would be e.g. an Atius with a father using Attius, or vice-versa - do we have that? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 23:07, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know, I'll try to look around.★Trekker (talk) 23:39, 10 November 2022 (UTC)


 * The problem is that, as with "Caelius" and "Coelius", and several other gentes, there's reason to believe that the two nomina were regularly confused with one another, which makes it really hard to tell if they're the same or different in individual cases. You could well have a father known by one and a son known by the other—and learn nothing more than that for those individuals you can't tell whether one is right and the other wrong.  A bit like "Clark" and "Clarke" used interchangeably until the mid-20th century in many instances.  Except that in theory, these two spellings should make a difference to pronunciation.  This may not have been appreciated by the whole Roman populace—presumably the aristocracy was literate, but literacy doesn't guarantee a thorough understanding of spelling!  And in Latin, long 'a' and a short 'a' are pronounced much more alike than in English, where "Atius" and "Attius" are pronounced very differently.  In separating these, I erred on the side of caution, probably following the model used by the original source that treated them separately, but said they "might" have been the same, or at least were regularly confused with one another.  They were small articles because I didn't have many examples to add at the time, but with epigraphic sources widely available, they could both be expanded considerably now.  Is there a really good reason to assume that they're identical?  P Aculeius (talk) 00:02, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I suppose, given how big a Roman gens could be (that is, it's not like every Marcius, Sergius etc was meaningfully related in any way, or even had been originally), it's hard to see what the practical difference would be between ' Atius and Attius are the same gens' and Atius and Attius are different gentes, but people often used the 'wrong' spelling such that you can't tell who's 'really' in each one.
 * I suppose the key question is: were they so interchangeable that it would cause more confusion to find (e.g.) Q. Atius on one page and not be able to find (e.g.) C. Attius on the same page, or would it cause more confusion to not be presented with the Attii when looking for the Atii? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 07:29, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure what the answer to that is, but separate articles with hatnotes and/or a mention of the possible confusion in the lead still seems like a better way to me. I just did a quick check in the C-S Databank.  There are a bit over 100 entries including "Atius" (filtering out "Statius" and such, but not including "Atia", "Atio", or "Ati"), and a bit under 500 under "Attius", all of which could theoretically go in these articles (they were written long before I learned to use the C-S Databank to fill in short gentes with citations from epigraphy, but I usually don't do that unless I mean to include all of the persons mentioned, and I wouldn't normally try with one that has more than 100 inscriptions, including women and inflected forms).  But in any case, there seems to be plenty of material to fill out both of them, so it seems to me that combining them would be potentially more confusing than keeping them separate.  P Aculeius (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I agree, while there is no definitive proof, there has been speculation that the Atii and Attii were one and the same, arguments have been made that the Attii who served closely under Pompey and his father,, may have been his relatives trought the Atii Balbi.★Trekker (talk) 21:24, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Augustus uncle seems to have spelled his name with two ts.★Trekker (talk) 17:43, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I realise I never got back to this - I'm not sure there's any perfect, neat solution, but agree that separate articles with hatnotes to the effect of 'you might be looking for [the other one]' is probably the best way forward in the short term. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 17:47, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's still where I come down on this, too. Yes, some people are found with both spellings, so there was some interchangeability, but in theory they ought to have been pronounced differently (and they usually are in English, due to English pronunciation rules), but some historical persons are always found as one or the other, and the basic assumption is that they were likely separate gentes with some overlap due to confusion in spelling.  After all, even literate Romans probably weren't consistent all of the time when it came to borderline cases—such as where both spellings were found, and they weren't sure which spelling was correct for individual persons.  P Aculeius (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

So it sounds like we're generally agreed that hatnotes on individual articles are preferable to a merge of these two articles? Joyous! | Talk 18:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think so—a merge wouldn't be a disaster, but in a case where reliable sources treat them separately—even out of an abundance of caution—I think keeping them separate is preferable. The fact that there are over a hundred epigraphic examples of one and over five hundred of the other, any of which could be added to these articles, makes me think that merging them has the potential to create more confusion than it could possibly resolve.  P Aculeius (talk) 18:21, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. In that case, I'm going to close the discussion. Joyous! | Talk 18:39, 27 February 2023 (UTC)