Talk:Augustus/Archive 5

Protected edit request on 24 February 2022
This redirect could probably classify as "printworthy", due to the fact that his former name is widely used in many textbooks and sources. Thus, I think a printworthy category would be appropriate. Thanks! Jishiboka1 (talk) 02:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * ❌ please provide the exact edit, such as "change X to Y", you would make if this page wasn't protected; then reactivate the edit request. — xaosflux  Talk 15:21, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * ❌ Which redirect are you talking about? This is the talk page for Augustus which you have probably been redirected to from the talk page of one of the many pages that redirect here. - Mullafacation &#123;talk page&#124;user page&#125; 19:12, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2022
Asalamu alaykum I want it to be known that Tiberias actually wasn't adopted. ITalexis (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. MadGuy7023 (talk) 16:27, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

"considered one of the greatest leaders in human history"
I don't find that claim in the cited Britannica source and I believe the rest of the lead fairly summarizes his legacy without appeal to such a vague standard as "greatness," in accordance with MOS:PEACOCK. 67.180.143.89 (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Britannica says "Augustus was one of the great administrative geniuses of history," which seems close. But I'm not wedded to the sentence. Furius (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

cognomen
As a child he was given the cognomen Thurinus, either in memory of the origins of his ancestors or because it was shortly after his birth that his father Octavius won a victory over fugitive slaves in Thurina. . . He is often called Thurinus as an insult in the letters of Mark Antony, to which he merely replied that he was surprised using his old name was thought to be an insult.’ Suetonius, Augustus 7. 1

From: Augustus:First Emperor of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy (pg 17) The king of ori (talk) 20:21, 24 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's in the article. What's your point? Furius (talk) 22:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * An edit on the first line to add it there The king of ori (talk) 06:29, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Even if Suetonius' information is correct, which is questionable, he wasn't "born" Thurinius, so the name does not belong there. Furius (talk) 11:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Greatest or successful?
Was Augustus one of the greatest leaders in human history or one of the most successful leaders in human history? SpicyMemes123 (talk) 12:52, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

FA status
This article was made FA in 2007: standards and expectations have changed a lot since then, and I'm not sure it would pass an FAC today. It's not a bad article by any means, but there's a couple of problems that worry me:


 * A lot of the article is cited directly and uncritically to ancient sources, particularly Suetonius. This isn't good by Wikipedia's standards (WP:PRIMARY) but also ignores that these sources are not straightforward recountings of fact, nor are they contemporary with Augustus.
 * The quality of sources is sometimes not particularly high. The article leans heavily on Goldsworthy's pop-history books; he's an excellent scholar, but his academic focus is on the Roman army, and these are not really academic works. Elsewhere it very heavily uses a single biography by Eck. Some web sources (e.g. Live Science, ZME Science, Vox and the AP) seem quite far below the line of what we expect in an article like this.
 * Other sources, particularly Scullard, Starr and Syme, are now getting really quite dated. Given how much has changed on our understanding of the Late Republic and Augustan culture since 1990 or so, this is a concern for comprehensiveness.
 * The "Further Reading" section is massive and includes some very well-known works, but none of these are integrated into the article. Again, a worry for comprehensiveness.
 * Some of the writing, grammar etc isn't great: His father died in 59 BC when he was four years old jumped out at me as sloppy phrasing, for example. See in particular the sections on "Stability and staying power". The formatting of sources is highly inconsistent.
 * There are a few straightforward errors of fact: (Augustus chose Imperator ("victorious commander") to be his first name, for instance. A lot of sections are only very sporadically cited.
 * For comprehensiveness, we need much more on Augustus's legacy and reception in post-classical politics.

There's a few other smaller issues, but these are the big ones for me. I'm thinking of starting an FAR: what would others' views be here? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 15:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You really seem to have a handle on this article's prblems, UndercoverClassicist. Would you have the time to work on it, do some bold editing, and fix some of them before submitting it for FAR? I'm confident you would vastly improve it. I'd like to do it myself, but I'm engaged in other projects now. Carlstak (talk) 00:54, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've given it something of a CE, and made some factual adjustments where it was straightforward, but a lot of these problems are big problems. Huge chunks of the text are more essay-style than encyclopaedia-style, and I think it really needs a complete overhaul to be sure of meeting GA standards (especially on tone and sourcing), never mind FA. I don't really have the resources to do the whole job myself either; I'd suggest that the most likely way of rescuing the article is for a small group to come together and work on it, and suspect that FAR might be a good way of getting that group together. Do you (or anyone else) have any thoughts before that point? UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:02, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article is not up to FA standards. I suspect that it has to be rewritten from scratch for that. One thing that could be done to make the task more doable is to split the part of his life during the Republic (before 27 BC) in Early life of Augustus (which ends in 44 BC), and deals with the rest (post 27 BC) here. It would neatly divide his life between Octavian (as a new name for Early life of Augustus) and Augustus, and make some space in the latter article.
 * I also think that despite their age, Ronald Syme's works are still the standard authority on the Augustan era, especially the Augustan Aristocracy and the Roman Papers (less the Roman Revolution, which was controversial from the start, but still ought to be mentioned given its long importance). T8612  (talk) 11:19, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed that we shouldn't be trying to root out Syme; he still comes up on undergraduate reading lists and is an important part of the historiography in any case. I appreciate that this isn't really what you were saying, but for the sake of illustrating the comprehensiveness concerns, Syme certainly isn't the last word any more: Galinsky, Levick and Zanker (all in the Further Reading) are themselves rapidly passing into the "traditional view" category, and they're not really used at all here. You can't really discuss Augustus without discussing what the Principate was, and you still need Millar (and his many critics and successors) for that; he's not mentioned at all.
 * Raaflaub and Toher is used in small parts but the balance, I think, is wrong between up-to-date scholarship and classic works. That in turn seems to have knocked onto the tone and perspective of the article, which has a very Syme-y and slightly dated flavour more appropriate to a secondary source than to an encyclopaedia. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:42, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I would very much like to see up-to-date scholarship reworked into this article. If you want to collaborate on it I might – depending on work – have some time. Ifly6 (talk) 15:45, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 January 2024
He was 76 years old. Please update it from 75 to 76. Crack Connoisseur (talk) 04:01, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Not done

Jc3s5h (talk) 04:28, 3 January 2024 (UTC)