Talk:Caelia gens

The Coelii stirps
There are 5 consuls with this gentile name not listed on this page, & a few more listed but submerged in the list. Should these be people be listed in their own section, or listed here as "Caelius" but called "Coelius" in the subject line of their articles? -- llywrch (talk) 17:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't consider it a stirps, because the spellings were somewhat interchangeable and didn't represent distinct lineages identified by spelling. While one spelling might have prevailed for a period of time or in a particular area, there was probably never a point in time when the heads of families got together and decided they would all use one spelling, while "those cousins over there" went with the other.  Since we can't infer much about the relationships between individuals from which spelling they used, they should be kept together.  P Aculeius (talk) 18:58, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You mean similar to the spelling "Claudius" vs. "Clodius"? Although I think the various branches of that gentilicum tended to standardize on one form or the other. -- llywrch (talk) 04:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Somewhat. There's a general perception that "Clodius" was the "plebeian" spelling, although we know of plebeian "Claudii" long before we meet with the spelling "Clodius".  And then Publius Clodius Pulcher deliberately adopted the spelling in order to make himself sound more common.  We meet the same thing with "Plautius" vs. "Plotius", where the same individuals are sometimes found with both spellings, "Quinctilius" vs. "Quintilius", and probably a number of others.  You'd think that the vowels would be harder to confuse between "Caelius" and "Coelius", but of course "caelum" and "coelum" mean the same thing... but even if we can guess that people using one version might be related to each other, we don't know if the reason is because of how they spoke, or what the prevailing pronunciation at a particular time or place was, or whether there was a deliberate decision, and in most cases we only have someone's name from two or three sources, so it's hard to tell whether their names were spelled consistently, or according to the prevailing custom of the time.  In any case, it's probably best to keep them together as we can't really distinguish them by the spelling of the nomen.  P Aculeius (talk) 12:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Caelii and Coelii are different
Pauly-Wisowa says in Caelius: häufig mit Coelius verwechselt und umgenkehrt. Many errors in Wikipedias come from using a mid-19th century source widely surpassed. --Romulanus (talk) 02:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You're inventing an excuse for something that's not a mistake. The assertion that the nomina are often confused does nothing to sort them out or establish whether they were really separate gentes, or used interchangeably, which in practical terms at least seems to be the case.  P Aculeius (talk) 05:42, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't invent anything. If PW had considered that they are the same gens (or the same nomen gentilicium), it would have written Caelius und Coelius, as it does, for example, with Bellienus und Billienus. Or as in Claudius talking about Clodius, PW would have said it's an alternative orthographic version. No, PW says that they are often confused in classical sources, not that they are the same. And PW is a preferred source to Smith. --Romulanus (talk) 12:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No, you're inventing a problem that doesn't exist. This has nothing to do with preferring one source to another; that's just your assumption.  Since members can't be clearly distinguished due to appearing with both spellings, there's no point in trying to split the article; any attempt to do so would necessarily involve either duplicating most of the contents, or assigning members to one or the other without proof, resulting in an increased degree of inaccuracy.  If you wanted to attempt something of the sort, you could have done so collaboratively by starting a very different discussion on the talk page, instead of simply editing the article without citing a source.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I have not invented a problem. You have resurrected one that it was solved many years ago. The Caldi are Coelii, The Roscii are Coelii, Antipater is a Coelius... You can read Pauly-Wisowa, Broughton, Degrassi, Badian, Gruen, Eck, Alfoldy, Syme... Source? You don't need a source for something that is common sense and widespread. It's like saying that you need a source to say that the Julia gens and the Junia gens are different. Duplicate? Why? Smith is fine, but it's absolutly out of date and nobody uses it anymore. --Romulanus (talk) 18:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You're tilting at windmills. Not one person has claimed on the strength of any source that the two were absolutely identical; rather that they are difficult to sort out, and simply because different scholars have attempted to do so doesn't mean that the problem has gone away.  You could have tried to start a collaborative dialogue to follow similar lines here; but instead you simply decided to cut and slice bits you didn't like out of this article without bothering to cite a source that says what you're arguing they do, and instead you're arguing that you don't even need a source because it's "common sense" and "widespread".  The example you cite is patently absurd; nobody has ever suggested that the Junii and the Julii are identical, inseparable, or even frequently confused.  Instead, you keep complaining about "Smith this" and "Smith that", implying that the issue is one man's opinion, which can be safely ignored because it's old, and making the unsupportable argument that older sources should not be used, when in reality the issue is your failure to cite a source for excising perfectly sound statements about the difficulties of separating the denizens of one article into two groups.  You'll find that you get much more done in Wikipedia when you try to work with, not against other editors. P Aculeius (talk) 22:21, 19 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Decided to go ahead and split the two. Coelia has already been created at the site of a former redirect to this article; will pare down this one later to remove the duplicates.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:16, 19 February 2019 (UTC)