Talk:First Triumvirate

Completely Dominated Roman Politics
It is clear that Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus had a significant impact on Roman politics. However, there needed to be citations for complete domination, because as I understand it, Cato the Younger, Cicero, Clodius, and much of the Roman Senate was able to resist them at many points. I'm not saying that it is wrong, I'm just saying that references and citations are needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.151.23.173 (talk • contribs)

Crassus' reasons for joining the Triumvirate?
First off, the article dosn't say why the three men joined, or their reasoning behind it. We know that Caesar wanted dignitas and respect, and Pompey wanted the Senate to give his troops land that he had previously promised them, but why did Crassus join? It was something about passing an insurance bill or something like that, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.172.94.171 (talk) 02:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I've heard, from another Wikipedia article, that Crassus wanted to gain even money via Caesar and Pompey's control of various provinces. Does anybody have a source for that? Samilo78 (talk) 14:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

France
This fuckin' article said that Caesar annexed "the whole of modern France" to the Roman Empire. This is both much less and much more than the truth. Caesar's Gallic acquisitions extended to the Rhine, thus also taking in territories now comprising all of Belgium, all of Luxembourg, and thick slices of Germany and the Netherlands. On the other hand, what's now southern France was already Roman long before Caesar arrived on the scene. There is no concise way of expressing all of this except for 'the Three Gauls' (or 'Gallia Comata'). Solidarity, Q·L·1968 ☿ 18:52, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Crassus' wealth
It seems to read as if Pompey had as much wealth as Crassus, but - unless I'm mistaken - Crassus was far richer. His vast wealth was one of the primary reasons he was a part of the the triumvirate at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theseus75 (talk • contribs) 18:57, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, you're right, but I don't know of anything to cite that with off the top of my head. I can try and find something though, but as far as I know it was really the only reason Crassus was in the Triumvirate (obviously not for his military skills, as he demonstrated at Carrhae).JW (talk) 20:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Family Tree
I've been working on developing a family tree of the populares to show how everyone's related (Caesar being related to Sulla, Cinna, Marius; Pompey being connected to Crassus; etc.). I posted it here since it connects the three Triumvirate members, although I wasn't sure how to incorporate it so I stuck it at the bottom of the page. If anyone wants to place it or relate it somehow, feel free - or, if anyone wants the .docx I use to make the family tree and then make a .png of it, let me know on my user page. JW (talk) 20:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is flagged as unsourced, @JW, so if you hope for it to remain, you should add the sourced form which the information was driver. Cheers. Le Prof

Today's substantial edit
Came here today from another article, to simply link to this article. Found the lede lacked the date range to explain the duration of this Triumvirate, so sourced that information (Toynbee), and added it.

In so doing, I noticed that the Goldsworthy reference appeared 10 times in the reflist, and that in some cases, the helpfully added quotations in the references were either near to identical to the text (meaning the text needed quotation marks, and the quote in the reference was redundant), or worse, and critically, that the WP text appearing did not match the text in the source, in its meaning.

I therefore set out to spend a couple hours, to either fix or mark the problems, In so doing, I was able to remove some tags, to consolidate others, but I also felt compelled to add some additional ones (esp. inline).

Hence, this edit:
 * (1) fixed the disambiguation at the top of the article,
 * (2) changed the references to "Notes and citations" [because both appeared], and made them columnar,
 * (3) completed incomplete references so that tags could be removed [for full Boak, Boatwright, etc.],
 * (4) Fixd the problems with the Suetonius/Graves reference,
 * (5) Started a bibliography / "Literature cited" section, so repeat references could be uniform, as in other WP classics articles,
 * (6) Removed the repeat references to Goldsworthy, Toynbee, etc. (i.e., made the references non-redundant), and began moving all refs to a uniform style,
 * (7) Removed the "citn style" article tag, and consolidated remaining article tags,
 * (8) Did general copyediting (removing stray and misplaced punctuation, removing italicized parentheses, fixing capitalization, etc., and
 * (9) Did a text review for accuracy of citations, for the Goldsworthy set (since those included quotations).

The result of this last edit activity was to move some Goldsworthy ref-quotes into the text, eliminate others, and restructure sentences for still others (when the Goldsworthy quote/text material only supported part of a sentences content).

Despite adding Toynbee and consolidating Goldsworthy repeat refs, Goldsworthy is 10 of 13 (vast majority) of inline citations, excluding problem primary sources '''(10 of 18 with them). This problems needs to be addressed. '''

Then, the remainder of the unverifiable text was noted (the whole "Death of…" and "Family tree" sections, and whole paragraphs within the "Creation section"), citations missing page numbers or web access dates were annotated, and the appearance of 5 poorly formatted primary Latin references for a single sentence was taken to task.

FInally, the continuing issues — the continuing disconnect that exists between citation and WP text content — was flagged through a "cleanup" tag.

I am no fan of tags, but this article was so bad as to its verifiability, it is due the reader to let them know, as far as possible, what is and is not reliable, verifiable content. Please remove inline tags, one-by-one, as soon as possible, as individual problems of sourcing are addressed, and adjust/remove section and article tags as soon as the situation warrants. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 18:35, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I would also note that there were spelling errors (e.g., "distrubution") in the quotations from Goldsworthy that originally appeared in the reference list, and this further tipped me off to the need to review that added content. So revert this bold edit at your (this article's) own risk. Leprof 7272 (talk) 18:40, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone explain what the following means?
"The three men formed an alliance to muster sufficient political power to overcome the stranglehold over Roman politics by the Roman senate and have some bills they supported and which had been thwarted by the senate approved."

It's copied from the first part of the article. It's poorly written and I can't deduce what it's trying to say. Solri89 (talk) 21:56, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Also the next sentence says the triumvirate lasted from 59 B.C. until 53 B.C. Then goes on to say that the triumvirate was kept secret until 60 B.C.  Does anyone else see the problem with these dates? Solri89 (talk) 22:02, 28 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Might be like the Republican Party prior to John C. Frémont running for US President in 1856 as the first Republican to do so. The party was founded in 1854 but was more or less secret until 1856. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:37, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Dispute about the triumvirate being a triumvirate
A lot of historians (inter alia, Gruen 1995, Flower 2010, etc) dispute the idea of there being a 'first triumvirate', characterising the label both as a legitimising retrojection from Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian's triumvirate and also characterising this 'triumvirate' as bound by friendship and political expedience. Eg Flower prefers 'big three', Gruen always puts 'first triumvirate' in quotes. Article ought to be updated re to reflect that newer scholarly view. Ifly6 (talk) 01:52, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Formation of triumvirate was after Caesar's election to the consulship
"It should... be stressed that... the political coalition sometimes misleading labelled the First Triumvirate was being put together by Caesar after his election and very shortly before he entered office" (emphasis in original). Ifly6 (talk) 07:41, 21 November 2021 (UTC)