Talk:Historia Augusta

Untitled
Even though the Penguin version is only one half, it's far more common on bookstore shelves, and it's useful for people to know how it relates to the full history. (sort of a modern-day version of listing the various corrupt MSS. of an ancient work. :-) ) Stan 06:02, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Obvious falsehood
Is there some example of obvious falsehoods short enough for modern readers to pick? I ask because the article talks a lot about unreliability but gives no examples. --84.20.17.84 08:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I've introduced a new section with some examples. The list could be extended indefinitely! Cenedi 14:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It's easier to understand now. --84.20.17.84 07:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Article being managed by a modern scholar (Barnes (?), Burgess (?) vel sim.
The recent edits of this article by an anonymous author indicate an attempt to threat basic freedom of speech; there is no reason to censor the criticism of the current orthodox view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beatus.Pistor (talk • contribs) 21:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Beatus.Pistor -- you need to provide an explanation on this Talk Page for the excessive number of tags you've placed on this article. Adding tags which say "see the discussion on the talk page", and then providing no explanation, is bad wikiquette. Some of the tags such as the ones which say that the section "may not represent a worldwide view of the subject" just seem bizarre to say the least. Pasicles (talk) 19:40, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed these tags for now - it does look a bit like vandalism in my opinion. If Beatus.Pistor is opposed to this he's welcome to outline why those tags are needed on this talk page. 94.191.147.92 (talk) 13:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

My updates of the article were victim of vandalism (if you look at the article's history). This is a debated topic in current academic research (see for instance the reference to Cameron 2011 there), but for some reason it contains only one side of the controversy, and there were users who tried to edit out/censor the subsection on 'criticism of the current orthodox view'. In addition, the article--as it was before I started working on it--contained originally factual errors or statements that were far from being substantiated. (talk) 15:55 17 June 2012 (GMT) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beatus.Pistor (talk • contribs)

Does Cameron demolish all of the arguments for the later date?
I am not familiar with the whole debate, but parts of the life of Claudius Gothicus are dependent on Ammianus, and at least one passage refers to Austrogothi, who probably did not exist, under that name, in the 360s-380s. 71.191.233.216 (talk) 00:29, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Overtagging
I don't disagree with the requests for citations, but when a section is tagged "unreferenced", it's superfluous (per WP:OVERTAGGING) to tag most or all sentences within it. The article still seems excessively burdened with requests for citations, especially when there's no discussion on the talk page, and at points where it's likely that the whole paragraph comes from the same source. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The problem is we don't know what that source is. More over there is possible misrepresentation of what is being said.


 * For example we originally had "Computer-aided stylistic analysis of the work has, however, returned ambiguous results; some elements of style are quite uniform throughout the work, while others vary in a way that suggests multiple authorship. To what extent this is because portions of the work are obviously compiled from multiple sources is unclear.[citation needed]"


 * A little searching produced "Computer-aided stylistic analysis of the work has, however, returned ambiguous results; some elements of style are quite uniform throughout the work, while others vary in a way that suggests multiple authorship. To what extent this is due to the fact that portions of the work are obviously compiled from multiple sources is unclear. Several computer analyses of the text have been done to determine whether there were multiple authors. Many of them conclude that there was but a single author, but disagree on methodology. However, several studies done by the same team concluded there were several authors, though they were not sure how many." (Prickman, Greg; Head of Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries, (2013) The Atlas of Early Printing "Ninth Century - The Text")


 * So not only was the statement misrepresented but by not being quoted and cited it was a major violation of WP:CV to boot. So this is NOT overtagged as we don't know where the items being presented come from or how accurate any of them are.--216.31.124.106 (talk) 14:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup of article
I have just completed a comprehensive cleanup of the article, mostly adding citations where required. Consequently, I have removed the citation required and original research boxes. Oatley2112 (talk) 13:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Response to request for comment
In general this is looking fantastic. Roman history is by no means my specialty, but I have a couple of small points: Furius (talk) 12:11, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In some places, it needs to be kept clearer that theories are theories - e.g. the discussion of the source of scriptores' names as Ciceronian references, the presentation of the case for Ignotus. This especially true with explanations of arguments from Syme.
 * I would expand abbreviations like HA and KG - there is no need for them and they may be confusing to people who jump straight to a section, rather than reading the article from start to finish
 * I'm not convinced that the table "Estimated amount of reliable historical details in some of the HA’s secondary and later primary vitae" is actually very helpful - I am skeptical of the methodological validity of the source's decision to create it.
 * There are occassional phrases which seem a bit POV for wiki, like "fertile and fraudulent imagination", "inferior sources". These need to be more clearly attributed to a specific source or made a bit more colourless.
 * "For instance, Herodian is used more often that he is explicitly referenced in the HA; three times his material is cited as "Arrianus", and ten times he is referenced as "Herodianus", probably to multiply the author's sources. Further, the author often distorts Herodian, to suit his literary objective." - but "Herodianus" is just the Latin form of "Herodian".
 * The examples of falsehood section might be trimmed a little. A lot of these items, presented as "falsehood", could be "error" - this could be marked a bit more clearly. The aclys is pretty weak as an "invention" as opposed to literary variety. The ones that rest on an absence of corroborating evidence can probably go too; e.g. on the accession of Tacitus: "(no reason to believe in them, either)" is weak as evidence of falsehood.
 * Historical value: Magie's quote is pretty pompous and unsympathetic and it is not really about historical value so much as literary value. If there is to be a section on "literary value" it should go there - and then it would be nice to balance him with more recent and sympathetic assessments (there must be someone who has viewed the intertextuality of the work as a fascinating and interesting feature of it?).
 * "Criticism of the current mainstream view" should be incorporated into the main body as appropriate - it does not seem fair to me to give such a prominent place to Syme and relegate Momigliano and AHM Jones to the end, when all three are exceptionally distinguished.
 * "Historical Value" should, I think, come immediately after "Genre and purpose" and "false documents" & "examples of flasehood" should be sub-sections of it.
 * Thanks Furius, those suggestions look good. I will work on these over the next few days. Oatley2112 (talk) 22:46, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * No problem. I should reiterate ttha this is looking fantastic - don't feel bound by any of my suggestions if you disagree with them. Furius (talk) 03:10, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Non-reviewer comment:
 * There is both "Magie 1921" and "Magie & Historia Augusta 1921" in References, but only "Magie, David; Historia Augusta (1921)" in Sources.
 * There is a "Birley 1988" in References but "Birley, Anthony; Historia Augusta (1988)" in Sources.
 * There is a "Cameron 2011" in References but "Cameron, Alan (2010)" in Sources.
 * There is a "Habelt 1968" in References but "Habelt, Rudolf (1966)" in Sources.
 * There is a "Prickman 2013, book-01-ninthcentury.php" in References but "Prickman, Greg" in Sources.
 * Finally, no citation points to "Anonymous (c. 395)" in Sources. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:05, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Please take great care with these refs, they still don't match. You should go through them one by one and see if the links work or not. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:55, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Non-Reviewer comment:
 * On the issue of "the" in front of names. Examples like "the Alexander Severus" stand for "the Life of Alexander Severus" and probably should be expanded to that. "The Philippics" is the standard name for a set of speeches by Cicero. 09:37, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * On the copyvio - The wikipedia article is primary and the UIowa version is the copy. The "offending sections" in the wiki article go back to at least 2006; the UIowa version is first visible in 2014 on the wayback machine and the front page of that UIowa project says that its entire project only began in 2008 . Furius (talk) 10:16, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I see, to be entirely honest, I thought that that might be the case but wasn't sure how to check. Mr rnddude (talk) 02:22, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to making this article into a Good Article, in particular the reviewer Mr rnddude, as well as Furius and Llywrch. Oatley2112 (talk) 05:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

"From the sixth century to the end of the 19th century, historians had recognized that the Historia Augusta was a flawed and not a particularly reliable source"
I would like more expansion on this claim. What 6th century historians objected to this work, and in what way? Koopinator (talk) 16:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)