Talk:Julian's Persian expedition

Work in progress
As a start I am translating this from Vicipaedia. Unless anyone else does it first, I will then add better secondary sources and more detail. Andrew Dalby 18:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I believe a more critical approach of Ammianus and secondary sources such as Zosimus is needed, or at least an explicit statement at the beginning of this thread that it is a summary of Roman sources without textual or historical analysis. For instance, it is obvious that the claim that the Persians lost 2500 men at Ctesiphon (just by coincidence the usual size of a Persian garrison) while the Romans suffered the losses of only 70 men is both unlikely without additional information, unlikely because of the description of the battle, and unlikely because it would have meant that Ctesiphon's garrison had been destroyed and a siege would have been immediately successful.217.63.243.52 (talk) 08:54, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This isn't really a comment on my original text (which was, anyway, written a very long time ago). The example given (2,500/70 deaths at Ctesiphon) isn't cited from an ancient source, but from Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall was used liberally by a later editor. I agree with what's said about this in a comment below. Gibbon can't be treated as a reliable source for Wikipedia except on Gibbon's own opinions. Andrew Dalby 13:55, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the charge of "cribbing" made by one editor in an edit summary
Had the editor who made this charge been actually familiar with the work from which the information in the article is derived, he would have hesitated before lightly making an accusation so grievous; the fact is, as is natural whenever anything is written from a single source, there is some resemblance between certain sentences in the article and Gibbon's account; but it is obvious that the writer has somewhat carefully rewritten them, to encapsulate the gist, but not copy the words, of the original; I have followed the parallel versions rather closely, and find no serious grounds for the accusation. The same information is contained in both, but it is hardly what can be called "cribbing." If the style is archaic, that is possibly to be attributed to the habituation of a reader of Gibbon to the flowery and ornate style (to modern ears) of the 18th and 19th centuries.

All this is said, not as an experiment in detective psychoanalysis, but because, if the charge were true, the article would have to be rewritten from scratch. Although Gibbon's works are in the public domain now, plagiarism is plagiarism always, and never acceptable on Wikipedia. That is, however, I am sincerely glad to be able to state, not the case here. RPride (talk) 22:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Gibbon is far too old to be used these days - modern sources needed to interpret Gibbon and the original Romano-Greek authors balanced against 20th-21st century archaeology and text/inscription discoveries - this article has problems! 50.111.51.247 (talk) 14:10, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

"hackneyed edifice"?
The article states:

"... that hackneyed edifice of ancient superstition collapsed very soon upon his death ..."

The phrase "that hackneyed edifice" strikes me as un-encyclopedic in tone -- fine for Edward Gibbon but inappropriate for Wikipedia.

Karl gregory jones (talk) 00:42, 4 January 2020 (UTC)


 * User:Refoelp, who added a great deal of the information to this article, does not write in a very encyclopedic manner while using outdated sources and outdated historiography. I have tried to fix this issue in a number of articles they have "worked" on. --Kansas Bear (talk) 02:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tagged the article for problems with style and tone - needs some 'neutralizing' and more modern sources - we've come a long way since 1952 in our knowledge about the issue.50.111.51.247 (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I took a shot at fixing the tone of the "Shapur and the fate of Armenia" section. Anyone's welcome to tweak it if they feel it's not fixed enough or there's anything else wrong with it. Egsan Bacon (talk) 02:58, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 21 March 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. No opposition and nominator's claims check out. (closed by non-admin page mover) Srnec (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Julian's Persian War → Julian's Persian expedition – The original title at the article's creation. The rationale behind the undiscussed move in 2015 was Almost all works of modern scholarship refer to it as either Julian's Persian war or the Roman Persian war of 363 or some variant of "war", but a search on google scholar suggests very much the opposite. "Expedition" seems more appropriate given that it was an invasion followed by a retreat, rather than continued, protracted warfare. A regular google search returns just about an equal number of results for both terms, but many of the ones under "Julian's Persian War" must be assumed to be Wikipedia mirrors. "Julian's Persian campaign" is also a possibility, which has fewer gscholar results than "expedition" but still many more than "war". Avilich (talk) 02:35, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In choosing the original title I think I reached the conclusion that this hardly amounted to a war. From the sources I've just reread (which is not all of them, I admit), I have the impression that war was not declared. So it was more like a barbarian raid, Alaric's invasion of Italy for example; or one might compare it with the expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro, with the difference, of course, that those two gentlemen made a permanent difference to the world, while Alaric and Julian didn't. I don't feel strongly, but my view is that "expedition" is appropriate. Andrew Dalby 14:14, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.