Talk:Kings of Alba Longa

Dates
I revised the dates according to the referenced material of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The previous dates were erroneous unless they were done using an unsourced work. PsychoticSpartan 02:31, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I apologize for the change of dates. I now realize that using Wikipedia for dates when I'm unsure is never a good idea. Rome is founded 432 years after the fall of Troy (1184 BC) and during the first year of the seventh olympiad (752 BC), according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus. I'm sticking to it this time. Psychotic   Spartan  123  11:13, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

List
I think this page should be turned into a list, and the page of the Latin Kings gang should instead be the page reached by searching for "Latin kings." The gang article would be entirely more appropriate as it is a more popular search result when looking for "Latin kings." I did a basic "Google search" for the term, and did not hit a page on the kings of yore for quite a few pages. Thoughts ideas? --I Write Stuff (talk) 00:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that having two pages, one entitled "Latin Kings" and the other "Latin kings", about two totally different subjects, is confusing. Perhaps this page could be renamed "Latin kings of Alba Longa", and "Latin kings" would then redirect to "Latin Kings" (the gang), and the disambiguation page would be maintained with references to the three articles, much the same as is the case now, except that the page on the kings of yore would be, as I repeat, "Latin kings of Alba Longa". However, I think the corresponding template is best left alone as is. Pasquale (talk) 14:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a suitable middle ground, I do not know how to make a disambiguation page however. Perhaps we should give it more time to see if anyone else would like to chime in, or if you would prefer to be bold, make any changes possible. --I Write Stuff (talk) 16:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There is a disambig page now. Therefore there is no need to list the contents of the disambig page in the hatnote. Such a list is discordant with the article - you think alba longa has to do with chicago gangs or vice versa. By the way one creates a disambig page by enclosing disambig in double braces at the very bottom. Take a look. By the way this appears to me to be a most excellent article if anyone is looking for an eval. It remains to fill in the stubs.Dave (talk) 21:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

A reservation
Well, it looks like User:Neddyseagoon made the decision for everyone. Had he allowed for a discussion, I would have pointed out that the ancient Romans did not consider these kings mythological, but historical. They may, of course, be entirely or largely mythological, but a more appropriate term may be legendary. The way I understand these terms, a legendary character may have some historical foundation, while a mythological character usually doesn't. Pasquale (talk) 14:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry to jump the gun, and a wholly valid point. But surely the main criteria for a terminology should be how they are viewed now rather than then? Neddyseagoon - talk 14:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

How much is historical?
Did Livy make the names up? The reigns? What they did?

Is is just fiction without kernels of truth, or is there some historicity there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.86.185 (talk) 13:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I think if you read the article you see that the names seem to have been invented to provide satisfying genealogies for Rome's leading families or etymologies of place names. Since this belongs to Rome's pre- or proto-historic period, I doubt there's any way to answer your question about historicity; the sources, other than these traditional legends, would be archaeological rather than historical. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Infobox
I deleted the entire infobox as misleading, after deleting two erroneous pieces of information in it. First, this line of kings ends even in legend with Romulus and the founding of Rome, so the notion that a kingdom that existed from the mid-12th century to the mid-8th was part of the Latin League, formed in the 7th century, is mistaken. The historical entity Alba Longa that was part of the Latin League is a different topic. Also, the box stated that these people were "pantheists." How do we know this? It's discussed nowhere in the article.

As stated in the article, this genealogy is transparently fictional, invented to bridge the two disparate legends of Rome's founding. The names of rulers are clearly invented as etiologies for features of toponymy and for family names. This is reflected by the existence of 15 different lists of these kings (different, meaning they vary depending on the writer's purpose). Although there was an Alba Longa, this article is not about the archaeological existence of a human settlement in the pre- or protohistorical period. It's about the legendary tradition. Material about Alba Longa as an actual place should go in the article Alba Longa. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:58, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Query about this list
Gods, Goddesses, And Mythology, Volume 11 edited by C. Scott Littleton has Silvius as the first king, whereas we say he succeeded Ascanius. Am I confused or? Dougweller (talk) 15:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Ares/Mars
Shouldn't we just say Mars? We don't say Aphrodite/Venus? Slightnostalgia (talk) 08:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean. Ares isn't mentioned in the article; just Mars.  The two links (one in text, one in the chart, which I agree could probably stand to be revised) both go to Mars, not Ares.  Could you be more specific about the problem?  P Aculeius (talk) 23:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The painting by Ferdinand Bol
For some reason, the painting featured here has been referred to throughout wikipedia as if it represented King Latinus. That is simply a mistake. It makes no sense to anyone who knows the Aeneid. It depicts a moment from Book V (Aen V,244sqq), when Aeneas crowns the winner of a boat race (Cloanthus) with a laurel wreath. Virgil locates this event in Sicily, far from Latinus's court, and before Aeneas had even met that monarch. The old man seated next to him on a throne is likely Acestes, who welcomed the Trojans after they left North Africa. The ships in the background make it abundantly clear that the scene is set after the boat race, and the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum (which houses the painting) concurs with me: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/SK-A-614. Why they title it "Aeneas bij Latinus" nevertheless is a mystery to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ichbinkluk (talk • contribs) 00:08, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Stepmother or mother?
From the article: "Dionysius records a different tradition, whereby [Silvius] was not the son of Ascanius, but his half-brother, the son of Aeneas and Lavinia.[i] In this account, Lavinia feared that Ascanius, already a young man upon the death of his father, would harm her or her child, as threats to his bloodline, and therefore hid in the woods, where she was sheltered by Tyrrhenus, the royal swineherd and a friend of her father, Latinus. She and her son emerged from hiding when the Latins accused Ascanius of having done away with his stepmother." What "stepmother"? Shouldn't that be "mother" (Lavinia)? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 18:15, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

No. In this narrative, Lavinia is Silvius' mother and Ascanius' stepmother. That is why she feared that Ascanius would harm her. Dimadick (talk) 18:45, 22 May 2019 (UTC)