Talk:List of Roman generals

Purpose
This list appears to have no particular purpose or definition. Every commander of a Roman army and/or province, and his senior subordinates, strictly rate as Roman generals, but since the source material is heavily skewed towards military action and adventure, and all the senior Roman public offices included military as well as civic command duties and powers, such a list would constitute the majority of attested Romans about whom more than a few lines of information is known.

I'd suggest, just as a starting point for discussion, that there should be other lists for senior magistrates and officials and provincial commanders, and that the generals list should be confined to men who were notable in some way as military commanders. As a rule of thumb I'm thinking of Cicero, who certainly (eventually) commanded a province and army and was even hailed imperator, but was no general. On the other hand most of his legati in the Cilician command were, including his brother Quintus, who is notable as one of Caesar's leagti in Gallia. Some reasonable "qualification" categories for the Republican period would be a) the viri triumphales, b) attested viri militares of the upper classes, c) anyone else who was an eminent commander in some way but doesn't fit into the a), b) categories. Appietas (talk) 05:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * My long term aim would be to differentiate between generals who have notable "generalship" victory/losses and other notables, who by virtue of the circumstances above, had also been generals. MacStep (talk) 11:43, 24 November 2010 (UTC)