Talk:Marcus Lollius

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identical with Lollius? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.145.82.30 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 17 April 2006

Bergmanus: "In 16 BC, when governor of Gaul (Bergmanus), he was defeated by the Sicambri..." I am not sure what Bergmanus refers to. Bergmanus could be a Latinized surname. It does not refer to Gaul or any governor of Gaul. If it is a reference to a work by the classicist, J.T. Bergmanus, it should be cited properly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 0x0n (talk • contribs) 17:37, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

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How many sons?
The section about his family is a joke.

As the section currently reads, Marcus Lollius married Aurelia the sister of the wife of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. So far, this reflects scholarly consensus; a lot of the Senatorial families were so intermarried they could truthfully greet each other as cousins. However, then it states that they had two sons -- which is at best as misunderstanding of the sources.

The facts are these:
 * Lollius & Aurelia must have had at least one son, for according to Tacitus (Annales, xii.1) Lollia Paulina was their grand-daughter.
 * They had to be her paternal grand-parents because Tacitus tells us in another passage (Annales, xii.22) her mother was the sister of L. Volusius consul in AD 3.
 * Ronald Syme has argued that the first passage in Tacitus lost a word in transmission, so where Tacitus states her father M. Lollius was an ex-consul, we should read that her grandfather M. Lollius was the ex-consul.
 * Horace twice addressed poems to a Lollius Maximus, whom scholars have assumed -- based on names -- was the son of Lollius & Aurelia. But it's entirely possible he wasn't.
 * No primary source reports how many children Lollius & Aurelia had.

So Lollius & Aurelia had at least one son -- the father of Lollia Paulina -- whom the experts have called "M. Lollius" in part out of mistaken identity, in part out of convenience. There is no authoritative source that can verify that was his name. His name could be "Lollius Maximus", which means the man Horace mentions could be the father of Lollia Paulina; since we don't know how many sons her grandparents had, we have no evidence that requires us to assume they must be different people. Or Lollius Maximus was entirely unrelated to Lollius, Aurelia, & Lollia Paulina.

The tl;dr version: at best, it is just one theory that Marcus Lollius & Aurelia had two sons. (Although no one but this Wikipedia article has proposed this, as far as I have been able to determine.) It is a verifiable fact -- well, as verifiable as any fact for the period -- that they had one son, the father of Lollia Paulina. And it is a fact that he married the sister of L. Volusius consul in AD 3. But everything else -- including that Lollius Maximus is their son -- is surmise.

My problem is not only rewriting this section -- which misuses its sources to claim there were two sons -- but in dealing with the related articles: Publius Lollius Maximus, Marcus Lollius (son of consul), and Lollia Paulina. Because they all depend to varying degrees on what this section states. And if I rewrite this section to reflect the solid facts, then we should get rid of the article about Marcus Lollius, son of consul, & merge its contents into other relevant articles. Which is a major change to this & other articles.

Thoughts? -- llywrch (talk) 06:21, 9 May 2018 (UTC)