Talk:Procopius

Good article delisting
This article has been delisted after being listed on the disputes page. The discussion regarding the delisting of this article follows:

Uhh where to begin, no lead per WP:LEAD, only refrences is some futher reading, writing is rather bad on the article, not good Jaranda wat's sup 01:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a lead - rather too short, but it's there. "Procopius (in Greek Προκόπιος, c. 500 - c. 565) was a prominent Byzantine scholar of the family Procopius. He is commonly held to be the last major ancient historian" is a pretty good summary of Procopius in two sentences. I don't understand "writing is rather bad on the article" (I presume you are trying to say that the quality of writing is deficient, but it is certainly one of the better-written articles I have seen on Wikipedia, perhaps because it was based on a Nupedia article: it is written in the style of E.B. though, rather than the blander style that predominates here, and includes phrases like "we know" which would probably be frowned upon by the MoS). The lack of a references section strikes me as unacceptable. The article dates back to the very earliest days of Wikipedia, before the use of a "references" section became standard. It is likely that the "further reading" section actually contains the references used to write this article. Unfortunately, we're unlikely to ever know. There's also no way that the claims in the article could be easily sourced to a particular referece work. So, while I disagree that this fails WP:LEAD and this is surprisingly well-written material, the lack of references probably snuffs this one out, unfortunately.TheGrappler 12:12, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Delist - referencing not adequate by contemporary Wikipedia standards. Metamagician3000 08:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Delist - Because of lack of references, lack of images, short lead and use of phrases such as "we know". I also feel the article doesn't stress the individual's importance. Cedars 07:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Translation into Chinese Wikipedia
The 19:52, 22 September 2007 84.144.253.79 version is translated into chinese Wikipedia.--Philopp 08:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit 25 Nov 07
The anonymous editor immediately before me believed that they had "deleted weasel words, tried to bring it back to a neutral perspective". The edit was a basic misunderstanding of the Secret History; I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't read the work. The SH does indeed "claim to" report, rather than "report" scandals in Justinian's reign: the work remains completely uncorroborated by any other contemporary witness, and some of the purported scandals are so outrageous, the causes given by Procopius so bizarre and unknowable (viz., that Justinian was a devil and had the gift of invisibility), that much of it does not so much report anything as give vent to the bile of the author: that's why I let stand the deletion of "apparently" ("The Secret History apparently reveals an author who had become deeply disillusioned"), since that particular word is a "weasel word" on the part of some Wikipedia editor. But the so-called 'revelations' are indeed "titillating (and doubtful)" rather than "revealing" (and "revealing revelations" is very bad copy editing, too). Similarly again, given that there is no doubt that the same author wrote both the SH and the Buildings, the panegyric of Justinian is undeniably insincere; since the Buildings bears the mark of official patronage in other respects, the panegyric can indeed be viewed as written at Justinian's behest, or something like it: stet. All of this is ground well traveled by the various editors of the work over the centuries, and represents the clear consensus of modern scholars. Bill (talk) 15:03, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

550
"The Secret History" was written in 550. / "Buildings" was written in 554. Böri (talk) 10:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding Justinian to the titles of Procopius's works
isn't really a thing. The  translations of these works—which we should follow—are just The History of the Wars (alt. Procopius's Wars) and The Buildings (alt. Procopius's On Buildings). — Llywelyn II   09:11, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Obscure passage in Style section
I removed the following passage from the first paragraph of the Style section:

In Procopius's work, it is identifiable several intertextual moments. He is not only adopted from those authors a variety of expressions for applying to places, people, times, and events, Procopius also created whole episodes on similar stories in them, but he was also framing his narrative e.g. with the ethnonym Getic he framed the story of the two Gothic nations (the Visigoths and Ostrogoths) through the two sieges of Rome in 410 and 537.

It is evidently a serious, good faith, edit, but the grammar and usage is deficient-- I can only begin to speculate on what is intended. Not knowing enough about Procopius's style to fashion it into a coherent passage, I place it here, so that a more competent editor may find it, and edit it appropriately. MayerG (talk) 00:35, 15 May 2020 (UTC)