Talk:Roman aristocracy/Archive 2

Move request
I propose that this article be moved to Roman equestrian order from the current Equestrian order. The current title is a generic name which could refer to any knightly order, especially medieval and/or papal ones e.g. the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. The title as it stands gives no indication that it refers to the Romans. It's the same as using the term "Senate" when you mean Roman senate. EraNavigator (talk) 19:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose I have plenty of books written by historians that use "Equestrian Order" as we do 'here'. "Equestrian Order" is used by academics, scholars, and historians. While Encyclopedia Britannica uses "Eques" as title of its article, the article uses consistently "equestrian order" . Furthermore I wish to point out that you gave a link to the "Order of the Holy Sepulchre" and not to the "Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem" (I will not speculate upon why you have "disguised" it). My main point is that the other orders/articles have different titles, making any mix-up highly unlikely. Flamarande (talk) 12:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The reason I linked that title is because it is the correct full title of the order (it's not my doing that someone's used an abbreviation) and to demonstrate my point that "equestrian order" is a generic term for any knightly order - in fact, "knightly order" and "equestrian order" are interchangeable terms. The ones supported by the Vatican are all called Pontifical equestrian orders (Knights of St John of Malta etc). May I ask why you have such a strong objection to adding "Roman" to the title, since it is, after all, a Roman institution? Even if you are right, and most people would understand it to mean the Roman order (and not everyone is as knowledgeable as you are), adding "Roman" is no skin off your nose, as it were. Another parallel is "legion". Most people would assume that refers to the Roman military unit. But the relevant article has to specify "Roman legion", because there are other types of legion e.g. the Foreign Legion and the British Legion. I rest my case EraNavigator (talk) 19:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I oppose the proposed move because the current title is as current academics and historians use it. That's my main reason. I wrote it above, but you seem somehow to believe that I have some personal reason ("May I ask why you have such a strong objection to adding "Roman" to the title" .... adding "Roman" is no skin off your nose, as it were). Rest assured that accuracy is my only and sole concern here (meaning: No awful Wikipedia made up title, in other words: a sad fabrication - the current naming-policy is absolutly pitiful, resulting in shameful examples like Victoria of the United Kingdom and Napoleon I of France among many others).


 * "Roman legion" is used as such by current academics and historians and therefore I'm not against that title. Your comparision is simply unwise. For what's worth I tried "equestrian order" in a Google-search; only this subject and your subject appeared. However your subject appears with its full offical name. "knightly order" and "equestrian order" may indeed be interchangeable terms but this seems to create no confusion at all as we can see here yet again: . Flamarande (talk) 20:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Amended move request
Actually, I think "Roman equestrian order" is a bit long-winded and that this article should be named Roman knight or Eques as in the Britannica. I so amend my proposal. But I stick to my basic point that the title should contain the word "Roman" if it uses English terms. EraNavigator (talk) 20:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * An absolute and categorial NO to the first (Roman knight); this article is not about the individual knight, it is about the respective aristocratic class (equestrian order) as a whole. This logic can be followed in the article "Roman citizenship" which correctly doesn't use the title "Roman citizen".


 * Oppose to the second. I have plenty of books written by historians that use "Equestrian Order" as we do 'here'. While Encyclopedia Britannica indeed uses "Eques" as title of its article, the article itself speaks/uses "equestrian order". We should use the proper title for simplicity and accuracy's sake . "Equestrian Order" is widely used by English-writing academics, scholars, and historians. Flamarande (talk) 22:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC) PS: You clearly seem to have re-oppened your case, councilor :)


 * OK, let's give other people a chance to comment EraNavigator (talk) 22:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has a clear rule that the most common name should be used for an article. If you can prove any other title than the current to be more common I'm all for the move. Wandalstouring (talk) 17:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This is the picture from some other authoritative encyclopedias:


 * 1) Encyclopedia Britannica: eques
 * 2) Encyclopedia Americana: equites
 * 3) Brockhaus Enzyklopaedie (German): equites
 * 4) Winkler Prins Grote Encyclopedie (Dutch): equites


 * So far I have not come across a single reputable printed encyclopedia that uses "equestrian order", which is not surprising, as that is a generic term, as I have said, and not specific to the Roman group. We are clearly out of line with encyclopedic convention, so I propose we rename this article Equites. EraNavigator (talk) 17:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * My fault, I should have been more precise, it's the most common English name. Foreign language sources don't count. Please check how the sources used for this article refer to the subject. Wandalstouring (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The first two are the most important English-language general encyclopedias. Since Wiki is a also a general encyclopedia, we should follow that convention. I don't see how the use in specialised sources is relevant. PS: If you want a specialised encyclopedic source, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) has the entry under equites also EraNavigator (talk) 20:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * One more reputable English-language encyclopedia: the Columbia Encyclopedia has an entry for equites, and no entry for "equestrian order" EraNavigator (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't help you. Read WP:Naming. It does tell you how an article name gets chosen. Wandalstouring (talk) 09:30, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

False information?
In the subject of the Equites, i am not too sure what to believe... here it says they are a middle class, in the texts and socials books i have searched it says they are a legion (consisting of 4300 soilders). i need some clarifacation of this for a project i am doing...

Yes this article is a mess. It's not that it has the wrong info (because the equites weren't very military during the empire), but it has a lot of holes. For example, it says that during the early republic, the equites were mostly military, but during the intervening centuries, they changed. However, it doesn't say exactly what they became. I always read that they were the roman capitalists, so I guess the middle class statement is correct...216.252.81.51 (talk) 03:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Until the reforms of Gaius Marius, all Roman classes other than the proletarii, where egligible for military service. Roman armies where militia armies at that time. The equites class formed the cavalry section of the roman army since they where the only ones to be able to afford horses. After the reforms of Gaius Marius, a proffessional army was raised and this ended the need for the equestrian classes to enter military service.

Therefore: they always where the middle class, both socially and economically, before Gaius Marius they also supplied the men for the equites section of the army. There is also something else that is wrong with the article. The equites where not between plebs and patricians, they were usually just plebs. The equestrian social class is based on property, the plebeian class is based on descent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.154.232.138 (talk) 14:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

As a classicist and ancient historian, I do not believe this article should belong among the History Good Articles. It has a lot of well-written and verifiable information, but it is fundamentally inaccurate in many places. All of the info I'm going to post here is stuff I can and will find evidence for when I get the time. But I wanted to clear some stuff up and disagree with a few things I noticed while reading through the article as it currently exists.

"Plebeian" and "patrician" were only different types of socioeconomic ordines at the very early periods of the Republic. The designation was believed to derive from whether or not your ancestors were among the city's founders. While this certainly was tied to wealth, at first, the transition of Rome from an agricultural town to a multi-national empire changed the nature of its economy. By the end of the Late Republic, the distinction between patrician and plebeian was a social and political distinction only, based on ancestry, and had no bearing whatsoever on personal wealth. This is why Pompey was considered to have less personal dignitas than Caesar (before he won the Gallic Wars), even though Pompey was a decorated war hero and many times more wealthy. When it came down to it (in the Romans' minds), Caesar's family was descended from Venus herself, while Pompey's family was descended from Italian farmers. Pompey was plebeian and Caesar was patrician, and money had nothing to do with it. This is also why Suetonius uses the term "senatorii" to refer to the senatorial rank, rather than "patricii." For centuries, the censors' job was vital to the survival of the senate and the maintenance of the classes, as it was the census which determined what your annual income was and therefore to which class (of which there were five) you belonged. By the mid-300s BC, you had to earn a certain income and own a certain amount of land to be of senatorial rank (either "ordo primus" or "ordo senatorii"), even if you weren't necessarily inducted into the senate. Moreover, before the Social and Civil Wars, you had to derive your income entirely from the land-- you couldn't be "in business," (unless it was the business of selling your crops/ livestock), which was considered low-class. If you were in business, didn't make enough money, or lost your family's land holdings, the censors would typically either throw you out of the senate if you were already a member, or, if you weren't a senator, they wouldn't let you join. This was true for patricians and plebeian nobles alike. To be considered a knight (either "ordo equestris" or "ordo secundus"), however, you only had to meet income requirements, which were lower than those of the senatorial rank. And since it was perfectly acceptable for the knights to be in business, they were fabulously wealthy compared to most senators, because the owner of a multi-national shipping company or slave trader made WAY more money than a gentleman farmer. So, in theory, it was perfectly possible for a member of a patrician gens to fall into to the ordo equestris if he fell on bad fortune. The Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, for example, was about as patrician as you could get. But his family's fortune dwindled when his alcoholic father spent all the money and was ejected from the senate, and Sulla would have never been allowed to join if his stepmother hadn't made him her heir. The social upheaval in the Late Republic meant that the census was taken much less regularly and the legal requirements for entry into the senate were often times ignored. The Lex Iulia passed by Augustus changed much of the legal requirements and definitions, or at least made what was already de facto to be de jure-- the first/ senatorial class was defined as the most-propertied, regardless of ancestry or where their income derived, and as such, a huge number of knights who had previously been literal second class citizens were eligible for first class privileges, as their economic value was legally recognized.--Ian Massey, University of South Carolina.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.168.231 (talk) 08:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Top social class?
The equites constituted the "top social class in Roman society"? What about the senatores? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Or the patricii? Or the nobiles? And although it's conventional to assume that cavalry are always elite socially because of the wealth required to maintain horses, Momigliano even puts forth reasons to doubt that the patricii originated as mounted warriors per se: the legions rather than cavalry were characteristic of Roman warfare, and cavalry officers had no particular prestige; the Flamen Dialis, who had to be a patrician, was forbidden to mount a horse. See Arnaldo Momigliano, “Procum patricium,” Journal of Roman Studies 56 (1966) 16–24. Officers rode horses for practical reasons when the legionaries didn't, but this is usually downplayed in the sources, since cavalry troopers were most often "barbarian" auxilia.
 * Although the supposed conflict between senate and equites can be exaggerated, consider this statement by P.A. Brunt in his essay "The Equites in the Late Republic": "some Equites aspired to a senatorial career, at least for their sons, and may well have resented the arrogant exclusiveness of the nobility, dominant in the senate, which tended to limit the advancement of new men" . Even if we regard "social" status as primarily economic, senators are often assumed to be richer, and the census qualifications for senators were actually set higher for senators by Augustus. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It's a loaded question, it should be "top social order?" as class is an anachronistic concept to do with economic status and the workers' relations to their employers. Status wasn't just measured in wealth. Power, heritage, and learning were arguably equally as important and as a freedman could achieve the wealth to become an equestrian it devalued the order in the eyes of the patricians. The patricians were arguably the highest order in Roman society as magistracies weren't open to the equites. When the equites class was created it was to do with the voting centuries in the assemblies and had the highest wealth qualification and was related to the army. Nev1 (talk) 01:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, setting aside the problems of translating ordo as class, Lintott clarifies this: Augustus sets an amount to qualify as a senator, but that seems to be a new requirement. So if wealth were technically irrelevant to senatorial standing in the Republic, the statement about the knights makes more sense. Another source (probably less authoritative than Lintott) says that both knights and senators in the Late Republic had to meet a property requirement of 400,000 sesterces, and then Augustus raised it to a million for senators. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Category:Ancient Rome vs. Category:Ancient Romans vs. Category:Ancient Romans by class vs. Category:Ancient Roman equites
Category:Ancient Roman equites is a category within Category:Ancient Romans by class which is a category within Category:Ancient Romans which is a category within Category:Ancient Rome. — Robert Greer (talk) 23:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Regal era needs fixing
The section on the regal era needs to be fixed. The mess is partly due to confusion in the ancient sources. A good article to help correct it can be found here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Equites.html

I don't have the energy right now...so if someone else can do it that would be great! --Urg writer (talk) 21:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Long captions are long
Is there a reason why the captions are so long? The first image, for example, goes into detail into Pliny without making a reference as to why the image is relevant to the article. Please note WP:CAPTIONS, which also says captions should be succinct. hateless 03:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with this nearly two-year-old suggestion. I've never seen such long captions on WP. They're informative and relevant, but I wonder whether there isn't a better way to incorporate them. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:33, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The lead book
There is an entire article in the lead. It is huuuuuuggggeee. If no one takes a crack at it soon, I plan to wield the editorial axe.User talk:Unfriend12 01:02, 16 March 2012 (UTC)