Talk:Socii

Incomplete article
well, this article is quite incomplete. In stead of doing the sensible thing and augmenting it where necessary and taking my additions as a starting point, EraNavigator rather found he needed to delete everything which wasn't properly sourced according to him. If you have problems with it then improve it rather than just go deleting everything. As it now stands the article is historically the equivalent of a glass half full. The Roman military confederation's history did not stop with Hannibal. This definately is a step backwards. -- fdewaele, 13 November 2008, 19:40.


 * Sorry, but I gave you plenty of warning about unreferenced material. I intend to complete the article in the near future. Regards EraNavigator (talk) 09:07, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

"Roman military confederation"
A quick google search of "Roman military confederation" reveals 71 hits, all little more than copies of the article itself. As I can find no prior use of this term outside of wikipedia, it appears to be a neologism of EraNavigator's own coining. Indeed, I can find nothing to back up the statement that it is "a term devised by modern historians". Who, exactly? Also, the perfectly acceptable term Socii, widely used and understood by modern historians (as well as the Romans themselves), is redirected to here! Catiline63 (talk) 00:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * H.H. Scullard uses the term, among others. However, since I am perfectly content with "Socii", I will not contest the move.EraNavigator (talk) 09:17, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

If it helps, two respected scholars, Salmon and Staveley regard confederation as a poor term to describe Rome's network of allies.

Salmon 1982 (The Making of Roman Italy), p.71 says: "...contrary to what is commonly asserted, it had not been converted into a Roman confederacy. It did not even remotely resemble a federal union. There was no federal council, no machinery for bringing the Italian states together for joint consultation or even for dealing communally with Rome."

and

Staveley 1989 (Cambridge Ancient History 7.2), p. 426 says: "Federalism implies some form of participation by member states in the policy-making process, however indirect. Yet in Italy there existed not even the machinery for effective consultation..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shunlaser (talk • contribs) 04:57, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

streamlining?
The lead section of this article seems rather long; there are probably ways to sum this up a little more briskly for the reader short on time.

The section "Background: early Rome (to 338 BC)" duplicates a lot of material in other articles not directly related to the topic of the socii; now, let me say that I understand how this can happen. At the time of writing, perhaps some of this was insufficiently covered elsewhere, and perhaps it still is. The danger, I know, is if you move it and cross-reference, somebody else can come along and delete the material.

Because this is under the aegis of the Military History Project, the article is a little heavy on the military aspect over the political and social. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:30, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

'tribe'
What Latin word does 'tribe' translate in the still-way-too-long lead section? I wonder whether we could re-think this. I'm always wary of the English word 'tribe' when used for the socii or the Gauls and such, for the following reasons:
 * 1) The Latin word tribus usually doesn't mean "tribe" in the anthropological sense. It usually means something more like "voting bloc." In origin, there may have been something "tribal" about this, but if so, that archaic meaning is certainly not the dominant one even in the early Republic. Cornell, a major source for this article, in fact says "no source explicitly states that the tribes were ethnic units" (p. 114); he himself uses the word almost exclusively for the Roman tribus (as can be seen here).
 * 2) "Tribe/tribes" often seems to be translating civitas or gentes in this article. Not the most accurate way to translate these words in the 21st century. Cornell refers to the Samnites as a federation of tribes  (pp. 345–346), where "tribe" probably translates pagus (these pages are not available in preview); the distinction holds elsewhere when Caesar speaks of the pagi who make up the civitas of the Helvetii. Cornell's use of the word "tribe" in regard to the Celtic presence in Cisalpina and the siege of Rome is rather complicated for our present discussion, but it seems likely that these were pagi of the original civitates ("nations" in the same sense as the word is used for nations predating Europeans in North America), since these have counterparts in Transalpine Gaul. As it relates to the status of socius, the civitas would be the polity that makes a treaty with Rome, not a "tribe" (pagus) unless it's doing so independently and in secession from its civitas.
 * 3) "Tribe" seems to have come into English usage as a translation of civitas or gentes during the era of British Imperialism. The 19th-century British scholarship that permanently shaped Anglophone discourse on the subject of ancient Rome was not immune to cultural assumptions. In this equation, "British = Romans" and "Others = 'tribes'," the word "tribes" being used by English-speakers for peoples of the Americas and Africa who were ripe for conquering, just like the Romans conquered everybody and brought the benefits of civilization, as it was thought of. Cornell inadvertently demonstrates this by his use of the phrase "Yuracarés tribe of Brazil" on p. 62 and "mountainous tribes" on p. 306 (where it may be anthropologically accurate). The point is not to be PC (I hasten to say), but to make sure we're using terms in a way that accurately reflects usage in our own time.
 * 4) If you read post-World War II scholarship, you can observe a movement increasingly away from the use of "tribe" for non-Roman polities. Yes, the word is still used (so please don't give me examples), because each generation of scholars builds on the work of the previous, sometimes resulting in the unthinking use of concepts or terms that ought to be examined for accuracy. The point is, the word "tribe" shouldn't be used as if it refers primarily to non-Romans who are by implication more "primitive," when in fact it's an important term for understanding the political organization of Rome itself.

Sorry to have gone on and on about this, but this article is obviously under the care of editors who take their work seriously and think through things. (My comments above about the digressions on the constitution of Rome and such still hold, too.) Cynwolfe (talk) 14:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Needs hatnote dab
I'm not sure what William of Nottingham's socius was, but it wasn't this. — Llywelyn II   00:39, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Possibly disruptive edits
The recent string of anonymous edits on August 29 introduced various grammatical and punctuation errors. Some facts have been changed as well. This subject is not my area, so would someone else please take a look and see what needs undoing? Thanks. Jessicapierce (talk) 19:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Contesting the use of the term "Latin" by the Romans
In the section "Meanings of the term "Latin"", the author has claimed that one of the meanings used by the Romans was to refer to the socii. Can anyone verify that? This claim might be born from a misunderstanding of the term Socii Latini Nominis, which the Romans did use, but it certainly does not mean that the Romans referred to the socii as Latins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shunlaser (talk • contribs) 05:02, 23 October 2020 (UTC)