Talk:The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

Just a bit of kibitzing - this book is not that important, and so doesn't really need a description of its contents that is longer than for any other book at WP. Brevity will get more people to read this article. It would be more useful to refer to a review by classical scholars, but the only online reference to it I've found is a remark about the "Zinnification" of ancient history, not auspicious (the rest seem to be lefty websites, who have partisan motives but not the expertise to evaluate Parenti's claims). Some of the alternative theories could be added to other articles, not all piled up in this one place. Finally, you can just do the page refs inline with "(p. 45)" etc, since readers will understand that they're all to the same book; the link and "Ibid." don't add any info, and you won't see any other articles on books doing that. Stan 14:19, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You raise some good points and have confirmed my own thinking. I should trim the material. For now, I'm still doing the writeup and, after that, I will do a culling. I still don't have a sense of what the most important items are so I'm just getting a lot down. Then I'll step back and do a better tightening/prioritiziation.

I noticed that the non-inline refs are starting to get awkward so I was thinking I should switch to inline.

However, I can't assess whether this book is important or not important. Apparently, the book was "nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Oct 2003". Does that make it a bit more important? Also, I find the book to be compelling, insightful, and highly readable which, for me personally, makes this book more important. If one accepts the themes of this book, then most of ancient history is highly distorted and such distortions have been carried through into more recent history. So, personally, I find this book quite impressive; of course, I need to read more history as I'm hardly an expert.

Anyway, after the initial writeup, I'll be looking for some more critical commentaries on this book (although your search suggests that I, too, will come up empty handed). Also, when you say this book "is not that important", are you sharing your experience from a reading of the book or are you basing your conclusion from the paltry web-search results? In the book, Parenti takes frequents jabs at a "distorted historical view of ancient Rome" as well as "obfuscating writing style of typical scholars". Just an thought: could Parenti be getting snubbed by an offended/dismissive status quo among established historians? (Again, I really don't know about such things and am only basing my thinking on how much I was impressed by this book.)

WpZurp 14:49, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I've done a web-search at google.com on "parenti assassination caesar" and got 731 matches. (Actually, only 334 of the matches are distinct according to google.com.) Am going through the top 100 and I think 10-20 of them will have some meat to them. Even Ann Coulter chimes in (with the only negative comments I've seen so far). However, I will be spending a bit more time processing this material. (And there's some interesting points at the 18 user comments at amazon.com.)

Anyway, how much of a shift from the historical status quo is Parenti's comments. I always thought the Roman mob were just lazy troublemakers and Parenti really changed my thinking about that. Parenti cites the movie Gladiator as the common view the public has of ancient Rome and social justice usually doesn't fit into the common view. Again, I'm not a historian so I can't say if Parenti is making fresh insights or just rehashing a change that is already sweeping through historical scholarly research. This material sure is new to me; for instance, I was reading stuff like Cicero and only got a sense of him as an upright, virtuous orator. Parenti turns things around 180 degrees with some arguments that seem pretty solid to me.

Further, Parenti occasionally hints at parallels between the fall of the Roman Republic and challenges currently faced by the US. This subtheme seems pretty important to me. I haven't really fleshed out this subtheme and might try to later on as my writeup progresses.

In any case, all contrary insights are appreciated.

WpZurp 15:22, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Here are more questions to throw out there. I've been thinking of writing longer reviews of various books that impress me. In particular, I'm leaning towards making a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of various books that include some of the most compelling passages/arguments. I appreciate that most books on Wikipedia have little-to-no-writeup. However, it just takes one exuberant reader and Wikipedia-writer to change that situation for a given book.

So, is there is any general objection to longer reviews/discussions of various books in Wikipedia? In theory over time, all good books (and not just the important books) could get a full treatmeat. True, a tighter synopsis at the start (of my rambling article) would be a good idea; then I could split off chapter-by-chater discussions. Would that satisfy most readers who want a quick hit? However, does this approach violate Wikipedia policy (or, possibly, copyright provisions)? Do authors object to this approach or, alternatively, would the Wikipedia gods consider this approach some kind of vanity promotion? At present, I'm guessing/hoping my approach is pretty unobjectionable to all concerned.

WpZurp 16:08, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I now believe that this book is important. I've been listening to an awesome talk by Parenti on his book and, so far, have heard half so far. I've included a link to the talk on The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome. Maybe the mainstream historians don't consider this book important but Parenti convincingly argues that the mainstream historians don't know what they're talking about. This book is important in understanding history and his insights should be propagated through the ancient Roman articles in Wikipedia. Not replace the status quo point of view in these articles but to contrast a compelling alternate view. Suddenly, the big mush of Roman history is starting to make sense.

WpZurp 17:06, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * As I mention on Parenti's talk page, there is no such thing as "nominated for the Pulitzer Prize" - you can be an entrant, which just requires filling out a form, or one of three announced finalists, and this book is not a 2003 or 2004 finalist. I haven't read the book, but I am somewhat familiar with Roman history and in particular the pitfalls that can trap non-experts like Parenti. It's all too easy to take some doubtful or conflicting evidence and come up with different interpretations; classical scholars have been doing that for centuries, their bread-n-butter is to weigh the evidence for different versions, then argue about it for a generation until all are convinced. For instance, the meaning of the term "plebs" is uncertain for us, because some of the richest members of Roman society belonged to plebeian gentes, and so to this day we're still not sure exactly what "plebeian" meant to the Romans. It's all too easy for the Parentis of the world to wade in, make all kinds of assumptions that don't actually have any evidence for them, then come to conclusions that sound good, but are nevertheless without factual basis. For instance, he critiques the ancient sources as reflecting the biases of the well-off - well duh, we all knew that already. That doesn't mean we know enough to be able to correctly choose which parts of those sources are factual and which are biased - the real scholars write whole papers on whether a single sentence represents reality or a political slant. So it's good to have a writeup of the book, but it's also good to keep it in perspective. Stan 18:52, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Ah, glad to be getting some dirt like this fudging on Pulitzer Prize nomination. At present, I find the book (and the talk he gave on the book) to be quite compelling. However, I'm a bit like Brutus. Because I'm a skeptic, as soon as I become convinced of a truth, I like to find evidence to stab Parenti's truths in the back (but in a nice kind of way). In fact, I hope you don't mind if I take some of you comments and weave into into a "criticism" section on the book. WpZurp 19:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * On length in general, yes, most book writeups could and should be longer. You want to go for repeated summarization - the first 1-2 paragraphs give the basic facts and hit the high points, for readers to get the big picture and know if they're even at the right place, then a section to set context and background and how it fits into the structure of human knowledge ("Gibbon's Decline and Fall is obsolete but still readable", that kind of thing), and then a more detailed synopsis. Think of readers getting weary and dropping off as they work their way down - you want to maximize their understanding even if they don't finish the article. Of course, you don't have to get all this right the first time, everything is fixable later. Stan 19:00, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I note that Featured articles has at least two book articles on it, both fiction; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and A Tale of a Tub, so you can see what an "award-winning" book article might look like. Stan 19:16, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the advice. I'm definitely rambling a bit right now. Some stuff I'll toss as I add in better stuff. I'm an ok writer but hardly a great writer especially on a first try. WpZurp 19:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Critical Comments in the Article

 * In fact only the Gracchi were killed by anything remotely like a "death squad": Cinna for example was slain by his own troops, Sertorius was betrayed by his own troops, Catiline was executed for an attempted coup, Drusus was slain by opponents of the optimates and not by them and Caesar was assassinated by a group of distinguished Senators.


 * Parenti argues against unfavorable comments made against these populares while also acknowledging their various flaws. The actions of these populares are set in contrast to the reactionary 82 BC dictatorship of Sulla during which he alleges the various reforms were rolled back.


 * Of concern is Parenti's willingness to attribute "populare" status to Tribune Marcus Livius Drusus because it helped his thesis that only Populares - and not Optimates (Roman conservatives) - cared about social reform, however Drusus is considered to have been an Optimate (see, for example: Ward, Heichelheim and Yeo, A History of the Roman People, 3rd ed., page 164). It is unclear whether Parenti deliberately or mistakenly attributed populare status to Drusus.

I believe these paragraphs are in the discussion of Chapter 4. I think it would be better if they were saved for a separate Criticism section near the end, so that readers could evaluate the book on its own merits before reading criticism of some of his points.

FWIW, I think Parenti is full of crap from beginning to end, and I've read other stuff by him that's just as ridiculous. But that's just my opinion. 169.199.125.31 19:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"Mainstream classical scholars"
Both Parenti and those editors who are adding criticism apparently regard all classical scholars as having the same point of view. This is not true at all. Having read just one academic-level book on Cicero, I recall a huge spectrum of viewpoints cited. Some of them were certainly similar to Parenti's own. Contrary to Parenti's view, not all "Caesarians" were "progressive/liberal" (some were authoritarian), and not all "Ciceronians" were "reactionary/conservative". So any editor who wants to say that something is "the opinion of the overwhelming majority of classical historians", either in favour of or as criticism of Parenti, needs not just to cite one or two historians who share that view, but to actually quote a classical historian who states that it is "the opinion of the overhwhelming majority of classical historians". --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)