User talk:Thuvan Dihn

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 * ✅ I added the references section and the reflist template, however the citations need to be cleaned up a bit. Check out WP:CITE for more info on citations and how they should be formatted. Post here or on my talkpage with any questions. -- Terrillja talk  04:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I was a bit ambiguous. I meant the formatting of the citations, not number of citations themselves. The templates for the citations can be found at WP:CIT. -- Terrillja talk  05:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you want me to use those horrific templates? Maybe we all read selectively, but this is what I read on that page:

"The use of Citation templates is not required by WP:CITE and is neither encouraged nor discouraged by any other Wikipedia citation guidelines. They may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with the other editors on the article. Some editors find them helpful, while other editors find them annoying, particularly when used inline in the text. Because they are optional, editors should not change articles from one style to another without consensus."

Thuvan Dihn (talk)


 * It's up to you, however using the templates allows bots to fill in extra info at a later date, which is pretty sweet. Anyways, happy editing! -- Terrillja talk  22:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

RE: Kiya
Thanks for the additions/clarifications -- it all helps!

Know what you mean about Smenkhkare. At this point I am beginning to this that Reeve's theory is the one that makes the most sense, and that the mummy in KV55 really only can be Akhenaten. As I look over the scholarly articles I am beginning to wonder why anyone took the idea that the KV55 mummy was Smenkhkare's -- though the original age estimate likely drove a large part of that speculation.

I have the Amarna Sunset book on order, and am very much looking forward to getting it, though I wonder whether the recent DNA test detract from any theories it may put forward.

My plan is to keep working on all of the associated articles relating to the DNA tests, such as Tiye, KV55, Nefertiti, Akhenaten, etc. Hope to see you there! Cheers! Captmondo (talk) 12:03, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Glad you're on the case! I will participate when I can. As a lifelong Amarnaphile my brain really went into a tizzy when the JAMA article came out. I'm still absorbing all the fascinating implications. I've read Amarna Sunset, and I don't think the DNA testing really has a huge effect on the argument that Dodson makes. He's mostly concerned with the problem of how many Ankhkhepruras there were, and who they were. He says very little about Kiya. He argues that Smenkhkara was a young man who became coregent with Akhenaten around Year 12 but lived only a short time afterward. Then Nefertiti became the new Ankhkheprura, first as coregent with Akhenaten and then (so Dodson suggests) as coregent with Tutankhaten.

The biggest impact that the new DNA stuff has on Amarna Sunset is that Dodson argues (very persuasively, for me) that Nefertiti was Tut's mother. So if the Younger Lady is not Nefertiti, that makes Dodson's account of the two Ankhkhepruras a little more shaky. I'd love to see a statement from Dodson about the JAMA article.

What I want to know is this: (1) What new evidence suggests that the KV55 mummy is old enough to be Akhenaten -- i.e., mid thirties? Study after study, over the past 100 years, concluded that he was no older than 25 -- hence the case for identifying him as Smenkhkara, which I always accepted. (2) What about KV21A, the mummy now said to be the mother of the fetuses in Tut's tomb? If they could recover enough DNA to say she was the mother, couldn't they also opine on whether she was the daughter of Akhenaten and the Younger Lady? If she *wasn't,* then we have excellent proof that YL is not Nefertiti. But if she *was,* then YL is Nefertiti, and Nefertiti is Tut's mother. (This is strictly speculation, not anything I'd put in Wikipedia. There's actually a very strong case that Nefertiti can't be Akhenaten' sister, because she had a distinctly non-royal sister of her own, Mutnedjmet.) (3) If KV21A isn't Ankhesenamun, then who in tarnation is she? (4) Why do Hawass et al. limit their speculations as to the identiy of YL to Nebetiah and Baketaten? For a long time many have speculated that EL was Tiye and YL was Sitamun. Since EL *is* Tiye, it seems time to revisit everything we know about Sitamun. There was no taboo on a son marrying his father's wives -- as in the case of Tadukhipa. Aldred and others simply assume that pharaohs inherited their predecessors' harems. So what if YL were Sitamun? (Again, I'd never put this in a Wikipedia article.) Anyhow, thanks again for crusading for truth! Thuvan Dihn (talk) 20:02, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Tullia
Hey Thuvan. I have amended the article Tullia (daughter of Servius Tullius) to refer to her being the elder daughter, not the younger, of Servius Tullius. I note you had changed this previously. The reference to the younger sister being killed by the elder is in the last sentence of Livy 1.46. I have checked the latin version too. Can you refer me to other sources, or paragraphs of Livy, which say that it was the elder sister who was the less fierce, and who was killed?--Urg writer (talk) 00:56, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Hi - In my revision of the article on Tullia I did cite my source - Aubrey de Selincourt's translation of Books I-V of Ab Urbe Condita -- it's the Penguin edition, published as Livy: The Early History of Rome (2002), ISBN 0-140-44809-8. I also mentioned this version in my notes on the edit, didn't I? I see that somebody has actually deleted the reference I added -- would that be you? That deletion is described as "fixed references," which seems odd -- wouldn't you want to provide more sources rather than fewer?

As I added, and somebody else deleted, this was the citation:

The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of The History of Rome from Its Foundations. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, with an introduction by R.M. Ogilvie and a preface and additional material by S.P. Oakley. Penguin Books, 2002.

Here are excerpts from de Selincourt's translation of I.46 (pages 86-87):

---

The two brothers, as I mentioned before, had married Servius's daughters, both of them named Tullia but in character diametrically opposed to each other. By what I cannot but feel was the luck of Rome, it so happened that the two fiercely ambitious ones, Tarquin and the younger Tullia, did not, in the first instance, become man and wife; for Rome was thereby granted a period of reprieve; Servius's reign lasted a few years longer, and Roman civilization was able to advance.

The younger Tullia was bitterly humiliated by the weakness of her husband Arruns, and fiercely resented his lack of ambition and fire. It was to Tarquin that the whole passion of her nature turned: Tarquin was her hero, Tarquin her ideal of a true man and a true prince. Her sister she despised for failing to support with a woman's courage the husband she did not deserve. There is a magnetic power in evil; like draws towards like, and so it was with Tarquin and the younger Tullia.

It was the woman who took the first step along the road of crime. Whispers passed between her and her sister's husband; their secret meetings grew more frequent, their talk less guarded. Soon she was pouring into his ears the frankest abuse of her sister and Arruns, while Tarquin, though one was his brother and the other his brother's wife, let her talk on. 'You and I,' she said, 'would have been better single than bound in a marriage so incongruous and absurd, where each of us is forced by a cowardly partner to fritter our lives away in hopeless inactivity. Ah! If God had given me the husband I deserve, I should soon see in my own house that royalty which I now see in my father's.

The bold words struck an answering fire. Two deaths soon followed, one close upon the other, and Tarquin found himself a widower, Tullia a widow. The guilty pair were then married - the king not preventing, but hardly approving, the match.

As you can see, this translator thinks that the younger sister was fiercer, and that she was originally married to Arruns.

Here is the Latin original of the same, from http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/livy/liv.1.shtml (which is not necessarily the same version of the text on which the Penguin version is based):

His duobus, ut ante dictum est, duae Tulliae regis filiae nupserant, et ipsae longe dispares moribus. Forte ita inciderat ne duo violenta ingenia matrimonio iungerentur fortuna, credo, populi Romani, quo diuturnius Serui regnum esset constituique civitatis mores possent. Angebatur ferox Tullia nihil materiae in viro neque ad cupiditatem neque ad audaciam esse; tota in alterum aversa Tarquinium eum mirari, eum virum dicere ac regio sanguine ortum: spernere sororem, quod virum nacta muliebri cessaret audacia. Contrahit celeriter similitudo eos, ut fere fit: malum malo aptissimum; sed initium turbandi omnia a femina ortum est. Ea secretis viri alieni adsuefacta sermonibus nullis verborum contumeliis parcere de viro ad fratrem, de sorore ad virum; et se rectius viduam et illum caelibem futurum fuisse contendere, quam cum impari iungi ut elanguescendum aliena ignauia esset; si sibi eum quo digna esset di dedissent virum, domi se propediem visuram regnum fuisse quod apud patrem videat. Celeriter adulescentem suae temeritatis implet; Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor prope continuatis funeribus cum domos vacuas novo matrimonio fecissent, iunguntur nuptiis, magis non prohibente Seruio quam adprobante.

I agree that the Penguin rendition is far from literal, and that de Selincourt has supplied extra words to create a more readable English version. I also notice that the Latin passage specifies which Tullia was older and which was younger only once ("Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor prope continuatis funeribus cum domos vacuas novo matrimonio fecissent, iunguntur nuptiis . . . ") The Penguin version is quite far from the Latin in this case. I don't claim to be a Latin scholar, and right now I don't have time to find any textual commentary that might help me understand the ins and outs of the syntax of this passage, but here is what I'm thinking: the Latin seems to say that Arruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia were joined in marriage (A. Tarquinius et Tullia minor . . . iunguntur nuptiis), and it places this marriage right after some funeral rites.

Since that chronology would be impossible, I'm thinking that the Penguin translation simply assumes that "Arruns" is a scribal error, or similar, and that this passage is a reference to the marriage of Tarquin and Tullia Minor, not to the marriage of Arruns and Tullia Minor.

Anyhow -- disregard my own take on the passage, it's not part of the article anyway, it's just my attempt to explain how I understand this difficult passage. But in making my changes to the Wikipedia article, I was just following de Selincourt's reading, and I did provide my source. I think it does make sense that the older brother would marry the older sister, and the younger brother the younger sister; further, given the apparent ambiguity of the Latin text, that seems to be how de Selincourt understood the situation. I believe I made my edits in good faith, and I gave adequate references for what I did. I think it's fine for you to edit the article as you see fit, but I do feel that, at minimum, you should restore the reference to de Selincourt.

If not, I will -- but not this minute -- I got other stuff to do. . . . Thuvan Dihn (talk) 18:54, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

____

Hey thanks for spending the time and effort to explain all that to me. I can now understand how the conflict between the two versions came about.

FYI I am working from this translation of Livy. As you will see, the only reference to which sister was the elder/younger is in the final line of 1.46, which talks about Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia being dead. On that translation, therefore, the elder sister survived to marry Lucius.

I have read through the original Latin version of 1.46. It is consistent with the translation I just referred to. Selincourt seems to stray a long way from the text. There is no reference in the earlier parts of 1.46 to which sister is the elder - Selincourt has apparently simply inserted references to one sister being 'the elder' as she pleases. A bit odd, huh!

For the moment, I will leave the Tullia article as it is, as it seems to correctly reflect the original latin text.

The reason I took out the reference to Selincourt is that I try to refer simply to Livy's text, not the interpretation of any one translator. That way, people can use whichever version of Livy which comes to hand. --Urg writer (talk) 20:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

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I do feel strongly that the Penguin reference belongs in the article. The translation you linked in your response is seriously out of date -- it's copyrighted 1853. It's also not a very good translation, full stop. The rendering that it supplies for the line about "Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor . . . " seems quite incoherent to me -- "Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, when they had, by immediate successive deaths, made their houses vacant for new nuptials, are united in marriage, Servius rather not prohibiting than approving the measure." Apart from the odd sequence of tenses, why would you want to refer to Arruns and Tullia as being united in marriage, when they are actually united in death?

I think it's fine to link to that 1853 translation by Spillan, but everybody should understand that it's not the last word on rendering AUC into English. I'd sooner trust the Penguin version, since (1) it's much newer, (2) it was endorsed by contemporary scholars as recently as 2002, and (3) at the moment you and I lack any independent learned commentary to explain Livy's original one way or the other, except for that still-viable Penguin translation.

Nevertheless, I was thinking about AUC I.46 all day (yes, I'm a total geek) -- and if my favorite Latin teacher were to put me on the spot and make me translate that line about Arruns & Tullia Minor, I'd do it this way: "When Arruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, with their funerals in almost immediate succession, had made their homes vacant for the sake of the new wedding, they [i.e., Tarquin and the elder Tullia] were joined in marriage, with Servius not prohibiting rather than actively approving."

I took the translation of prope + continuatis directly from Cassell's Latin Dictionary, which cites Livy I.46 to illustrate this particular sense of the verb continuare; I understand "continuatis funeribus" as an ablative absolute; I note that there are 2 and only 2 finite verbs in the sentence (fecissent, iuguntur), both with 3rd pl. endings, and I interpret the first as referring to Arruns and Tullia Minor (this seems unavoidable), and the second as referring to Tarquin and Tullia Major (since the alternative makes no sense); and I understand "iuguntur" as an historical present, which is customarily translated in the past tense in English (tho maybe that rule hadn't been invented in 1853).

Anyhow, you can see that I actually agree with you and old Spillan that, in this sentence, we are being told by implication that Arruns originally married the older sister, and Tarquin originally married the younger sister, and that the death of Arruns and Tullia Minor enabled Tarquin and Tullia Major to wed.

However, I can also see that the entire tale is ambiguous as to the sisters' relative ages, and I notice similar ambiguities throughout Book I of AUC, especially when you have 2 closely related individuals with similar or identical names (father and son, brothers, sisters). Further, I see that Livy is not very concerned about the sisters' relative ages, since he does not specify their ages on first mention, and he only makes a rather offhand and cryptic remark about which was which in the passage we're examining now -- a passage that is clearly open to more than one interpretation.

Therefore -- given Livy's ambiguity, and given the conflicting translations (Spillan vs. de Selincourt) -- this seems to me to be the safest prespective: the sisters' relative ages are not the most important part of this story, and which was older and which was younger remains a moot point. So I disagree with the statement that's now in the article: "According to Livy, the elder of the two daughters had the fiercer disposition." As we've seen, Livy never actually says this -- he just says that one was fiercer than the other.Thuvan Dihn (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

-

Regarding this point: "Selincourt has apparently simply inserted references to one sister being 'the elder' as she pleases. A bit odd, huh!" Well, I think it's evidence that Livy is ambiguous, and that de Selincourt assumed that the older sister would marry the older brother, and thus strove to provide clarity where Livy was obscure. Evidently that wasn't the best course. But this doesn't make his translation inferior to Spillan's, not by a long shot.

BTW I love Latin literature, and this exchange has reminded me how much I enjoy wrestling with Latin syntax! I'm a geek indeed! I hope you are experiencing similar joy! And the article on Tullia has grown richer over time! Yay Wikipedia! Thuvan Dihn (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree. Its great to work together on the article!--Urg writer (talk) 10:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey I just read the Latin translation work you did above. Great work. And I completely agree! The problem with the version to which I referred is that it puts a full stop before the relevant part, whereas there is no full stop in the original. Hence "they [i.e., Tarquin and the elder Tullia] were joined in marriage" refers back to an earlier part of the whole sentence, as you say!--Urg writer (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the Tulliae
It turns out that Livy isn't the only source for this episode in Roman History. Another one is The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. There are many translations; available online is an old Loeb Classics version through LacusCurtius. Here's the link for the second part of Dionysius' Book IV: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dionysius_of_Halicarnassus/4B*.html

D's version of the story of the Tulliae starts out like this, and as you can see it's quite different from Livy's version (e.g., Lucius Tarquinius is now the grandson rather than the son of Tarquinius Priscus):

28 Tullius had two daughters by his wife Tarquinia, whom King Tarquinius had given to him in marriage. When these maidens were of marriageable age, he gave them to the nephews of their mother, who were also the grandsons of Tarquinius, joining the elder daughter to the elder nephew and the younger to the younger, since he thought they would thus live most harmoniously with their husbands. 2 But it happened that each of his sons-in‑law was joined by an adverse fate in the matter of dissimilarity of character. For the wife of Lucius, the elder of the two brothers, who was of a bold, arrogant and tyrannical nature, was a good woman, modest and fond of her father; on the other hand, the wife of Arruns, the younger brother, a man of great mildness and prudence, was a wicked woman who hated her father and was capable of any rash action.....

So here, if the translation is reliable, we have an unambiguous statement of which Tullia was bolder: it was the younger one, who was originally married to the younger brother. I think a safe conclusion here is: "As to whether the elder Tullia was the fiercer sister, or vice versa, both ancient and modern scholars have disagreed." Thuvan Dihn (talk) 08:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Great! Would be good if you could incorporate references to Dionysius in the article, of course properly cited etc, highlighting any differences between the two articles. I imagine there will be other sources too. I am only concentrating on Livy for the moment, but of course the article will only ever be complete with references to other sources. --Urg writer (talk) 10:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I will work on this when I can.Thuvan Dihn (talk) 02:37, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Giant planet
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Edits to Battle of Lake Regillus
Sorry I reverted your edits a bit peremptorily last night. I was a bit tired after spending several hours on another article which is still not quite in satisfactory condition, and at the time my first impression was that the edits were not improvements, or perhaps a bit pedantic. I tend to be a bit defensive when it comes to my prose, as I consider myself a good writer, particularly when it comes to punctuation and stringing together clauses to make good narrative sense. I may also have been thrown by the construction, "King Tarquin", which I have carefully avoided, although I'm aware that it does occasionally appear in well-written sources. However, on further consideration I realize that your command of the language is sound, and that I should have given more deference to your opinions. I revisited the edits this morning, and while I didn't implement most of the ones at the beginning of the article (except for a very well-considered colon), I did make most of the changes in the latter part, which I think were distinct improvements. Thank you for your careful attention to detail, and sorry again for not giving your work proper consideration in the first place. P Aculeius (talk) 15:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

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