Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caecilia Metella Balearica (priestess)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Caecilia Metella Balearica. Whoever does the merge needs to be careful to make sure everything being merged really meets WP:V. In particular, see the comments in the discussion about some of the sources being questionable, possibly vanity press, posibly even hoaxes. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:24, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Caecilia Metella Balearica (priestess)

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This woman did not exist. She is not in the Realencyclopedie, not in Broughton, nor in any reliable source on the period. She seems to come from Colleen McCullough's novel Fortune's Favourite. The sources in the article refer to the historical Caecilia Metella. It seems that the confusion came from an anecdote about the real Metella, who had a vision in a dream that compelled her to restore the temple of Juno Sospita; however the sources tell that she was pregnant during that event, so she could not have been a vestal virgin. T8612 (talk) 00:58, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Added sources: T. P. Wiseman wrote two articles on the Caecilii Metelli in 1965 and 1971, but he does not mention a Metella as vestal. More recently, Kaj Sandberg & Christopher Smith drew a stemma of the Caecilii Metelli (p. 430) that doesn't have Metella the vestal. T8612 (talk) 12:03, 29 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2019 March 29.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 01:12, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment If the claims made by the nominator are true, this article should be added to WP:HOAXLIST.&thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 05:18, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Damn, I should have waited a bit to break the record.^^ Seriously, I don't think there was an intention to deceive. The article originally relied on a source, which was rightly deleted last year by, but the article remained.  T8612  (talk) 12:03, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I removed the reference because (1) it was added by an account that I suspect was a sockpuppet of a banned user (named below) who is known to have invented personages like this one, with the tell-tale practice of citing books without page numbers; & (2) according to to a Wikipedian in Brazil, the publisher of the cited work is better known as a vanity press, thus undercutting any possible credibility the work might have. Due to lack of time, I go further than that in determining if she actually existed. But I'm confident this is a hoax. -- llywrch (talk) 10:17, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I just checked and he created 373 articles, 240 of which are stubs, and also got 17 deleted. Someone should go through that list, there may be other fictitious people. T8612  (talk) 13:21, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paganism-related deletion discussions. &thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 05:23, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. &thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 05:25, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions. &thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 05:26, 29 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment I added the sources to this article, but I had not checked to see if there was another article about Caecilia Metella Balearica. If this one was invented by Colleen McCullough, then I would suggest merging this article into the other one (the info about Sextus Roscius is supported by scholarly sources, but is not yet in the other article), and adding a section on 'Caecilia Metella Balearica in popular culture' to the other. Readers of those books might well search for information about her, and if McCullough based her character on the historical one, it would be useful to say so. I will try to investigate further - for example, does McCullough give information in her books about which characters are historical and which she has fictionalised? RebeccaGreen (talk) 13:06, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge seems a good idea, then. From the other article at least one claim "Her oldest sister was a Vestal Virgin" needs to be deleted, assuming there's no proper evidence for it. And the sooner the better, because I can see at least three genealogy pages on the web that look like descendants of this page of ours.
 * This article was created, long ago, by User:G.-M. Cupertino, an account somehow connected with well known, widely used genealogical publications that are not always accepted as reliable ... Andrew Dalby 09:51, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * What publications are you thinking about? T8612  (talk) 21:26, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Work by Christian Settipani, some of it published from an address in an Oxford college.
 * NB1: I don't know of any connection beyond the fact that G.-M. Cupertino often cited this material. The G.-M. Cupertino account has been blocked for sockpuppetry. NB2: since the publications aren't, or weren't, available on line, I only know of them at second hand. Andrew Dalby 09:14, 1 April 2019 (UTC)


 * This woman did exist. She did assist Roscius who was being defended by Cicero (see Syme, Approaching the Roman Revolution, 84-85).  She was the daughter of Balearicus, consul 123 BC.  I'm not familiar with Colleen McCulloch, so I'm not sure which parts come from her book.  But at first glance it looks like the last paragraph is fictitious, and the reference to her being a Vestal and a priestess are also wrong.Urg writer (talk) 20:57, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * You are speaking of the other Caecilia Metella. There was no Metella vestal/priestess.  I added the part about Sextus Roscius to the correct article.  T8612  (talk) 21:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * They are the same person. Both articles are full of inaccuracies.  I agree they should be merged, and the accurate bits kept in one historical article.  Urg writer (talk) 20:26, 1 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.