Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Archive 28

RoC: Marcus Aurelius should be referred to as "Marcus" and not "Aurelius"
Thanks everyone, for all your contributions! When editing relevant articles, he should be called Marcus and not Aurelius. The two are used variously in different places. The main reason in support is the sources. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Van Ackeren's Companion never use "Aurelius" alone to refer to him. I saw that, an editor for whom I have much admiration, systematically changed "Marcus" to "Aurelius" on Reign of Marcus Aurelius. Thanks for calling my attention to this. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 22:11, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I changed the referencing to match that of the main article on Marcus Aurelius. However, it is not much of a problem if he is called "Marcus". Векочел (talk) 23:15, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * A quick flip through suggests that naming him "Aurelius" alone has become much more common in the main article on Marcus Aurelius in the last few months, although it occasionally occurred there even before. I agree with InformationvsInjustice that off Wikipedia, in English writing, his brief name is nearly always "Marcus", never "Aurelius".
 * There are several references in both articles to his brother and co-emperor Lucius Verus. The latter is sometimes given the brief name "Lucius", sometimes "Verus", and both brief names can be found in other English sources, so that's OK, though it might help readers if we were consistent. Since the name "Aurelius" belonged to both of them, that is an additional reason to choose another short name for Marcus instead. Andrew Dalby 11:43, 27 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll just note here that Anthony Birley in his biography refers to the emperor by his praenomen on a consistent basis. That is, for the portion of his the book where he went by the name "Marcus Aurelius": the man had three or four different names over his lifetime. (And that assumes he didn't have a nickname his most intimate friends & acquaintances called him by.) That said, I'm going to pontificate here on a very complex topic: which short form of a Roman's name should one use in an article?


 * If the person has a commonly-accepted version in English (e.g. Marcus for Marcus Aurelius; Vespasian for the older Titus Flavius Vespasian, & Titus for the younger; etc.), the writer is home free. Where none exists, the writer has to consider a number factors. Writers on the Roman Republic have it easy, since there's sufficient evidence that Romans of that period went by their praenomina. Likewise, writers of the Later Roman Empire also have it easy, since most people have only one name recorded for them (e.g. Stilicho). (BTW, one authority persuasively argues that "Flavius" (abbreviated "Fl.") was from about AD 375 on an honorific title & not part of the person's name. As a title, it is roughly equivalent to "Mr." in an 18th-century context; thus Senators rarely, if ever, used the style "Flavius", & to address a senator as, say, "Flavius Symmachus" would be considered an insult.) It is the first three centuries of the Roman Empire where things get difficult to get right. For the period up to the Year of Four Emperors, if not a decade longer, men still favored using the praenomen as the short form. It is in the AD 70s where the important part begins to be the cognomen: where an individual named "Gaius Bigus Dickus" lived before AD 70 would favor being known as "Gaius", after that point he would favor "Dickus". But both preferences can be found until the late 2nd century, when praenomina have become treated as part of the gentilicum & the cognomen becomes the part that distinguishes family members. (IMHO, this shift was due to an influx of newcomers who were descended from men who had taken the first two name elements from the Senator who helped them to become Roman citizens, or the Emperor at the time they became citizens. Thus not only were a "Sex. Julius" & "C. Julius" of the 2nd Century very likely unrelated, it is not at all likely two "Sex. Julii" of that period were related. Things do get confusing, & my practice is to find an expert to lean on.) However, there are still old Italian families where two brothers may have the same gentilici & cognomina, yet different praenomina: the praenomen is still the significant element, as late as the 4th century. And the issue of polyonomous names only serves to further complicate matters: if there is no attested short form used by their contemporaries, there really is no simple way to pick a proper short form. (If anyone cares, my practice is to use the final element in the names, & cross my fingers that I did it right. But I have seen experts use the gentilicum of a person as the abbreviated way to refer to the person. In short, it's clear that was acting in good faith & using common sense -- although calling the emperor "Aurelius" grates my ear. And my extensive discussion is not my attempt to lay out the "right way" to solve this problem, it's just my warning that we will see people argue over which name element is the "right" one to use. (Maybe even if a policy were hammered out on the matter.) I hope fore-warned is fore-armed. -- llywrch (talk) 21:46, 27 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I prefer Aurelius over Marcus, even if not widely used in the modern academic literature (and Verus over Lucius). We have the name of several thousands Romans named Marcus, which is one of the three most common first names in Roman history, and therefore not distinctive at all.  Stanford and the Internet Encyclopediae of Philosophy, etc. are just tertiary sources, they do not have an authority over how we format Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is aimed at all audiences, and we should therefore abbreviate Roman names to make them distinctive enough to the average reader.  You don't use Marcus for Cicero, Gaius for Caesar, or Publius for Tacitus. Less common praenomina can be used though. By the way, while we are discussing the article on Marcus Aurelius, why is his biography split into several articles ("Marcus Aurelius", "Early life of Marcus Aurelius", and "Reign of Marcus Aurelius")? It would be much better to have everything on the same page.  It makes things more difficult to read and edit otherwise (hard to maintain consistency over many articles).T8612 (talk) 09:52, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Such ambiguity is why we usually say "Marcus Aurelius". However, there are instances where it's safe to use praenomina to refer to individual Romans; such as when distinguishing someone from a brother (biological or adopted, in the case of co-emperors) whose names were otherwise similar, which might be the reason for using "Marcus" as shorthand here; his colleague was Lucius Aurelius Verus.  And we do use praenomina to refer to some specific individuals on a regular basis: Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Gaius (Caligula), Tiberius, Titus; Nero's birth name was "Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus", but he was officially "Nero Claudius Caesar" when he became emperor.  As long as there's no risk of confusion in a particular instance, it's safe to use whatever name is preferred by academia when not using the full name.  I'm not saying it's mandatory.  But "Aurelius" by itself would be more ambiguous in this instance, which might explain why "Marcus" seems to be the more common way to refer to him when it's already clear which Marcus.  P Aculeius (talk) 12:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, as Llywrch says, all is in good faith and this is a very diffficult issue. Just "Aurelius" is an unwise choice, exactly because of the ambiguity that P Aculeius points out. If writing about Henry James, in a context in which his brother is also involved, it would be no good calling either of them just "James". Andrew Dalby 09:06, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * To answer 's second question, I expect there are three articles due to length. The main article on Marcus Aurelius, when I checked just now, is 117,830 bytes; the one on his early life is 69,224 bytes; the third, on his reign, is 66,360 bytes. These figures omit the additional size of any graphics. His reign is one of the better-documented periods of Roman history, & he is one of the very few people of ancient time we have enough personal information about to allow us to analyze his character & motivations. (The others include Cicero, Augustus, Augustine of Hippo, Julian the Apostate, & Libanius; not only do we have an adequate account of their lives, but we have their own words to explain their lives.) When you contrast this with what we can say about the vast majority of known Romans (viz. little more than their bare name), or what we can say about a number of known events of the time (e.g., the Bar Kochba revolts, for which our knowledge can be summarized as "The Jews revolted, the Romans sent a lot of men to Judea, who killed a lot of people there, and the revolt was crushed"), be glad we have to write several articles to cover the material competently. -- llywrch (talk) 22:50, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * That doesn't look too long for me. The article on the Roman Empire is 279,201 bytes, and the three articles on Marcus Aurelius share some duplicated material (bibliography, citations, and pictures). Is there a size limit for articles?T8612 (talk) 15:12, 30 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Not a strict limit, but there's a useful editing guideline to suggest when large articles should be split based on size. It doesn't apply in every case; some articles simply require a lot of space to cover a broad topic, which is probably the case with "Roman Empire".  However, when individual portions of a topic become individually more expansive than many thorough articles, so that readers risk becoming bogged down in minutiae, splitting an article can be a good idea.  Article size is only one way to help determine whether a large article should be split; but I note that each of the three Marcus Aurelius articles by themselves are in the range of very long articles that might benefit from being split, if size alone were the main criterion, as two of them are over 60K, while the main topic is over 100K.  Combining the three would make the resulting article over 250K!  But more importantly, if you want an overview of Marcus Aurelius, you could easily get overwhelmed by a large section just on his early life, and then again on his career, with the rest of the article being crowded out; these two sections combined would make up more than half the space of the article.  Another way to look at it is that practically everything about the life of Marcus Aurelius is potentially encyclopedic, but not all of it is necessary to get a broad overview of the man.  More detailed topics can be made into stand-alone articles, making the main one more accessible to readers, while still directing them to the split-off topics for further information.  P Aculeius (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2018 (UTC)


 * A long, long time ago there was a limit of 32,000 bytes for articles but that was lifted years ago. (It was due to a limit in some browsers, so I was told at the time.) If you can remember that constraint, then you are truly a Wikipedia old-timer. (I suspect of the people posting in this thread, Andrew might be the only other person to remember that limit.) Something to remember in case there is ever a "Wikipedia Trivial Pursuit" contest with cash prizes. -- llywrch (talk) 23:14, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, are you saying that Birley sometimes refers to the emperor Marcus Aurelius as "Aurelius" but refers to the juvenile Marcus Aurelius as "Marcus"? While I agree at those sites have no "authority" over Wikipedia, the fact that they consistently use Marcus should carry weight here. Also, if there are going to wholesale changes across multiple articles (as has occurred in the last couple months), I feel that there should be (or should have been) a discussion and a consensus first. Is there a consensus here? Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 04:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * , I just saw your query earlier this morning; sorry for the delay. I checked Birley's biography, & he consistently refers to the emperor as "Marcus". Yet I also need to add a caveat about this, that Marcus is a special case concerning names: his changed dramatically over his life up to the point he assumed the purple. It can be confusing, & the author of the Historia Augusta does get confused in reporting this. According to Birley (& counter to what the Wikipedia article states), he was born Marcus Annius Verus. When he held his first consulate (AD 130), he used the name Marcus Annius Verus Catilius Severus, the last two elements taken from his grandfather. In an inscription dated 138, after Antoninus Pius adopted him at Hadrian's direction, his name became Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus; "Aelius" taken from Hadrian, & "Aurelius" from Antoninus Pius". Then when Marcus assumed the purple in 161, he assumed the name Imperial Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. So I may be wrong about why we refer to him as "Marcus", & the real reason is that "Marcus" is the only part of his name that remained consistent thru his lifetime. -- llywrch (talk) 18:13, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I take it Llywrch meant to write "Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus". That agrees exactly with the longest form of his name on imperial coins as given by David Sear (reference below). Not that Sear was necessarily a great expert on the history, but this is the kind of thing he had to get right. Andrew Dalby 08:43, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I just found this discussion via a link on the talk page at Marcus Aurelius. I take the blame for making "Aurelius" the standard short name on that page last month. I was not completely confident in that choice; you can see me asking for another opinion on talk:Marcus Aurelius. If the consensus here is that "Marcus" should be used instead, I can make those changes so no one else has to clean up after me. Regards, Tdslk (talk) 07:37, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I swear I had typed Imperator" & not "Imperial". I blame it on my computer keyboard! (And FWIW, I took that style from Alison E. Cooley, The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy (Cambridge: University Press, 2012). I guess we have independent verification of this fact.) -- llywrch (talk) 03:27, 9 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for commenting! Векочел, who continued that pattern at Reign of Marcus Aurelius, said above that it was done "to match ... the main article", not for any other reason. T8612 has stated a preference for "Aurelius", but without giving any reason as yet (I think). Otherwise, my impression is that there's a consensus above for "Marcus" (or, whenever it works better, "Marcus Aurelius"), and that seems to be what reliable writers on this subject in English also do.
 * While waiting to see what others say (especially T8612), I would be in favour of acccepting Tdslk's offer. Andrew Dalby 10:09, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I principally reacted over the use of other encyclopediae to format Wikipedia. I think that Marcus (as well as Lucius and Gaius) are not distinctive enough to be used as diminutive in this kind of article.  I checked the literature a bit and many authors keep the whole name (either "Marcus Aurelius" or "M. Aurelius"), possibly for the same reason, although the Cambridge Ancient History says "Marcus" only (but "L. Verus").  The Roman Imperial Coinage uses "Aurelius" (my preference for Aurelius may come from there as I've read these books so many times), but it dates from 1930.  That said, I I don't have a strong opinion about the use of Marcus if there is a consensus on this.T8612 (talk) 23:04, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting reply. You made me think of looking at David Sear's Roman Coins and Their Values (1964 edition: pp. 99-104). This also uses "Aurelius" as brief name. But I don't feel these two examples outweigh others: coin catalogues are a bit special.
 * I agree that "Marcus Aurelius" is good. Andrew Dalby 13:38, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Just checking in on this. My sense of the above discussion is that using "Marcus Aurelius" throughout would be preferred, or at least acceptable, to everyone. Are there any objections to making this change? Tdslk (talk) 23:05, 15 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I think the consensus is that either "Marcus" or "Marcus Aurelius" are acceptable, as long as the context makes clear that Marcus Aurelius is the subject. "Aurelius" alone should generally be avoided as ambiguous, because it was shared with many other individuals in this family, and isn't widely used to refer to Marcus Aurelius in scholarly literature.  P Aculeius (talk) 02:16, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I've edited to use both names throughout at Marcus Aurelius, as well as Reign of Marcus Aurelius and Early life of Marcus Aurelius. Tdslk (talk) 18:55, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Stylistically, I would prefer to use "Marcus Aurelius" when first mentioned in each section/subsection and Marcus thereafter. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Might be overkill to use the full name for every section and subsection; we don't do that when speaking of "John Smith". Just try to make it read clearly, and nobody will object.  If something's unclear, it's easy enough for someone to rephrase.  P Aculeius (talk) 22:24, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Is a citation needed for the statement "ancient Israel suffered under Roman rule"?
The article Historical Jesus has recently had added to it an unsourced sentence "The Jews of Jesus' time waited expectantly for a divine redeemer who would restore Israel, which suffered under Roman rule." Is this such a truism, like WP:BLUESKY that it doesn't need a reference? The monstrous Romans were beastly to Israel? Or should there be a reference to back this statement up? Or perhaps a balancing perspective 'All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?'maybe?Smeat75 (talk) 01:42, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I would at least reword this sentence, which could imply that the Jews only waited for a redeemer once under Roman rule. T8612  09:06, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The Jews perceived Roman rule as oppression, which is important irrespective of whether we'd agree with it or not. I'm sure it could be reworded more neutrally, but in fact whether or not they "suffered" isn't the part that needs a source, so much as the expectation of a messianic deliverance.  However, if this is the lead sentence of a paragraph that describes this tradition in detail, and provides sources, then this sentence may not require one.  If it's isolated (why would it be?  This seems like an important theme for an article of this title), then yes, it needs a source, but that should be easily obtained.  Just about any source describing the topic will say this, more or less diplomatically depending on its perspective.  P Aculeius (talk) 11:46, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Easily reffed. Here's one: --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:56, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 08:15, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Religion of the Huns
Hello, I was hoping someone knowledgeable about sources on the Huns might comment about the veracity of the claim that "it is generally assumed that the Huns practiced a form of Tengrism" on Huns. There's currently a discussion of Talk:Huns on the issue. The issue of the religion of the Huns in general is currently pourly sourced and I fear may contain synthesis of sources.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:36, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Battle of Cannae
I posted a request for input about my efforts to keep this a Featured Article at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. Comments wlecomed. -- llywrch (talk) 18:37, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Rise of Macedon
There is a discussion underway at Talk:Rise of Macedon which may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Narky Blert (talk) 09:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If you're feeling strong enough to contribute, there have been two WP:RMs since that post; one (19 October) closed, another (21 October) still open: Talk:Rise of Macedon. Narky Blert (talk) 21:25, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Rise of Rome
I stumbled upon this article and it is so terrible that I first thought it was a joke. It is apparently a high-school student essay pasted to Wikipedia in 2003, and has not been improved since. It was also nominated for deletion five years ago. Any suggestion on how to improve it welcome. I left a note on the talk that I'm pasting here for convenience: "The article is completely worthless under its present state. It should be renamed "Roman Imperialism" (or something similar), and focus on the Roman expansion in the Mediterranean Basin, in order to answer the questions why and how the Roman Republic then the Empire managed to defeat and conquer so many other civilisations, then how Rome preserved its Empire for so long (and avoided "national" revolts). All the drivel on the first seven world governments or the Roman influence on later times should be removed. I mean, the article deals with "Celtic scholars" in the Middle Ages and the creation of the Euro... A good starting point would be to list here books and articles on Roman imperialism. I think moving there the section on Roman Imperialism from the current Roman Republic article could be a good start." T8612 (talk) 13:48, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Pelasgians and modern nationalism
I've allowed myself to get sucked into a very long back-and-forth on the Pelasgians page, about whether or not the use of the Pelasgians in modern nationalist discourses should be mentioned in the article. I think the discussion has reached something of an impasse and think it would benefit from fresh voices. Would anyone care to take a look? The discussion is here: Talk:Pelasgians. Furius (talk) 17:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Atlas: Merger proposal
I've proposed that Atlas of Mauretania be merged into Atlas (mythology). Feel free to chip in on the talk page here.MajoranaF (talk) 00:06, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Oechalia
Oechalia is a DAB page which currently has two bad incoming links. Expert attention would be welcome.

Melaneus links to the various possible places in the first paragraph of the main text (mouseover the bluelinks), but to the DAB page in the infobox. I doubt that enough is known about this mythical Oechalia, wife of Melaneus, to justify more than a redirect to Melaneus from the DAB page. DGRBM link.

List of Trojan War characters names Oechalia among the Greek allies. It looks to me as if this may be Oechalia (Messenia), but confirmation (or refutation) would be welcome. DGRG link.

Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 05:06, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:46, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

History of the Huns
In an effort to get the size of Huns under control I've spun off the History section as a new article, History of the Huns. However, as I've been reducing the corresponding section at Huns, I've realized that the history section has a number of enormous issues. I'd like to ask if anyone would be interested in helping me 1) reduce the history section at Huns in such a way that it only contains necessary information; 2) help me expand and correct "History of the Huns" so that it actually covers the whole history of the Huns in a halfway decent way. Thanks!--Ermenrich (talk) 01:18, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Was it really necessary to split the article? Huns is only 47k of readable prose, and 19k for History of the Huns, so you were below the 100k theoretical limit. I don't think the article should be trimmed further.  T8612  (talk) 02:54, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * According to Article size, 50 kB+ is "may need to be divided". So we've only just gotten below that after several reductions, and the article still doesn't cover everything it should, so more material is only going to be added. A separate article allows for a much more in depth history, which sadly isn't currently done very well in the current iteration of History of the Huns (which is the old version for Huns). More material will need to be added to the history section of Huns as well to rectify the problem.--Ermenrich (talk) 03:53, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The history of the Huns is not that extensive to the point of making a separate article imo. I would have suggested you to continue expanding the article until you hit the upper limit. It's more difficult to deal (reading and editing) with two articles than one. T8612  (talk) 19:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Birth of Crassus
There seems to be some disagreement in reliable sources about the date of birth of Marcus Licinius Crassus; compare Talk:Marcus Licinius Crassus. Maybe someone here can tell whether one or the other of the proposed dates is the current state of research and the other is outdated, or what else is going on? Huon (talk) 20:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

A-Class review for Marcus Aurelius needs attention
A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Marcus Aurelius; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! AustralianRupert (talk) 09:16, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Antiochus
Amphion and Zethus links to the DAB page Antiochus. The source gives no clue as to which this might be. Does anyone in this WikiProject know? Narky Blert (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nae bother, solved using a footnote and a citation. Narky Blert (talk) 23:54, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Humanities published first article
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 09:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

What to do about OMACL links?
As some of the articles involved in this discussion (WP:VPIL) involve the topic of this Wikiproject, I'd appreciate any help or input y'all might have. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 18:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Feedback needed at Talk:Roman diocese
Hello, there is a discussion going on about how best to improve the article Roman diocese. Your opinion at Talk:Roman diocese would be welcome. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:51, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It is worth looking at this article. It is unreal.  T8612  (talk) 01:52, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Setting other issues aside, I know that "op.cit." is no good on Wikipedia, but what about inline Harvard-type citations (Dalby 2019 p. 2035)? I haven't noticed a good article that has them, but I seem to think I recently saw a guideline that allows them. Andrew Dalby 09:43, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, if used consistently all through the article, they are acceptable, like almost any clear style (WP:CITESTYLE). Many students are taught to use them in their work outside WP, & you used to see them a lot. I think some people go round conveerting them to templates etc, which I've done myself when there were mixed styles. I'm sure I've seen them in FAs in the past. Johnbod (talk) 14:19, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed, op cit doesn't work of course, but sfn is great; love it, and use it where I can. That could fit in well with this proposal at the article, made subsequently to my OP above. Andrew, John, or anyone: could use your thoughts at the discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

A numismatic puzzle
Cyzicus links (through Timotheos) to the DAB page Timotheus. I was tentatively thinking that the pictured coin might be Timotheus of Heraclea (Heraclea is some distance from the Sea of Marmara, but on a shipping route); when I discovered that Timotheus (general) links to the same image. It seems to me that a tyrant was more likely to have been coining money than an Athenian general. Expert opinion would be welcome. Narky Blert (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * According to our articles, Cyzicus was ruled by the Persians after 387 BC, before either the general ot tyrant seem to have achieved prominence. I think it might be another Timotheos entirely, perhaps a satrap. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, it seems it is the general, who raised a siege of the city in 363 (so our date is a tad misleading). Another account. Johnbod (talk) 17:46, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Updated description. T8612  (talk) 19:13, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Applause! Narky Blert (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Origin of the Romanians
There is currently a Request-for-Comment open about restructuring the Origin of the Romanians article. Any comments or suggestions for improving the article would be greatly appreciated. Borsoka (talk) 11:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Pannonian Avars and Avar Khaganate
I've started a discussion over at Avar Khaganate about whether it shouldn't be merged to Pannonian Avars (much like Hunnic Empire was merged to Huns a few years ago). At the moment the Khaganate article handles the history of the Avars, whereas the Pannonian article seems to just discuss their origins. Anyone interested please join the discussion at Avar Khaganate.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:21, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Ptolemaic Genealogy
We have quite a lot of articles citing the Ptolemaic genealogy by C. Bennett hosted at https://tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptolemies/ - see, for example Theoxena of Egypt. It is a good source, which I have seen cited by a number of professional scholars. However, it seems that it has moved in the last few weeks and is now hosted at http://www.instonebrewer.com/TyndaleSites/Egypt/ptolemies/... Is there any quick way to change these links? Furius (talk) 22:27, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is an excellent source, thank goodness it survives. A bot could probably change them all (I speak theoretically, because I don't own a bot myself). One wonders whether the move is final or temporary. David Instone-Brewer, whose site it presumably is, is a technical officer at Tyndale House: Tyndale itself previously hosted the Ptolemaic genealogy pages.
 * Your link goes to the file index. One can start, instead, from the contents page, here. A quick test suggests that the internal links work correctly. Andrew Dalby 10:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I emailed David Instone-Brewer about the matter in the first place, which is how I found out where it had moved to. He seemed to indicate that it was intended to be a permanent shift, but he also said that the site is being mirrored on trismegistos.org which is of course more permanent. Perhaps I'm blind but I can't work out where it actually is on the latter site. Furius (talk) 12:48, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Placement of useful maps
Until this summer, these two maps were prominently displayed at the beginning of the Roman Italy article, which underwent major revisions this year. Now they're not used in any article we might routinely consult. I don't know about the other members of this project, but since my work tended to involve describing the places where miscellaneous Romans came from (or were buried), I was constantly consulting these maps due to their high level of detail and general ease of use. Apart from their attractiveness and readability, they depict traditional (i.e. first century) boundaries between the different regions of Italy. I realize there may be a degree of uncertainty with some boundaries and locations, and that some boundaries may have been fuzzy or changeable. But I still think these maps are incredibly useful resources. I almost restored them to the Roman Italy article, but I'm not sure that there'd be a consensus for that—it might just be me using them. So I thought I'd ask the rest of the project: should we use these in that or another high-profile article, or otherwise make them easily accessible for users? P Aculeius (talk) 00:06, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I'm thinking details could be used variously.  Can we better nail down the date/period portrayed?  Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 00:27, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure they're meant to represent a specific point in time. The map shows the extent of Carthaginian settlement in Sicily, and alludes to the borders of Etruria before and after the time of Augustus.  Of course, during Augustus' time, Italy was divided into new regions that only roughly corresponded with the traditional areas, and didn't usually share the same names, but the old geographic names seem to have persisted even after this.  I'd say that the map most closely corresponds to Italy between the Punic Wars and the first century AD, although obviously some of the features date back further (i.e. Veii) and go forward later (for instance showing where the modern coastline around Ravenna would be).  In some cases alternate names of towns are provided.  It's a general reference rather than a depiction of only one point in time, which makes it a bit more useful than it would be if it only depicted features of one time period.  Whenever I needed to know if a town was in Samnium or Campania, I turned to the "Roman Italy" article and looked at the map.  I'm sure other users would benefit from it, too.  If I had the skill I'd try to draw a new version stitching both images together and removing the creases.  Sadly I don't!  But it's the best map of its type that I know of on-line.  P Aculeius (talk) 02:11, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, very handy maps, I hadn't ever really looked at them. Possibly superseded by the maps in the Barrington Atlas, but we haven't all been given that for Christmas yet.
 * Incidentally, I only recently found the online gazetteer to the Barrington Atlas, in a series of pdf files, linked here. This is well-sourced, reliable material. The nuisance is, in order to know where to look for a place, you need to start from the key map ... which has just disappeared from the link I had saved, but can be found, thank heaven, here.
 * Would a page Topography of Roman Italy serve as a home for those maps? Andrew Dalby 10:05, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure how intuitive the title is. Perhaps "Geography" or even "Cartography" or just plain "Maps".  These would of course be expandable by adding other relevant maps for details/time periods/alternative views.  Sadly the Barrington Atlas seems to be priced out of the range of most would-be users!  Apparently there's an iOS app, but that's no use for me, nor for Wikipedia readers.  Looks very comprehensive from the standpoint of physical geography, but splitting Italy into 10+ numbered maps makes it a lot harder to get a good overall view at the same time as spotting individual details.  The split between the "North" to the "South" maps by Shepherd is a minor inconvenience; having to do it ten times or more would magnify that considerably!  Also the Shepherd maps forego topographic detail in favour of political boundaries.  Both have their advantages, but on the whole I think most readers will benefit more from being able to see the boundaries of different ethnic/linguistic/cultural regions than from seeing where the mountains are highest.  Maybe one of these days I'll learn how to draw well enough to stitch together these two maps.  But even if I do, I won't be able to provide much topography!  P Aculeius (talk) 14:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the problem with these maps is that they look old-school and have a centrefold. I however don't think there is a problem with putting them back in the article. As an aside on the subject, does anybody know whether we can take screenshots of Peripleo and add them to articles?  T8612  (talk) 14:59, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing at Ancient Greek
Hello, The sourcing at Ancient Greek is in a sorry state. I'm willing to help, but I'm not the best placed to do so; the article would probably benefit from members of this project. Your assistance is welcome: please see Talk:Ancient Greek. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:21, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Campaign history of the Roman military
This article was promoted FA in 2007, but now it looks quite under FA standards. I am mostly troubled by the bibliography: Many of the sources used here are very questionable to me. Should a book written by Boris Johnson, or even Churchill, be included in a featured article, on a subject that is outside their sphere of competence? Moreover, Bury, Harkness, Gibbon, and Pennell are really dated; Davis Hanson and Liddell Hart have dubious reputation; Holland, Welch, and Wood are more popular writers than academics. I suppose the criteria for featured articles were different in 2007, but I think this article should be delisted as it relies too much on sources that should not be used in a featured article. This was already pointed out during the review, but ultimately ignored. Moreover, few people curate the article, and there have been a number of unsourced additions. The title is a bit weird as well. I would prefer something like "Wars of Ancient Rome". So, should it be delisted? T8612 (talk) 14:06, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Comments please at Talk:Laocoön and His Sons/Archives/2023/December
Where there's an ongoing discussion. Thanks! Johnbod (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Comments at Talk:Greek Anthology
I have started a discussion about the inclusion of a section on the Greek Anthology page here. It concerns the potential creation of several poet pages if they meet notability criteria (which I do not believe they do).  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 05:19, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

new meta user group about classical culture
Hi, with a core of interested users we drafted last autumn this proposal for user group m:WikiClassics. The group is growing and it's intended to boost cooperation in an area where cross-language coordination is important, and to improve the maintenance of metadata and multimedia on wikidata and commons in a more efficient way.

We are welcome to every input, this is one of the first user groups (together with military topics and medicine) that is clearly intended as a de facto cross-project on a clear theme. We will also try to create and share useful maintenance tools.

In the talk page we have started one crucial discussion about the specific logo, m:Talk:WikiClassics. Please share your suggestions and ideas, especially if you have useful svg files to combined with the standard layout and color pattern of UG logos... but you can also propose something totally different, of course. We hope to see you there!--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:50, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * FYI, we are voting the logo in the talk page, the two main options are Minerva's owl and a vase. --Alexmar983 (talk) 01:47, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot Beta
Hello! Your WikiProject has been selected to participate in the WP 1.0 Bot rewrite beta. This means that, starting in the next few days or weeks, your assessment tables will be updated using code in the new bot, codenamed Lucky. You can read more about this change on the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team page. Thanks! audiodude (talk) 06:47, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Potential article: Roman rump states
I have little time to put an article like this together, but it might be a good idea to start a List of Roman rump states article, listing the minor states that were ruled by Romans or had a strong Roman culture shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Potential examples could include the Mauro-Roman Kingdom, the Kingdom of Altava, and the Kingdom of Soissons. Also, according to this map, there are three small areas labeled "Roman outposts" -- I don't know if these are synonymous with the Mauro-Roman kingdom or if any article of them exist. Also, this map shades Armorica red, indicating it had some association with Rome. These matters should be looked into. --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * 1. Is 'rump state' the right word? I might be wrong, but isn't a 'rump state' usually singular (i.e. Russia is/was a rump state of the USSR, but Belarus, despite its very close connections to the former USSR, isn't). 2. Judging "that were ruled by Romans or had a strong Roman culture" seems likely to be a subjective enterprise. It sounds like you don't intend to include the Ostrogothic kingdom - and yet it used Latin as its court language and its king referred to himself as Gothorum Romanorumque rex (which is analogous to Masuna). The Eastern Roman empire looks a lot like a rump state too... Furius (talk) 20:04, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * A rump state is the diminished political entity that once held more territory or power. Indeed there can only be one rump state. Perhaps you were thinking of Roman successor States.Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 21:32, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I looked up "rump" in the Oxford English Dictionary and found "II. 4. a. A small, unimportant, or contemptible remnant or remainder of a (official) body of people" ... suggesting that "rump state" could be perfectly accurate for some of the entities mentioned but might be POV. Andrew Dalby 10:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've seen the term "rump state" applied to some of these entities, particularly the Kingdom of Soissons, so that's why I used the term. "Successor states" might be a better term to use for such an article. I was debating whether to link to Odoacer's Kingdom, so I'm open to including it. RSs should guide the criteria of what states to include. The examples I listed above clearly would be included, though I'm not sure of others that might exist. --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds good - what term do reliable sources tend to use nowadays to talk about these states as a unit? "States of the migration period"? Furius (talk) 08:34, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, could I just remind everyone about reliable sources? This map clearly isn't - apart from the speculative British states, they have the Maori turning up in New Zealand several centuries too early. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * About the map, that's fair, though I'm still curious what to make of the "Roman outposts" in Africa -- they don't appear to be synonymous with the Roman-Mauro Kingdom, and I wonder if more reliable sources speak of them (or if Wikipedia mentions them on any articles)? For the record, the map I showed, regardless of how reliable it is, does give a list of sources. --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 15:02, 2 March 2019 (UTC)


 * I think this list should include all the states that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, not just "the Mauro-Roman Kingdom, the Kingdom of Altava, and the Kingdom of Soissons". Visigoths, Franks, or Ostrogoths also retained a significant Roman culture, with the use of Latin, Roman nobility titles, some Roman laws, etc. 's selective list could be POV. Perhaps a page on this already exists though.  T8612  (talk) 12:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I couldn't find a page on this, so that's why I came here.
 * Would it be appropriate to have the page only list successor/rump states that were ruled by the longstanding inhabitants rather than Germanic tribes that had just settled in the former Roman Empire? --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 18:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, once you raised the point, I too was surprised to find that such a list didn't exist. It would be a helpful thing, since it is a complicated and confusing period! As for your question, I think the answer is no, unless there are recent reliable sources that support it. I may be wrong, but my impression is that the trend in contemporary scholarship on the period is to play down the significance of that distinction (but it's not my area of research, so I might be wrong). A good list would include a 'notes' column for each item, which might be able to convey that sort of information. Furius (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The tribes invading the Roman Empire were actually very small (perhaps about 1% of the population of the areas they settled in). Moreover, some of them had already settled in the Roman Empire for more than a century before its collapse.  The notion of "longstanding inhabitants" is difficult to assess. I think an article (not a list) would be better to explain the details.  T8612  (talk) 14:20, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair enough -- even if such an article includes both Germanic-controlled and non-Germanic controlled kingdoms, I think it would be a positive for Wikipedia, and, as User:Furius stated, would help explain what really is a complicated time period.
 * I think we should limit to article to successor/rump states of the Western Empire, as the Eastern Empire (the direct continuation of the Roman Empire) lasted for another ~1,000 years and because the Eastern emperor was recognized as the sole Roman emperor in 480. --1990&#39;sguy (talk) 15:02, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposal for "former populated places in Ancient Greece"
Hi people. The seems to be overcrowded, and also the related. I propose first the creation of a stub template AncientGreece-geo-stub and afterwards, when there are at least 60 stubs, create a new. Regards, --Fadesga (talk) 20:01, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I praise your initiative! Most of these stubs are Ancient Greek places that were formerly populated, so wouldn't 'Category:Ancient Greece former populated places stubs' be just as overcrowded? And how would this interact with the existing tree of regional sub-categories? Furius (talk) 01:31, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Tacitus for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Tacitus is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Tacitus until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 00:38, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Caecilia Metella Balearica (priestess) for deletion
I nominated this article for deletion. See discussion here. T8612 (talk) 19:44, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Campaign history of the Roman military
I nominated this article for a FA reassessment. Discussion here. T8612 (talk) 17:42, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Julius Caesar for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Julius Caesar is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Julius Caesar until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 11:11, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Alexander the Great in the Quran
Your feedback would be appreciated at this request for comment on Talk:Alexander the Great in the Quran. Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Picture of Ennius in the Vatican Museums
I would be very grateful if an editor living in Rome (or visiting) could go to the Vatican Museums and take a picture of the "Head of Ennius" that is displayed there. Currently we have on WP is copyrighted and may have to be deleted. I could not find another online. There is one picture on the Museums' website, but copyrighted. Many other artworks in the museums lack a picture on Wikimedia too. T8612 (talk) 23:51, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Why is this? it:File:Testa_di_ennio,_tomba_degli_scipioni,_oggi_ai_musei_vaticani.jpg says that it has been in the public domain since 1996. Furius (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Copyright status is dubious and wouldn't pass a FA review. T8612  (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Pilate Stone and Pilate's historicity
I recently discovered that the articles Pontius Pilate and Pilate Stone make a big deal about how the inscription on this stone proves that Pontius Pilate really existed. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as he is mentioned in numerous independant sources. I've changed the article to reflect this less, but another user pointed to some news articles suggesting that the stone proved Pilate existed. Now I don't think these are reliable sources, but I was curious if anyone with more knowledge on the subject might comment on it - if there were ever serious doubts about the existence of Pontius Pilate, it would seem that this ought to be documented in the article, after all. Discussion can be found here.--Ermenrich (talk) 02:14, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks. There is no doubt about Pontius' existence.  He was one of a significant number of equestrian prefects of the eastern Roman provinces in the early empire period.  The fact he has significance to the Christian religion shouldn't make him any less historical.  As you point out, he is mentioned by a number of independent sources.  --Urg writer (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The historical existence of Pontius Pilate was never seriously doubted by professional academic historians. There may have been some crazy nutcase far from academia at some point who claimed that Pilate never really existed, but real historians never seriously thought this. The fact is that Pilate was already more than reliably attested in multiple independent sources long before the Pilate Stone was ever discovered. Even without the Pilate Stone, we would still have more than ample evidence to verify that Pontius Pilate was indeed a real Roman governor of Judaea.
 * The reason why the article makes such a big deal about the Pilate Stone "proving" Pilate's historicity when it had supposedly previously been questioned is probably because there are many evangelical apologists out there who like to go around claiming that skeptical scholars did not believe Pontius Pilate existed until the Pilate Stone was unearthed, proving that those awful skeptical scholars were wrong all along. They make these claims in effort to undermine contemporary historians' skepticism regarding other parts of the gospel narrative. It is a very underhand tactic, but it seems to be effective. —Katolophyromai (talk) 07:04, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Katolophyrmoai and Urg writer. Yes, I had suspected something like that might be at work. I will, hopefully, get around to making some other improvements to the article, but if anyone could help I would appreciate the support.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:57, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Authors Importance Ratings
I have done some curation work on the article backlog and came across some importance ratings I find questionable. Apuleius, for instance, is rated as high-importance; Lucan, Statius and Tibullus are all rated as mid-importance, even though they are arguably more important than him. Should Apuleius be down or should the others be moved up? My instinct would be to rate all widely read authors as high-importance

I would like to hear what you think since this is relevant to ancient authors more broadly. Modussiccandi (talk) 22:49, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've never really been sure what 'importance rating' is for and I'm not sure how much energy should be given to rationalising what is ultimately a highly subjective matter. But I would note that Apuleius is one of the first texts that people encounter when learning Latin (and therefore something that's particularly liked to be searched for?). Furius (talk) 23:17, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Ratings are indeed all over the place; I corrected many of them, but it is a very subjective task. I think we should at least draw by consensus the list of "Top importance" articles, perhaps by restricting their number to 100? T8612  (talk) 23:50, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree, some attempt at consensus is certainly needed here. Furius seems to suggest that common school texts should be rated highly. In that case, Xenophon and Lysias should be high-importance, too, since many Greek students would encounter them early on. I don't entirely agree with that view, but we may want to try something like the vital-article project, where they set a target number an people can suggest articles.Modussiccandi (talk) 10:21, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The importance ratings are, as T8612 says, pretty inconsistently applied; that said, based on the criteria given at WP:CGR/A (particularly, High: "Subject is not a key topic of the Classics but nevertheless is of interest to most."; Mid: "Subject is of interest to scholars of the Classics but may be only peripherally known of by others.") I suspect that Lucan, Statius, Tibullus, and Apuleius should all be Mid importance. I'd rate Xenophon as high-importance under that scale, but Lysias probably only as mid-importance.
 * My gut instinct would be that on these criteria, Xenophon is the only author mentioned thus far who even has a chance of being better than peripherally known by others; Apuleius is probably the next most well-known. Page view statistics bear out some of my instincts: Xenophon gets far-and-away the most monthly page views; Apuleius does next best, and Lysias is right down at the bottom. I wouldn't have guessed that Statius gets more watchers and pageviews than Tibullus, but frankly neither get all that much attention!  When you compare any of them to Sappho (I think rightly counted as a High-importance article), who gets twice as many views and 50% more watchers than Xenophon, and an order of magnitude more than any of the others, or a top-importance article such as Julius Caesar (an order of magnitude more page-views than Sappho; two orders of magnitude more than Lucan).  Page views are obviously an imperfect metric for how much of interest to the general public a given article is, but I think that a low monthly pageview count is probably a good indication that a topic isn't "of interest to most", even if a relatively high count doesn't necessarily prove that it is. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:28, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's a long time since I studied classics at school, but: surely Lysias is encountered early because Lysias is easy, and that's true of Xenophon too. Apuleius is encountered early because he tells a good story, and that's true of Xenophon too. I wouldn't say that's enough to make any of the three top-100, and I agree that it's subjective and doesn't matter much anyway! But of those three, Xenophon is notable historically, Apuleius is notable in the history of fiction, and both of them are interesting philosophically. Xenophon is rare as a mercenary soldier who became a Greek author; Apuleius is a path-breaker as an African who became a Latin author. Lysias is an also-ran. Andrew Dalby 08:31, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The views of someone whose school Greek only got as far as "the soldiers are in the city" (I looked at doing that in Greek, but no) may be of interest. Apart from Lysias I've heard of all of these. Historians will have a wider non-literary interest, and both Sappho and Apuleius are likely to be covered in even the broadest survey of world literature. Lucan often comes up in the study of Shakespeare & other dramatists (google helpfully adds that they are 46 minutes apart in Ontario).  In general, no, importance ratings are not important.  My home project, Visual arts, very wisely decided at the start not to attempt them.  Looking at views is one good way to approach them - let the readers decide. About 150 is a decent size for "top importance" in a large subject, but that perhaps only means 20-30 authors at most (excluding philosophers I suppose). Currently you have 107, if the table is up to date. I see you are subscribed to the very useful WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Popular pages service, but the project doesn't seem to have a link to it anywhere on your project info - that's bad.  Johnbod (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I've always felt that the breakdown of articles by importance for any subject on Wikipedia should be based on percentages of total articles, rather than a fixed one. By that, I would say 1% are "Top" importance, 9% "High", 40% "Mid", & 50% "Low". This would mean that, since at this writing there are 21,646 total articles belonging to WP:CG&R, 216 would be graded as "Top" & 1,939 as "High". Of course, this does not mean there are 216 authors of Top importance: this number includes other topics such as Roman legion, Slavery in ancient Rome, Classical Athens, & Iliad. As for the utility of these ratings... I'm conflicted about them. On one hand, they serve as a guide to which articles should receive more attention from contributors & be watched for vandalism & trolling, but on the other these ratings seem simply so much pedantry. No one cares if Lysias is Top, High, or Mid-level importance. (Although promoting someone like Fabius Planciades Fulgentius to "Top" would be an act of trolling, or a very dry joke.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:08, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Such a list is only useful for the top articles. There are so many articles in the wikiproject that most people won't bother with that. T8612  (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Greek colonisation redirects
I just edited the redirect page Greek colonization to point to Greek colonisation rather than Colonies in antiquity which I think should be fairly uncontroversially an improvement. Looking at the list of redirects to Colonies in antiquity, though, it seems that there is more to this.

The following redirects currently all point to Colonies in antiquity (or subsections thereof):
 * Ancient Greek colonies
 * Ancient Greek colonisation
 * Ancient Greek colonization
 * Colonies in antiquity
 * Colonies in the ancient world
 * Colonies of Ancient Greece
 * Colonies of ancient Greece
 * Greek colonies
 * Greek colony
 * Hellenic colonies
 * Apoika
 * Apoikia
 * Apoikiai
 * Pontic colonies
 * North Pontic Greek colonies

I suspect that all of these would be better off pointing elsewhere. I think it should be fairly uncontroversial to redirect the first ten (Ancient Greek colonies...Hellenic colonies) to Greek colonisation. Apoikia and its variants possibly should also point there, but we don't currently use the term in that article, whereas we do in colonies in antiquity. Probably should also define "apoikia" in the article in that case.

Finally, with Pontic colonies and North Pontic Greek colonies, I am genuinely unsure whether the best target is Pontic Greeks, Greek colonisation, or something else entirely. Does anyone have any thoughts?

(And while we are at it, Roman colonies is probably better off pointing to Colonia (Roman), no? That's where I would have expected to end up, at least!) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * NB I suspect that the reason for all of these redirects which seem like they ought to point to Greek colonisation is that they predate this discussion on this board previously... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, this makes sense. I think Apoikia should go to Greek colonisation (and as you say, the term should be mentioned there). The last two could point to Pontic_Greeks or to Greeks in pre-Roman Crimea (especially for North Pontic Greek colonies). Furius (talk) 09:32, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Struck the ones I have done (and the two correct redirects I accidentally included in the list). Will tackle Apoikia & friends when I am more awake.  Will leave Pontic colonies and North Pontic Greek colonies to see if anyone else has any input... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:20, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Done apoikia and friends & struck. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:05, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Shifting Greek Names Out of Footnotes
On several pages relating to myth (e.g. Aphrodite, Adonis, Athena), the Greek text of the names—and their pronunciation in both English and Ancient Greek—have been moved to footnotes (and thereby obfuscated from the lede). These changes are the work of a single user across the articles. I believe they should be reverted to the previous format for the following reasons:
 * This is not standard among Greek myth articles.
 * Nor is it standard among other articles with Ancient Greek names.
 * Moreover, this is not standard across the English Wikipedia: non-English names and pronunciations are preserved in the lede for gods in other religious traditions, for other mythical figures, and for other subjects in other languages. (n.b. I would have liked to have pointed to some Near Eastern myth articles to demonstrate my point, since they also previously showed ancient characters in the lede, but the same user has brought this non-standard practice there.)
 * And, quite simply, I feel it is important to have this information visible: not only does it readily display the English pronunciation of the subject (which is crucial), it also provides the cultural, linguistic context of the ancient language from which the name comes.

I can sympathize with the concern that putting Ancient Greek text in the lede may overwhelm the casual reader (though I think it's fairly easy to skim over), but providing at least pronunciation is standard practice in encyclopedias. Please discuss.  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 14:31, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Edit: it occurs elsewhere as well. This needs to be discussed in the context of this project.  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 14:40, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The reason I have been putting the Greek spellings in footnotes is not to "obfuscate" the information at all, but rather because the Greek spelling and pronunciation takes up a lot of space (often at least the entire first line of the article, sometimes the first several lines) and yet these are far from the most important pieces information to most people. The vast majority of people reading these articles cannot read Greek and will not care how the name is spelled in Greek; the first thing they want to know when reading an article is obviously going to be what the subject of the article is, not how you spell the name of the subject of the article in Ancient Greek. At the same time, however, the information about the ancient Greek spelling and pronunciation is still worth including in the article because this information is useful to the minority of the readers who care about this information.
 * Therefore, in order to preserve this information in a place where it is still easy to find and easily accessible, but where it does not clutter the first line of the article with information that the average reader does not care about, I have been putting the Greek spellings and pronunciations in footnotes after the first usage of the name at the beginning of the article. My fear is that, if we were to give this information in the lead rather than in a footnote, we might have to cut some of it out to keep it from cluttering the lead. I think the footnotes are an excellent compromise that allows us to keep all the information without cluttering the lead.
 * This use of the footnotes is not something I came up with on my own; other people were doing the exact same thing long before I came along and it has been done in numerous of other articles about subjects with names with different languages. For instance, the article Christopher Columbus has had the Italian, Ligurian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, and Latin spellings of his name in a footnote after his name at the beginning of the article for years. I had nothing whatsoever to do with that. You complain that the practice is "non-standard," but, as far as I am aware, Wikipedia does not have an official standard for how foreign language spellings of names are supposed to be given in the lead of an article and, as it is, different articles have different formats for many things anyways. I think that what we really should be asking here is not "Is this standard?" but rather "Is this better?" —Katolophyromai (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As you say, this change is non-standard. MOS:ALTNAME is pretty clear that relevant non-English names should appear in the lead (and I find the example offered there of Genghis Khan pretty helpful; on that standard, none of the articles here concerned counted as 'cluttered'). Furius (talk) 15:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I understand the concern that the information may not be strictly relevant to the casual reader—but, then again, how can we determine what information is? People visit an article for all sorts of reasons, most of which are "far from the most important" reasons for others. The lead should summarize the major points of the topic, and I think it is not at all cut-and-dry that ancient names do not count as "major" or "important" in general context (or even specific—I can think of several online communities that would want to access the ancient spelling first and foremost). I do agree with the point that what is standard is not necessarily what is best; there are all sorts of editorial conventions I find frustrating or inefficient. Nonetheless, as points out, we must abide by these conventions for the sake of the encyclopedia—and, indeed, the examples at hand (such as Aphrodite and Adonis) do not have nearly as much nominal information as the Columbus example you provided. On the whole this issue should be decided by the community to determine how much information qualifies as clutter in the lead and, subjectively, what qualifies as "important" information.  anthologetes  ( talk •  contribs ) 17:22, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As I recall, there was a big RFC on this topic a few years ago, and concluded in part that "Many editors are sympathetic to the proposal of limiting the number of foreign names in the lead" and "Not-withstanding this, many editors are firmly opposed to any concept of micro-management and are of the view that this may be comfortably tackled on a per-se basis" [emphasis original]. Personally, I think that including the pronunciation and Greek spelling of the name of an ancient Greek figure (whether real or mythological) is generally fairly valuable.  I am surprised at the assertion that "sometimes the first several lines" are taken up by this (maybe on mobile?  I generally browse wikipedia on a 1080p screen and I can't remember seeing more than about half a line being taken up by this sort of stuff). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:40, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It tends to be saints, Buddhist semi-deities, cross-national figures & that sort of thing where several language versions are given in biographies, & that needs keeping an eye on. Try Tara (Buddhism) or Avalokiteśvara (first para and infobox), as opposed to Padmasambhava, with a note. I too think that the ancient Greek name is appropriate in the lead for AG deities & other major figures. Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 31 May 2019 (UTC)


 * What if we put the pronunciation in the infobox? Personally I'm against putting this valuable information in a footnote. T8612  (talk) 18:55, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm for moving that material into infoboxes. It's near the top of the page for easy access, yet it does not block the flow of the text in the lead. (And provides information that is not already in the body of the article.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:18, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Template:Infobox person does have fields for "native name" and "pronunciation", so this is doable. I'm not terribly opposed to the idea for articles which already have infoboxes, but I would note that MOS:INFOBOX says that "all information in an infobox ideally should also be found in the main body of an article" (and specifically gives instructions for logged-in users to hide all infoboxes!) so it may not be ideal. And in any case I wouldn't want this to lead to infoboxes being unnecessarily added to articles in order to move the information on pronunciation into them – especially on articles like Sappho where, with the exception of "known for", I don't think a single field can be filled without caveat (even the spelling of her name, it is noted in the article, is inconsistent!) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 07:10, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd personally prefer to move/keep the common names/pronunciations in the lead and shift any further names (dialectical or epithetic) to an etymology section or infobox. Additionally, Template:Infobox deity doesn't have "native name" or "pronunciation" fields, so the problem would persist for the many mythological pages in the project.  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 17:52, 5 June 2019 (UTC)


 * , as with any rule expecting all information in an infobox to also appear in the text of an article could be pushed to absurdness. One innovation I have implemented in a few articles I wrote was to include the relevant article number of the person in the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Anyone who has used that important reference work will attest that knowing they should turn to, say, "Iulius (34)" out of the hundreds of articles on the members of gens Julia will find that bit of info very helpful. That one line might even justify adding infoboxes to a large number of articles. (I think adding a similar index for the entries in Prosopographia Imperii Romani would also be desirable.) On the other hand, there are some who think Wikipedia articles ought to be self-contained & not expect the user to look anywhere else for information. (Jimmy Wales once made a statement much to this effect.) So one could argue having lemma for these two references is unnecessary. -- llywrch (talk) 16:17, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

When a Greek name takes more than a few words of actual text, as opposed to the cruft required to link to Ancient Greek and display polytonic Greek text, it usually means that there is some ambiguity or controversy. If so, we should explain it, but we don't have to do it in the header. A link to another section is often better than a footnote. Either we have to have a double note system, or the reader will have no idea there is substance beyond the note. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Lifespans of Celtic women
Greetings all. I've got into a small dispute about some text on Ancient Celtic women concerning archaeological evidence for lifespans of those women. I've laid out the situation and may case on the talk page there and would be grateful for a second opinion. Furius (talk) 09:35, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Servilia image
is featured on the article Servilia (mother of Brutus), but I kinda doubt it's actually supposed to be her. It could just be someone else from the Servilia (gens). The page which the commons image is taken from doesn't seem to imply really that it is Brutus mother from my reading (it's in another lanaguge so I could be wrong). Thoughts?★Trekker (talk) 09:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Good catch. She's clearly Roma or Minerva, not a mortal woman. Furius (talk) 09:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yep, the source says obverse shows a bust of Minerva. And they date the coin to 100 BC, when Servilia was not yet five!  They gloss the inscription on the reverse as "Publius Servilius Marci Filius": I suspect Publius Servilius Rullus, who was triumvir monetalis in 100 BC, is the Servilius named on the coin. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:49, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your replies. I'll go ahead and remove it from the page.★Trekker (talk) 09:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have corrected the caption on Commons. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:07, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * To my knowledge, the only (historical) Roman woman that appears on a coin of the Republic is Fulvia, the wife of Antony. T8612  (talk) 11:18, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's really unfortunate, coins are the best way to get surviving contemporary depictions of people.★Trekker (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The Louvre believes that this statue of Livia is contemporary. So statues are possible. It does of course matter that Livia spent a lot more time than Servilia in actual power. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:29, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sadly I think a lot of contemporary works have gotten destroyed over the years. but nice we have one of Livia.★Trekker (talk) 06:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Pontius Pilate rewrite
I've drafted out a complete rewrite of the article on Pontius Pilate using reliable sources - there is very little in the current article that I think can be salvaged, as large portions of the article are unsourced, and what is sourced relies almost entirely on websites (which are often used to support claims not found there) and primary sources. The draft is currently in my sandbox (User:Ermenrich/sandbox), where I will continue working on it until I think it's ready to replace the current article (perhaps leaving the long list of places where Pilate appears in literature/film/music, as I have no idea how to fix that). I'd appreciate any input anyone here might have.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:13, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * First off, what you have written is a clear improvement over the current text. (I see it is missing the lead paragraphs -- I assume these are to come.) That said, there are some points worth expanding on:
 * You should develop that he was a member of the Pontia gens. Doing this gives him a place of origin, & supplies some additional information about the procurator.
 * Also of interest is that the equestrian order had their own cursus honorum, the tres militiae. While we don't know which units he served in, we can safely assume he passed thru these military offices, & thus was at youngest in his mid-thirties when he was assigned to Judea.
 * Knowing his approximate age when he arrived in Judea, we can estimate his age as his mid-forties when he was sent back to Rome. That is another big clue, being 45 in those days was nothing like being 45 today: Pilate was approaching old age. He was likely quite wealthy from his years governing Judea, & since most equites never got as far as a procuratorship, there was a mark against his tenure in Judea, & the imperial court was not a safe environment to be in (Caligula had just been elevated), Pilate would doubtless be more than happy to retire from the imperial service & tend to his villa gardens. And he probably died of old age in the next 10-15 years, based on what we know of age spans of his time.
 * One last point. I know you're trying to avoid citing primary sources, but you need to explain what Tacitus writes about Pilate -- despite that Tacitus mentions him only as the person who put this troublemaker named Christ to death. Because Tacitus offers no further information about the incident, this means we are forced to rely on less objective sources. (Sometimes there is information in saying that a primary source has no further information.)

I hope these suggestions prove useful. -- llywrch (talk) 22:03, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for the comments! Do you have any sources for the connection between Pontius Pilate and the Pontia gens? I know it's linked in the article (and it seems quite likely) but I haven't actually found it written in for instance Bond or Carter where I would have expected it.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * , that is a good question that required me to think about. (That, & helping my daughters celebrate the 4th here in the US.) The gens Pontia is not a single family, rather it is a complex of lineages with a common ethnic origin -- in this case, from Samnium, in central Italy. We can be assured that he -- or his ancestors -- came from there because of the linguistic character of the name. Just as "Franklin" or "Lovecraft" indicates a likely origin in Britain. Because "Pontius" is an uncommon name -- unlike Aurelius, Julius or Cornelius -- this increases the odds that his ancestors came from Samnium, & were not adopted into the gens, as many Gallic aristocrats were adopted into the gens Julia. (The reason I had to think hard about this is that I've been accepting it as a matter of accepted fact that everyone with a given gentile nomen belonged to that gens; it can be hard work explicating the reasons for what one accepts on faith.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:32, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I found a definitely reliable source for the information. I'm about to go on vacation but when I get back I'll try to work in Ann Wroe's (popular) book and Lémonon's more recent book on Pilate in French.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:42, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Enjoy your vacation! I, too, think the article is a great improvement on what we had before. Andrew Dalby 16:58, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Infobox Monarch task: Done.
Hello all. Just placed a Royalty infobox for Andreas Palaiologos after doing the remaining 15 of the Roman Empresses. All the other ones had already been done by other editors, as far as I can tell. That task appears to be complete. Not sure if I'm supposed to remove it from the Task page (I'm new in the Project). Back to sourcing Roman Kingdom now. I've got three solid paper sources (Forsythe, Carandini, Jerphanion) that should cover most of it... just takes time to associate each statement to an actual page number Robincantin (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Statues of Roman Republican men

 * Several busts of famous men of the Republic are misattributed on WP. The attributions often date from the time of discovery, in the early modern era, and were likely made by antiques dealers, for whom saying "Bust of Scipio Africanus" was more financially interesting than "Bust of a bald man". Problem is since there has been no consensus on the identify of the persons portrayed, initial attributions have often been retained. There are still very wrong; for example Scipio Africanus was said to have "flowing hair" by Livy (probably describing his statue); the busts of the bald man are certainly not his. So should we remove these from articles using them as illustrations?


 * Filippo Coarelli made an interesting theory on the busts of Marius and Sulla above. He retraced their history and showed they were found near the Tomb of the Scipios. He thus thinks they are the heads of the statues that the were on the entrance of the tomb. The "Marius" would be the head of Scipio Asiaticus, and "Sulla" that of Africanus. This is however only the theory of a few scholars (Coarelli is not alone though); I don't know whether we could generalise it on Wikipedia. What do you think? T8612  (talk) 02:35, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Where there are no other images that are probably of the person, and the identifications have become traditional (until recent years), it can be worth keeping them, with a more frank caption. Obviously we use tons of invented "portraits" of biblical, mythological and early historical figures, and I supposed that a more or less contemporary bust that has later caught on as representing an individual means something - dealers have always tried to pass off all sorts of portraits as famous figures, but most such ids don't stick at all.  I have changed a few of these. What's the thinking about the other "Sulla", near the bottom of the bio? Johnbod (talk) 15:38, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think we should always make sure to use a contemporary depiction whenever we can, but we can use unsure or disputed or even fictional portrayals when we need to.★Trekker (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I replaced Sulla's portrait in his article infobox. The second bust of Sulla in the article actually has a reference (if you click on the link on Commons), but I cannot check it. My main question is whether there is enough ground to "switch" the pictures of "Sulla" to Scipio Africanus, and "Marius" to Scipio Asiaticus, as Coarelli proposed. See on Scipio Asiaticus how it looks like. T8612  (talk) 18:36, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you could use the image of "Sulla"/Scipio Africanus in the Scipio Africanus article so long as the caption attributed the proposed identification to Coarelli. Obviously, asserting that image X is definitely meant to be a representation of person y when this is not fully agreed on is not okay, but I think including images that might be of person y (so long as we don't have an equivalent or better image definitely of person y) is acceptable.  To take an example I know well, the lead image for Sappho is not great, but there are no wholly good ancient sculptures of her: the identification of the portrait as "Sappho" is almost always questionable, none are contemporary, and most of the images on Commons are, frankly, not great.  We have to compromise by saying that the lead image is "probably" Sappho, and including a bunch of vase paintings and more modern artworks where we are more confident of the attribution... Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible - presumably images of earlier figures such as Sappho, even where there is a traditional "look", are as about as unlikely to reflect a tradition based on an original actual portrait with any likeness as those of Jesus or Buddha. Johnbod (talk) 13:04, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * But it still seems odd to use the sculpted head as lead image for Sappho if it's not only damaged, but really only guessed to be a later copy of a 4th century "portrait", when we have a vase painting which is certainly intended as a "portrait" of Sappho and is much closer to her lifetime. OK, I admit, the vase painting is already used on the page. Andrew Dalby 08:51, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * We are I think straying from the original question, but though I am not happy with the current lead image of Sappho, I equally have issues with all of the various alternatives. This is probably a better discussion to have on Talk:Sappho if reworking the images there is a discussion people want to have, though.  I have been thinking about bringing it up again myself recently, actually... Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:17, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Image request: British Museum Spartan running girl
If anyone who watches this page is in London, would you be able to drop by the British Museum and get a better image of this bronze figure? We use the current, very poor, image at Heraean Games, but a better image would also be usable at, e.g. Women in ancient Sparta. The figure is apparently currently on display in room 13 of the BM, on the ground floor. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:17, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I notice Robin Lane Fox thinks she is dancing, because of the off-the-shoulder dress (The Classical World, plate 5). Johnbod (talk) 17:37, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Far be it from me to contradict Robin Lane Fox, but if we believe Pausanias the off-the-shoulder dress is precisely what we should expect a runner at the Heraean games to be wearing. Paul Cartledge ("Spartan Wives: Liberation or License?") identifies the figure as a runner, as does the British Museum itself.  Even if this isn't unanimously agreed, it's still a useful image to have... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:45, 26 July 2019 (UTC)