Talk:Licinia gens

Merge of Licinii Crassi family tree

DGG, is there supposed to be a merge discussion somewhere else? The merge template was lil' malformed [1], but there doesn't seem to be anything that corresponds to it in any case?

For what it's worth, I support a merge of the family tree into this article. It's a big tree, but then it's a big article, and it wouldn't be overwhelmed. I can't see a good reason for shifting that to a standalone and removing it from its natural context. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:13, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion should be on the talk page of the article proposed for merger into this one, not here. But I'll leave it up to you whether to move it there. I'm not convinced that adding genealogical tables to gens articles is a good idea. They tend to be narrowly focused on one branch of a family, and are very distracting when uncollapsed—still a bit distracting from the usual format of the articles when collapsed. They don't match the formatting of the pages they're being added to, and they frequently omit people for various reasons. The focus of the member portion of gens articles is on listing, not genealogy; that's why they don't usually mention all of the relationships between different people on the list, beyond providing a filiation (the main exceptions are when the relationship to another person is the most notable fact about someone—or when someone is known entirely from a sepulchral inscription mentioning the person's relatives). Based on the appearance of the articles in this series that already have charts like this embedded in them, I'd say they're better maintained as separate articles, linked through the "see also" section. P Aculeius (talk) 00:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

It depends. When the gens article is small, or there is only one famous branch, then I think it's fine keeping the tree there. This is not the case for the Licinii though and the tree for the Licinii Crassi is quite large. What I think is more pressing is to remove the list articles on individual branches of a gens, like this Caecilius Metellus, or Lentulus, and make redirect to the subsections of the gens articles. T8612 (talk) 01:47, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Oppose, for reasons already stated above. There are already family trees like this w/ separate articles. Avis11 (talk) 15:51, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

"Murena" is not Lamprey, but Moray (Moray eel)?

I guess that the source mistranslated "Murena" with Lamprey. Murena, which passed untouched in current italian language, is Moray eel. The Romans valued the meat of moray eels so highly that they set up their own farms, the "murenai", which can still be seen along much of the Mediterranean coastline. Another source says "si dice che la murena abbia avuto questo nome in ricordo del condottiero Lucio Licinio Murena (I secolo a.C.) che fu il primo ad allevarla." -> "The moray eel is said to have been given this name in memory of the leader Lucius Licinius Murena (1st century BC) who was the first to breed it." Resoli (talk) 09:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

A probably more accurate source says: "Murena padre fu console repubblicano romano nel 62 AC, appartenente alla gens Licinia , il cui secondo cognomen/soprannome è dovuto agli allevamenti ,a Formia e a Ponza, di murene in piscinae sul mare." -> "Murena the father was a Roman Republican consul in 62 BC, belonging to the gens Licinia, whose second cognomen/soprannome is due to the breeding, in Formia and Ponza, of moray eels in pools by the sea." Resoli (talk) 10:25, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Our entry in Wiktionary says that murena could refer to either moray eels or lampreys, although it also derives it from the Greek, in which it supposedly refers only to morays. Of course Wiktionary cannot be considered an authoritative source; so looking further afield, Liddell & Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon concurs with the translation of the Greek, but of course does not have an entry for the Latin. Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities translates murena as "lamprey". Cassell's indicates that the word may refer to either a murry (moray) or lamprey, while the Bantam dictionary gives only "moray". It does not appear that the Romans had a separate word to refer specifically to lampreys; our word is derived from Late Latin. So murena seems to have referred to eel-like fish in general, rather than only to morays.

As for which of these fish was bred and eaten by a family of the Licinii, I note that both lampreys and morays were eaten by the Romans, but that lampreys have been popular fare for much of recorded history, while morays are known to accumulate deadly toxins in their bodies, making their consumption more dangerous. This might slightly favour lampreys, but it is not mentioned by any of our sources on the Licinii. There might also be a tendency on the part of some writers to translate "murena" exclusively as "moray" since it is the word from which "moray" derives, not knowing that the same word also applied to lampreys in Roman times. I don't think there is enough evidence to say which one was bred by the Licinii, but the English-language sources all refer to lampreys.

I think we can discount both of the Italian sources cited. The first one does not appear to be a scholarly source on Roman history, and it makes multiple mistakes in a short span. The surname Murena was derived from the fish, not the other way around; and the first of the Murenae to appear in history was praetor in 147 BC—although the notes in one translation of Pliny make the breeder of fish a contemporary of the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus (140–91 BC), while this source only seems to know of a first-century BC "leader"—probably the consul of 62 BC, to whom it merely alludes. The second source, also not really a scholarly source on Roman history, explicitly attributes it to the same man, and says that the fish was named in his memory, which is clearly a mistake; and the references to Formia and Ponza may also be errors, as he, and his forebears, are said to have come from Lanuvium.

Pliny says that Gaius Hirrius, a contemporary of Caesar, was the first to breed murenae; if so, then the Licinii might not have been breeding them—merely compared with them, either because they loved to eat them, or perhaps due to some other association ("slippery as an eel"? a parasite?).

I note that under "branches and cognomina", this article mentions both the murry and lamprey as alternatives. Nowhere does it say explicitly "lampreys", excluding morays. So I'm not sure what it is that needs to be done here; the sources do not seem to be mistranslating murena, as the same word was used for both fish, and as this article allows that it could refer to either, it does not seem to be in need of clarification, merely because some of the sources cited choose to translate murena as "lamprey". P Aculeius (talk) 12:56, 31 May 2023 (UTC)