Talk:Paulus Catena

Paul not as bad as that

Someone was very excitable when they worked on this article. In Ammianus Marcellinus' account, Paulus Catena was not known throughout the Roman world for his cruelty; the historian simply says that he was given this nickname for his cruelty -- much like a local thug might be known as Henry "Finger-breaker" Smith. Further, there is no proof that his predations in Britian contributed to the decline of the local aristocracy there; this is nothing more than one unidentified person's opinion. One authority on Roman Britain, Sheppard Frere, notes that "it cannot have been easy for anyone of prominence in Britain to have avoioded involvement with the defeated side", but is silent about any connection between Paulus' actions & the impoverishment of the aristocracy. Cruel investigators have harmed many families, but alone have never destroyed an economy as large as Britain's -- so I'd expect proof or a source for this claim.

The life of this person after Britain is entirely without any sources; the section from Ammianus quoted in the first paragraph only covers that part of his career. Ammianus mentions this person a couple more times in his history, but I don't have time at the moment to see if he confirms anything stated in this article. Someone with access to the The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire could clean up the rest of this article quickly -- which I don't happen to have at the moment.

This article is in desperate need of a lot of help. Wikipedia deserves better than this. -- llywrch 02:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't have time to sort out the article, but PLRE has the following information: he was a native of Spain, his nickname came from his ability to wrap peeople up in a coil of accusations (So says Ammianus anyway), he carried on his trade in Britain, the East, Gaul (where he watched the young Julian), and Egypt, and he was burned in 361/2. Skookumpete (talk) 02:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)