User talk:P Aculeius/Archive 3

Re: Fasti ostienses

(Thought it would be more useful to you if I left these comments here than in response to your comments on my Talk page.)

First, I'm not entirely clear what your intent with this list is -- or if you are clear about it. What I mean is this. When publishing a primary source like this, there are three ways of presenting it: one is to present it in a scholarly fashion, where the notes & care to present it as accurately as possible makes it difficult for non-specialists to read; a second is to present it as a readable text, glossing over all of the problems & ambiguities in the source; a third is to find some workable mid-point between these two extremes. While my preference is the third choice, none of these are actually bad; one just needs to know which standard to measure your work by.

That said, to my comments.

• The AUC dating is not part of the original document. IIRC, its appearance in the Fasti Capitolini is unusual for the time, & its use was rare for the time, intended to make some point. Personally, I don't find it useful. (And adds the question, does a year in the AUC style begin on 1 January or 21 April, the traditional date for the foundation of Rome?) However, if you think it should be part of the document, I think it would be best to indicate that it is not part of the original document, with a note, or say putting the material in a different typeface, such as italics.
• On the other hand, the edition I use, Ladislav Vidman's 2nd edition of the Fasti ostienses, does label the various fragments of the FO & match them to his text. (BTW, I got a copy thru InterLibrary Loan with my public library, & photocopied the book for future use before returning it.) It makes reference to parts of the FO much easier. I don't know if you are interested in adding that information, but I can supply it if you do.
• The label "Notes" at the top of the last column doesn't appear correct to me to be the best choice. "Notes" indicate commentary from the editor, where the text in the column comes from the FO. I don't know what this part of the FO is called by specialists. If there is no generally accepted name, I would probably call these passages, "addenda" or "chronicle" -- but I'm not entirely happy with that label either.
• At various parts you add "[missing lines]". I don't see how this helps the reader: obviously there are many missing lines in this inscription.
• There are some misalignments between the entry in "Magistracy" & the related names, which make it hard to be sure which is which. (That the duoviri of Ostia often is a single person doesn't help.) To create subboxes in the table is a difficult solution to implement, based on my own experience with Wikipedia's table mark-up tags. Would putting the pairs on a single line solve this problem?
• The problem with restoring passages is that it is, in the end, an opinion. (And sometimes, too the reading of an inscription.) Which why I'm uncomfortable with using the text from EDCS: there is no attribution whose restorations is being used there, or its date. Some scholars do a better job of restoring lost text, some do an excellent job for their time & state of knowledge, but the reading becomes outdated with new discoveries. At least with Vidman's edition -- which is one of the standards scholars use -- I know where to start.
• Those are general comments. I noticed some specific ones, such that the "addenda" to 44 BC & AD 2 are joined: the "addenda" belongs to the entry for AD 2 starts with the line "tecta est hominu[m plus ...g]". This is clear in Vidman's edition: the text from AD 2 comes from Fragment Ba, where the text for the years 49 thru 44 BC are on Fragment A. (The material belonging to Fragment Bb pertains to AD 6.) However, without knowing just how "scholarly" you intend this to be, I'm not comfortable making this detailed of criticism.

Hope this helps. -- llywrch (talk) 18:45, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Your points are well-taken. My goal might be a little vague: making the contents accessible to those unfamiliar with the CS database, and in a more readable format. Perhaps I need some help narrowing this down. As for the individual points you've made:

• I realize that AUC dating isn't common in period documents, but it is in modern scholarly works (CIL, PW, Broughton all use it extensively), and I think it adds a little context and flavour, so I'd like to keep it. That said, I agree that there probably should be a note explaining that none of the dates are from the original inscription, but are the result of modern scholarship. Another font style is possible. Considered making the magistracies italic, so perhaps the dates should be bold? Or maybe just a different style of line separating the dates from the rest would be good. Need to think about this and perhaps try some of the options.
• I would very much appreciate Vidman's text, even though I may have trouble with the Latin! But it would probably be best to have a more authoritative version, as you say, to point to. You could then amend whatever I put in, with your expertise, when you have time.
• Agreed with the criticism of "notes". Perhaps something like "other text"? Or "other material", or even "other notations", which at least would be clearly part of the original.
• I put "missing lines" in the "notes" column when there were indications that a considerable amount of the original text was missing between the sections that were preserved or could be guessed; i.e. within the transcribed material for a particular year. While I think it's potentially informative, I don't think it would impair the readability to remove these notes.
• I thought I had everything aligned correctly after reviewing each section this morning. It might depend on how wide your window is, though. If it's squeezed narrowly, then it's possible for some of the contents to wrap, but at a normal width, or even a narrower-than-normal one, that shouldn't happen. I don't know of a good way around that. I'm not sure that trying to combine entries on lines would help, since they'd still need to line up with the magistracy lines. But it would make the list less readable, IMO. I don't think the issue with the duumvirs is quite how it appears; sometimes only one name is given, presumably because the second one is missing. Adding a blank line for the missing one might alleviate that confusion. But I'm pretty sure none of the magistracies are on the wrong lines now.
• As I mentioned above, I'll gladly revise this to follow Vidman, at least as closely as I can. If you have any specific suggestions on what needs to be noted, apart from a general statement such as, "except where noted, this transcription follows that found in Vidman," let me know.
• Please feel free to correct any mistakes you find. I corrected a couple of apparent typographical errors last night, for instance "Rittius" to "Bittius" (I checked, there are only one or two inscriptions for "Rittius", but there are plenty for "Bittius" that match the name of the consul and identify him as such. I also think the 'n' in "Censorius" was omitted by mistake; there don't seem to have been any "Cesorii". Otherwise, I checked the entire table against the individuals in the List of Roman consuls, to see if there was anything obviously wrong. Other than a couple of uncertain praenomina (P. vs. L., for example), there were only a couple of years where the individuals varied from the consuls already given; so at least I feel that the transcription matches up properly.

Thanks for the review. I think it will help improve this table. P Aculeius (talk) 00:40, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Servilia gens

Hi, thanks for making a clearer family tree. However there are some changes to make:

- The Servilii Gemini appeared with two twin brothers (Geminus means twins in Latin, it was a good omen for Romans because of Romulus & Remus and Castor & Pollux, so it was often mentioned in cognomina). The two twins were Q. Servilius Geminus & P. Servilius Geminus cos. 252, 248 BC, but you also gave the cognomen Geminus to their father, who couldn't have been a twin. He was probably a Caepio.

- Your tree for the Gemini branch ends with two brothers C. Servilius Geminus cos. 203 BC, dict. 202 & M. Servilius Pulex Geminus cos. 202 BC. They nonetheless had descendants but nothing is sure. The main problem is that they seem to have lost their patrician status because some of the latter Servilii were Tribune of the Plebs. However, the genealogical tree is made by relying on coins; Crawford gave a tentative family tree in his catalogue. The moneyers were doubtless heirs of the Servilii Gemini because they all (four of them) honoured Pulex Geminus on their coins (he was famous for his duels).

Here is the tree given by Crawford: http://oi64.tinypic.com/beiygw.jpg

The one I made from there: http://oi65.tinypic.com/315fw2c.jpg

I don't know whether the theoretical tree made by Crawford should be reproduced. What do you think? T8612 (talk) 00:34, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you'll find that when the surname Geminus appears in a family, it tends to be given to one brother, not both. This is normally how the stirpes in Roman families divided; with brothers taking different surnames. We don't actually have any evidence that the ancestors of the family were named either Caepio or Geminus, or even anything to prove that they're the same branch of the family, apart from the fact that both appear in history at the same point in time, and both were descended from a man with the same praenomen. So really having them combined at all is going out on a limb. But the natural inference is that their fathers were the twins, and that the brothers referred to by Cicero (who is the only source for one of them, as far as I know), were sons of the one named Geminus.

Admittedly if they were identical twins, that would give a good reason for Cicero's anecdote. But frankly, you have to assume a lot about what Cicero said to draw that conclusion: they lived a hundred and fifty years before he was born, so he never saw them or met anyone who had; they could have been mistaken for one another without being identical twins; and he might just have chosen the consul Geminus to make a rhetorical point about the name, even if the consul didn't have a twin brother.

I'm also not comfortable assuming descendants for whom there's no evidence. That was the problem with the original tree: miscellaneous Servilii simply plugged into the family to fill holes, without any evidence that they were related. What precisely is the evidence that either of those two Marci Servilii were descended from the Gemini? If we had some evidence that the Vatiae were descended from the Gemini, then maybe there'd be a case. But as far as I know, there isn't any. And in between, there's a generation where for no apparent reason the entire family stopped using any surname. That doesn't make sense; exchanging one surname for another, okay; that's normal. Suddenly deciding not to use one? That's not normal Roman practice.

Depicting an illustrious member of the gens on a coin doesn't make the moneyers his descendant. Lots of Roman coins depict the feats of earlier members of gentes without implying descent, just as many Roman families of the late Republic revived the surnames of branches that had long become extinct. The fact that these later Servilii were plebeians is even more troubling. While all scholars assume that it was possible to go over to the plebeians, actual examples are scarce as hen's teeth; the only one that seems fairly certain is Publius Clodius, and that was highly irregular (and technically illegal).

My main purpose in redrawing the chart, apart from getting a gigantic and labyrinthine table to fit in an article that wasn't designed for anything like that, was to limit it to what could reasonably be assumed based on the available evidence: statements in ancient writers, and filiations from inscriptionary sources, combined with what we do know about normal Roman naming practices. I feel like the table is already veering close to the line between probable fact and speculation, and I'm not comfortable making it even more speculative, or including disjointed branches that don't clearly connect anywhere.

If it sounds like I'm still on the fence, it's because I keep turning it over in my head. What exactly is Crawford's reasoning, and does he have any sounder reasons for his conclusions? How confident is he? Does he usually restrict his stemmae to fact, or does he regularly go out on a limb to connect families that nobody else has? All of these are unknown factors from my point of view. Perhaps you could elucidate? P Aculeius (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I understand your reservations, but we wouldn't be able to draw any family tree with such logic -- even for the Cornelii or the Julii. There is always some level of uncertainty. Perhaps it is possible to add that on the table (sure/unsure?)?

Regarding Geminus, we only know that Publius (cos 252) had this cognomen (and his children/grandchildren). So his brother and father should not be named as such (or a ? could be added after "Geminus?").

Crawford is usually "conservative" when it comes to dubious theories and systematically dismisses them. However I am not convinced by his table, especially the [M. Servilius], son of the cos 203 on the left. I think he reused the biographies found in the Realencyclopadie.

On the coins, I agree with you when the moneyers portrayed mythical ancestors, like Ahala or the earlier kings, but here four moneyers depicted an attested figure (consul in 202). A fifth moneyer, P. Servilius Rullus, did not use this theme, possibly because he wasn't a descendant of Pulex Geminus (I kept his line separated on my tree). There is therefore a good argument for sorting all the four mentioned moneyers as descendants of Pulex Geminus (and linked between each other), but the problem is how? The filiations are not well preserved and they didn't mention their cognomen.

In short, I agree with you and would keep the table as it is, except for the Geminus cognomen. I'll add the moneyers in the "others" section and say that they depict the duels of Pulex Geminus (as well on his page).T8612 (talk) 03:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, something you said reminded me that it is possible to show relationships as speculative or possible. I can add dashed or dotted lines. If you could help me find exactly what Crawford says, so that I can cite it properly, I'll try this tomorrow. I'll also adjust the appearance of "Geminus" to make it clear that it's not established. P Aculeius (talk) 03:48, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Since writing the above I've reached another turning point in my thinking. Checking with Broughton, I find that the Gemini were definitely patrician, while the Vatiae were plebeians. I just don't think it's likely that the first of the Vatiae was the grandson of a distinguished patrician like Marcus Servilius Pulex Geminus, and son of a pontifex—although I cannot find a Marcus Servilius who was pontifex in 170 in either the DGRBM or Broughton. Something here is not adding up, which I admit is not proof that it's wrong, but it needs a darned good explanation. P Aculeius (talk) 04:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I've checked the sources and here it is. The M. Servilius, pontiff in 170 is found in Livy, 43, 11. Due to the prestige of the position, it's unlikely that this man was from a lesser known branch of the gens. His praenomen being the same as Pulex Geminus, it could well be his son, but also the son of C. Servilius Geminus, Pontifex Maximus between 183-180.

Then, the Fasti give the filiation of P. Servilius C.f. M.n. Vatia Isauricus (the M.n. here would be the pontiff above). He minted the same denarius in c.82 as his father C. Servilius, moneyer in 127 BC (both denarii show Pulex Geminus killing an enemy). I don't have an explication for the change of cognomen, perhaps an undocumented adoption.

About the "switching to the Plebs". C. Servilius Geminus, cos 203, was tribune of the plebs in 211 (see Broughton p.373) and consul with Cn. Servilius Caepio in 203 (2 patricians couldn't be consuls at the same time, so he was definitely plebeian). His brother Pulex Geminus was also a plebeian for the same reason (colleague of a patrician Claudius in 202). This change of status made by their father was apparently explained in J. Bleicken, Das Volkstribunat, 1968, but I don't have it. The Realencylopadie gives a lot of details as well, but I don't have the volumes for the Servilii. Here is the full text for the Servilii in Crawford.

Thus I would leave things as it stands for the table, as we don't have all the material, but we can add some remarks in the list.T8612 (talk) 12:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I've rechecked and sure enough, there's the pontifex in Broughton. I don't know how I missed it, as I looked back and forth when I didn't find it at once last night. Just tired, I guess. I also note that the consul of 217 is indicated as a Patrician, but Pulex is consistently identified as a plebeian. There doesn't seem to be any explanation. I happen to have scans of PW, and while I don't read German, Google Translate does a tolerable job with it. I'll add now that I accept PW as an authoritative, if not infallible source, while I have no idea what Crawford's background, qualifications, or reputation are.

I'm satisfied that we've got something authoritative to cite to, and it's enough to convince me. Sorry for being such a stick-in-the-mud about it. PW seems to indicate that No. 59, the father of Gaius and Marcus Geminus, must have been the one to join the plebeians, since both of his sons were, but it seems equally mystified about the reason; Mommsen seems to have thought that Pulex went over to the plebeians, but since both sons were plebeians PW leans the other way. A hint might be from Livy, xxvii. 21, where the right of Servilius to be tribune or aedile was denied by one faction, on the grounds that his father was still alive and in captivity; perhaps there was more to the story, and the two brothers decided they would rather be counted among the plebeians than among patricians who assaulted the honour of their family. But that's just my speculation.

PW includes a chart very much like the one we've been discussing, with one main exception: it's got No. 14, the moneyer C. Servilius M. n., dated to 93 BC, instead of 136, and makes his father, Marcus, a son of the pontifex Marcus of 170, and thus a brother of No. 13-91, the first Vatia. Since Crawford places him much earlier, he has to make his father a son of C. Servilius Geminus, and cousin of the pontifex. PW says that 13 used to be placed a generation earlier, and then indicates that 14 is a little bit newer than 13. I can't really account for the reasoning for its dating without delving into PW's sources, and I don't have the basis for Crawford's placing No. 14 about 136 rather than 93. Until I do, I would tend to follow PW. I'll start work on the chart today. P Aculeius (talk) 16:35, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I think the change happened during the captivity of C. Servilius Pr. before 218. The exact reason is lost to us I'm afraid.

Crawford is the undisputed numismatist of the Roman Republic; he reordered all the moneyers in the correct sequence by comparing coin dies and hoard evidence. Every source using coins before 1974 is likely to be wrong, including the Germans... Crawford's dates are all good. His book is online (not sure it's a legal link).

Here is the list of the moneyers showing a duel of Pulex Germinus on the reverse:

• Crawford 239, denarius c.136 BC, signed C SERVEILI M F. Number 14 in PW.

• Crawford 264, denarius 127 BC, signed C SERVEIL. Number 13/91 in PW. Note the M on the shield referring to M. Pulex Geminus. The lituus on the obverse also refers to his augurate in 211 BC.
• Crawford 327, denarius 100 BC, signed M SERVEILI C F. Number 19 in PW. Brother of Isauricus below, son of the above.
• Crawford 370, denarius 82-80 BC, signed C SERVEIL. Number 93 in PW. Vatia Isauricus cos 79. Isauricus minted this denarius with two other colleagues who supported Sulla, who were also by coincidence related to the three moneyers of 127 BC (and therefore copied the reverse of the denarii minted in 127, which is for Isauricus identical -- apart from the signature). It has therefore been assumed that Isauricus was the son of the second entry above. Hence, thanks to the filiation in the Fasti, Isauricus C.f. M.n.<==C. Servilius M.f. (Vatia?), moneyer in 127 BC<==M. Servilius, pontiff in 170 BC.
• Crawford 423, denarius 57 BC, signed C SERVEIL C F. Long after the others, and more difficult to link with the rest of the family. Crawford says he could be the grandson of C. Servilius Pr. in 102. The obverse FLORAL PRIMVS was interpreted by Mommsen as a commemoration of the Servilius who instituted the Ludi Floralia 173, but it is simply the name of the moneyer and the meaning of the obverse is still unknown (full story here). So the Aedile of 173 should be removed...

The problem we have with all these moneyers is that only one is known in other sources (Isauricus). The dates are correct here and since they all refer to Pulex Geminus, they must be related to him. Another Servilius minted a coin at the same time (in 100 BC), but he did not depict a duel and added his cognomen Rullus, as if he wanted to show he wasn't from the same family as the others (Crawford 328). The Servilii Caepiones likewise used different subjects.

Crawford created a second branch with n°14 (Crawford 239) to find a place for him as he has the same name and filiation as n°13/91 (Crawford 264). Since moneyers were normally quite young (mid 20s), there could be another generation between the Pontiff of 170 (possibly born in about 210) and the moneyer of 127 (born in the late 150s), which would give a solution to the homonymous moneyers with the same filiation. However, we can't add this as it's not found in any source.

To conclude, any attempt to draw a table after the Pontiff of 170 is speculative (even him could be a son of either the cos 203 or 202)... You could leave the table as it is now, but say that it was made after the info found in RE, which is likely to be wrong on some points.

Sorry for bringing so much details!T8612 (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I improved the page of Pulex Geminus. I'd like to add a picture of a coin (like this one, from the British Museum, but I don't know how to do it). Could you do it?

I was also wondering how should I write magistracies, in Latin or English (Tribune of the Plebs or tribunus plebis?).T8612 (talk) 00:24, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Nice work. I've done some cleanup and additions, including a picture. Most of the time you need to have copyright to use a picture in Wikipedia, or else a "fair use" rationale, which doesn't seem to apply to Roman coins. Fortunately, Wikimedia Commons has lots of pictures of Roman coins, some of which look nice as article illustrations (the ones with rulers usually don't). And they had one of the coins depicting M. Servilius Pulex Geminus! There are image tutorials for Wikipedia, if you'd like more information, but if you use the edit button on that page, you can see how that one is formatted.

A couple of other tips you probably know, but might have forgotten: references come after punctuation, and it's okay to combine references to a particular source and put them at the end of a sentence. Sometimes they work in the middle of a sentence, but too many of them can be distracting and make the text harder to read and edit. I combined the references to Livy and added a couple of citations for Servilius' consulship and time as magister equitum. Also, you can use the vertical separator, or "pipe", to make links read one thing and say something different; for example "List of Roman moneyers during the Republic" is the article linked to the words triumviri monetales.

As for magistracies, you'll find that varies widely from source to source. I tend to use common English names for familiar terms, as long as they're not anglicised too unrecognizably. But you can use what seems most natural to you. I tend to include common variants (including historical ones) in the first lines of articles, without suggesting too strongly that one is mandatory and another proscribed. People can be very attached to a particular choice of words, and I've found it's pretty pointless to try and convert them or fight over every difference of style.

With respect to tribunus plebis, I used that a lot when I started writing articles, and a lot of other Latin phrases, but nowadays I tend to save that as a variant, and use tribune of the plebs. The capitalized version is optional, but following the example of the older sources, which are very well written, I tend not to capitalize most offices or institutions that don't sound like titles. I capitalize "Pontifex Maximus" and "Flamen Dialis", but not "consul" or "senate". But some people like capitalizing everything, and other people don't think anything should be capitalized. Just be logical, and consistent (at least within articles), and it'll be fine. I'll look over Crawford and see what he has to say about these wascally moneyers. P Aculeius (talk) 02:02, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

gens Postumia

Hi and thanks for the edits. I'd like to considerably edit the page for the Postumii, as I think there is too much biographical information there and it is difficult to read. The should only be magistracies, or family connections there. Do you agree with that?
Then I will also add refs and make several corrections on the later members (the coins are also misattributed) as I did with the Servilii, but first I want to have a better page.
I was also wondering whether I should links the consuls in the Fasti Capitolini page you have made. T8612 (talk) 18:22, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the edits. Improving biographical coverage is an important mission for Wikipedia. I don't recommend linking the consuls in the Fasti Capitolini, however. With the large number of partial names, interpolations, and other epigraphic indicators both in and around the names, links would make the table harder to read. Those consuls who have or are likely to receive articles are already linked in the List of Roman consuls, which Llywrch has been working on steadily for over a year.

Please do not begin excising material from articles about Roman gentes. They provide exactly the type of coverage they were intended to, which is, in most instances, a summary of their career and significance over one to three lines (usually depending on importance). Many of the individuals included do not have their own articles, and are unlikely to receive them, since few additional details are known; excising the biographical summaries for those who do have articles would have the bizarre effect of leaving unimportant individuals with more information than important ones, giving the opposite impression of the one intended. For the most part, only the articles that were created independently and which have not yet been formatted like the main body of articles on Roman gentes need this kind of revision, and there are only a handful of these left, as I've been working on this series off and on since 2009. This article in particular was given a thorough overhaul less than two months ago.

That said, properly sourced information is always welcome if it's within the usual scope of these articles. There are specific factors to consider, however. In most cases, relationships between individuals are only explicitly stated if they are the most important (or only) information known about them, or if there is otherwise a high risk of confusion between them. Except for relatively unimportant individuals, such as those known only from funerary inscriptions, entries should not list all of a person's relatives who happen to be known or mentioned in the same article or elsewhere. Nor is it necessary to provide a full list of offices held at various times by notable persons; explaining their significance is the chief purpose of the entries, and if someone fought the Boii as consul in 132 BC, that's more important to note than that he was an aedile ten years earlier, and an envoy to Capua in 138.

If this sounds too fraught, there are some excellent areas where you could edit to your heart's content, however. There are hundreds of Romans (and Greeks) about whom enough information is known to write an article, but who don't have any, or who have only a one- or two-paragraph stub. Starting or expanding these would be an excellent way to help with Wikipedia's coverage of Classical Greece and Rome. P Aculeius (talk) 20:06, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. Of course, I didn't intend to delete info for people who don't have an article, but almost all of the Postumii have one. Could you give me an article of a gens that you consider "complete", so I can see what is the expected format?

Regarding the Postumii, the main mistake I see is about the three Aulus Postumius Albinus, propraetor in 110, consul in 99, and commander of the Roman fleet in 89. Broughton says they are the same man (cf. I p.544 and II pp.1 & 37). He also has the same number in PW (36). The mistake comes from William Smith; I don't recommend using him from creating articles, he's only good for finding ancient references. But I don't know how to delete or merge articles. Perhaps the new article should mention that Smith is wrong to prevent someone else from creating new articles.

Since Aulus Postumius died in 89, he cannot have adopted Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus (a murderer of Caesar, born between 85-81). The mistake comes from one of Decimus' coins portraying a "A. Postumius cos", but it could have been a portrait of any of the Postumii of this name who was consul (there are five). Crawford suggests he was adopted by the moneyer of 81 (number 372 in Crawford's catalogue), son of another moneyer in 96 (Crawford 335), himself son of the consul of 110 (they put their filiation on their coins).

Is there a place where I can report such mistakes? rather than on your page...

I've added three moneyers on this page and corrected the legends of the coins.T8612 (talk) 22:13, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The Postumii article is fairly complete as is. You can recognize the ones I've brought up to current standards because all of the sources are now in a bibliography section, with short citations throughout, and (usually) at least one source cited for every entry (and frequently several for the longer ones). The older ones don't have enough citations, as they were written with the idea that only the ones that didn't have articles needed full citations. There are a few left over from the earliest days of the project, which have overlong section headers, and overused italics in the lead. But I usually fix those as I run across them.

Thank you for adding the additional entries. At some point I might go through PW and see if I've missed any. I could probably add a hundred more from inscriptions, but I'd rather not do that in the big articles; it's time-consuming and not really necessary to get a sense of the importance of a gens; I generally do that for gentes that have few individuals known to history. I've refactored the additions slightly, in that in most of these articles Spurius is abbreviated S rather than Sp., but it doesn't matter in articles that don't already contain it. I just want them to be internally consistent.

I'm also carefully avoiding "of the above" in all gens articles; as members are added (usually in strict chronological order, by stirps), adjacent entries can be separated, so if someone's relationship to someone else is mentioned, it's best to name the person and provide additional information (I'm also revising some old entries I made that avoided repeating names, and simply said, "the consul of 110"; these seem unnecessarily opaque to me now, so when I run across them I fix that). However, in most entries it isn't necessary for each entry to say, "Z was the son of Y and the father of Z and A". This is especially so when the individuals have (or should have) their own articles, where their families can be described without worrying about length. As you point out, space is at a premium, which is why I generally try to keep most entries within two lines, although I allow three for complicated ones, and occasionally run over that for the most important individuals (but not much over). The Postumii are one of the most important gentes, and so they tend to have more information than a lot of the others.

When this project is finished, all gens articles will have roughly the same format: a lead, usually one paragraph, followed by sections on the origin (ethnic, legendary, and etymological), a brief description of praenomina used, and a list of the families and cognomina, usually focused on Republican times; in some articles there isn't enough information for all of these, and we just have one paragraph or so.

Then we have a list of members, usually beginning with the filiation template (unless, in rare instance, no filiation is known for any of the individuals). Both men and women are included together, chronologically unless separated into families, which are individually listed in chronological order. Occasionally early and later individuals are listed separately; for instance miscellaneous individuals from the Roman Kingdom and early years of the Republic before the first distinct families of a gens might go at the top, while miscellaneous members from imperial times come at the end. Otherwise the main families come first, or last, usually depending on when they first appear.

After this there are sometimes some footnotes (explanatory notes; these don't go in the references), then a "see also" section linking to the List of Roman gentes, then the references, the bibliography, followed by any applicable categories.

We don't normally delete articles like this on Wikipedia, even when they're merged. But merging individuals should be done carefully, and that means scrutinizing different sources carefully. It's possible that the three individuals you've mentioned are the same, but if they are then certain difficulties need to be resolved, such as differing filiations and the matter of who the adoptive father of Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus was. It's true that there were other Albini who were consuls, but is it likely that he depicted an earlier Albinus on his coins, rather than his adoptive father? This needs closer scrutiny, and I might have time to give it later on.

Actually it's fine with me if you post questions like this on my talk page. I want these pages to be accurate, and sometimes that means some detective work. However, I'd caution you against dismissing good sources just because they contain inaccurate guesses about who people are. I feel quite certain that there are mistakes in PW, Broughton, and Crawford, too. Sometimes the best information we have is still just a best guess based on the available information, and as the available sources and analysis of them evolves, we make revisions based on them. P Aculeius (talk) 23:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I'll use the Postumii as reference for formatting then.

Regarding the difference of filiation of the propraetor 110 and the cos 99 (S.f. S.n. then A.f S.n.); the filiations were invented by Smith in order to make his biographies consistent (to fit the bio of one being the son of the other). There is no filiation in the Fasti, or anywhere else to my knowledge. In this case, it's much more logical to have someone who was propraetor, then consul, then killed, than having a consul and an ex-praetor/consul spawning from nowhere after someone who was propraetor. (Moreover the reckless behaviour of the propraetor 110 looks quite the same as the man killed in 89, although it's not a historical argument.) I think Smith tried to fit the filiation on the coin he illustrates (A.f S.n.) with the consul 99 and the propraetor 110, but the coin was minted in 81, way later. PW and Broughton are more likely to be true on this man than Smith. Smith also confused the consul 99 with Spurius Postumius Albinus Magnus, as he says the former was an orator (after Cicero's Brutus).

On Decimus Brutus. He portrayed a A. Postumius who was consul, and since there was no such man in his lifetime, the portrait could refer to any A. Postumius cos, and not his adoptive father. The portrait could even be that of A. Postumius P.f. Albus Regillensis, first consul of the family and victorious at the battle of Lake Regillus, because other moneyers of the gens used references to this battle. Crawford suggested the moneyer of 81 might be his adoptive father simply because he is the last Postumius Albinus recorded before, so it makes sense to think he adopted someone, but it could be an otherwise unknown Postumius Albinus.T8612 (talk) 00:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Spent a few hours this evening working on a chart of the Albini, in order to sort out the different individuals. Still need to go over them more carefully tomorrow. I combined a couple that seemed to be the same person, but not in the generation we're discussing. Pretty sure the chart in PW distinguishes between some of those Crawford supposedly lumps together. Now that I have the chart to look at, I might be able to puzzle them out better, with the help of Broughton, Crawford, and PW. Note however that PW contains a significant amount of guesswork too. P Aculeius (talk) 06:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Several remarks on the Postumii table: (a) the praetor of 90 is not attested as an Albinus; his only mention is in the Periochae 73 as the praetor L. Postumius. Broughton doesn't count him as an Albinus as well. (b) I doubt that the four men below A. Postumius Albinus Regillensis cos. 464 BC were his children. The dates are too far apart. Moreover only Publius and Marcus have a known filiation; the two others could be the sons of Spurius Postumius cos trib 432. I also think there is an additional Aulus Postumius between the cos 464 and Publius and Marcus. (c) It seems to me impossible for A. Postumius Albinus cos 242 cens 234 to be the father of L. Postumius Albinus cos. 234, 229, as there are only 6 years between their consulships. Imo, there are three separate lines: one with Albinus Magnus, one with the cos 242 cens 234, one with the cos. 234, 229. (d) I think it's more logical to put the two brother Spurius cos 110 and Aulus propraetor 110 as children of Albinus Magnus, because of the father's first name normally given to the eldest son. (e) Does the PW give more info about these remarks?

What's your opinion about people only known from filiations found in the Fasti or on coins? There are several lines of "(grand)father of the consul of", but should I also add one for moneyers' fathers when they put their filiation on coins? For example I added Cn. Cornelius Cn.f. Blasio, triumvir monetalis in 112-111 BC. He signed CN BLASIO CN F, so we know for sur that a Cn. Cornelius Blasio existed.T8612 (talk) 21:39, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Lot of questions to deal with here. First off, I'll say that the majority of this chart is taken directly from the one in PW, although the early part is based on filiation and uncertainty. It's also just a starting point in trying to figure out who some of these people are. It could change if there's a better way to make sense of things. Otherwise, I'll try to answer your individual questions seriatim.

a) L. Postumius, praetor in 90 (or perhaps 91) BC is shown on the table, in the position I've put him, and his entry in PW (No. 13) says, "probably an Albinus". This seems like a likely place for him to be. He's likely to be identified with one of the other Postumii known to history, but he doesn't fit really well anywhere else. Chances are several of the miscellaneous Postumii are Albini too.

b) The dates between the four "children" aren't far apart from each other. They span about twenty years in all, and only nine between the latter three. We know from their filiations that the first two are sons of Aulus, the consul of 464. As for the (probably) younger two "children", Aulus and Spurius, they're even further removed in time from Spurius, the consul of 466, and there's no evidence that he or his son had any other descendants. All in all, it seems far more likely that they belong to the family I show them in than anywhere else; and I've indicated them with a dashed line to show uncertainty. I agree that based on age alone they would tend to be grandchildren rather than children of the elder Aulus, but we don't know how old he was when he married, or how old they were when they became consular tribunes. But they group well with Publius and Marcus age-wise, and if Aulus had a son who was censor in 403 (when the censorship had yet to acquire its full prestige, and was still regularly held by relatively young men), why not consular tribunes in 397 and 394? Moreover, if Aulus named his first son after his father, and his second possibly after another relative, then it would make sense for the third to be named after him, and the fourth for his brother. I'm not saying it's got to be so, but it's a reasonable explanation.

c) Eight years, not six, but not an important difference. We know from many other cases, going back to the earliest years of the Republic, that an older man might be followed by his son as consul in a relatively short span of time. What's harder to explain is the father, given as grandson of the rex sacrorum of 275. In theory that's possible, but in order for him to be the father of Lucius, he should be older than is easily explainable. Nevertheless, if Lucius, the rex sacrorum, is the grandfather, there must have been an intervening Aulus, and that's the only way to explain the filiation of Lucius, the consul of 234. I agree that it's problematic, but it's not impossible, and that's how a reliable source reconstructs this family. We don't have any clear alternative.

d) While an eldest son often received his father's praenomen, that clearly wasn't always the case. Drawing conclusions based on nothing more than that is very risky; in this case PW says explicitly that these brothers can't be placed on that basis alone; it says that their exact relationship cannot be established with certainty from known sources. However, in the table they're placed where I put them. Again, I've used dashed lines to indicate the high degree of uncertainty. In each case, I've followed the chart in PW, and when necessary referred to the text; but nothing suggests a different reconstruction thus far, notwithstanding the problematic areas already mentioned. I'll assume this covers e) as well.

It's generally okay to add individuals from filiations. I've done this a little inconsistently; typically at the beginnings of branches, where it was useful to indicate generations earlier than the first individuals mentioned in historical sources; or to tie branches or generations together. Sometimes I'll do it to emphasize the use of a particular praenomen within a family, if it makes a difference, or if a gens has very few known members, so it's clear that more individuals are known. But it's not essential to do it. Bear in mind that at the beginning of a branch of the family, or in imperial times, it's not at all certain that the father had the same cognomen. Sometimes you can infer that, and sometimes you can't. Use common sense, and you should be fine.

I'm still planning to go through the late Postumii in more detail when I have time, as I suspect there's some duplication, including that which you pointed out earlier. It just may take a couple of days to get it done. P Aculeius (talk) 23:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok. Just a quick thought, since the tables you make come from PW, wouldn't it be also logical to add their number in PW? It would help with all the homonymous men. I also remember that they did this in their own tablesT8612 (talk) 00:27, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I sometimes add these in the references when I cite to PW, but would prefer not to add too much technical data to the chart. Might put them with the individual members when I have a chance. P Aculeius (talk) 04:17, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Coin images

Hi, I'd like to add new pictures of coins on Commons, but I'm not sure of the copyright. Here is an auction house that say they allow the use of their photos on informative websites ("Our photographs may be reproduced for any reasonable non-commercial usage such as theses, research papers, dissertations, personal or informative websites, etc. When doing so please credit Roma Numismatics Ltd as the source of the image, and provide a link to our website www.RomaNumismatics.com"). Does it also apply to Wikipedia? If so, what sort of licence should I select on the upload page?T8612 (talk) 18:37, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Both Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons have specific policies about what material, including images, can be uploaded and used. You should find the guidelines you need for Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Non-free content. Wikimedia Commons guidelines are more restrictive, as they do not allow for "fair use" as a rationale for uploading copyrighted material. I'm pretty sure that images of ancient coins have presented some tricky questions in the past. You may need to delve deeper into policy to get a clear answer for new files. P Aculeius (talk) 19:00, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Damn, I didn't know that fair use was forbidden. It limits what I wanted to do. However the pictures I take of my coins are ok -- unfortunately my collection does not cover all the Republican coinage!

Anyway, I've added two coins to the Caecili Metelli, you may check the page. I've also found a mostly duplicate page of the Caecilia (gens): Caecilius_Metellus. It's kinda useless to have two pages describing more or less the same family, given the importance of the Metelli. Is it possible to merge them?T8612 (talk) 21:44, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

It's possible, but it would take a fair amount of work to do a proper merger. There are actually a lot of pages like this, and I intend to talk to other members of the Wikiproject before I take on a task like that. But my first priority is to finish the gentes, and that will still take a couple of months. P Aculeius (talk) 22:10, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Your reversion of curia

You could have been a little more careful and edited my changes to Curia instead of reverting them all. The current article is an awful mix of ancient, medieval and modern and confuses several things. There's even a section on the talk page titled "Bold re-write needed". I'm going to split up those edits I made and hopefully we can work together to improve the page. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 04:12, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Most of your changes seemed to be deletions of whole sections and paragraphs that belonged in the article. I wrote most of the material on the comitia curiata and the senate house myself, when the article was in much worse shape than it is now, and frankly it's the other stuff that could use a lot of work, not the carefully written and documented material on the wards and the senate house. It's pointless to excise all of the clear material with a hatnote sending people to the comitia article, which (at least the last time I checked it) was one of the most dense, convoluted, and impenetrable articles in this project—as were the other articles on Roman comitia. It's even more pointless to cut out the parts about the senate house, since that's what "curia" typically refers to in Roman history, much more so than the original meaning. I reverted the edits because they were cutting out the main parts of the article, and saving the worst bits. The primary topic of the article is, and should be, Roman curiae. They're not just the prelude to the modern use of the word. P Aculeius (talk) 04:28, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

February 2018

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Anno Domini. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:30, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

1. This isn't about me undoing someone else's contributions; this is about another editor repeatedly reverting mine, even as I was taking the issue to the talk page. In fact before you posted this warning, I'd already posted two lengthy discussions of the issue on the article's talk page demonstrating clearly that my contributions should not have been reverted and did not need to be reverted again.
2. You seem quite zealous to issue administrative warnings about the three-revert rule considering that there were only two reverts to begin with. The three-revert rule applies to editors who have reverted the same edit more than three times, and clearly two reverts with talk page discussion is not even close to a violation of the three-revert rule.
3. Since you yourself reverted what you acknowledge was a good-faith edit, and not vandalism, for the third time, instead of following the policy at WP:VERIFY to try and find reliable sources for information that appeared to be correct and potentially verifiable, you shouldn't be issuing this warning in the first place. Per WP:Administrators and WP:Edit warring, "Administrators should not use their tools to advantage, or in a content dispute (or article) where they are a party..." (emphasis supplied).
4. I further note that you issued no similar warning to the editor who was actually "undoing other editors' contributions ... to protect [his] preferred version of a page", despite an equal number of reversions, and the fact that I was the one who brought the issue to the talk page, while his edit summaries indicated that he would continue to revert my contributions until after I had satisfied him that the contribution was appropriate, rather than bringing the discussion to the talk page himself.
5. If you're going to issue warnings despite the apparent conflict of interest, where there has been no violation of policy in the first place, you should at least take the trouble to edit your post so that you're not implying that experienced editors must be new to Wikipedia. Posting a "Welcome to Wikipedia" message on the talk page of an experienced editor is simply patronizing.
6. Lastly, before you decide to revert my latest attempt to clarify the issue, I've refactored my contribution, simplifying the statement, and I believe phrasing it in a way that leaves it verifiable through the sources I've cited with it. So it's not another reversion, it's a completely new edit attempting to satisfy the demands made repeatedly for more specific citation, when the most appropriate way of dealing with the issue would have been with a "Citation Needed" or "Better Source" tag, instead of multiple deletions of apparently correct information. P Aculeius (talk) 05:19, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

You had not, at the time I reverted, produced a single source that supported your statement that usage had changed. I suggest that tagging as disputed, unsourced, and unimportant would be overkill; but all three tags would be justified. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:29, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Filiations

Hi, I wanted to know your policy on filiations. Sometimes there are parentheses around, or no filiation at all (even when it is known), or full filiations (even for people that don't appear in the Fasti). Initially, I thought filiations were only added for people whose father (and grandfather) appear in inscriptions, and parentheses used when the filiation has been guessed, either because it is obvious or it appears somewhere in the literature, but it doesn't seem to be the case. What should I do?T8612 (talk) 01:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

First, let me say that you're doing excellent work, and learning well as you go considering how new you are to Wikipedia! You're definitely helping the project with your in-depth research, and I hope my edits following your additions to articles (chiefly on Roman gentes) don't scare you off, or give you the impression that you're doing everything wrong! Thanks for the hard work.

As for filiations, they generally appear without parentheses when known to a reasonable certainty, whether from inscriptions, history, or other scholars; parentheses are used only for those that seem rather uncertain in secondary sources such as the DGRBM, Broughton, PW, etc., or where there's some disagreement among the sources and the differing opinions aren't easily resolved (as they would be in the case of a typo, or by comparing the filiations of multiple generations for consistency). But you don't need an inscription to insert a filiation. If X is the son of Y and grandson of Z, then we know his filiation whether or not it can be found in any writing, and if it's fairly certain what it must be, there usually won't be any parentheses.

Bear in mind, however, that since 2009 I've probably written thousands of filiations into these articles, and I'm sure there are instances where I'd make a different choice as to how to write them than I did then. When I run into cases like this now I correct them, usually by checking against Broughton in the case of magistrates, although in some cases I think he may be mistaken. I think it'd be fine to insert them where they're missing, if Crawford has something that doesn't conflict with what's already stated; but perhaps we could collaborate in cases where we find disagreements of identity. No source is going to be right 100% all of the time, and I'd like to look over the evidence in cases where a filiation that was supposedly known may be mistaken. Particularly as it's not always obvious whether a moneyer should or shouldn't be identified with someone else whose career is partly known, and a wrong guess could mess up an otherwise clearly organized family. P Aculeius (talk) 02:30, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

A couple of quick notes, having just done a little work on the Plautii. Good work overall! I trimmed your caption a bit and moved the picture up to the lead, as it seems odd to have a picture later in the article, but not in the lead, where there's a lot of white space due to the table of contents. Most of the trimmed bits are accounted for later in the article. I've tried to avoid the pictures with rulers in them, as they don't look very nice to me, but in this case the main issue was the caption being much bigger than the picture itself!

I saw where you must have been wondering about the filiations. Presumably the question was about the (L. f.) in the first Hypsaeus to appear for decades (to whom you've now added a couple of relatives). I'm not sure which source it came from, or if it's just inferred from the fact that no other possible parents appeared. It can be frustrating not knowing just how many men there were in a family who never held public office, or at least weren't notable enough when they did for someone to mention them in surviving histories! I suspect with more scholarship we could figure out exactly how these individuals are related, but that might veer too close to OR. But the ones from the 120's are probably sons of either the Gaius of 146 or the Lucius of 139ish, although conceivably they might not be brothers.

One thing that bothers me is the Lucius who was a moneyer in the early 190's. I know I said before it was possible for a father and son to hold public office close together in time, or even simultaneously (and I saw an example of municipal duumvirs who were father and son today). But why couldn't he be the same person as the praetor of 189? I don't know whether the age of moneyers was usually rather young, but I seem to recall that failed candidates for high office sometimes obtained lower office before attempting comebacks. And the cursus honorem was certainly less rigid in the decades after the Second Punic War than it was in Cicero's time. Does Crawford say why he thinks the moneyer was the son of the praetor, rather than the same person? I guess I could look that up myself, but I may be a bit busy for the next couple of days.

Lastly, I suggest avoiding generic ref names like ":0" and ":1". Apart from looking like smileys, it's hard to tell what they go with when editing a page. Nothing worse than revising a page with multiple repeated references, when you don't know what "ReferenceA" and "ReferenceB" referred to while you're trying to sort out what references are needed where. What I do is make the ref tag a miniature version of the reference itself, like, "Crawford 244", so if at some point in the future it gets changed/moved, I can figure out what it referred to. This isn't an official policy, but it's convenient and less easily missed than a two- or three-character name. P Aculeius (talk) 03:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the encouragement. I'll try to add the filiations when possible now. I think many people are unknown, or "missing", because they either died early (mortality was much higher) or had a religious "career" (many were flamines, but we only know a handful of them). I suppose fathers chose the latter path for their weaker son(s).

Regarding Hypsaeus, the moneyer of the late 190s, nothing is absolutely certain, but moneyers were normally young at the beginning of their career. They were among the Vigintisexviri, the 26 junior magistrates of each year. So a praetor in his late 30s (at least) could have hardly been a vigintisexvir a few years before. It was also not uncommon to see a father consul or praetor, and his son moneyer the same year or the year before (there is even a case of a moneyer writing "my dad is the consul" on his denarii!); I think it allowed the family to share the cost of the electoral campaign to have several of its members to run together, and the coins could have also been used as electoral propaganda (since they bore their name). There were however instances of senior magistrates minting coins, usually during wars, but always away from Rome (and in this case Hypsaeus minted in Rome), or by quaestors or aediles, but then they mentioned their magistracy on the coins.

I think in this case, the moneyer fits well with the other known members, 1. the praetor of 189, 2. the moneyer of c.190, 3. the praetor of 139.

Regarding the moneyer who signed PLVTI. Crawford doesn't detail his reasoning much, but he notes the deliberate archaism of the L, which looks like an half-arrow (the lower bar is pointing up). So he may have thought that Plutius was an archaic spelling of the name (and that the moneyer tried to look "old"), since Plutius is unknown in Roman history and that there were plenty of Plautii at the same time. Münzer and Mommsen disagreed though, and thought he was the only known member of the gens Plutia (I don't have the PW for Plautius). Perhaps it can be mentioned on his entry.T8612 (talk) 13:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll take a look at Crawford later, but it makes sense. Remember, though, at least some of the minor magistrates will have been older men who had failed to achieve higher office, so while this one may be a grown son, the timing itself only makes it probable, not certain. As soon as I saw the unusual spelling Plutius, I looked for inscriptions, and found a fair number of them, but none that immediately stood out as Plautii by another spelling. This may justify further investigation, but I think the better practice for now is to footnote it, rather than indicate it as a third orthography, particularly as there does seem to have been a gens Plutia, which was probably distinct. The two spellings could have become confused if that's the case, although I'm sure that the moneyer knew which gens he belonged to! P Aculeius (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I've finished with the Aurelii Cottae and surprisingly almost all the family members fit together, except the first two Marcus. The PW adds another Marcus Aurelius Cotta, consul in AD 20, because the agnomen Maximus Messalinus was not found in the literature after the names of the consul, but I don't think it's possible for the consul of AD 20 to have been the son of Messalinus (as they say). Most of the description pages of the individual members on Wiki contain mistakes though. I think it would be great if you could make a tree as you did with the Postumii Albini, as we have the almost complete family here.

Regarding the Lucius Plautius Plancus entry you corrected, I found the name Gnaeus here (in the title). I now suppose it's a typo, since his name is not shown in the Latin text. There was no Gnaeus Munatius Plancus praetor in 43. He is the same as Lucius Plautius Plancus, formerly Gaius Munatius Plancus.

I don't know what you mean by "avoiding generic ref names like ":0" and ":1""?T8612 (talk) 14:14, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

According to the DGRBM, Gnaeus Munatius Plancus, the praetor of 43, and Lucius Plautius Plancus, born Gaius Munatius Plancus, proscribed by the triumvirs, were brothers. Broughton has Lucius Plotius Plancus as praetor in 43. I'm trying to unravel this right now. So far all of Cicero's letters simply mention the brother of Lucius Munatius Plancus, or the praetor Plancus, without clearer identification, but Shuckburgh identifies the praetor as Gnaeus Munatius Plancus, not Lucius Plotius Plancus. I do not see where he is named in Appian; there is a vague allusion to people who were proscribed, but I could not find the word "Plancus". Cassius Dio mentions that Lucius had a brother who was proscribed, but does not name him. Valerius Maximus is available only in Latin; I can see the proscribed man is called Gaius Plotius Plancus, brother of the Munatius Plancus who was consul and censor; he does not say that Gaius had ever been praetor, as far as I can tell. Pliny calls him Lucius Plotius, notes that he was the brother of the Lucius Plancus who was twice consul and censor, but does not call him praetor; the notes call him Lucius Plotius or Plautius Plancus, but add nothing further to his identification. Not finding anything relevant in Horace. Velleius Paterculus says that Lucius the consul caused his brother's proscription, but does not name him. Cannot locate anything about him in Solinus.

PW seems to assume that Gnaeus and Gaius were the same person, but the statement that Lucius Plautius Plancus was praetor designate seems to be based on Cicero's letter, which does not clearly name him, but has been identified with Gnaeus. Slowly going through the rest of the article with Google Translate, but it's putting me to sleep. Right now it looks to me like they might be the same person, but I'm not sure how solid the case is. Could amend the articles to say so later on.

As for ref names, try to make them something that could be recognized or identified if the original reference to which they refer were deleted. ":0" isn't very useful as a ref name, because nobody can figure out what it refers to if they can't see the original reference. "Crawford 214" would tell people it's a reference to Crawford, and even which part, if there are multiple references. It's not a substitute for a short citation, but it's a hint as to what the short citation refers to. When you get used to editing sections of articles with generic ref names, you'll see how frustrating it is when you have various ref names occurring in a section, and no idea what source they refer to. P Aculeius (talk) 16:27, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I just found what was the problem with ref names. In fact, the visual editor, which I use, doesn't tell me I create ref with :0 or :1 when making multiple citations. I have to switch to the source editor to correct them.

Regarding Plautius Plancus, he was also moneyer in 47 BC and wrote L PLAVTIVS PLANCVS on his coins, so the correct spelling is Plautius. I also found little info in ancient sources, but followed Broughton; his assumption is the most logical. You have an English version of Valerius Maximus here, although the formatting is a bit odd.

About pictures and copyright, some pictures of ancient coins on Wikimedia come from the famous auction house CNG (example here). I was wondering whether the free licence found in the description applied to all the coins on their website, or just those already on Wikimedia? I can make a subject in the talk page of the WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, perhaps someone knows about it?T8612 (talk) 19:43, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, must be a visual editor thing. Having gotten used to the source editor long before there was a visual editor, I had no idea. Either way, best practice is to do as you just did. Although the visual editor still added a colon at the beginning! Ah, well. When you edited Aelia gens earlier, you saw some examples of "ReferenceA" and "ReferenceB" that were automatically generated to avoid duplicate citations. Coming back to these years later, I find myself having to replace them with more useful citations, often because I wasn't specific enough with the original source.

You'll also notice that a lot of the entries aren't cited at all; that was because I thought that linked individuals should be sourced at their articles. Only later did I begin citing them all or almost all meticulously; I started at the letter A, and apart from a handful of important gentes I worked on early in the project, I got more sophisticated and better at sourcing as I went along, with considerable improvements in formatting at different stages. Now I go back and revise older articles to current standards when I encounter them. Adding the full citations will take longer, but at least I can eliminate some of the oldest formatting issues quickly and get the articles to the style they should be in.

I'll point out that the notion of "correct" spelling is somewhat modern. Strictly speaking it's not "incorrect" to use Plotius instead of Plautius. It may not be the usual or preferable form for one reason or another, but a writer was free to use whichever one he wanted, and we shouldn't assume that a particular choice was a mistake in cases where it could have been deliberate (there certainly are instances of mistakes, but this isn't one). The name is found both ways, and it's probably preferable to use the traditional spelling for consistency, but it's also fine to note that an individual is often or usually found with a different spelling. I would, however, ignore mistakes or extremely rare spellings unless there's an important reason for including them, or at least relegate them to footnotes. Common alternatives can go at the head of the lead, but others could give a false impression in some cases, or clutter up the lead.

I don't know the answer to your question about the coins, but unless you find a specific statement from CNG, you shouldn't assume that any of their pictures are subject to the same license unless so designated in Wikimedia Commons. Maybe there is such a statement on their website, but I don't know. P Aculeius (talk) 21:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

gens Annia

Hi, there is some problem with this gens, as the cognomen Luscus is only found for the Consul of 153. I think this gens didn't use a fixed cognomen, like the Antonii, who only used personal agnomina. The only two known cognomina for them are Luscus and Rufus, noting physical features so perhaps not used by the other members of the gens. If you look in Broughton II, p.487, he gives the names of three senators with different cognomina, whereas they are obviously cousins.

There is also a problem with the Anni Bellieni, as the only Annius with this cognomen is mentioned in Cicero, Pro Fonteio, and it seems to be a mistake: Bellienus is apparently another name after that of Gaius Annius. So Bellienus should be a different gens. Some large cleanup is apparently needed...

As for the coins, CNG published their coins under Creative Commons license, so I can upload coins from them.T8612 (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't see any authority for Luscus as a personal surname. Both PW and Broughton apply it to the ambassador of 172 BC, who seems likely to be the father of the consul of 153. If the consul of 128 was his son—which seems to be the case—then he's part of this family, and presumably inherited the cognomen Luscus even if he became known primarily as Rufus, perhaps to distinguish him from his father. His son, Gaius, while not given a surname in either PW or Broughton, was evidently the son of Rufus, and grandson of Luscus, the consul of 153, according to his filiation in PW. This is how Drumann draws out the stemma, and he applies Luscus to all of them through No. 6 in the text (although omitted in the table), with the surname dying out through the lack of a (known) male line after this generation. Since it was quite possible in Republican times to drop or ignore a cognomen except when needed, I would follow Drumann in the absence of anything to prove that Luscus did not apply to the entire family.

As for Bellienus as a cognomen of the Annii, Broughton indicates uncertainty as to the name of the praetor in 107, and the legate of Fonteius, whom he lists under 74 BC, he calls "Gaius Annius Bellienus". Naturally the latter two aren't in Broughton. Sallust calls the praetor of 107 "Lucius Bellienus", while Broughton gave the uncertain "Gaius". There does seem to have been a gens by this name, but in inscriptions it is nearly always Billienus, not Bellienus. There aren't a lot of inscriptions, but only one of them is under Bellienus. At this stage I'm inclined to think that most of these entries should go under a separate gens, but not quite certain. Checking PW I think there's enough ground, but would like to think about it some more. P Aculeius (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I just found the cognomen Luscus in Livy for the ambassador of 172. The cognomen of the consul of 153 is found in Cicero's Brutus (79), but he could have made a mistake given he wrote it a century after. The cognomen is missing in the Fasti Capitolini -- idem for Rufus. In the Chronography of 354 another cognomen is given for the Consul of 153: Fusus (it is also mentioned by Broughton). I'm not totally convinced here...T8612 (talk) 19:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about the reversion earlier, needed to finish one set of edits, and thought Drumann supported the existing filiations. Checked once the edits were saved, and saw you were right. Fixed them. P Aculeius (talk) 20:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I've just added three new senators on this page. Can you check the sources? I'm not sure about how to present them. It's from Greek inscriptions found here and here. Interestingly, they don't give their cognomen, just the tribe and filiation. There are loads of new names to add from there. Tell me also how you present the tribe.T8612 (talk) 21:05, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Very resourceful. I've "fixed" the sources with the full bibliographic information and placed them in the bibliography. Bear in mind, cognomina were regarded as somewhat informal names, so it shouldn't be that surprising to see them omitted from official documents this early. These articles don't include tribes; for most individuals that information isn't available, when it is it's usually for the more obscure members, and it's one more detail to clutter up the article with explanations. I did mention it for the second Gaius Annius, because that's the most obvious way he can be distinguished from the one of 135. In general, it would be more appropriate to add that level of detail to individual biographical articles. It still seems possible, given the absence of cognomina in the list, that some of these senators are other individuals on this page. But since there's not much evidence, I think it's fine to keep them where they are for now. P Aculeius (talk) 22:37, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll add some of the names found in these sources now. For other gentes, it's possible to identify them with existing members. Some senators don't have their gens listed on Wiki, you still have some work to do. :)T8612 (talk) 23:04, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

That was quick!...

...and very nicely done. Haploidavey (talk) 16:29, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I was just curious to see if I could find an obvious connection from the sources (if not something that justified the original edit, something that might explain why it got there, other than pure vandalism. When I finally managed to *find* all four citations in English (there was a typo in one of them, and the English version of Cicero's collected letters is hard to search), I realized it wouldn't take long to write up everything known about Cyrus. And I needed to remove the "Vettius" anyway, since it applied to the freedman (which doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't Cyrus' nomen; we don't know what it was, or if he had one, but then none of the sources said he was Greek, either; we're just assuming that). The original article was a very slightly rephrased/augmented version of a short article in DGRBM, which is fine, I suppose, except that it wasn't attributed. And a couple of details were added to it for which there was no authority. So I cut it back to what is actually said, which really isn't that much, but placed it in context. Cicero's explanation of Cyrus' excuse for the narrow windows was rather amusing! Anyway, quick article, and now I'll be patrolling it. P Aculeius (talk) 21:43, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

His self-justification makes for delightful reading. Seriously, you've turned a barely informative, dry little stub into a pleasant and appealing article. That counts for a lot, in my book. And yes, I quite forgot to check the worthy old DGRBM. Haploidavey (talk) 14:20, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

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New gentes

Hi, can I add new gentes on the current list (just adding the names without creating a page), or do you prefer if I write them here? So far the names I've found, notably in the SC De Agro Pergameno, are: Serria, Munia, Valgia, Crepusia, Tremelia, Statiliena, Pandosinia.

By the way, it seems that this SC dates from 101, not 129 BC. The earlier date was initially supported by Mommsen, Syme, Broughton, etc. but I found that nowadays academics follow Mattingly who argued for the more recent date (free [https://www.docdroid.net/ldzYSPO/mattingly-1972.pdf here]). There is a summary of the debate here. It's true that Mattingly's theory "fits" much better with the names we have. Apparently Ernst Badian (whose articles are almost impossible to find outside paywalls) further proved this point with Gaius Coelius Caldus, cos 94, n°10 in the list of senators; he was a novus homo from an equestrian family, so his father couldn't be in the list as a high-ranked senator (it is the future consul in the list); see here. So I made a note explaining this debate on this article; please tell me whether that's fine. Another solution would be to make an article for the SC De Agro Pergameno and explain in lengths the academic debate.T8612 (talk) 23:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I would prefer if you left them here for now, as I need to look through them and figure out what approach to take. If you redlink them, someone might start an article that I could miss while working on the others, and I'd prefer to know that all of the existing articles are either my work, or have been brought up to the current standards (I'll work on my older articles eventually, but right now I want to finish the R's and start on the S's, and work towards the end of the alphabet).

As far as the senatus consultum, I think that a stand-alone article would be the best solution. It could be linked in articles that mention it as a source, similarly to how I've been linking inscriptions and the Fasti in recent articles. However, I would hesitate to change all of the dates from 129 to 101. Opinion is probably still divided, and 101 may just be the current favourite. You may be able to avoid giving the year in entries, and just link to the article explaining the uncertainty of the dating. i.e. "Gaius Flobbulius C. f. L. n. Vespillo, a senator mentioned in the Senatus Consultum de Agro Pergameno", and just place him in the appropriate spot chronologically. I'll look over the debate later this evening, if I get a chance; maybe it'll change my mind. P Aculeius (talk) 00:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

New gens: Varinia (cf. Praetor in 73 defeated by Spartacus).

I've also spotted a mistake on the Licinia (gens) page. The Sextus Licinius "a senator, whom Gaius Marius ordered to be hurled from..." etc. is said to be a "Lucilius" by Broughton, and also tribune of the plebs (cf. vol. 2 p. 47 and note 1 p. 52). He is duplicated on the Lucilia page. Would you leave a mention on the Licinia page to avoid any future re-addition?T8612 (talk) 00:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

New gentes: Cascellia, Prifernia, Saufeia, Voluscia.T8612 (talk) 00:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, will try to get to all of these eventually. Want to finish the R's before I go back to pick up older ones; that may take a few more days. P Aculeius (talk) 13:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

New gens: Albania (cf. CIL_1².26).

NB: I don't make all those spaces you revert. I think it's the visual editor that automatically creates them when I change entries in a bullet-list. It doesn't even tell me when I "review my changes". It doesn't seem to change the finished aspect though, only the code.T8612 (talk) 00:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, alright, I was beginning to wonder if they were automatic, since I couldn't see why you'd want to add spaces there. Anyway, they weren't that hard to fix. I delete them since they're not shown in examples, not needed to interpret things, and of course anything that makes pages more confusing to edit is a bother. Anyway, thanks for letting me know! P Aculeius (talk) 10:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

New gens: Fabrinia (very small, not in Smith, 1 moneyer (Crawford p.280) and an inscription -- with stemma here, in Italian).T8612 (talk) 02:20, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

New gens: Sentia (Syme wrote an [https://www.docdroid.net/hkaBMBQ/4434830.pdf article] on them, with a stemma) T8612 (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

You can use Syme's article linked above to expand on the Sentii.T8612 (talk) 17:43, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Roger. Partway through the S's now, should pick up all the ones from 'S' on as I move toward the end of the alphabet, then pick up the others listed above. P Aculeius (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Follow-up on WP Women Writers template update

Hi - can you please add your support (or objection) here? Template talk:WikiProject Women writers Thank you. Hmlarson (talk) 18:49, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

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Saw this, thought of you

Thought you might be interested. Or entertained. The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period -- llywrch (talk) 00:05, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Intrigued, perhaps. Pleased to think that some of the one-spacers have open minds, perhaps? Or concerned that the only thing that may be written about the study is how small and unconvincing it is? Well, at least something is written about it. You can indeed find interesting articles in The Atlantic. Shame I don't spend enough time reading magazines to justify subscribing, but I don't even get National Geographic read, and that's my one essential! Thank you for the share, it's nice to be thought of. P Aculeius (talk) 02:45, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

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Email received?

Shortly after I made some edits to Crepereia (gens), I emailed you the article I used. I thought it might interest you since it listed many members of that family not yet listed in the article. Did you receive it? -- llywrch (talk) 18:47, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't checking at the time. Looks like it went straight to my spam box, but I found it. Thank you! I've added you to my contacts list, so that shouldn't happen again. I'll have a look in the next few days. I didn't add all the Crepereii from inscriptions since there were so many of them, and the article already seemed sound without them. But there's no reason why I can't. I simply prefer to work with persons from history unless there aren't enough to make a decent article without adding those from inscriptions. In some cases I might do it because inscriptions clear up family relationships or indicate the use of unusual praenomina, but it's time consuming, only a small percentage of inscriptions are securely dated, and it'd be a nightmare with more common names, which is why I tend to use inscriptions mainly for more obscure families that don't show up much in history. But anyone worth talking about in a scholarly article is fair game to add! I'll have a read of this article in a bit, so thanks again! P Aculeius (talk) 18:59, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

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Gens Manlia

Hi, can you review the changes I made to this gens? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manlia_(gens)

There is something that puzzled me: there is a Gnaeus Manlius Cn. f. P. n. Vulso, consul in 474 BC, who has a page duplicating that of Aulus, the Decemvir of 451, despite being the same man. On the gens page it's written "He is frequently identified with Aulus, the decemvir, although this would mean that his son, Capitolinus, was consular tribune seventy-seven years after his father's consulate." However, the consulship probably did not work in the 5th century as in the 1st century, so there wasn't an age limit. The "Gnaeus" mentioned here, was the son of "Cincinnatus" (whose name is also disputed), consul just six years before him in 480. Therefore Aulus/Gnaeus was young when consul, perhaps 30yo. Moreover, Livy describes him as an "aged man" when appointed Decemvir in 451. The sources and filiations match (except for the praenomen). What to do with the second article (on Gnaeus) then? I left them on the gens page so you can see.

Would you also improve the rating of the page (it's marked as "start" class, whilst it's more than that now)?T8612 (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I haven't reviewed it yet because the changes from the last set of edits required too much time and effort to go through. However, I would strongly recommend against reorganizing the articles without discussion. I went over and over the evidence with respect to the individuals you mention last time I worked on this, and the decision of how to present them was based on that review. I'll comment more when I've had time to deal with this, but based on the amount of editing it could take all day to sort through, and I don't always have that amount of time to devote to this project at once. P Aculeius (talk) 00:25, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I think I've got everything where I'm satisfied with it for the time being. I split the Capitolini back off, as they certainly give the impression of a distinct family, even if they're a branch of the Vulsones. That's how these articles are normally done when a distinct family with its own cognomen can be identified, although I usually don't make a subsection unless there are at least three members. I left the Cincinnati in with the Vulsones, but reworked the issues into a footnote. I also used a footnote to go into some detail with the arguments over whether the consul of 474 BC and the decemvir of 451 could have been the same person. I note that none of the historians say they were; and Livy doesn't say that the decemvir was aged, or a consular. He says he was chosen because he'd been one of the ambassadors sent into Greece to study Greek law. The "elderly" decemvirs were the four chosen to round out the figure to ten; i.e. Veturius, Julius, Curiatius, and Romilius.

Dionysius is the only source that calls the consul of 474 "Aulus", and the only one who says that the decemvir had been consul, but he also says that he had been consul the previous year (452). This passage looks confused to me, perhaps indicating that we should follow Livy when he says that the consuls of 451 did take office, but then resigned in favour of the decemvirs, and that Sestius was chosen because of his actions as consul the year before. Dionysius may have gotten himself in a pickle when he wrote that Claudius and Genucius were only consuls designate, because then the consul before the last ones mentioned would be from 453, when Curiatius, and not Manlius, had been consul. As for the chronological argument, I agree that a consul in 474 might have been a few years younger than in later times, although 30 seems like a stretch, at least for someone other than a general with a charmed life.

But even if we suppose he was 30, his eldest son was probably born by or around then, not fifteen years or more later, and that would make the son rather elderly to be named consular tribune for the first time in 405, and twice more after that, to 397. Even fifteen years younger seems unlikely. Certainly possible, but the better explanation seems to be that the consul of 474 was his grandfather, not his father. However, with the note I hope that both views will be properly represented. P Aculeius (talk) 05:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. The "old age" remark comes from Broughton actually, but it indeed seems that Manlius isn't one of these elderly decemvirs.

Regarding the surname Imperiosus, would you really translate it by "imperious"? Livy (vii.4) really says that he earned it for his cruelty; imperious sounds a bit tame in comparison:

"But what men most loathed was his brutal temperament, and the epithet "Imperiosus " (masterful) which had been fastened on him from his unblushing cruelty, an epithet utterly repugnant to a free State. The effects of his cruelty were felt quite as much by his nearest kindred, by his own blood, as by strangers."T8612 (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

It's better than any other translation. It certainly doesn't mean "cruel". It's derived from impero, "I order", the same root as imperator ("one who orders", or slightly better, "one who commands"), the title by which victorious soldiers would salute their commanders, and which was later co-opted by Augustus and his successors, giving us imperium, "emperor", and "empire". I suppose the simplest translation would be "bossy", but we have a better and more precise word in English, and that's "imperious". That's where the word comes from; it's borrowed directly from imperiosus. You can be imperious without being cruel. Torquatus and his successors obtained the surname Imperiosus in part because of their harshness (the DGRBM, under "Torquatus", No. 1, says that his father obtained it because of his "haughtiness"), but more specifically because they demanded obedience to a degree in excess of that typically ascribed to commanders. And there's at least some evidence that the sobriquet was bestowed on others from time to time, if not usually recognized as a cognomen. It's the most literal translation of imperiosus, while cruel isn't one of the alternatives; and alternatives such as masterful or commanding don't fit as well in this instance. P Aculeius (talk) 20:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Colors (Almond)

As part of an initiative to prune entries in List of colors: A–F, List of colors: G–M, and List of colors: N–Z, one entry I reviewed, Almond, was NOT added by you, but you contributed to the source article. I urge you to visit Talk:List_of_colors#Color_issuesS Philbrick(Talk) 17:45, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Alternative names of Crayola crayons for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Alternative names of Crayola crayons is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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Nomination of History of Crayola crayons for deletion

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RfC about Crayola's RGB values

Hello, I have moved your disagreement regarding the use of swatches to the threaded discussion. I think it will be more productive if we keep it organised. Dryfee (talk) 18:10, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

RSN discussion

I've opened a discussion regarding crayon color sourcing at WP:RSN. –dlthewave ☎ 02:43, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Era styles are not dependent on the sources used

Please read WP:ERA and follow it. Sources are irrelevant, as it how it's started. Stability, which I admit is subjective, is what matters. Start a discussion if you wish to change era styles. Doug Weller talk 12:20, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm familiar with WP:ERA and thought I was following its guidelines in this case. If you quote a source, you shouldn't tweak the original language to fit your own sensibilities; the Accua article was effectively this. But I've followed your advice and opened a talk page discussion on the topic. The article's original style is what debates on the subject usually boil down to; nothing under WP:ERA refers to stability, although the previous section on date format does; not sure it's supposed to apply here, but your point is well-taken, as it makes sense to take stability into account. I don't have any particularly strong arguments to change Palermo Stone back, other than the fact that a previous editor decided to change it without discussion in the first place.

I have my own preferences, as most people do. But I'm not an era crusader; I usually limit my contributions in this field to my own work, establishing consistency when both eras are being used inconsistently in an article, or reverting changes that were made contrary to policy when I notice them. That's what I thought I was doing in the Palermo Stone article. I won't bother arguing for further reversion, since the best argument I can make is about the previous change having been unjustified, and you clearly feel that stability is more important, which I think is relevant. Apologies for the conflict. P Aculeius (talk) 13:58, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Sadly I run into a lot of era crusaders, mainly though they are IPs. Doug Weller talk 18:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

CFD notice

Hello, because you participated in one or both of the CFD nominations for "Ancient Greece" in July, I wanted you to know that I've created a second nomination for Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 September 1#Ancient, and thank you for contributing to the discussion. Nyttend (talk) 21:35, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

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"Lists" of gentes

Hi, I think that the gentes' articles are a more than just "lists" and should therefore be considered as articles in the assessments. It is especially relevant for the main patrician gentes (Cornelia, Claudia, etc.), who have very long text-based sections. Do you agree? If so, I will start changing the assessments. I also think some of them could be promoted to good articles as a result. T8612 (talk) 16:17, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Not sure. It might prompt someone to start applying new standards to what until now have been reasonably insular topics mostly edited by members of CGR. I haven't had time to work on new articles for a few months, but I was getting close to the end of the initial stage of the project. I should be able to pick my activity back up in the new year, if not earlier. Once the series is "done", at least in a rough form, it might be worth looking at this again, and figuring out whether it's a good step. P Aculeius (talk) 22:44, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Makes sense, we'll see next year then. I've also been thinking of making a gens template. T8612 (talk) 23:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I think you should use TP Wiseman's [https://www.docdroid.net/jHE0ncP/wiseman-new-men.pdf New Men in the Roman Senate] for the gens articles. There are tons of info on them. T8612 (talk) 15:40, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

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Gens Fabia

Hi, the thing is that "mainline scholarship" seems to have shifted to "Gnaeus Fabius" (it is also supported by Degrassi, who published the Fasti, and Broughton (although he still mentions Numerius into brackets)). recent century editions of Livy now use Gnaeus. I also found this recent stemma. I'd rather follow the opinions of Ogilvie, Münzer, Degrassi, and Broughton than that of Smith.

There is also a problem with Marcus Fabius Ambustus (pontifex maximus 390 BC). Broughton doesn't list him, Münzer says he did not exist, and Ogilvie thinks it is a corruption and the Pontifex Maximus should be Marcus Foslius Flaccinator (Broughton agrees). What to do with Ambustus' article then?

You can find Ogilvie [https://www.docdroid.net/cIPzX6S/ogilvie-commentary-on-livy-books-1-5.pdf here]. T8612 (talk) 17:55, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Incidentally, the List of Roman consuls mentions a Gnaeus instead of Numerius. This list could be significantly amended with this [https://www.docdroid.net/WjoTDWB/taylor-augustan-editing-in-the-fasti.pdf article] by LR Taylor, who shows that Augustus and some other patricians "edited" the list of consuls (principally the place of consul prior/posterior). T8612 (talk) 19:58, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not relying on someone's opinion; I'm considering the evidence, the same as you. But while the story of how the name came to be used by the Fabii is suspect (although it cannot be disproved; even the period of time to which it belongs cannot be proven wrong, although it's probably anachronistic to place it in the fifth century BC), that doesn't really tell us that surviving manuscripts of Livy are more accurate on this point than any other sources. We know perfectly well that praenomina were frequently corrupted in manuscripts; we know that it was common for copyists to substitute familiar or common praenomina for uncommon ones. The argument that "only" the Buteones and Pictores used Numerius is circular, because if the older Fabii used the name, then it wasn't limited to those two families. Nor does it make sense to draw a distinction between the stirpes of the Fabii in this way, because all three families seem to have been descended from a common set of ancestors, so the fact that one or more branches used a particular praenomen is strong evidence that others did as well.

There is no corresponding argument for Gnaeus, which does not appear at all amongst the Patrician Fabii, except if we follow the manuscripts of Livy. Our knowledge of the sources consulted by each surviving author (including the Fasti) is limited to what they tell us, and since some of them are lost (including Fabius Pictor), we don't really know who had the best sources. That the Fasti were edited is not in question; neither is that they're generally accurate, with only minor exceptions, as far as we can tell. But what reason could possibly be advanced for changing "Gnaeus" to "Numerius"? Deliberate falsification doesn't seem likely to be to anyone's benefit in this instance. If anything it might make the Fabii seem less significant, since the name was generally found in plebeian families, and calling attention to intermarriage with the Samnites wouldn't seem to be particularly desirable either. The matter will always be unsettled because the sources are in some disagreement. But a praenomen that's associated with other Fabii seems more likely than one that isn't.

I note a Fabius Dorsuo listed by Broughton among the pontifices of 390. Perhaps there's been some conflation here. Would need to resort to the sources to see what basis there is for each identification. At the moment I don't have time to work on that, but that's what my first impression is: a need to untangle the sources and see if that elucidates the mysterious pontifex. P Aculeius (talk) 21:18, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Seccia gens

OK by me... Peter Flass (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

I hope my edit summary didn't come across as hostile, although I understand why it might. Part of the reason why the project criteria for the titles of gens articles was changed is because other editors kept moving some of them to the bare nomina whenever there was no other article of that name, on the grounds that the parentheses constituted unnecessary disambiguation. With some articles this occurred more than once, leaving a patchwork of different titles. Some editors accepted the need for consistent names when it was explained, others insisted that the titles were wrong. Since the current style is used by standard references, and avoids the argument over "unnecessary disambiguation", the old style was officially deprecated around a year ago, in order to prevent random articles in the project being renamed constantly. Of course, since most of the older articles still use parentheses, well-meaning editors now occasionally change the newer ones to the old title format for consistency... I'm sure you can appreciate why this would make anyone grouchy! But again, I didn't mean to come across as hostile. Thank you for understanding! P Aculeius (talk) 00:05, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

No problem, I understand. Peter Flass (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Re: Richard Carrier

Good luck with that. And if you need the help of an Admin, feel free to ask. -- llywrch (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I started regretting my offer almost as soon as I made it! Siebert had a legitimate concern, even if he wasn't very good at articulating it. And it isn't clear that the different parties want an independent cleanup. They kept discussing the issues for a while after I posted, and the tone seemed to get a lot more civil. I've posted my opinion and hope it'll help guide the editors as they continue to improve the article. It looks better now than when I offered to clean it up, but it still needs work to meet NPOV, IMO. But if the editors who're actually familiar with the sources are willing to deal with that, I'll gladly step back and let them do it! P Aculeius (talk) 22:50, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Gens Pincii or Pincia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincian_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_Pinciana Adair Elwyn Po (talk) 02:28, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

You need a reliable source to add material likely to be challenged. Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for this purpose, since anybody can edit it, and not all claims in all articles have been subjected to thorough review. The article you're citing has no source citations, so it's impossible to know the reason why it says that. I'm not finding any scholarly articles claiming that there was a Pincian gens. There's a very lengthy article about the Pincian Hill in Pauly-Wissowa, but it's in German and I can't tell what it says about the name. But even if some source claimed that there was such a gens, there's no reason for an article about them in the absence of any evidence of members. There are zero persons named Pincius or Pincia in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Pauly-Wissowa, or in the Clauss-Slaby Databank. That alone is almost enough to conclude that no such gens existed. While it's possible for them to have existed without leaving any mark in history, even in inscriptions, I haven't seen any evidence, and without evidence, there's no reason for an entry. Find a reliable source—something that could be expected to distinguish between fact and uncritical repetition of whatever is said by someone else—and it could go back. Find even one reliable source that proves there was someone with a name like Gaius Pincius Fronto or Pincia P. f. Crescentilla, and we can presume the existence of a gens. But without even one clear example, or a statement in a scholarly source that they existed, it's nothing more than a wild guess unsupported by any evidence. That's why it was deleted. P Aculeius (talk) 03:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Cyclopes

Hi P Aculeius, did you see this discussion on the Cyclopes talk page where you're mentioned? If you have nothing to say there, that's fine. I just wanted to be sure you were aware of that discussion. Regards, Paul August ☎ 09:58, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I did see it, but wasn't sure I could muster a meaningful opinion. I'll take another look today. P Aculeius (talk) 13:54, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I've replied. Hope you find my insights helpful—or at least amusing! P Aculeius (talk) 14:48, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Paul August ☎ 16:04, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

IP editor on Pacilia (gens)

In the future, it might be best to try directly talking to the user on their talk page. I've left a welcome message on the IP's talk with links to basic policy and such. They obviously don't understand how to use article talk or even edit summaries. They still might not act differently but providing some basic WP information/links is helpful to any newbie. I hope this doesn't sound patronizing but a little kindness goes a long way. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 01:30, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I really wasn't sure how to deal with this, and finding guidance proved harder than it sounds! Since the editor was an IP address (actually two addresses, although one of them was only used once), and didn't have an account or a talk page, I didn't realize that this was an option. I also wouldn't have thought of blocking the IP rather than protecting the article; it seems like a punishment, and thus a harsher measure, particularly as the article itself is rather obscure and hardly received any attention until the editor in question started puffing it up. So I really had no idea what else to try!

I might add that based on both the nature of the edits and the language used before yesterday's large talk-page style comment placed at the beginning of the article itself, it looked as if the editor's command of English was shaky; the impression that I got was that he or she must be descended from some family with a similar name, and that the purpose of the edits was to claim not only descent from antiquity, but from Roman nobility. Yesterday's edits seemed to confirm this impression, and indicate that the editor's native language is Italian, as he or she mentioned a number of famous Romans using Italian versions of their names. However, understanding an editor's motivations, and knowing how best to deal with the editor's disruptive editing, are two different things. Thank you again for your help! P Aculeius (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

It's a tricky judgment call, to be sure. Since the IP tried 3 main times over three weeks to insert this info with apparently no understanding of the most basic functions (edit summary, talk page) on WP, just getting their attention seems important. Blocking them isn't a punishment but I hope they will look at their talk page and learn something about editing and communication on WP. They might not. I find it hard to even call it a content dispute when they lack the basic tools to properly "dispute" your reverts. They are making changes based on what seems to me a combination of possible family lore, deductive reasoning, and original research. It's a short block for the IP and protecting the article seemed a bit much for one IP editor, particularly one who isn't a vandal, just unfamiliar with norms of WP. Plus they seem to come back every week so I think it's better to try educating them rather than semi-protecting the article. My opinion will change if they come back again with the same lack of basic WP skills. Sorry to blather at you. If they return with no change, take it back to page protection and ping me. I'm a bit irregular about checking WP and not always on every day. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 20:42, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

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Question on Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus edit

Hi, I just saw you reverted my edit to Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, which was to remove the "Ar. f. Ar. n." part of his name in the introduction. I removed it because I couldn't find anything about what it meant on the Internet and it wasn't explained in the article itself. I'm just a lurker who occasionally tries to fix typos, and you seem like a real WP editor, so I thought I'd just ask. What does Ar. f. Ar. n. mean? Why is it included in his name, but not other historical Roman figures? In my opinion it should either be removed or explained, but I'd like to hear if I'm wrong about that and why. 76.170.75.88 (talk) 03:51, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

This formula is called a filiation, and it was treated as part of the Roman name. In this case the filiation is an abbreviation for "Arrunti filius, Arrunti nepos", i.e. "son of Arruns, grandson of Arruns", which is discussed later in the article. Filiations appear in many articles about Romans, but not all (in many instances, they're not known). You would probably have found the answer if his father and grandfather had more typical names, such as Lucius or Marcus; Arruns is an Etruscan praenomen, and was very rare at Rome, although quite common among the Etruscans, and Collatinus was one of only two or three Romans known to history whose filiation would include the abbreviation for Arruns. With virtually any other Roman figure, the filiation would be more recognizable. Filiations may look odd if you're not used to Roman names, but they quickly become second nature in biographical sources, and scholars continue to use them as a convenient way to help distinguish between Romans with otherwise similar names. P Aculeius (talk) 05:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

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Re:Question about deletion of comment

Hey. I deleted the comment at first sight as I thought IP users aren't allowed to take sides on votations. I mainly edit at Spanish Wikipedia where this is a rule, I'm not so familiarised with the English version so I just assumed it worked the same here.

I was unaware about the same IP doing the same on talk:Themiscyra, it's weird for me. --Bankster (talk) 02:12, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks and clarification

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion here (I realize that that talk page discussion is a bit disjointed, sorry for that). However, I want to clarify a possible confusion on your part, perhaps due to the hard to follow discussion. In your comment you say that I wouldn’t be “deleting the paragraph if there were a good reason to keep it here.” However, the content in dispute (that I and another editor think do not belong) is not just a paragraph, but in fact a very long section titled “Polyphemus and Galatea” with multiple sub sections, and sub-sub sections: see the table of contents in here. I doubt that this matters much, but I wanted to point it out. Regards, Paul August ☎ 10:20, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Re: Sempronius Gracchus, suffect consul

Hi P Aculeius. I happened to be looking over Sempronia (gens) when I noticed it included one "(Lucius) Sempronius Gracchus, consul suffectus in AD 167". It appears you added it back in 2010. However, checking not only the List of Roman consuls & List of undated Roman consuls, but Alföldy's & Leunissen's prosopographies for the 2nd century, I failed to find any trace of said suffect consul. (I did find a L. Sempronius, governor of Crete & Cyrenaica between 190 & 193.) Do you remember where you found Sempronius the suffect consul? -- llywrch (talk) 07:49, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I probably found him on the List of Roman consuls when looking for entries mentioned in Wikipedia that weren't in the DGRBM, which had only a rather fragmentary list of consuls from Imperial times, based on early readings of Imperial-era fasti. Looking at the list, I see where Bergth added him on May 20, 2008, part of a large addition in the middle of major additions to the article by that user. Several of the other edits by Bergth cite Degrassi, although this one does not mention the source. Looking only at the edit summaries, it looks like a legitimate edit, so I would start by seeing if Degrassi has a consul by this name. This Sempronius remained until you revised this section on November 8, 2016, with the explanation that you could not find sources for them. I'm not finding anything about him in my sources, but perhaps there's something in Degrassi? P Aculeius (talk) 17:49, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't have access to a copy of Degrassi, & if I did I doubt it would make any difference because I can't read Italian. (The primary reason I haven't asked my public library ILL department to hunt down a copy for me.) But using other resources I have at hand I figured out where this name came form -- & that it actually is in Wikipedia. (Well, a form of that name is.)

I started with a query for "Sempron* Gracch*" at the Class Slaby inscription website, & found AE 1996, 01328, a fragment of a military diploma with text that provided the names "[? Se]mpronio [Graccho] / [L(ucio) A]emilio [Frontino co(n)s(ulibus)]", which raised more questions than it answered. Those words between the square brackets are restored readings, & only a very daring or very foolish scholar would offer restorations like those. (I can accept adding "Se" to "mpronio" to arrive at Sempronio (nominative "Sempronius") & an "A" to "emilio" to restore Aemilio (nominative "Aemilius"), but adding "Graccho" & "Frontino" without any explanation was more than I could accept on pure trust.) Fortunately, I have copies at home of some published editions of these military diplomas, & I had the notes to this specific diploma. These restorations are based on another fragmentary diploma, where the names read "[...]ci[.]o L. Aemilio Fron[...]" CIL XVI, 00125. And this is the form that appears in List of undated Roman consuls, based on Leunissen's book.

L. Aemilius Frontinus is known from other sources: he is attested as governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, & as proconsular governor of Asia early in the reign of Commodus. Sempronius [...]ci[.]us is a bit trickier to track down. There is a L. Sempronius C[...] Celsus Servilianus Fabianus who was [ju]ridic(us) per Apu[liam et] Calabria[m] and proconsul of Baetica in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus, thus supporting that name should be read "Gracchus" but the first letter of the missing word could also be read as an "O", requiring another nomen (e.g. Otacilius), & thus he is not likely the former proconsul of Baetica.

I've definitely led you down a rabbit hole with this case, but in my experience this is how a lot of these issues end up. -- llywrch (talk) 04:54, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

• An update about Degrassi: I found that one can access an electronic copy of his work on the Roman consuls on archive.org! They now have a borrowing library of sorts there. All you need to do is to create an account, find his book & click on a button to borrow it for up to 5 (or is it 7?) days. Minimal supporting text about his conclusions, but at least one can confirm what he says for a given pair of consuls. (I suspect there are more works worth perusing there, but I haven't had the time to look much further.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:04, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Request for separate article on Gaius Vibius Maximus

Ave P. Aculeie! I see you have been a recent active editor on Vibia (gens). May I ask you a small favour? Could you please create an article stub for Gaius Vibius Maximus? I have just written some material on his AD 104 Egyptian census and placed it in the Vibia (gens) Wikipedia list. But I think it is worth separating him out from this terse list and giving him his own proper article. Thanks. 86.161.82.206 (talk) 20:54, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Crepereia Tryphaena

Hallo Aculeius, and thanks for correcting my edit on the Crepereii article. About that, I have a question: you changed Tryphaena's death to the 3rd century, but all the sources which I know are unanimous in setting the girl's life around the mid of the 2nd century. Why that? Vale, :-) Alex2006 (talk) 12:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The C-S Databank (linked to the CIL and AE citations) say the inscription dates between AD 201 and 300, i.e. third century. It's possible that it's earlier in that period and that the individuals lived during the second century, but there's no information to that effect in the inscriptions, and they don't appear to give an age or date of death, so we can't even guess from the inscriptions what year they died or how much of their lives might have been in the second century. Now there may be other sources that can be more specific about the dating, but I don't know which, and given the very lengthy discussion of the tomb and its environs in Italian, which I have to depend on Google Translate to render, I couldn't find anything that would have justified the earlier date. Could I have missed it? Sure. But does it just say "second century" or does it give a clear basis for the date? Because that makes a difference. If the date is due to the original archaeological survey of the tomb a hundred years ago, then I suggest that the C-S Databank is probably to be preferred because it incorporates more recent data. But if there's something in the article, or in another article, that provides a concrete reason for dating the tomb to the second century, then that might be preferred. Can you help me figure out why other sources give an earlier date? P Aculeius (talk) 15:25, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Here it is!

Elementi cronologici per la datazione di questa tomba sono offerti dalla convergenza dei dati forniti da alcuni oggetti del corredo e dagli elementi stilistici della decorazione del sarcofago. è senza dubbio la bambola a fornire il dato cronologico più preciso; infatti il tipo di pettinatura molto curato ne colloca la fabbricazione in un arco di tempo estremamente limitato intorno alla metà del II secolo d.C. In quegli anni infatti era di moda un tipo di acconciatura, documentata da una serie di ritratti privati caratterizzato dalla fusione di elementi tipici della pettinatura di Faustina Maggiore e di quella di Faustina Minore. Se la bambola pone un sicuro termine cronologico prima del quale la deposizione non può aver avuto luogo, il sarcofago e la presenza dell'ambra permettono di definire meglio la datazione della deposizione. Il rilievo del lato corto del sarcofago, presenta infatti quelle tendenze coloristiche che caratterizzano la scultura dell'età degli Antonini e orienta la datazione negli anni intorno al 170 d.C.

Which I summarized as: " While the terminus post quem for the burial can be obtained through the doll’s hairstyle, coiffed according to a composite Roman fashion hairstyle with elements of the times of empress Faustina Major (r. 138-40) and those of emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) and empress Faustina Minor (r. 161-75), [9] a more precise dating for the death of the girl can be deduced by the style of the bas-relief carved on the short side of her sarcophagus, typical of the roman sculpture in the years around 170.[1]"

The quote above comes from Anna Mura Sommella, who is one renowned roman archeologist. The other sources which I read, included the Capitoline Museums, confirm this dating. However, the sarcophagi of Crepereia Tryphaena and of Crepereius Euhodus belong to a group of 5 sarcophagi buried between the mid of the II century and the III century a.d.

I cinque sarcofagi sono stati sepolti in un arco di tempo che è compreso tra la metà del II e il III secolo d.C., come dimostrano le caratteristiche tipologiche e stilistiche dei rilievi.

Can be that confusion aroused between the sarcophagus of Tryphaena and others belonging to this group? Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 17:06, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Possibly. Anyway, that sounds like a good explanation for the more precise dating—without anything more specific about the dating in the C-S Databank, I'll assume it's less reliable in this instance. I'll amend it to "latter part of the second century", which allows for some "wiggle room" between 150 and 200. P Aculeius (talk) 17:52, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Cantii

Sorry, but it's not as you said and did. It's really unprobable that all that Cantii you quoted belonged to a "plebeian family of Rome". You can easily see that they are all located in the north-west of European continent. I remind you that Cantius was a term that meant "from Kent". Please answer me, I'm seeing an erroneous identification between gentes of Rome and nomina, not only in you, but in Wiki. I honestly want to contribute, the work on Wikipedia is excellent in many aspects, but this point has to be clarified. It's nice to see such an interest in this Roman affairs: it's the matter on which I dedicated my life. Docenshistoriamromanam (talk) 14:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have a difficult time accepting your expertise and authority on the subject, when it's clear that you didn't look for inscriptions before declaring that such a gens never existed, or generalizing about their origin. I've just finished adding entries to the article based on a rough examination of the inscriptions in the C-S Databank, and that provided some thirty-five separate examples of men, women, and children with this nomen. I may well have missed some—in fact I almost certainly did, since I searched for "Cantius", rather than "Canti-", which would have likely brought up several more instances, but taken much longer to filter through.

The first examples I added this morning were indeed from Gaul, but since only two or three of them were from Belgica, and none from Britain, I would say that your etymology appears to be guesswork based on the similarity of the name. There were several examples from Hispania, and a few from Rome itself, although the largest number of entries I noticed were from Aquileia and its surroundings.

Whether the first Cantii were natives of Aquileia or anywhere else in the provinces, or whether they came from Rome at an early date and settled there, is beside the point. They were clearly Romans, and while it's entirely possible that they weren't all related—although many clearly were, either by blood or patronage—all of them would have considered themselves part of a gens Cantia, and we have no practical means of separating them into separate gentes with any precision. The same is really true of all Roman gentes, and within a few generations even they wouldn't have known whether they were or weren't related, which is why all persons bearing this nomen are listed in one article. P Aculeius (talk) 18:08, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail

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I feel your pain

I saw this edit of yours and was reminded of this recent even more egregious edit, to the same article, and the ensuing unsatisfying discussion here, so though I'd commiserate. Paul August ☎ 16:48, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Immediately on making my edit I thought I'd better find a source, just in case—only to find that, while various probably accurate accounts say so, I couldn't readily supply one that I felt comfortable citing in support of it. Hence my post at CGR: surely someone in the project can quickly put their finger on a source that says so explicitly. With enough digging I could probably find a book that says so in my house, but I have no idea which to start with—I vaguely recall having a book on the archaeology of Troy, but can I find it, and is it up-to-date enough? Or is my mind playing tricks on me? All the same, I see I'm in excellent company! P Aculeius (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I've found a source see this. Paul August ☎ 17:44, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, was just looking into that when you replied here! I seem to recall reading, years ago, that the walls of Troy had been destroyed some time before the Trojan War and rebuilt, but that might have been retrojecting modern archaeology into mythological Troy. Was just investigating that angle before adding the reference. P Aculeius (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

... Speaking of "pain" hope all is well where you are. My wife and I are both home "self-isolating" with "colds" (we hope ;-). Paul August ☎ 17:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

For better or ill—so to speak—I live in the one place in this country that has yet to be touched by COVID-19, but am preparing myself mentally for its arrival. Found the book I was thinking of, Michael Wood's In Search of the Trojan War, and pp. 114–116 verifies the extensive burning of VIIa, although Wood concludes that this cannot be the Homeric city, because the citadels of mainland Greece had already been destroyed—I don't know if this conclusion has withstood the test of time, but at least that and the other sources cited at CGR should be sufficient for the fire. P Aculeius (talk) 18:32, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

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regarding Maria gens revert

Fair enough...and thank you for the explanation for your action. That is how a revert should be done! (I was actually returning just now to undo the edit myself for being too conjectural.) I share your interest in onomastics. With respect to my instant contribution, I was working under the assumption that Oscan and Latin shared the vast majority of lemmas, coming from Proto-Italic; the only applicable ones that I am able to discern are mas/man and mare/sea. I am under the impression, however, that the Oscan adjectival from mare would take the form Mareius, which seems to leave only mas as a source. I'd like to have your thoughts on a possible etymology for Marius, if you would. 66.168.119.108 04:41, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, if it were going to go in the article, it should go after the part that's already there, particularly as it seems to assume a Latin origin for what's just been said is derived from an Oscan praenomen—although Chase himself classes the gentile name among those names either originating at Rome, or not shown to have come from anywhere else. Chase gathered a tremendous amount of information, and is very useful as an etymological resource, but as others have observed, he didn't know as much as we do now, particularly about non-Latin praenomina. And even if we grant that we can't point to anything identifying the Marii as anything other than Roman, but for the use of Marius as a praenomen among the Oscans, what we lack here is anything etymological other than a general ethnic and cultural background.

Now, I admit we CGR people can sometimes take sourcing for granted with things that seem obvious—but a connection between the root you've mentioned and the Oscan praenomen doesn't seem obvious. It's not implausible, but it needs at a bare minimum something to suggest that it's a reasonable possibility, even if it's not likely. Personally I've always associated it with Latin mare, the sea, or the Oscan equivalent—but that's just my personal association, not based on a thorough knowledge of the linguistics—and I wouldn't put it in the article. It's the kind of statement that really has to have some sort of source, other than your own reasoning—however good that may be, and however much experience you might personally have in the field. Get just one published, expert source on Latin/Italic names/praenomina to cite this to, and it can go back. I might reword it—I'm a bit of a stickler for grammar and nuance of meaning—but I wouldn't object to it if I can see that it can be cited to what seems to be a reliable source.

Just a suggestion, and one you're certainly not obliged to take, but you might find it worthwhile to make an account on Wikipedia. It's free, you can call yourself almost anything, it makes communicating easier, since you'll have your own talk page and be able to keep a watchlist of articles you've written or contributed to (only the ones you want to keep an eye on), and, if you think you might want to be a regular contributor, even in a minor degree, it'll help your edits look like they're coming from a responsible editor. Of course perfectly good edits can be made by IP editors, but a lot of experienced editors, for good or ill, are suspicious of edits made by anonymous IP addresses—in part because of the high volume of bad edits and vandalism that comes from IP addresses, and in part because there's no sure way to tell if the same person is a regular or experienced contributor, or someone who's just stepped in to promote a pet theory. I don't mean to cast aspersions! Just an idea that you might consider. P Aculeius (talk) 05:25, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts, which are all valuable, appreciated, and well-expressed. I shall take your recommendations under advisement. I have, myself, considered the possibility of mare as the source etymon, but have considered it somewhat less likely than something akin to mas because of the above-stated morphological considerations; to wit, I considered that mare > Mareia (compare Pompeia < Oscan pumpe/"five"). Much as yourself, I was originally considering mare as the likely source (perhaps indicating an ancestral boatman, fisherman, or dweller by a body of water), until the expected Oscan/Sabine morpholgy threw me off of that. I guess that presently, this is best left as food for thought, though, for which I now have ample time, what with the fairly heavy duty self-quarantining that I (along with everybody else) am doing. Trying to avoid going "stir-crazy" right now... Take care. 66.168.119.108 13:27, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Chlorus

I just noticed that some time ago you removed the detail surrounding Constantius Chlorus's name in the lead of his article in this edit. However, there is good reason for the information to be restored, since it was adequately cited to a reliable source: the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (2018). Its says: "He added the name Valerius (the nomen of Diocletian) to his style presumably on his elevation to imperial rank, but the nickname Chlorus (Green) is not older than the 6th century". I really think we should point out 1.) No-one ever called him that in his lifetime, and 2.) Χλωρός does not mean "pale" any more than it does "green", and the reason for this epithet is unknown. GPinkerton (talk) 03:21, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Lucius Octavius Rufus

CIL XI 6167 - Iscrizione di Lucio Octavio Rufo

Can you please add Lucius Octavius Rufus (see CIL XI 6167) in the member list of the Octavia gens? For the complete text of the inscription, see here in EDR

Thanks --Accurimbono (talk) 15:59, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Question about gens articles

When you assemble the long citations at the bottom of the article, do you order them alphbetically or by date? -- llywrch (talk) 22:42, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

By date. In the case of Greek and Roman authors, where we don't know exactly when their works were published, I usually go by date of death or the latest date they were known to be alive; for authors whose works can be dated, by the date of publication of the earliest work cited to that author in the article. My goal is to make it possible to follow the development of scholarship on a particular topic, since in many cases opinions have changed with time, and in some instances new information has come to light. For instance, Gallivan's articles on Roman consuls can generally be understood to build on the scholarship of the 1950's, which superseded the chronologies of the 19th century, based on imperfect (perhaps I should say, "less perfect", since our understanding is still far from perfect) readings of the fasti, etc. I realize that in some instances, alphabetical order might make works easier to spot in a long list, but typically they're not too hard to find if you have even a vague idea of the chronology, which I think readers who consult the bibliography are likely to have. But there's no inherent value in alphabetization—nobody thinks, "oh, I would understand this so much better if I could see the sources in alphabetical order"—unlike chronological order, which often can help readers gain a better understanding of how we came to know things. So in most of the articles I've written using bibliographies, I use chronological order. P Aculeius (talk) 23:06, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Not to argue the point, but when the inline citations are using abbreviated forms, & the reader looks to find the longer, complete citation, it is easier if they are arranged alphabetically. (A book I recently read split the bibliography into sections by topic, which frustrated me when I would go to look up what publication, say, "Schmulz, 1987" was & find I had to look in 3 or 4 different places.) But while the long citations are few in number (say 20-30 at the most), IMHO it makes no difference which order is used. Nonetheless, now I know the logic & am less likely to disturb it. -- llywrch (talk) 16:38, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:ROMANS

I think we need to make it clear in WP:ROMANS that the praenomen should be retained except for famous people. T8612 (talk) 18:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think we had general consensus for that based on the recent discussions. I'll make some small edits, and we'll see if they satisfy everyone. P Aculeius (talk) 22:56, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

@T8612: I've had a stab at revising the middle section of the article titling policy. Would you take a look and tell me what you think? P Aculeius (talk) 23:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

It's good. Thanks. T8612 (talk) 02:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Infobox issue

Hi I am responding to a edit that you reverted concerning Titus Cloelius Siculus, I reverted you edit because your reason is mostly opinion base, and your explanation regarding the date in which the consuls served is incorrect it is not a guess that’s why the source is their. This is the first time I have had someone have a issue with my infobox that has a reliable source in it. There is a section in the Roman consuls page concerning the date and time, their it tell you the date for that period in which they started to serve and which there term ended. I am not typing to be disrespectful, I appreciate your contribution to Ancient Rome. If you truly believe that my edit is not useful then let us settle this on the talk page. BigRed606 (talk) 00:50, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

But it's hardly the first time you've heard that the useless information you're duplicating to no point whatever has no place in an article. Roman consul articles routinely contain succession boxes listing the consuls who preceded them, with whom they served, and who followed them. Duplicating that information in a disinformation box serves absolutely no purpose except to clutter up a simple article with fancy graphics. The disinformation box contains nothing except a general inference about when he ought to have assumed and left office, based on when Roman consuls are supposed to have entered and left office, although that date has been discussed for years and was clearly subject to variation and change over time; there's absolutely nothing in any Roman source referring to Cloelius saying what date he assumed or left office—you're just assuming it must have been on whatever the usual date was during that time period. Without specific information about specific individuals, it's just a guess—and doesn't bear repeating on hundreds of biographical articles about individuals whose actual dates are not provided in any source, because they were never recorded by any historian or in any inscription.

You don't know he was born at Rome, you don't know whether he was at Rome when he died, and you can say absolutely nothing about the date that either occurred. There's no information about his family or anything he did, other than take office and leave office—which doesn't require a special graphic. So all the disinformation box actually contains duplicates information already contained in a separate graphic in a short article, or something you're guessing based on what other people probably did in other years. Information boxes are for distilling important details from long articles—not for making short articles look more impressive than they are, or repeating what anyone can gather from two or three brief paragraphs, or making up facts based on what probably happened, even though there's not a single historical source that says it did. Disinformation boxes look impressive and serve no useful purpose—which is what these officeholder boxes do for individuals about whom almost no specifics are known, except who they succeeded and who followed them—information already contained in another box. P Aculeius (talk) 02:59, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

If I may butt in, there are two facts that an infobox can contain that wouldn't appear in the article: the identification numbers from PIR & Pauly-Wissowa. (Having that for the second would be quite useful, as the identifying numbers are assigned according to their idiosyncratic alphabetical system, which is further complicated by when the relevant volume or supplement was written. Articles for some very significant persons saw print not in the original volume, but in a supplemental one. Unless you use Pauly-Wissowa regularly, it can take a considerable time to find the article you want.) That said, obtaining these identifiers & adding them thru infoboxes to the thousands of biographical articles would be a very time-consuming project for anyone -- most of the time would be spent simply copying the information from the pages into digital form -- I doubt that this will be accomplished any time soon, thus failing to provide reasonable justification for infoboxes. (In other words, once someone does the work, then we might want to revisit adding infoboxes to all of the biographical articles. But not until then.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Some German editors are transcribing the RE on Wikisource. I wish them good luck... T8612 (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I managed to find downloadable images for most of the encyclopedia, but locating anything in the supplements is a job. I wish there were some instructions for using it—at least in English, since I have to use Google Translate to figure out what the articles say. P Aculeius (talk) 22:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

It is quite a job even if you know German. Experience has taught me 3 ways to find the right biographical article. (1) Thumb thru all of the articles on the members of the gentilicum until you stumble across it (the complete name of the person is in the first sentence); the names are arranged in an alphabetical order (gentilicum -> praenomen -> cognomen), but there's next to clue how many articles might lie between (say) one Iulius & another. (2) Various secondary & tertiary sources offer links to specific articles; the Oxford Classical Dictionary, for example, will provide the number after the subject name. (3) I've seen a pamphlet at a local college library that is an index of all of the articles (including supplements) by subject, allowing the average user to much more easily find the right article. I believe it is published by the same folks who publish the Pauly-Wissowa. (Due to the pandemic the college closed its campus to the general public, so I can't check what its title, author or publisher are.) If you can locate a copy, it is invaluable. -- llywrch (talk) 03:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Aculeius, T8612, and Llywrch, if any of you are still interested (and unaware), the RE supplements from 1 to 13 can be obtained for free on Library Genesis by typing 'paulys supplementbd' (sic) or 'paulys supplementband'. The text in the PDFs can't be directly selected and copied into a translator (only by manual transcription), and so a knowledge of German might be necessary. Ss 14 and 15 are currently unavailable. Avis11 (talk) 22:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the understanding, I understand where you coming from and know that the infobox does have some dead wait that needs to be taken out, like when they were born and died. So if I may suggest something, how about we get ride of the parts of the infobox concerning birth and death, and get ride of the succession box. In other words we can used the infobox instead of the succession box, that way it’s more accessible and easier to find out who they served with and who the previous and succeeding consul were instead of having to go all the way down to the bottom all the way down to bibliography. Thank You. BigRed606 (talk) 23:58, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Praenomen Ai.

Hi, have you ever encountered a praenomen abbreviated as "Ai."? See my edit here for more details. T8612 (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I've only seen it in that one instance, and can't think what it could mean if it's not some sort of mistake. It doesn't resemble any known praenomina, or any cognomina that seem likely to have been praenomina at one time. However rare they are, every other praenomen is at least somewhat documented, or appears in inscriptions—and most of the rarer ones weren't commonly abbreviated. So from my perspective, a mistake is the most likely explanation—the engraver carved the wrong letters. Perhaps it should be 'A' for 'Aulus', although 'Quintus' is more probable for the Aulia gens; 'Ti' for 'Tiberius' would explain the 'I', and seems possible given how few Aulii we know. 'Ap' for 'Appius' seems unlikely, as the name hardly appears outside the Claudia gens. 'Ar' for 'Arruns' seems improbable, as the Etruscan name was hardly used at Rome; the only similar example I can think of is Lars Herminius, in the mid-5th century BC. 'Caeso' and 'Gaius' wouldn't normally be abbreviated in a way that could lead to 'Ai' with a single mistake. In my opinion, either the 'A' should be a 'T', or there shouldn't be an 'i', or the 'i' should be another letter, or the engraver simply started writing 'Aulius' again and kept going. I don't think that a novel praenomen not found in any other instances is probable. P Aculeius (talk) 22:52, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Both of you may be interested in this paper which discusses this abbreviation Ai. in the last few pages: Olli Salomies, "Praenomina Recorded Erroneously in Inscriptions", Arctos, 29 (1995), pp. 155-161 (Academia.edu requires an account, but it is free.) His conclusion is that in one case this may be a stone-carver's mistake, but it has been attested in other inscriptions. As for what it is an abbreviation for, we await further discoveries. -- llywrch (talk) 23:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

Thanks for the understanding, I understand where you coming from and know that the infobox does have some dead wait that needs to be taken out, like when they were born and died. So if I may suggest something, how about we get ride of the parts of the infobox concerning birth and death, and get ride of the succession box. In other words we can used the infobox instead of the succession box, that way it’s more accessible and easier to find out who they served with and who the previous and succeeding consul were instead of having to go all the way down to the bottom all the way down to bibliography, than you.BigRed606 (talk) 16:30, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Citation style suggestion

Hello. With regards to your preference in listing references in chronological rather than alphabetical order, in the past I've had problems in quickly locating a desired reference b/c of it, and scrolling up your talk page I see I'm not the only one who has had this issue. That the citations are usually displayed with abbreviations and you don't like the sfn template make the task of finding the equivalent reference no easier. I won't ask you to change any of this, but I'd find it expedient to display the shortened/abbreviated form of a source – the one used in inline citations – as the first element of the full reference at the bottom. For instance:

• PIR – Paul von Rohden, Elimar Klebs, & Hermann Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated PIR), Berlin (1898).
• PLRE – A. H. M. Jones & J. R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (abbreviated PLRE), Cambridge University Press (1971–1992).
• PW – August Pauly, Georg Wissowa, et alii, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Scientific Encyclopedia of the Knowledge of Classical Antiquities, abbreviated RE or PW), J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1894–1980).

As you see, your preferred reference format remains identical but for the abbreviations (PIR, etc.) being placed in the beginning... so when someone is looking for a particular source they need only look at the leftmost corner of each citation while skimming through the list of references, instead of having to painstakingly look through the whole bibliography section. Avis11 (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Please NB the existence of Template:Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire and related templates. Please don't just put abbreviations in footnotes; this is the 21st century, we're not trying to save ink. GPinkerton (talk) 03:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Please don't ascribe stupidity to other editors when stalking them on their talk pages. When templates are known to exist, they're used. Not every source that's got a standardized abbreviation has a template, and new templates may be created without editors knowing about them. But if a standard work has a standard abbreviation, just look for it, like you would in any other article. Even if you're not familiar with the abbreviation, and can't be bothered to check the bibliography, the "find" feature works perfectly well in every browser. P Aculeius (talk) 04:02, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Note also the existence of Template:Wikicite, which allows an inline citation to be directly pipe-linked to the full citation at bottom without any change to your style whatsoever.

By the time any reader even thinks to use control+F he will already have painstakingly wasted time scrolling through the page to look for the source in question, with the result of either throwing up his hands in frustration or finally finding what he desires. Of course, placing the abbreviation first makes skimming much easier. Either that or Wikicite requires only minimal or no concession from your part, and makes interaction with the article more user-friendly. Avis11 (talk) 23:11, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Any Roman onomastic recommendations?

Hello there, I noticed your name when looking through edit revisions of the List of Roman nomina and also found that in your profile you mentioned an interest in Roman onomastics. This has been a particular fascination of mine for awhile now, and I was wondering if you knew of any books which provided a good insight. I've been reading articles from JSTOR and looking through inscriptions for rarities that could be added, but was just wondering if there were any books which you felt were especially great.

Thanks, Blyndblitz (talk) 02:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Just off the top of my head, any onomastic articles by Olli Salomies (sadly his most important work is in Finnish, not English); there was an article by Benet Salway, "What's in a Name?", of course George Davis Chase's "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", which if occasionally outdated, is nonetheless an important and expansive foundational work not just on praenomina, but on gentilicia and surnames, with far more listings than you're likely to find elsewhere, grouped in various ways and treated together; Mika Kajava wrote a treatise on women's praenomina. Those are some of the main sources I've read or have handy. No doubt there are many others. But a lot of what you can learn comes from simply working with and seeing tons of names—I first started by cataloguing individuals in the indices of my Latin books and any Roman histories I could find, hunting for abbreviations in dictionaries and seeking out data in books on Roman culture. Then I began systematically cataloguing persons in classical encyclopedias. Nowadays I have access to tens of thousands of inscriptions, and all the internet can offer! But a lot of my understanding is only possible because of all the time I spent searching for any information I could, wherever I could find it. Different writers have different opinions about things, and the more experience you have, the easier it'll be to reconcile their opinions and contradictory evidence. I wrote a bunch of articles about Roman names back in 2009–2010, but they could use a rewrite. Since then I've mainly worked on Roman gentes, as catalogues of individuals. And that work's grown and changed over the years (improved, I hope). Hope this gets you started! P Aculeius (talk) 04:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Appreciate the recommendations, I'll check them out. Blyndblitz (talk) 15:44, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Article deletions

Would you mind giving an input on these two discusions (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roman Emperor (Principate) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quintus Caecilius Metellus (tribune))? I need a clearer consensus on the first, especially. Thanks. Avis11 (talk) 19:28, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

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Question regarding short descriptions

Is the singular 'family' rather than plural 'families' appropriate to describe a gens, given that not every member is related to each other? Some pages have/had the short description 'families in ancient Rome who shared the (...) nomen', or alternatively 'families in ancient Rome', both of which you tend to remove because you find them awkward. The former is awkward enough, but is it, strictly speaking, incorrect? Avilich (talk) 00:31, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe that it is. While technically persons bearing the same nomen didn't have to be blood relations, according to Roman law and custom anyone adopted into a gens became part of the family; the Latin word familia translates "household", and included the slaves of the family, and freed slaves took the nomen of their former masters, indicating that, in a sense, they remained part of the family and belonged to the same gens. The Romans may have felt there was a distinction between the descendants of ancient families and those of freedmen, but those distinctions were lost within a few generations; a century later we can only speculate as to which members were and weren't descended from the original gens, and doubtless the Romans themselves couldn't always be sure—the nomen Clodius was regarded as "plebeian", but the most famous persons to bear it were descendants of the patrician Claudii, while plebeian Claudii appear at a very early date. The later Junii claimed to be descended from Lucius Junius Brutus, though some scholars then as now were skeptical; the claim could neither be proven nor disproven in Roman times and certainly cannot be now.

We can take for granted that in many instances the same nomen gentilicium must have arisen independently on multiple occasions—but we have no way of knowing for sure in more than a handful of cases—and neither could the Romans. In modern parlance, we often use the word "family" to mean everyone who could possibly believe they are related—we accept that sometimes an assumed relationship is probably wrong, but unless we know for sure, we accept that characterization. In just the same way, the Romans usually could not tell which persons bearing a particular nomen were distantly related to each other, related only through some long-ago adoption or manumission, or not related at all. They treated the gens much the way we use the word "family" today: a variable term that could apply narrowly to a single nuclear family, or expansively to everyone who was thought to be or claimed to be related—the main distinction being that all of the gentiles bore the same nomen. Use of the plural "families" implies a lack of relationship that either contradicts Roman tradition, or assumes a degree of certainty that we seldom have—at best it's guesswork how most individuals who weren't part of the senior lines of an old and well-documented family were or weren't related.

We should probably assume that, as a pre-industrial society, the Romans often had large families. Doubtless these were limited by a relatively high mortality rate, but presumably it wasn't that much higher than in pre-industrial 18th and 19th-century rural areas, where families of twelve or fourteen children were commonplace. Even if Roman families were usually smaller than that, there must have been many, many cadet lines in families that existed for hundreds of years—potentially thousands of descendants after a mere three centuries. It would have been impossible to keep track of them all. Yet if they claimed, rightly or wrongly, to be descended from a common ancestor—they were gentiles, and part of the same family. And even allowing for the assumption that some members weren't really descended from the original ancestors of that family, the word "family", singular, is still applicable to the great majority—but in most cases we have no way of knowing, so assuming the lack of a relationship as the rule, rather than the exception, is inappropriate.

Just as importantly, the grouping of members into a gens assumes that they constitute a single family; we can't really distinguish the members who were and weren't related, but the grouping inherently implies that they were. The Romans never spoke of there being multiple Fabia gentes, multiple Julia gentes. Even though they were aware that some persons with a nomen must not have been descended from the original ancestors, and except to the extent that they were aware of someone's immediate outsider ancestry, they treated all those persons sharing the same nomen as though they were part of that gens—and descended from the ancestors of the gens. The singular "family" is the word that comes the closest to the same meaning in English. P Aculeius (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

A large and warm thanks for clarifying and taking the time to write all this. Avilich (talk) 01:56, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Pedius and Pinarius

We don't know what her husband(s) praenomia were. The names Lucius and Quintus are just assumed based on her sons/grandsons names. No names are given ancient sources, we don't even know if Julia Major actually was married twice at all. If they were her grandsons they could have been from two daughters by the same husband, or one from a son and the other from a daughter.★Trekker (talk) 19:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I would like to add that I would love to be proved wrong, if we had more detail on Julia's life that would be wonderful.★Trekker (talk) 20:03, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Cite please

Feel free to cite a Wikipedia guidline that says that Bibliography and Citations sections can not be sub-sections of References. Because I'm pretty sure that's just something that you personally feel.★Trekker (talk) 21:39, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Can you cite a guideline that says that references and bibliography ought to be combined into a single section, or that references should be referred to as "citations" instead of "references"? Why are you insistent on changing one article in a series of several hundred to use a different format from all of the rest? Aren't you just imposing your own style preferences on individual articles, irrespective of the established format for articles in a large series? Or is the goal to change the format of them all to suit your preferences? P Aculeius (talk) 21:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I never claimed that they "ought to be" simply that you can and that you reverted me only because it didn't suit your preferences. There is no rule against using a citations/bib/references section in combination. You don't decide how the page is going to look forever simply because you claim you decided how it was formated in the begining. You claimed 'this isn't done this way', and I'm questioning if you have an actual reason to say that.★Trekker (talk) 22:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)a

I don't claim to have decided the formatting—I started and developed several hundred articles about Roman gentes, and this format in the process. There were a handful of articles already in existence, but all highly inconsistent and in need of extensive revision. You're substituting your preference for an established style, even though other contributors to the article oppose it, without bothering to seek consensus for doing so, and declaring that once you've changed something to the way you want it, nobody can revert it unless they prove that their way is right and yours is wrong. Surely you can see that's a two-way street. But after some reflection, I don't see this as a battle worth waging—you want to demote "references" and "bibliography" into subsections and combine them into a single section called "references" by substituting "citations" for "references"... fine, have it your way. But next time, at least try to consider that other editors might have made a deliberate choice to follow one format consistently, and that if there's nothing inherently wrong with that decision, it might be worth discussing the matter as a suggestion first, instead of adopting a "my way or the highway" approach. P Aculeius (talk) 05:20, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

What does any of that have to do with you claiming in your edit summary that a citations section can't be used above a reflist, (and by extension from your edits that both a citations section and a bib section can't be used under a large references section)? I've seen that used in several articles (featured articles even) on many topics and no one has said before that that is wrong.★Trekker (talk) 06:30, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Ugh, you don't know when you've won, do you? The premise of your edits is that your preference is objectively better than the established style of an entire series of articles, and must not be disturbed once you've made them, even though other editors disagree with them, and you're not interested in discussing them qualitatively. You just insist that once you've changed something, it can't be undone unless a "policy" says it should be. You seem insensible to the notion that no "policy" says you should have done it in the first place, and oblivious to the notion of establishing consensus before making major changes to the formatting of articles—and clearly collaboration isn't high on your list of "policies" that you observe, since you're still arguing even after you were told to do whatever the heck you wanted—so just drop it already. P Aculeius (talk) 14:35, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't care about "winning", you can easily see that your format is the one used on the article right now. If changing the format on a gens article is so taboo/disruptive then fine I wont ever do it again. But as far as I see it you made a pretty broad claim about references and citations that I don't think makes remotly sense. Sorry if this coversation has been a bother to you, it wasn't my intent. Happy holidays.★Trekker (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you!

Hey! I just wanted to say a quick thank you for your help with a lot of my edits and articles and for the massive amount of time and content you have created for the Roman side of Wikipedia! Feels good that one can trust you in regards to when one makes a quick or sloppy edit and seeing that you have spent time to improve it for the benefit of all! I just wanted to make sure that you known that I appreciate (not that I matter that much, but it is something) what you are doing in regards to the articles we both edit on and elsewhere here on Wikipedia! I hope my edits don't cause you to much frustration and I am constantly trying to improve in these regards! If you have any spontaneous feedback or comments that I can bring with me, I would be glad to hear them!

Kind Regards CutieyKing (talk) 17:11, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! It means a lot to hear that from such an active editor. I don't have any other feedback to share right now, so just keep going as you have been, and I'm sure the other fine editors in the project will help to clean up any remaining issues. P Aculeius (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Oops ...

... that was a misclick. Paul August ☎ 01:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

No worries! Thanks for taking the time to let me know! P Aculeius (talk) 02:44, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Names ending in -anus

Hi, I'll try, with what I know, to clarify the issue here to avoid overflowing Llywrch's page with impertinent information. It's far from certain that names ending in -anus derive from place names as a general rule. Wilhelm Schulze, in his acclaimed Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen (1933), gives several examples of such gentilicia (including Norbanus) whose bearers show no affinity to the supposed place of origin. Münzer did indeed suggest that G. Norbanus, cos. 83 BC, came from Norba, Latium, but Syme, in RR p. 200 n. 3, wrote, "the ending of the gentilicium is palpably non-Latin, perhaps indicating Etruscan origin or influence" (he does go on to acknowledge Münzer's theory without dismissing it). Both Sculze and Lily Ross Taylor (in her Tribes) suggest that the only plausible way to establish a connection between the consul and Norba is to assume that the Norbani were of great antiquity, with a distant ancestor moving away from the town before any of the family's illustrious members appeared in history.

It's worth quoting in full Syme's statement (RR p. 93 n. 2) which you showed reservations towards: "Etruscan names, of three types, point to Etruria and the adjacent areas subject to the influence of its ancient civilization", and in a subsequent footnote he specifies those names as ending in -a, -as, and -anus. It seems that while -anus was a common Latin termination, it was also usual for non-Latin names when used in gentilicia. This is the extent of my current knowledge on the subject. Avilich (talk) 15:31, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

February 2021

Please do not use misleading edit summaries when making changes to Wikipedia pages, as you did to Lewis District, Mason County, West Virginia. This behavior is viewed as disruptive, and continuation may result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. - Sumanuil (talk) 00:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh, really? You deleted a picture from an article, failed to provide a reason or any edit summary, and you're warning me about "disruptive editing" for reverting the edit with the perfectly straightforward and accurate explanation, "No explanation for deleting the picture of Cornstalk"? [Edit: I forgot to mention that you then used the edit summary to shout at me for reverting your edit: "BECAUSE I DIDN'T DELETE IT." You certainly did delete the image syntax—all you had to do in the first place was say that the file had been deleted, and all you needed to do the second time was explain what the reason was—not shout at me for reverting the deletion of the image syntax, and then warn me for doing it and threaten to revoke my editing privileges.] If you do this to other editors, I'll report you for tendentious editing. Don't threaten editors because you don't like their edits—this warning is frivolous and inappropriate by any standard. P Aculeius (talk) 00:49, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Your reversion of my edits on Tarquinius Superbus

You're right about the Servius reference. I saw it in the editing box and didn't realize it was in the infobox. As for the rest: 1. Tarquinius likely wasn't legendary, which in this context clearly does mean fictional. 2. He certainly didn't rule during those years, so leaving it a bald statement is misleading. 3. It wasn't a popular uprising. Quite the contrary, it was clearly a revolt by another branch of the same family. 4. Not everyone thinks Servius = Macstarna. Some simply say that he was somebody else. 5. The prose describing the Tulliae is florid and likely lifted wholesale from some outdated English text, but more importantly, like most of the article, it reads as if it were true, instead of the total fabrication of later historians and possibly playwrights (kind of like his regnal years). Livy would be proud. It's tedious to argue with you though, so I will continue to warn my students about the Roman history articles in Wikipedia, unfortunately. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 22:41, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Tarquin certainly was legendary—in the same way that Henry VIII, George Washington, and Babe Ruth are legendary—stories are told of them, giving them larger-than-life personas. It says nothing about them being fictional. We don't know the exact years, but these are the years according to the traditional chronology, and it's an exercise in pedantry to footnote every date in early Roman history in order to explain why the chronology is probably wrong by an unknown and undeterminable quantity—and even if it weren't, the lead is not the right place to bring it up.

Arguing about whether the uprising was "popular" or "one branch of the family against another" is more than splitting hairs—it goes to how the Romans themselves perceived the event, particularly to the degree that a variety of leaders received the support of the whole people of Rome—except, according to the traditional narrative, the king's household and certain nobles who left the city to fight for him against the rest of the Roman people. And I point out that Brutus, while a member of the king's household, wasn't a branch of his family (he'd have to have been a Tarquin, not the grandson of a Tarquin), didn't belong to the same "branch" as Collatinus, and that the other actors in the overthrow of the Roman monarchy weren't related to the king at all. There's a reason why the stories about Horatius and his companions, Scaevola, Camilla, the Valerii, and the other families that were involved were so popular: they made the point that it wasn't one royal seizing power from another, but a revolution directed from the beginning at establishing what we conventionally call a republic.

I don't know offhand who you mean is disputing the identification of Macstarna with Servius Tullius—but it's the most widely known and accepted theory. I'm well-aware that it's unproven and could be wishful thinking—I just reread what Cornell has to say about it while citing him. But again, it's what's usually said, and it's the only version we know from history. Your "florid" is simply clear writing, and I truly resent your accusation of plagiarism. My point, however, was simply that the names we call them by are obviously inadequate by modern standards—so it makes sense to note that this is how the Romans referred to them in their mythology, not necessarily their proper names, if they existed as described in the story. But you've just said that it's all fiction anyway—so why bother stating the story as it's conventionally related? Because that's what we have to relate: the story as it's told, and only then do we critique its details and historicity.

You seem to be under the impression that we need to preface it by stamping fiction, fiction, don't even read this, it's garbage all over it. But as you've already made this personal by accusing me of plagiarism, the worst excesses of what you clearly regard as worthless idiocy rather than some of the best historical writing from Roman antiquity (and I'm not saying that it's perfect or correct in all details—just that judging it by modern standards and quibbling with every point while or even before you relate what it says—is absurd, hypercritical, and simply a poor approach to teaching history. So feel free to tell impressionable students that anyone whose point of view about how to discuss history and historical writing differs from your own is suspect, not to be relied upon, because you and only you are the font of truth. And be sure to teach them that the right way to argue your points is to insult someone as you're making them, and then say that the argument is finished, because you're finished speaking, and don't really care what anyone's response is. That's sure to make them better consumers of knowledge. P Aculeius (talk) 23:02, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

My apologies for a too strongly worded description of the prose regarding the Tulliae. Many of the articles on related topics have extensive passages taken from the public-domain Encyclopedia Brittanica or once-standard texts on Roman history, and sound like it. As for the rest, well, I've been down this road before, so have a nice evening. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 23:15, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Erroneous use of macrons

Hi, about this edit. I'll be straightforward and say that I've met anti-macron people before, and those that didn't belong to the ideological anti-Reconstructed pronunciation crowd were simply insufficiently informed. So let me try to help:

• You write "except in grammars and pronouncing dictionaries", which I think is irrational considering that this is an encyclopedia, which is a kind of dictionary, that adds pronunciation information to the entries' headwords. in fact there's transcriptions in three languages in the headword of the page in question, and these are languages a reader can be expected to be able to pronounce - you're removing a pronunciation aid for the one language that needs it the most.
• You write "not used now" - I'm afraid this is manifestly false, many people with whom I communicate in Latin use them habitually, as do I. Generally those who are able to, do use them, it's just that most are unable. Here's a twitter by one of the best modern Latin poets around.
• You write "not used in antiquity" - what does it concern us? If it did, you'd have gone on to remove the capitalization (or use all caps) and replace the macron with an apex, its ancient equivalent. To tell the truth I suspect you don't know about apices, because then you'd understand the necessity of marking vowel length in Latin just as the Romans understood it (you can bet it was there in their encyclopedias). It's hardly worth mentioning that apices will be mistaken for stress marks by the majority of readers, and therefore macrons have to be used in their place.
• I recommend you watch this video by an acquaintance of mine to dispel any remaining doubts you may have.
• To sum up, the even those readers who know Latin will be helped greatly by having Latin vowel length (and pronunciation) marked in article headwords, and hopefully this time around you will agree that it's desirable to use macrons to that end. Brutal Russian (talk) 03:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Kindly don't assume that everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant and uninformed. Macrons are not an authentic characteristic of Latin—people who use them now largely do so because they are used in textbooks for teaching Latin, and encouraged by the teachers of those courses to help their students learn the "correct" pronunciation (often assuming that Latin had a single, standardized pronunciation, which was almost certainly never the case—this is a grand oversimplification meant to make teaching easier). An apex is not a macron—and they were never a standardized feature in Latin writing. They appear in some inscriptions, but the majority of Latin writing lacks them.

But all of this is quite irrelevant to your only justification for adding macrons. You say that readers will benefit from having a guide to the pronunciation of Latin words—but there's a place to indicate the pronunciation of Latin words that occur in the subject of a title—and that is immediately following the first occurrence of the words in the lead. You can do so using IPA for Latin, or several types of pronunciation respelling, which would allow the use of macrons. There are templates leading to information about pronouncing Latin that can be used on words occurring elsewhere, but in most instances Latin words occurring in English texts either have English pronunciations or are fairly transparent—as are most Latin names—and do not really require a pronunciation guide. So please don't write off people whose opinion differs from yours as "ideological anti-macron people who are insufficiently informed". You can achieve your goals in ways that don't conflict with historical or general usage, and without lecturing people about their lamentable ignorance. P Aculeius (talk) 12:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Dear P Aculeius, I think you misunderstand how the human mind works. One is not in control of the things they assume - when you see a long dark shape in the grass, you assume it's a snake; when you see something that resembles a human face, it causes empathy in you. When you see a behaviour you've already encountered numerous times, you assume that the enderlying reasons for it are the same if you're blessed with any ability to generalize at all. But one can lie about or conceal what they initially assumed, or they can be forthcoming about it. I chose the latter option, and it's wrong to try to shame me for being candid. Knowing what the other party assumes helps you address it and reach consensus much easier; it's precisely a clash between mutual assumptions that underlies most arguments and misunderstandings. In no way does this mean that I'm writing you off; even if you believe that I am, you still should appreciate that you learned about it from me instead of having to assume it yourself. Please keep this fundamental observation in mind for the future.

What's more, I still believe my assumption was correct, as you're clearly insufficiently informed on the matter. Macrons were indeed an authentic characteristic of Latin: they were adopted from Greek along with breves and used in scansion exercises. More imporantly, despite what you seem to believe, Latin spelling was never fully standardised, and what standardisation there was came during and after the Silver Age through the work of grammarians which was constantly being undermined by language change. Apices were absolutely a standardised feature of Latin writing; their use wasn't enforced, but they were the standard way to spell vowel length, and non-native speakers may have been taught to use them consistently if the Vindolanda Tablets are any indication. As for your statement about standardised pronunciation, it might be true in general, but is rarely true when it comes to stressed vowels. More importantly, when the vowel attested in the modern word regularly reflects a Latin vowel of known length, speculation about what other pronunciations might have existed becomes simple whataboutism. In the vast majority of cases these reflexes agree between most or all languages - tracing them has been something of my specialty lately, so I'm confident in what I'm saying. In this particular instance, [aˈrettso] reflects the vowel /ē/; if it didn't, we'd still be obliged to list it as long as the form reflected by Ancient Greek Ἀρρήτιον.

What is "the subject of a title"? The only thing I can think of is precisely the same as what I called the headword. This is the place where you removed the macron from - not from a random place in an English text. I'm not aware of any pronunciation respellings for Latin and have never encountered them, or even a need for them, because Latin spelling is close enough to being phonetic. Further you talk about Latin words occurring in English texts that are pronounced according to English rules. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of this discussion, which is not Latinisms in English, but indicating the pronunciation of actual Latin.

On the whiole, I cannot wrap my head around your objections and suggestions other than on the assumption of some combination of ideology and insufficient knowledge of the question. Why would you want to encumber the reader and the page with phonetic transcriptions instead of using the simplest of solutions that is the macron? Your words do indeed make it look like you're ideologically opposed to macrons as something "non-authentic", a modern invention, perhaps even silly and puerile, fit only for introductory textbooks - despite being reassured that the best Latinists employ them in their everyday writing. Though I would not be surprised to learn that you put modern Latinists on the same level as children playing with the sacred monument that is authentic Roman Latin - I've seen all too many examples of this attitude. Most importantly, even if all of your assumptions were correct (and I hope to have demonstrated that they're anything but), this would still not address the elephant in the room: this is an encyclopedia; its headword/subject/titles must contain the diacritics necessary for correct pronunciation even if these aren't habitually used in the language - stress marks in Russian are a good example. All modern Latin reference materials worth any salt use the macron in this function. How is it possible to object to adopting their use on this website other than compelled by some kind of ideological aversion?

Please assume that I'm writing in good faith and am interested in understanding your exact reasons and motivations - I won't try to shame you for it :-)

p.s.: sānē quam grātum fēceris sī ad haec Latīnē respondēbis, necnōn et illās quās dē tē ūsque adhūc concēpī opīniōnēs, continuō tollēs. Brutal Russian (talk) 01:01, 2 April 2021 (UTC)