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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 10 October 2023 [1].

Temple of Apollo Palatinus

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Nominator(s): UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about what was, at least in its day, one of Rome's grandest temples. Built by the not-quite-yet emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill, the temple played a major role in Rome's religious life and political ideology. It was, by turns, a senate-house, war memorial, public library and distribution centre for sulphur. The article has to wrestle with the deeply complicated issue of the join between ancient text and modern archaeology: the reconstruction of the complex around the temple is deeply controversial and its excavations have not been brilliantly documented. The article has undergone a peer review from Golden, Modussiccandi and Caeciliusinhorto, to whom I am greatly obliged for points both stylistic and substantive, and a Good Article nomination by Simongraham. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Tim O'D

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Claiming a spot now. Review soon-ish. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 20:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ignorant on the subject matter, but having a bash:
  • The Temple of Apollo Palatinus ('Palatine Apollo') - is this translated? From Latin, I presume. If so, could use a language template.
  • 'Palatine Apollo' is a translation of Apollo Palatinus, but we use language templates for text in the non-English language, and the overall name given ("Temple of Apollo Palatinus") is English in the same way that "Cathedral of Notre Dame" is: we wouldn't put a French language template halfway through that name. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:39, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • sometimes called the Temple of Actian Apollo,[1] - as this is in Construction, does it need to be cited here too?
  • Ditto It has been described by the archaeologist John Ward-Perkins as "one of the earliest and finest of the Augustan temples".[2]
  • According to his biographer Suetonius, he claimed to have "found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble".[5] - very famous quote, but is it needed here? Bit of a cliche in my opinion.
  • This came up at PR: this is what I put in response there:

It is a very famous quote, and I think there's value in indicating to the reader that Augustus claimed to be engaged in totally rebuilding the city; that claim both gives evidence for what precedes it and useful context for what follows it. John Ward-Perkins uses it in exactly the same way, so there's a secondary-source context for connecting the quotation with the building programme. We could rephrase to something like "Augustus claimed to have totally refounded the city of Rome and to have beautified it in the process", I suppose, but that would seem like a bad swap to me.

Did you have a particular change in mind? UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not if you're happy with it. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:37, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • senate-house or senate house?
  • I opened up a recent academic book to see where they went (the Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero), and they have one of each. Perhaps a little old-fashioned (certainly seems less common in phrases like charnel house in recent publications): hyphen removed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • connection - British English article, so consider using "connexion" instead.
Bit of a shame that the original version is slowly receding into the rear mirror of history, but what can you do. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:39, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cossutius, a brick-maker employed by Gaius Asinius Pollio, a politician and literary patron of the early Augustan era, was likely involved - try Cossutius, a brick-maker employed by Gaius Asinius Pollio—a politician and literary patron of the early Augustan era—was likely involved.
Good idea: done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More to come. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 13:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Right, time to wrap up. Comments soon, for real this time. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 20:29, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any reason to have single quotes (') and not double quotes (") for some of the translations?
MOS:SINGLE advises single quotes for all glosses: I think that's been followed consistently, but please shout if I've mixed some up. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Extra full stop after ref 54.
Fixed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Second paragraph of "Location" is a bit sparsely sourced: assume that ref 54 covers most of it, but wouldn't hurt to duplicate it somewhere so it doesn't look like a big chunk of unsourced text.
We've got two sentences cited to one citation, then three cited to the next. WP:WHENNOTCITE has Per WP:PAIC, citations should be placed at the end of the passage that they support. If one source alone supports consecutive sentences in the same paragraph, one citation of it at the end of the final sentence is sufficient. It is not necessary to include a citation for each individual consecutive sentence, as this is overkill, so I think the present solution is the best fit with that guidance. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The temple's precinct – the Area Apollonis – was built - shouldn't em-dashes be used here, so *The temple's precinct—the Area Apollonis—was built [...]?
The MoS (MOS:DASH, I think) says that either spaced endashes or unspaced emdashes are fine at editorial discretion: I prefer the spaced endash as I think it's better for readability, as it avoids jamming words together. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • the intercolumniation of the pronaos was diastyle (that is, the gap between each pair of columns was three times a column's width). - might be able to replace the brackets with a colon here.
I don't think that would be wrong, but I don't think it's necessarily better: to my eye, brackets fit better for what's very much an aside from the main narrative. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two extra "squiggly brackets" (sorry, don't know what on earth the proper name is) after ref 73.
Fixed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • libation-bowl - hyphen needed?
As we removed it for senate house, I'll do the same here for consistency. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The cult statue of Latona was by Kephisdotos the Younger, the son of the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, while that of Diana was originally sculpted by the Epidaurian artist Timotheos, but its head was remade by Avianus Evander,[35] an Athenian artist who had been taken to Rome as a prisoner in the mid-first century BCE.[76] - quite long, I'd split it up with dashes and semicolons, something like: The cult statue of Latona was by Kephisdotos the Younger—the son of the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles—while that of Diana was originally sculpted by the Epidaurian artist Timotheos; its head was remade by Avianus Evander,[35] an Athenian artist who had been taken to Rome as a prisoner in the mid-first century BCE.[76]
I've taken a slightly different approach, but split it in two, hopefully solving the problem. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • the Roman emperor Lucius Verus - could use the reigned template like you have in similar other places.
The point of using the template elsewhere was that we were using these reigns as a dating system (that is, our only information on the date of an event was that it happened under that emperor): here, however, we are already using a more precise date, so I think it would unnecessarily clutter the text and potentially create some confusion. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • it represented the restoration of Rome's 'golden age' - attribution? ;) (joking)
{{sfn|Augustus, G. J. C. O.|27 BCE}} UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • For Zanker, the temple was part of a cultural programme - consider rephrasing: "For Zanker", whilst making sense in languages like French, is a bit unclear here. Maybe "Zanker saw the temple as a part" or similar.
I think it's fairly standard in English, at least in academic writing and at least when dealing with (contrasting) interpretations of e.g. art, architecture and literature. I'm not seeing much chance for confusion in the sense of any reasonable chance of not understanding what it means, or understanding some other meaning from it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • In function, you have "eighty" spelled out but "27" in numerals.
Changed "eighty" into figures: MOS:NUMERAL wants consistency between numbers that are "near" each other, and I'm not sure that an adjacent paragraph is quite that, but equally it doesn't hurt. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • published around 4 BCE - why not the circa template?
Abbreviations shouldn't really be used in flowing text, only in infoboxes and in brackets. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • (63.0 by 121.4 by 15.4 ft), - is the comma wanted?
Yes: measuring 19.2 by 37.0 by 4.7 metres (63.0 by 121.4 by 15.4 ft) is a parenthetical clause. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The area around the temple, including its sanctuary and the rest of the domus Augusti complex, was further excavated by Carettoni between 1956 and 1984 - hats off for dedication, Christ.

And that is all from me. Happy to support even without waiting for the amendments. Truly another excellent article by someone who's been around less time than me but already has ∞ times more FAs. Good work all round. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 20:58, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for these comments and for your support - as ever, some sharp observations and food for thought in each case, even where our personal tastes diverged. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Funk

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Yes, but I'm thinking to whatever entity it was at the time. FunkMonk (talk) 08:50, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Rome" as written here is definitely the city, rather than the civilisation, so I'm not sure a link to e.g. Ancient Rome on it would be correct. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:12, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "whose worship originated in the Greek world, was considered a 'foreign' deity" Isn't that the case for most Roman gods?
    • Afraid not. It's a long story, but in short, the two traditions descend from the same source, so while the Greeks and Romans both have the "same" god as Jupiter/Zeus, it isn't accurate to say that the Romans "got" Jupiter from the Greeks. However, Apollo doesn't seem to be part of that inherited tradition, but rather to have spread into Etruscan and Roman religion directly from contact with Greek cities. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "against Mark Antony, Octavian" Could specify what their occupations/ranks were to contextualise their roles?
    • Neither concept really works all that well in ancient Rome, particularly not at this time. We've already introduced Octavian as the controller of the Roman state, and Antony as his enemy in the civil war: I think that's enough for what's needed in this context. Adding that both were former consuls would be distracting and somewhat tangential to the point at hand: that status had very little to do with either of them being in the position they were. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "who reports having read it in the Greek author Asclepias of Mendes" How does someone read something in an author?
  • Link Augustus and Apollo in image caption, as well as other terms not linked in captions.
  • "already considered particularly sacred" For what reason?
    • I don't think there was a particular reason: there isn't a sharp divide between sacred and non-sacred ground in Roman culture, which is where the adverb particularly came from. The whole Palatine was somewhat sacred in that it was the site of Rome's original foundation, ordained by the gods as the seat of Romulus's city; to a lesser extent, that was true of the whole city, and we get a very good sense from Aeneid 8 of the generally but non-specifically numinous feel of the place to the Romans of Augustus' time. The sources are clear that this specific site was more sacred than the rest, but don't go into detail as to why - I don't expect anyone in 36 BCE could have given you a clear answer. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • State what Apollo was the god of?
    • The "god of" concept doesn't work very well for classical religion: it's better to think of gods as being associated with or patrons of certain things (which may overlap with the purviews of other gods). Apollo is associated with a big bunch of vaguely-related things. From the Background section, Apollo was held in Roman culture to represent discipline, morality, purification and the punishment of excess: I think that's the best explanation (it's Zanker's) that gets the point across without going into the tiny minutiae. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Greek art was held to have an "acknowledged moral superiority"" But why would the temple of a Greek god then be considered unfit for being within the city?
    • Those two things aren't the same: Greek art is very different to Greek gods, and the specific belief that only Roman gods should be enshrined within the pomerium never implied that nothing Greek should exist there. I strongly suspect that this "belief" only existed in retrospect (Juno, who was meant to have originally been a goddess of Veii, had temples within the city), but that would be OR to include: the sources all report it as fact. Remember that there's also a big time gap here: we're talking about the mid-fifth century BCE for the founding of Apollo Sosianus (and so the alleged prohibition on a temple within the pomerium), while Apollo Palatinus (and the "moral superiority of Greek art") is four centuries later, by which time building a temple to Apollo within the city clearly isn't a problem. UndercoverClassicist T·C 22:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the reconstruction of the complex around the temple is deeply controversial" I don't get a hint of a controversy from reading the article, anything that could be elaborated upon?
    • I don't really want to get too far into those weeds in the article: the main issues are the orientation of the temple itself and the position of the Portico of the Danaids in relation to it: the latter is at least partly out of scope, but I've tried to discuss it in outline around the diagram of the Area Apollonis complex (and in the associated caption). The much bigger problem is the status of the domus Augusti and whether it had anything to do with Augustus: although sources will still say that it did, they mostly seem to be repeating the "traditional" identification: those that look at the evidence pretty universally conclude that the identification is unsound. Again, I've tried to cover this in outline while not getting sidetracked by something that is really the focus of a different article. UndercoverClassicist T·C 12:57, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not seeing the stated changes, perhaps weren't saved? FunkMonk (talk) 15:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - last issues seem to have been fixed now. FunkMonk (talk) 13:21, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you. I'm still working on the process of identification: it turns out it's a little more complicated and interesting than currently in the article. Got some good sources and will hopefully be able to turn into something coherent this evening. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:15, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Elias

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Already skimmed this very interesting article. I'll leave my comments shortly.el.ziade (talkallam) 07:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Location section: Excavations from the early twenty-first century indicate that the house was largely destroyed... are you referring to Zink's excavations?
    Unfortunately, it's not clear, and I was a little more specific about the date than Wiseman allows (now changed). He cites a paper which I can't get hold of from 2006. The excavations in question are of the house, not the temple, so it's likely that they cover projects outside the scope of this article. I've amended to be as specific as I think we can be. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Same section: Roma Quadrata without italics, link it please.
  • The passage The temple's cult statue of Apollo was depicted on the Sorrento Base, a late-Augustan or early-Tiberian (that is, c. 14 CE) statue plinth first identified as a depiction of it by the German architectural historian Christian Hülsen in 1894. seems out of place, maybe insert in the description section?
    • It needs to be in Reception, as the Sorrento Base was made about half a century after the temple was opened, and wasn't ever part of it. It does make for an awkwardly short paragraph, but only because it's the temple's only real footprint in the visual arts. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Other scenes show human beings worshipping sacred objects, do we really want to use "human beings"?
  • In Excavation section: Arcus Octavi --> Arcus Octavii? Also link first instance to Arch of Octavius in the Architecture section.
  • Lead, location, and Excavation section: capitalize Domus in domus Augusti.
  • Italicize "pronaos" consistently.
  • May have more later. el.ziade (talkallam) 09:16, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by RoySmith

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Just a few random things I've spotted:

  • The lead is four paragraphs, all of which start with "The temple [...] was". Could you find some less repetitive phrasing?
  • Infobox: the alt text "Temple of Apollo Palatinus is located in Rome" appears to being picked up automatically from the image title, but it's not useful as a non-visual description. I believe the "map-alt" attribute of {{Infobox ancient site}} will let you set something more useful. Also, the caption "Shown within ancient Rome" doesn't make sense in isolation. Perhaps something like "Location of the temple within ancient Rome"?
  • Sculptures and artwork: The image of Apollo Barberini needs an alt text.
  • Function: The alt text for Relief with Tripod (49350890031).jpg doesn't do the image justice. I would certainly include that it's a broken fragment of sculpture. Also, while I'm not an expert on this stuff, I think "bas-relief" describes it more accurately than "flat".
  • Excavation: add "stone wall" to the alt text.
Thank you for these: all good points and all done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

SC

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Putting down a marker for now. - SchroCat (talk) 22:13, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Later history
  • "to the French archaeologist": any reason why his nationality is important?
Architecture
  • "The British archaeologist", "Austrian archaeologist", "American archaeologist" and all those in the footnotes too: ditto. I'm not sure what these descriptions add to a reader's understanding of the Temple of Apollo Palatinus
    • Seems to be a general view against these nationalities, so I've generally removed them, with an exception for Rosa (and by extension Carettoni) in the "Excavation" section: I think it's interesting and important that the site has always been under Italian "control", despite the land itself being originally owned by an emperor of France. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:50, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is it worth moving the explanation of the cella into the main text? I missed the footnote and wondered what it was when I got there.

Support Only a couple of suggestions from me, the answers to which won't affect my support. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 16:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Tim riley

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Nothing much from me – mere quibbles. Adopt or throw out as you wish.

Thank you, as ever, for these, Tim. One I still need to work on, others replied to. No hard disagrees, but a few queries or hesitations. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • General
  • I can't work out your thinking about single -v- double quotation marks, but the MoS would have us choose the latter as default.
  • In theory, single quotes for Glosses that translate or define unfamiliar terms per MOS:SINGLE, and generally for "scare quotes": that is, terms like 'foreign' deity, where the categorisation was seen as appropriate in its time and the perception of it is vital to understanding, but we wouldn't endorse that term today (in this case, because our whole paradigm of where religion comes from has shifted). The MoS doesn't really rule on that latter situation: the system adopted here was fleshed out during the PR/FAC of Panagiotis Kavvadias. Happy to take a steer here: suggest it might be wise to work case by case. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • We have an abnormally high number of red links throughout the article. Do you think they are likely to turn blue in the foreseeable future? See the first bullet point of WP:REDNO.
  • I suppose I'm thinking of WP:NODEADLINE here: my reading of that first bullet point is that we shouldn't redlink articles with limited chance of ever being created (e.g. because they're not notable, or because the sources on them don't presently exist). I think all of the redlinks would pass GNG and make at least a decent Start- to C-class article (I thought about starting Avianus Evander myself). I think we're on the right side of the admonition at the start of WP:REDLINK: In general, a red link should remain in an article if there is a reasonable expectation that the article in question will eventually be created (either as its own article or as a redirect); remove red links if and only if Wikipedia should not have any coverage on the subject. Happy to be quibbled on specific examples, though. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead
  • Whenever possible I think it's better not to have citations in the lead. Of course the Ward-Perkins quote needs a citation, but "sometimes called the Temple of Actian Apollo" is covered in the main text, where I should say the citation belongs.
  • You're now the second person to raise this: I think you're right; the logic was that it's an implied quotation ("it has been called" = "someone has called it..."), but I think that's over-cautious given the citation in the body. Removed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Background
  • "was considered a 'foreign' deity" – do we need the quotes? (If so they should be double according to the MoS.)
  • "his first major architectural project undertaken independently in the city" – I'm struggling a little with this. Independent of what or whom? And how does this square with "It was the second of four temples built in Rome by Augustus", later in the text?
OK: it's pretty much the first project Augustus definitely had a hand in, but the Temple of Caesar is definitely earlier (both in commencement and dedication), and is, at least initially, a team effort between then-Octavian, Lepidus and Antony. I've added an EFN to explain this: not sure if enough or if some clarification in the text would help, but equally not fully of ideas for how best to do the latter. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "While the temple's official name was the Temple of Actian Apollo (using the epithet Actius), it was also informally known by the same god's epithets" – I'd be cautious about using "while" to mean "although" here. We aren't quite into "Miss Smith sang Mozart while Mr Brown played Brahms" territory, but the "while" here could certainly be read in a temporal sense – "during the period when".
  • "Cossutius … was likely involved in the temple's construction, based on finds of his stamp on bricks" – two things here, neither of them earth-shattering. First if, as appears, the article is in BrE, "was likely involved" is not normal BrE: "was probably involved" would be usual. And secondly, grammatically the sentence could do with a helping hand: Cossutius is the subject of the sentence and he wasn't based on finds of his stamp. Perhaps something on the lines of "Cossutius, a brick-maker employed by Gaius Asinius Pollio – a politician and literary patron of the early Augustan era – was probably involved in the temple's construction: bricks with his stamp have been found in the temple and adjacent buildings."
  • Later history
  • "According to the French archaeologist Pierre Gros" – do we need to know his nationality?
  • It's fairly standard to introduce new people as "the Nationality profession, FirstName LastName", isn't it? That's certainly my default when I don't have any more interesting information to offer but don't want to treat the reader as if they should already know them. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Location
  • "the proximity between the monuments" – unexpected preposition: one might expect "of"
  • "late Republican domus … constructed during the late Roman Republic." Not sure we need both "late"s.
  • "disproven by later excavations" – in English English (though not in Scottish English) the past tense of prove is proved, and the same goes for disprove and disproved.
  • Architecture
  • "The British archaeologist John Ward-Perkins" – I doubt if his nationality is any more relevant to the article than that of Pierre Gros. Likewise for "British archaeologist Amanda Claridge", "the French classicist Gilles Sauron" (how he must hate Tolkien), "the Austrian archaeologist Stephan Zink", "the German classical archaeologist Lilian Balensiefen" and "the German architectural historian Christian Hülsen".
  • See above; I think it's a fairly standard introduction. There's some (small) value in emphasising the multi-national nature of classics as a field, and of the study of this monument, and also some value in getting variation from endless "the classicist... the archaeologist..." etc. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Point absolutely taken, but somewhere in the MoS I think we are bidden to refrain from specifying people's nationalities unless they are relevant. I often dodge the issue by saying "the historian X in his 2002 study of Y says...". It doesn't, in truth, tell the reader anything he or she needs to know, but it lends an air of authority and moves the prose along. Ahem, and pray don't say I said so. Tim riley talk 20:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not averse to treating this as a pure stylistic question rather than simply a matter of the MoS, but do you mean MOS:NATIONALITY? As I read that, it specifically covers opening paragraphs, and advises excluding ethnicity and previous nationalities while including, where possible, someone's "main" nationality. MOS:INFONAT does advise against including nationality in infoboxes where avoidable, but the logic there is that it's usually, in practice, a simple extension of their place of birth. I'm not sure that either is really interested in this kind of situation: did you have another guideline in mind? UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:31, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Parts of the column capitals were likely gilded" – "probably", probably, as above.
  • Reception
  • "the historians Josephus and Velleius Paterculus in the 1st century" – at first glance they look like brothers with the same surname. If they can be switched round without affecting the sense it might make for smoother reading.
  • Footnotes
  • Some of the References seem hybrid – partly citations and partly explanatory footnotes, e.g. Ref 19: "Hill 1962, p. 129. Suetonius records the story at Divus Augustus 94.4". I don't know what other editors think, but for my money the bit about Suetonius would be more helpful to the reader if moved to the Explanatory notes section. I do not by any means press the point, or indeed any of the points above.
  • I think it's neater to have it in the reference, since it is a citation of sorts (albeit to the primary source on which the secondary one is based): making a new EFN creates a new blue footnote, which is a readability trade-off, and means that we end up with a whole load of very short EFNs that just give links to primary sources. Appreciate that the line between a fleshed-out reference and an explanatory note is fuzzy: I've tried to stick to keeping it in the reference footnote when it's strictly about how a reader can verify the information, and using an EFN when it's about going beyond that with some sort of tangent or additional context. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:42, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I enjoyed the article greatly, and learned a thing or two as well. I'll look in again with a view to adding my support after a final perusal. Tim riley talk 13:16, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Supporting. Happy to leave the nominator to deal with the one outstanding point, above. The article is a pleasure to read, well and widely sourced, nicely illustrated, well proportioned and is in all respects of FA quality in my view. Tim riley talk 20:36, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Greatly appreciated: thank you on all counts. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:16, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Choliamb

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  • I've uploaded a better photograph of the podium of the temple, taken in 1994: File:Rome, Temple of Apollo Palatinus podium (1994).jpg. I think this might be a more useful lead image than the single fragment of a capital that now holds that place, but I'll let you decide. At the very least, it should probably replace the unsatisfactory photo of the temple podium currently in the Excavation section.
Done, and moved the column capital to replace the old image of the podium. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:06, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't understand why the Danaids from the portico are illustrated with a photo of the bronzes from the Villa of the Papyri when we actually have some of the originals on which those bronzes are based, and there are photos of them in the Commons (see c:Category:Female Hermai from the temple of Apollo Palatino). These figures were extensively restored in 1997, but still, wouldn't it be better to use a photo of material that comes from the Palatine itself wherever possible?
I wasn't aware of those - thank you. Found an image and a useful bit of context for the provenance of those statues. I am a little dissatisfied that I can't find anything in print about their restoration in 1997: do you happen to know of anything? UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:06, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The date comes from the new(ish) catalogue of the Palatine museum, Museo Palatino: Le collezioni, ed. Carlo Gasparri and Maria Tomei, published by Electa in 2014. But now that I go back and read more carefully, it's clear that this was just the most recent consolidazione of the figures, and that they were actually restored shortly after their excavation by Rosa and exhibited on the Palatine already in the 1870s (Visconti and Lanciani, Guido del Palatino (Rome 1873), pp. 73–74, described as caryatids). They were subsequently moved to the Museo Nazionale, and then back up to the Palatine in 1997 for the reopening of the antiquarium there after many years of closure. I'll send you some page scans. Maria Tomei is the one who made the association with the Portico of the Danaids, and presumably her two articles would give you all the detail you could want: "Le tre 'Danaidi' in nero antico dal Palatino," Bollettino di archeologia 5–6 (1990), pp. 35–48, and "Danaidi in rosso antico dal Palatino," Romische Mitteilungen 112 (2005–2006), pp. 379–384. I have not read either of them and unfortunately neither one appears to be available online. But she's the author of the entry in the catalogue, so that presumably gives a good summary of her views. Choliamb (talk) 18:28, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the same vein, I'm surprised to find no illustration of the painted terracotta reliefs, which are among the most photogenic of all the surviving works of art associated with the temple and the house of Augustus. The panel with Apollo and Herakles facing off over the Delphic tripod in particular is probably directly relevant to the role of the temple as a memorial to the victory at Actium. There are plenty of photos of these reliefs in the Commons (see c:Category:Ancient Roman reliefs in the Antiquarium del Palatino (Rome)), and I can upload more if you're not satisfied with the quality of the existing ones. IMO, one of these would be a more useful contribution to the article than the marble relief fragment with the tripod (on which see below).
  • Following on from the previous point: the interpretation of the Apollo and Herakles panel as a reflection of the contest between Octavian and Antony is credited here to Steve Tuck, but it is not his idea: it was discussed at some length in an interesting article on the ideological significance of the temple's decorative program by Barbara Kellum, first published in 1985: "Sculptural Programs and Propaganda in Augustan Rome: The Temple of Apollo on the Palatine," in The Age of Augustus, ed. R. Winkes (Archaeologia Transatlantica 5. Providence 1985), pp. 169–176; reprinted in Roman Art in Context, ed. E. d'Ambra (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993), pp. 75–83. This article is definitely worth a read; if you can't track it down online, let me know and I'll email you a copy.
  • The photo of the marble relief fragment with the tripod is a real eyesore in its current form: all that blank space, with a tiny piece of marble tucked away in one corner. At the very least the current photo should be cropped, but hold off on doing that, because I'm pretty sure I have a better photo of that fragment, which I will hunt down and upload later today.
Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 14:37, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all of these - no quarrel with any of them and will work my way through. Could I take you up on the offer of a PDF of Kellum's article? Will send you a Wikimail. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:59, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Email received. Meanwhile, I've uploaded a better photo of the tripod relief here: File:Fragmentary relief of tripod (Rome Pal Ant 475909).jpg. Choliamb (talk) 15:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And reply received; much obliged. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:06, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Choliamb: I think I've now been able to act on all of these, and on the material you generously sent me by email. Galinsky in particular was particularly fruitful and has made his way into the article at numerous points. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:48, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Choliamb, part 2. Okay, I've now completed a careful read of the entire article, and I have another list of suggestions for your consideration. Most of them are trivial points and a few are quibbles, but because having a bunch of nits picked off you all at once can be an unpleasant experience, let me preface this by stating in advance my support for the nomination (which I will repeat below in bold), regardless of how many of the changes below you ultimately decide to make. To aid in navigation I've grouped them according to the subheadings (not the main headings) used in the article.

Background

  • "City of brick, city of marble." Perhaps cite Suet. Aug. 28.3 in the footnote (in addition to, not instead of, Ward-Perkins), to help out readers who want to see what Suetonius actually says? (You do below with Suetonius and others in current footnotes 19, 29, 76, and 122).
    • (Can I put on record how much I appreciate you digging out and including the primary-source citations: it is much appreciated). Done, and slightly adjusted the quote (now a paraphrase), which was the famous formulation but not quite what S. wrote. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:57, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Temples restored during in 28 BCE. The text currently says "in 28 BCE, Augustus claimed to have restored eighty-two [temples]". This is a little misleading, I think, because the claim that he had restored 82 temples during his sixth consulship was made by Augustus in the Res Gestae, which were published on his death in 14 CE, not in 28 BCE. In other words, it's the restoration, not the claim, that dates to 28 BCE. This is a quibble, I know, but it can be avoided by simple rephrasing. Perhaps something like "Augustus claimed to have restored eighty-two temples in the year 28 BCE alone" vel sim. (And maybe add a reference to Res Gestae 20.4 to the note for those who want to see the claim itself?)
  • Asclepias of Mendes. I see why you wrote this, based on the genitive form Asclepiadis in the text of Suetonius. But Athenaeus calls him Asklepiades, not Asklepias, and that is how he is known to modern scholarship (see, e.g., FGrH 617, RE II.2, col. 1627, s.v. Asklepiades 26). The red wikilink in the article is almost comically aspirational, since not enough is known about this guy to fill even a microstub!

Construction

  • Rhamnusius. The article currently says that this epithet refers to "Apollo's sanctuary at Rhamnous". I don't think we know this, and it is not what the source cited (Hill 1962) says. Hill refers not to a sanctuary of Apollo but to the "Nemeseion" -- i.e., the sanctuary of Nemesis, most famous sanctuary at Rhamnous and one of the most famous in Attica. No one has come up with a very convincing explanation for the epithet Rhamnusius, known only from a single mention in the late antique Notitiae: most modern sources assume that the cult statue on the Palatine was originally taken from Rhamnous, but that's just an assumption without any ancient authority. If it did come from Rhamnous, it presumably came from the sanctuary of Nemesis, as Hill guesses, but again, it's just a guess. Since there is no scholarly consensus, perhaps better simply to admit that the meaning of the epithet remains obscure. (If you need a citation for that, the entry in Richardson will do, or for more detail the discussion in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon, IV, col. 88, which is what all the topographical dictionaries seem to cite.)

Later history

  • Fire of 363. The article currently says that the temple "was destroyed in a fire on 18 March 363, during the fourth-century persecutions of non-Christians in the Roman Empire". To me, this wording implies pretty strongly that the destruction was the result of a deliberate attack by disgruntled Christians. Is there any evidence for that? The only ancient source cited by Platner and Ashby is Amm. Marc. 23.3.3, which gives the date, but says nothing about the cause except that it was a fire. So I looked at the three sources cited at the end of the following sentence. In spite of the fact that the note tells readers to turn to Quenemoen "for the cause of the destruction", she appears to say nothing (at least on p. 234, the page cited) about motives or circumstances, only recording the date and the fact that it burned. And unless I've overlooked it, the same is true of Hill. I don't have the LTUR to hand; does Gros discuss the events of 363 in more detail? If he doesn't, perhaps it would be better just to leave the Christians out of the sentence in order to avoid implying an association for which there is no evidence? Temples catch fire for many reasons, after all.

Location

  • "House of Augustus". Since I carp a lot about little things in these comments, let me lean the other way and say good on you for emphasizing how problematic the identification of the House of Augustus actually is.

Architecture

  • Intercolumniation. It seems a little awkward to me that you discuss the wide intercolumniation in two separate paragraphs, first in connection with Kellum's suggestion that it was intended to recall the Capitoline temple, and then again in the next paragraph when you cite Vitruvius on the term diastyle. I don't suppose there's a way to bring these two together in one place or the other (since it is precisely the diastyle spacing that Kellum is commenting on). Also, is it worth adding a reference to Vitruvius 3.3.4 to the note (as with Suetonius above)?
  • Orientation. I don't understand the argument attributed to Claridge here. The fact that the temple was diastyle only means that the columns were farther apart than normal; it doesn't change the overall size or footprint of the building, which is determined by the remains of the podium, so what does it mean to say that the temple could not have fit into the available space? Has something been garbled here? I haven't read the article you cite in Reconstruction and the Historic City, but the explanation that Claridge gives in her Oxford guide to Rome (2nd ed., pp. 142–143) is very different and seems to make much more sense: there she argues (1) that the foundations at the northern end are less substantial and better suited for the lighter structure of the pronaos, while the more substantial southern foundations would have supported the heavier cella; and (2) that the "tremendous visual impact" of the temple on visitors makes more sense if the facade faced northward, the direction from which people would have approached the building, rather than southward over the edge of the hill toward the Circus Maximus. I take no position on whether or not her suggestion is correct; I'm just trying (and failing) to understand her reasoning as it is currently expressed in the article.

Sculpture and artwork

  • Cult statue by Scopas. Pliny does say that the cult statue of Apollo was made by Scopas, but as I mentioned above, the additional claim that the statue came from Rhamnous has no ancient authority; it is modern speculation based on the puzzling epithet Rhamnusius. Your citation of Coarelli on this point fails verification, I believe: unless I've missed it, he says nothing about Rhamnous (and rightly so). It pains me to see the Rhamnous connection stated here in Wikivoice, just because some modern scholars have repeated the speculation as if it were fact. But if you feel you must include it, the phrasing ("the Nemeseion sanctuary of Apollo at Rhamnous") needs to be changed, since Nemeseion = sanctuary of Nemesis.
    • Reworked: still there, as the suggestion is in the sources, but I've tried to soften it and be clear that it's really a conjecture. The sources are a bit more bullish than you've been here: Hill presents the Rhamnous origin as fact, while Richardson has it as "the possibility that...". Has anyone discussed the idea more sceptically in print? UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think your question gets it backward: the burden is on the modern scholars who repeat the story to support it by citing ancient evidence -- any evidence at all -- that the epithet Rhamnusius had something to do with the statue by Scopas. Maybe there is some, but I've never seen it. So I tried to chase it down. Platner and Ashby and Richardson refer to Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig 1909–1915), IV, col. 88, s.v. Rhamnousios. Roscher's source was Jordan and Hülsen's Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum (Berlin 1871–1907), I.3, p. 67, note 70. Jordan and Hülsen pointed me to Ludwig Ulrichs, Skopas: Leben und Werke (Greifswald 1863), p. 67. And that's the end of the line. The story starts with Ulrichs. Does he cite any ancient sources to support his explanation of the epithet? No, he does not. He simply says that it seems more likely to him than the alternative explanation suggested by Ludwig Preller, Die Regionen der Stadt Rome (Jena 1846), p. 182. That's it. At no point does anyone in this chain of references claim that there is any actual evidence that the statue of Apollo by Scopas originally comes from Rhamnous, but once it got into Jordan and Hülsen (a monumental resource that casts a huge shadow over all subsequent studies of the topography of Rome), it was there for careless readers like Hill to copy as if it were fact rather than a desperate attempt to solve what Ulrichs himself calls the "riddle" posed by the epithet Rhamnusius. (It's pretty clear that Hill was looking at Jordan and Hülsen, since he follows them in referring to the sanctuary of Nemesis as the Nemeseion, which English-speaking scholars almost never do.)
    Wikipedia policy is to follow secondary sources, but (to use a favorite metaphor of the drama boards) citing secondary sources is not a suicide pact: you don't have to include it in the article just because one or more secondary sources happens to say it. Editors are always free to use their own judgment when deciding what to include and what to leave out. Having said all of that, I have no problem with your rephrasing, which makes it sufficiently clear that this is conjecture, not fact. :) Choliamb (talk) 23:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed with all of that - always interesting to see how certain "facts" come into being. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:15, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    In 1984 the Greek epigraphical journal Horos published an amusing and rather rude article by Stephanos Koumanoudes (not the famous one, of course, but I assume a descendant) entitled "Perhaps > Usually > Certainly," which traced the reception of a suggestion made by Eugene Vanderpool about the identification of a building located just beyond the southwest corner of the Athenian Agora. With each repetition, the hesitations and qualifications of Vanderpool's original suggestion were discarded until the identification came to be widely repeated as fact. That building, originally referred to simply as the "Southwest Building", is now universally called the "State Prison", where Socrates was supposedly confined and where he died. The road that runs southwest from the agora through the valley between the Areopagos and the Pnyx is lined with domestic and industrial buildings, and this is almost certainly just another one of those: as John Camp observes with delicate understatement in the most recent edition of the Agora guidebook, "many features of the building are appropriate to a commercial/industrial complex". But the moment the name of Socrates entered the picture, the proposed identification was seized upon by the popular press and by scads of non-specialist scholars, all of whom were happy to claim at third or fourth or fifth hand that the place where Socrates was imprisoned had now been identified. Once that idea was loose in the wild, it could never be called back, and today there are thousands and thousands of "reliable secondary sources" that repeat the identification, even though I don't know any serious Athenian archaeologist who believes it. But Vanderpool was (rightly) revered by the American archaeological community, so no one is going to come right out and say that this particular suggestion has little to recommend it. Instead, we all continue to refer to this structure as the "State Prison" with mental, if not actual, quotation marks, or with a parenthetical question mark after the name. And the case study by Koumanoudes of the way in which speculation ossifies into fact remains a forgotten article in an obscure Greek journal that most people have never heard of. Choliamb (talk) 14:20, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Other misc. artworks. The article currently says "A statue of a young man (ephebe) in black basalt has also been found in the temple, as well as fragments of a marble relief showing the prow of a ship and of a fresco showing Apollo with a lyre." This description of the findspot is misleading, since none of these pieces were "in the temple" (and indeed it's hard to understand what that might mean, since there is no surviving temple for them to be "in", only the podium and a few architectural fragments). The citation provided is Coarelli 2014, p. 157, and it fails verification, since only the ephebe is specifically assigned to the temple on that page. (The English edition of Coarelli's guidebook says "from" not "in", an important distinction, and because it's a translation, it may or may not accurately represent the Italian preposition used by Coarelli himself.) In Tomei's 1997 guidebook to the Museo Palatino, she describes the findspots of these three pieces as follows: (a) ephebe, from "the cryptoporticus to the east of the Temple of Apollo" [found in 1869 by Rosa]; (b) fresco fragment, "excavations of the constructions south of the Scalae Caci [found in 1950]; (c) ship relief, "from the eastern slope of the Palatine, towards San Gregorio" [!!!] (Tomei, Museo Palatino (Milan 1997), p. 60, no. 35; p. 63, no. 37; p. 65, no. 39, respectively). Of course people have wanted to associate the fresco with the temple, and the ship relief with Actium, and there's no harm in such speculation, provided nobody claims that they were actually found in the temple -- or (in the case of the ship relief) anywhere remotely near it!
    • Reworked: I've been more precise on the ephebe, and removed the other two altogether: Coarelli doesn't attempt to link them to the temple: one could argue that the Museo Palatino does by putting them all together, but that's subtext rather than text and perhaps the sculptures might speak more to the general prominence of Apollo/Actium in Augustan visual culture than to the Temple of Apollo itself. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:20, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Function

This section is a nice condensation of a lot of potentially confusing material. I think you've done a good job of distilling things for casual readers. I do have three small suggestions:

  • Double quotation marks needed for the phrase 'golden age', to match the style of the rest of the article.
    • Not quite the same style; I've used single-quotes where nobody's being directly quoted, so double would be inappropriate, but I want to distance myself from the terminology (that is, the Romans would think of it as a golden age, but we shouldn't parrot that). I think the MoS is silent on this matter (see above in Tim Riley's review). UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Final sentence: replace fruges accepi with fruges and purgamenta dari with purgamenta. I understand that you are quoting the Acta here, but the passive infinitives fit uneasily into the syntax of your English sentence, where what the reader expects are the Latin terms for "first fruits" and "purifying agents". If you go back and look at your source (Forsythe), you'll see that he actually changes the passive infinitive of the inscription to active in the first of these expressions (fruges accipere) to get around the same difficulty, and in changing it back to passive you have compounded the problem by accidentally writing accepi (the perfect indicative active) rather than accipi. All of this is easily avoided if you just gloss the nouns and omit the verbs altogether.

Reception

  • Add citation (book and line numbers) in the Ars Amatoria? You give specific references by book and poem number for Propertius, Tibullus, and Horace earlier in this section; Ovid deserves the same courtesy.
Now done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:26, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Excavation

A lot of information here about the early excavations that was new to me. Well done. A few tiny points:

  • You give the dimensions of the temple above in the architecture section; do they need to be repeated here?
  • Rosa's excavations only open on Thursdays: This may be my favorite fact in the article. Thank you for including it. If someone ever tries to remove it as trivial, I will edit war unto death to preserve it.
  • "the third-century-BCE Temple of Jupiter Invictus": the string of hyphens is pretty unsightly, and most style guides, while hyphenating "third-century" when used as an adjective, would not add another hyphen before BCE. But it can all be avoided by writing "the temple of Jupiter Invictus, constructed in the third century BCE". Similarly, "houses of the late Republican period" rather than "late-Republican-period houses" later in the same sentence.

As I say, mostly small details. A fine article overall. Reiterating my support. — Choliamb (talk) 20:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Choliamb: thank you once again for all these comments: it took me a while to get through them, but I think I'm there. Let me know if I've missed or misunderstood something, or if there's any other blind spots in the article: I recognise that I have nowhere near the breadth of contextual knowledge that you have! UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:20, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - pass

[edit]

All images are appropriately licenced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:04, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - pass

[edit]
  • All sources are high quality books, journals, two PhD theses and a couple of academic websites
  • Nicely formatted
    Zanker (1983) is the only journal ref with an ISSN. Recommend deleting the iSSN for consistency with the other journal references. (Or add issns to all the others.)
  • Spot checks:
    fn 3, 38a, 118, 119 - okay
    fn 116 is incorrect - should be 1997 instead of 1990?

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:04, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for doing these, Hawkeye: greatly obliged. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:58, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Great work here. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:41, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you again: that's very kind of you. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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