Wikipedia:Peer review/Drusus Julius Caesar/archive1

Drusus Julius Caesar

I'm working on articles relating to heirs or potential heirs to the Roman Empire, and am hoping to get this promoted to GA. Any input welcome. Psychotic Spartan 123 09:36, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Peer review by llywrch

First, I normally ignore style & wordsmithing issues when reviewing an article -- even for GA -- but even on a first read I found numerous places where a good copy-editing was called for. One obvious example would be the last paragraph of the lead: the material is disorganized, sometimes repetitious, & jumps all over the place. I would rewrite it to say something like this (links omitted):

Drusus died suddenly 14 September 23, apparently from natural causes. However, at the time he was engaged in a feud with Sejanus, the powerful Praetorian prefect of Rome. Ancient historians, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, allege that he had been murdered. Sejanus had seduced Drusus's wife Livilla, and with the help of a doctor she had poisoned Drusus.

The account of Drusus' death raises some questions. Obviously from the distance of over 2 millennia we will never be absolutely certain whether Drusus died of natural causes, or if murdered who did it. But is there any discussion in the secondary literature about whether Drusus was murdered, or was this simply gossip? (Tacitus is very adept at weaving malicious gossip into his account that, once the facts are subjected to a detached & careful analysis, proves unfounded.) The primary sources -- not only Tacitus but Suetonius, Dio Cassius, & the inscriptions & papyri -- have been carefully studied over the past decades, so if there is any doubt or certainty about the cause of his death it ought to easy to determine.

I notice that the Italian Wikipedia article has a section about Drusus' activities while he was co-ruler with Tiberius. This information is out there, & it should be added to the article. (I often examine the parallel articles in other language Wikipedia to find things I may have omitted from the article I'm working on. Sometimes it reveals useful information, sometimes the articles are only translation from an earlier version of the article.)

Also, are there any examples of the conflict between Sejanus & Drusus? It is always better to show than to tell, unless space & emphasis prevent one from it: it makes the narrative more vivid & interesting.

A detail that H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, mentions is that Drusus' death affected Tiberius, & it was one of the reasons he withdrew from Rome to Capri in 26. This should be mentioned in the section "Post mortem". Along with how it affected other family members.

I'd also suggest looking at the works of Ronald Syme for material & judgments on Tiberius. He is an important & influential historian of ancient Rome; even when he is wrong or outdated, he needs to be cited to be refuted, & show how our understanding of Drusus & his time has changed.

Hope this helps. -- llywrch (talk) 21:16, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to start by thanking you for taking the time to read the article and looking into sources related to it. Here in an hour I'll begin copy-editing as you suggested. I used way too many comas and there are weird breaks in paragraph structure that seem to be the result of my haste in writing the article.

As for the relationship between Sejanus and Drusus, I will look more thoroughly into that. It was popular for primary sources to blame Sejanus for the deaths of public figures at the time, and so it would be easy to discount Drusus' early death as just another murder committed by Sejanus. Obviously, there is a lot of conjecture on the subject so I will try to represent mainstream thoughts of the time and those of today.

Unfortunately, I can't read Italian. French is my only other language, and the French article on him is pretty brief. I will try a browser translation to see if that reveals anything.

Reading through the article again I realized I lent more emphasis on his relationship to Germanicus than that of him and his father. On an off note, I should give more information about his relationship with Germanicus in both their articles (Drusus is only mentioned twice in Germanicus' article).

I appreciate the tips! -- SpartaN (talk) 01:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)