P Aculeius

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Welcome to Wikipedia, P Aculeius! I am Fetchcomms and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!

 fetchcomms☛ 01:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Autoreviewer

Hi, after seeing a few of your articles at newpage patrol, I think you are ready to have your account flagged as an wp:Autoreviewer. So I've taken the liberty of doing that. ϢereSpielChequers 16:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! I'll do my best to make sure that this decision is justified! P Aculeius (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Quintus Pomponius Secundus

		The Original Barnstar
		Awarded on April 20, 2010 to User:P Aculeius for his excellent work on Quintus Pomponius Secundus. Gaius Octavius Princeps (talk) 22:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You turned an ancient Roman stub into something informative and sourced. Quintus would be pleased. Thanks for the effort! Gaius Octavius Princeps (talk) 22:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, will be commencing a two-month trial at approximately 23:00, 2010 June 15 (UTC).

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A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	i am studying the origin of pomponi Paolo Pomponi (talk) 11:13, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello P Aculeius, I apologize for the delay but i take a my holiday. Is very interesting what you say to me. I would like you to visit Earthology as i am writing it. I am sure that your question it will be.. but what that match with Pomponia GEN? good question. Well the root of this world it seems to be replicated during the history. Please inform me if you are confident to use google earth i can share as well the wiki project into geo browser and show you that Mr. Pompous Pienomos is a man that can teach history in Geo Space. Of course we have a laboratory of artificial intelligence research and it will be my pleasure to cooperate with a Man that have huge knowledge about Pomp Words. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pumpu (talk • contribs) 09:24, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Belated greetings for the new year

Best Wishes for a Happy New Year! May 2013 bring you rewarding experiences and an abundance of everything you most treasure. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC) Victory, Janus, Chronos, and Gaea (1532–34) by Giulio Romano

Ack! I was leaving new year's greetings the other day, and I had this terrible feeling that in my haste I was skipping someone whose contributions and collegiality I rely on and wanted to acknowledge. You always take the time to make well thought-out comments, and it's much appreciated. Best wishes, Cynwolfe (talk) 03:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Barnstar!

		The Epic Barnstar
		I happened across your major expansion of Curiatia (gens) during a recent changes patrol and thought it deserved recognition. Awesome work! Stalwart111 04:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oh, and apologies for the unhelpful change at List of Roman gentes - just random link "fixing". You obviously have a good system going! Keep it up! Cheers, Stalwart111 08:20, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem, considered just rewriting the original when making the new article, but didn't want to throw out the contents, and decided merger would be easier than gradually reforming a relatively short article. P Aculeius (talk) 14:01, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely; understood that when I saw your subsequent work. Cheers, Stalwart111 21:01, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Here's something ridiculous ...

... to say after your years of awesome contributions to classics on Wikipedia: Welcome!  davidiad { t } 05:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Please accept this Barnstar

		The Socratic Barnstar
		For improving the improvements to Romulus Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 05:47, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

A barnstars for you!

		The Invisible Barnstar
		For working so much time on improving articles without seeking from the other users to be rewarded for your hard work in Wikipedia. 😇 JeBonSer (talk | sign) 05:00, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

		The Stub Barnstar
		For expanding the Lucumo article with good references. 😇 JeBonSer (talk | sign) 05:00, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Merry Merry!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2020!

Hello P Aculeius, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020. Happy editing, ★Trekker (talk) 14:14, 21 December 2019 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

A Barnstar for You!

		The Civility Barnstar
		Thank you for your kind words.★Trekker (talk) 16:58, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Merry!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello P Aculeius, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021. Happy editing, ★Trekker (talk) 16:25, 23 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Nomination of Atinia (gens) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Atinia (gens) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atinia (gens) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

Chewings72 (talk) 05:44, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Filiation question

Hi P Aculeius! Looking at Annia gens, I notice that some of the filiations are in parentheses--which I assume means the relationship is inferred, not attested--while some I would expect be in parentheses--I know some of these are inferred--aren't. Do you try to note this? Do you care? (I'm content either indicating this or not.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:08, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I usually followed the sources I was using at the time. If it's pretty clear and not disputed, the parentheses aren't necessary. But of course some sources take for granted what others consider dubious, and some authors are more scrupulous about reporting doubts. Feel free to revise them accordingly, if you feel sure about any of them! P Aculeius (talk) 01:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

"... a misguided effort at NPOV"

Nope (diff). My edit summary said "poor style", and that's what it is, as far as I'm concerned.

In Chapter 6 of How Wikipedia Works, the point is expressed this way:

A discovery may be called highly significant or just significant. If you think about it, significant can be more impressive. Why? Perhaps because the general reader doesn't want to be bombarded with superlatives but would like to understand the main stages of a development.

That small style guide is something I co-authored. It goes onto say "Understatement also helps with neutrality", which is also true, and why I think our house style should favour it. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:02, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Except that in this case, it's not merely a detail worth noting, but a very important distinction—in fact just about most important there could be. There's no issue with neutrality here; nobody's being puffed up or diminished by emphasizing how important the distinction is. Unlike your edit summary, which was personal and insulting, and on which you've doubled down on the target's talk page. Your appeal to authority is ill-advised. "I wrote the rules, therefore I decide whether something offends them", is a lousy way to defend hypercorrectness—and rudeness. If you think something could be better worded, there are better ways of going about it—and better ways of explaining what you're doing without insulting other editors. P Aculeius (talk) 17:41, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm. Firstly, here is your edit summary:

Undid revision 1020131939 by Charles Matthews (talk) Evidently a misguided effort at NPOV. The adverb in question doesn't harm neutrality; it emphasizes the importance of the thing—saying merely "significant" actually seems to downplay it.

Secondly, I'm not often reverted. When I am, I always follow up, because if there is something to be learned, I want to learn it. Not clear I have learned anything so far. I could have cited MOS:PEACOCK, but the range of examples there doesn't cover the particular point.

So, I said nothing about NPOV. There was nothing personal in my edit summary. There was in yours, which was off-beam also.

I _think_ "highly significant" would be better as "very marked", because social distinctions often seem highly significant in an insider way, but have trivial significance to outsiders.

I also think the significance can be dealt with better in the body of the article. In fact if you want a timeline, highly significant -> somewhat significant -> not so significant, I imagine it is more helpful to the reader if you do so in a verbose way. The lead can be concise on such matters. It gets question-begging otherwise.

The last time I had this kind of hostile experience in coming to a user talk page for a revert discussion, it was for replacing a "however" by a "but". Honestly, I think Wikipedia generally needs tighter writing.

Charles Matthews (talk) 19:01, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps if you adopted a less hostile stance when people disagree with your choice of wording, you might not find them responding in kind. The fact that you chose an insulting way of making your change, and then responded to its reversion by coming to my talk page, quoting my edit summary, and taking absolutely no responsibility for your own, while repeatedly asserting that you're a better writer and that other people simply aren't up to your standards—or Wikipedia's, by implication, simply comes across as haughty and dismissive. Perhaps you should consider that other people's opinions might be just as entitled to consideration as your own.

But you could have avoided this confrontation simply by choosing a less-combative way of dealing with the situation: instead of telling everyone how bad the wording was—thereby giving the impression that the use of an adverb to suggest great importance was inherently wrong—you could have explained that you felt that "highly significant" would have no more, and perhaps less impact, than "significant" in itself. But not only didn't you do that, but you failed to consider, and still seem unwilling to consider, the fact that "significant" may not sound that important to many readers, who regard it as no more than the opposite of "insignificant"—not necessarily of paramount importance. Your edit might still have been reverted, but at least it would have been reverted due to the actual intent of the edit, rather than due to the belief that you objected in principle to the use of an intensifier—which certainly would have been hypercorrectness.

Coming to my talk page would have been justified if you wanted to clarify your point. But instead it was mainly a complaint about how such a block-headed writer could revert an edit by a shining light of Wikipedia, when the wording I thought preferable was so obviously bad. Alluding to policies that clearly don't apply in an apparent effort to prove that you should never have been challenged, claiming that you're the great authority who should never be challenged, and that being challenged is such effrontery as to be a memorable occasion in itself, is simply arrogant. It may surprise you to know that other writers are just as careful with their wording as you, and that you're no less prone to ambiguous wording, subject to improvement, than they are. I find that if something is a distinct improvement, I generally leave it alone; but in this case the meaning or emphasis of the passage was changed in a way that appeared to undercut the intended meaning, and that seems like a suitable reason for reverting the edit.

If you had come here simply to suggest a better wording, or ask for my reasoning, this conversation might have gone very differently—but instead you wrote that your wording was right, my wording—or at least the wording I reverted to, as I have no idea whether I originally wrote the sentence that way—was wrong, poor style, harmful to readers, and that you're the best judge of whether you're right or wrong, so how dare I revert you? I suggest that a different approach would be more productive. P Aculeius (talk) 20:52, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, that's a certainly a rhetorical mouthful, which does not (however) address two concrete points I made about the wording of patrician (ancient Rome). Let's sum up, beyond the bristling:

• Per the comment you have made "I have no idea whether I originally wrote the sentence that way", the concept that all of this discussion is to be personalised seems ill-founded.
• My reference to "poor style" is to do with concision rather than anything else. That article gives some commonplaces from standard style books on superfluous words. What I cited from HWW was introduced as a personal take. It turns out that you disagree with the idea that the word "highly" is superfluous in this case.

If I hadn't thought that my edit was a typical subedit, I wouldn't have made it a minor edit. Charles Matthews (talk) 04:20, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

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Merge

It may be of your interest that I merged two articles you wrote, with the result being Appius Claudius Crassus Inregillensis Sabinus. Avilich (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 20

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Solar eclipse of July 28, 1851, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Corona.

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Accidental revert

Sorry about the revert, I misclicked after realizing too late I was in the wrong place. Avilich (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

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Umbrians, Picenians and Celtics

The complete name of the region where Pisaurum is was called "Umbria et Ager Gallicus": the wiki-map you talk about shows it: it included two different areas, and Pisaurum was in the second one. Pisaurum (please, read about this town, even on wikipedia) has never been an Umbrian town. Even if you want to believe the region denomination was already in use during Accii's life, this WAS NOT an ethnical denomination: Pisaurum was never part of Umbria: was a Picenian town. The complete name of that subregion was but was Ager Gallicus Picenus (it means: ager gallicus previously controlled by Picenians). I think you should find a good source to say that Accii could have Umbrian blood: we couldn't say that Welsh people has Anglic blood because Welsh is in England, could we? Sabinettus (talk) 18:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. You're looking at the wrong map. It's clearly labeled "Umbria" and includes Pisaurum. The label "Ager Gallicus" crosses the border between the regions of Umbria and "Cispadane Gaul", and refers to neither a geographic division nor a component of Umbria. But more importantly, the fact that the town was in Umbria doesn't mean that everyone who lived there was ethnically Umbrian; Umbria included many other peoples, including Etruscans from very early times, Gauls from around the beginning of the fourth century BC, and doubtless Picentes. The article you want to change to fit your preferred nomenclature—or to reject some you dislike—isn't referring to Augustan regios or later Imperial subdivisions, but to general historic areas as shown on the map I've been referring to—which shows Picenum extending south and east of Umbria and Sabinum along the coast from Ancona to Hadria.

From your continuous reversions, it sounds like it's very important to you to prove that the Accii weren't Umbrians. Do you have any reliable sources for this? If so, please identify and cite them in the article. Simply insisting that Pisaurum wasn't part of Umbria, when our reference sources show that it was, isn't good enough. P Aculeius (talk) 18:55, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't really know were Accii were from, but surely, if they were from Pisaurum, they did not live in Umbria. You can read many books about Pisaurum'region, and nowhere you read it called simply "Umbria": if you read it, you read "Umbria and Ager Gallicus". If the map seems to exclude Pisaurum from the Ager Gallicus, I think that Titus Livius is enough to say that the map is wrong:-) Sabinettus (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• where Accii were Sabinettus (talk) 19:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Furthermore, in my opinion, the previous text, saying "of Umbrian origin" let it think of an ethnical identity: the phrase "of that region" (however we call it) can solve the ambiguity Sabinettus (talk) 20:02, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

A last word about the map you talk about: you can find it under the wiki-page "Roman Italy" and it is shown with these words: "Northern and southern section of Italia under Augustus and successors". Sabinettus (talk) 20:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

It agrees with me that we should not use it for the Republican age, and the map actually seems to show the same boundaries of Augustean division.

Sorry for my too long posts. Sabinettus (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The map appears to reflect general geographic designations of the Republic as well as during Augustan times—and more importantly, it doesn't use Augustan or later Imperial terminology for most of them. And you don't seem to be reading what the article says: it doesn't say that the Accii were Umbrians, it says they might have been Umbrians, or something else from one of the neighboring regions. We have reliable sources placing Pisaurum in Umbria, and none placing it in Picenum—all the article says is that Pisaurum was in Umbria, which is correct. The Clauss-Slaby Databank also lists inscriptions from Pisaurum as being from Umbria/Regio VI (using both Republican and Imperial-era terminology), and if you look at our article about "Regio VI Umbria" (which says "also called Regio VI Umbria et Ager Gallicus", meaning that "Umbria et Ager Gallicus" can be referred to simply as "Umbria"), there's a map at the very top that indicates geographic regions of Italy to the time of Augustus (i.e. the Republican period), which clearly shows Pisaurum within the boundaries of Umbria. So there really is no argument to be made that Pisaurum wasn't in Umbria, and no evidence of the origin of the Accii except that some of them were from Pisaurum and neighboring regions. As a result, I can't see why you're so dead-set against the article mentioning that Pisaurum was in Umbria and that it's possible that the Accii were Umbrians. P Aculeius (talk) 21:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

nothing of what I wrote is not corre t, so there is no reason to cancel it. My sources are Livius and Svetonius. I have no words Sabinettus (talk) 23:07, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The Ager Gallicus is *not* a separate region—it's clearly labeled in the map as a small coastal area of Umbria and Cispadane Gaul. Please stop insisting that Pisaurum wasn't in Umbria when it's clearly so identified and treated by everyone else. P Aculeius (talk) 23:24, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

You deleted all my writings asking me sources (you could ask me them without deleting, but, however...). I gave you lots of sources, but you surely did not read them, because you deleted all them. I think I won't write on english wikipedia any more, where probably too few people are intested by these themes (you are the only writer of the page, I see, and we would carry on to delete each other's writing for ages... that's a lost of time!). I wish you could learn italian language, a day, so that you can understand the sources I gave you and you didn't understand. I really forgive you for your bad manners. I will not answer you anymore nor read these pages Sabinettus (talk) 01:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Please, the both of you, remember that the administrative reform that creates the Regio Sexta has nothing to do with an ethnic issue: Umbri, as an ethnic group, are not Piceni, and the reform doesn't enroll Piceni into Umbri. Simply, under a merely administrative point of view, with the reform Pisaurus is included in the Regio Sexta, that's all. When talking about people from Pesaro before the reform, you can simply call them Piceni, when talking about people after the reform, you could call them Umbri but only if you attach such an explaination to it (but however I would suggest to avoid confusion, the main and wide shared meaning for "Umbri" is the ethnic one). Greetings :-) --g (talk) 12:38, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Replied to your topic on the article's talk page, and revised the origin section in a way I hope will satisfy everyone... P Aculeius (talk) 14:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Roman naming conventions

The next time you make a rollback of this kind you should bring reasons that have some basis in fact. The image you rolled backed has nothing to do with Roman naming conventions, and as anyone with any knowledge of these matters knows it's not even a realistic image of an Etruscan. Which would be the reason to put the photo of a barbiton player in that page? Did the Etruscans spend all their time playing musical instruments? --Tursclan (talk) 18:23, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

The facts were stated quite clearly in the edit summary. You replaced the image of an Etruscan—viewed by everyone but you as an appropriate image of one (but not a photo of one; photography had yet to be invented)—with a poor-quality, low-resolution image combining mismatched portions of a badly-damaged fresco stretching more than halfway across the page, and accompanied by a ridiculously long caption containing lots of details about Etruscan—not Roman—names, at a point in the article where the analogous topics about Roman onomastic practices had not yet been introduced. What possible reason could there be for the image that was selected, and which you've removed? It's a generic image of an Etruscan, at a much better scale and of much higher quality than the image that you've replaced it with, and unaccompanied by a long caption containing details that don't belong at this point in the article. Does the fact that the painting is of a musician imply that the Etruscans spent all their time playing musical instruments? Well, I didn't think so, but if that's the case, then your image implies that the Etruscans spent all their time murdering each other in violent civil wars. However, I assume that isn't your contention; so neither is the bizarre notion that the original picture was misleading because it depicts a musician. P Aculeius (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I completely disagree, it's a random image that has nothing to do with this article. The fact that it is of better quality has nothing to do with it as well, since there are dozens and dozens of images of better quality. I invite you to stop rolling back until consensus is found. --Tursclan (talk) 12:16, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

There is no consensus, the discussion has just begun, I remind you that the article is not your property, if you continue like this I will report you to the admins. I'm going to check the article as well, because at first glance there is also a problem with the sources. --Tursclan (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Please don't threaten to report people to admins just because you're not getting your way—you haven't responded meaningfully to anything I've said here or on the article's talk page, and it was pointless to carry this argument on in both places—as I said on the article's talk page. There is no "problem with the sources"; the article has been edited and reviewed by numerous editors with experience in Roman onomastic practices, who have read and are familiar with the sources. I'm not claiming that it's perfect or beyond improvement—but if you begin dismantling it in order to replace good sources with your own preferences, like you have with the picture, you'll simply be creating more problems for other editors to clean up later. Please discuss major changes on the article's talk page, and not here. P Aculeius (talk) 13:28, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright, we'll just continue in the article talk only. FYI I'm very busy these hours, and I'm not done with the discussion yet. So please wait until a consensus is found between the two of us, a consensus that does not yet exist. We continue in the page talk. I'll be back as soon as I can. Thanks.--Tursclan (talk) 13:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

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(Junia?) Aurunculeia

Hello P Aculeius, I would like to have your input on where (if anywhere) this lady should be listed. Her first name is seemingly disputed (per 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) so I am unsure of if she should be listed on any gens page.★Trekker (talk) 12:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I was able to view all but one of the linked items—I'm going to assume that number 5 (or was it 4?) probably doesn't say anything that isn't in the others. PW probably doesn't give any additional clarity—did you have the chance to look? The numbers following one of the first sources might be references to both "Junius" and "Aurunculeius" in PW. My feeling is that she should probably be listed under both, with a footnote explaining the uncertainty about her name. Perhaps also under "Vinia gens" when that's created, but there's no rush on that.

As for an explanation of her name: I was going to say that I wasn't sure adoption could even be a likely possibility, since the chief purpose of Roman adoption—at least as mentioned by Roman writers—was to provide heirs to carry on the name and status of a man without surviving sons. But the one or two instances I see cited for the proposition that women could also be adopted into another gens make some sense, and the Junii were certainly important enough that adoption into that gens could have provided a significant advantage. The notion that she was a sister of Aurunculeius Cotta, and that he was replaced by a Junius after his death during the Gallic Wars might have something to say for it—there may be some important connection that we don't know about.

I would not dismiss the possibility of "Aurunculeia" as a metronymic—while these are mainly attested from imperial times, this could just be an early example; the Junii were a very large family, so it may have been a convenient means of distinguishing her from other Juniae.

Nor can we really be certain that "Vinia" is an erroneous emendation—certainly the reverse seems more probable than "Vinia" being mistakenly substituted for the more common "Junia". If it is correct, then the suggestion that it could also be an error for the praenomen "Vibia" makes some sense—this name does appear at Rome. However, women's praenomina are only infrequently attested in Roman families—and "Vibia" seems much less likely than more common praenomina, at least amongst the Roman aristocracy.

Ultimately, I think that "Junia" is likely either her name by birth or adoption; Aurunculeia either her father's name or a metronymic; Vinia a possibility, but perhaps an error for a praenomen. This doesn't really resolve anything, does it? But that's why I would list her under both "Junia" and "Aurunculeia", and perhaps "Vinia" when that's been created. You can probably use the same note explaining the uncertainty in each place. P Aculeius (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!

Handshake icon

I wanted to say a special thank you for your participation on Christianization of the Roman Empire as diffusion of innovation. I am so grateful! You are intimidatingly awesome! Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:44, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Artoria Gens and Lucius Artorius Castus

Hi Aculeius,

I don't know if you are the moderator/owner of Wikipedia.

an anonymous user 2603:8000:cf40:2edb:493e:259e:9091:86c8 states that LEGG means detachments. I found inscriptions where VEXILL LEG means detachments of the legion. In trismegistos LEGG is an abbreviation of Legions (https://www.trismegistos.org/abb/list.php?abb=LEGG&abb_type=exact&abb_word=&abb_word_type=exact&abb_length=&abb_size=&freq=&comb=AND&search=Search). I think this user is hiding important information by saying that my last edit is a per theory.

Some users in the page of Lucius Castus deletes information coming from a peer-reviewed article on JIES published in 2019. I consider Wikipedia a serious encyclopedia. I hope I'm not wrong. Thanks. Emryswledig (talk) 07:12, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not taking sides between your edits and those of the editor opposed to them, because I'm not familiar with the sources cited and don't have sufficient expertise to evaluate them. There are ways to get input from other members of the community: I suggest starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, where our best classical scholars can suggest an answer. However, as a general matter, anything that isn't widely accepted by the scholarly community, or which depends on your own interpretation of a source, including the original inscription, is liable to be considered original research, in which case it may not be included in an article. The community determines whether a claim is backed up by scholarly sources, or appears to be the original research of editors, so your understanding of this particular inscription may have to be discussed, either on the talk page I linked above, or more specifically at talk:Artoria gens, although you may still wish to post on the WP:CGR talk page in order to draw other editors to the Artoria gens talk page to participate in the discussion there.

Your post here suggests that you're not that familiar with Wikipedia and its policies. Wikipedia doesn't have "a" moderator or owner, in the sense of a single editor—and there's no good reason why you should have thought that would be me. The use of article talk pages to discuss potentially novel or controversial ideas, and resolve disputes between editors, is standard procedure. Generally, when the inclusion of something proves to be controversial, you need to achieve some kind of consensus before it can be added to the article, and that usually means discussing the matter on the article's talk page. The fact that another editor disagrees with you doesn't mean that "important information" is being "hidden". It means that your understanding of the sources, or their reliability, is in dispute—and that's why you should discuss them on the article's talk page. Not everything that's published is reliable, and not every interpretation of a reliable source is reasonable—or beyond dispute. Try opening a discussion on the article's talk page discussing the specific issues in question, and perhaps notifying the community at Classical Greece and Rome about the discussion, so that more people can weigh in, and with luck, achieve consensus for one version or the other. P Aculeius (talk) 11:12, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for weighing in, P Aculeius. This individual is known to me and other WP editors - he is one of the co-authors of that JIES paper that he mentioned above and he has multiple sockpuppet accounts here on Wikipedia and on Facebook, where he has recently been publicly plotting with his co-authors to change articles on Wikipedia to push their bizarre, fringe theories. He is a very persistent troll! 2603:8000:CF40:2EDB:493E:259E:9091:86C8 (talk) 16:17, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not a troll. show your name please. Maybe you are a troll. And you hide known information. Emryswledig (talk) 07:16, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

This really isn't the place for you to battle it out. I suggest you do this at talk:Artoria gens, and stick to the specific points of disagreement, if you want anybody else to be able to follow your arguments (this goes for both sides). The more complicated you make it, the harder it will be for anyone else to weigh in, so try to reduce the arguments about the inscription to the most basic points—you can always provide further discussion if needed, but the more people have to read in order to grasp the issue, the less likely they are to participate in the discussion. What's needed here is external input. And bickering about each other and who's using what alias or pursuing what agenda won't help anybody else resolve the issue. P Aculeius (talk) 13:22, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Aculeius. Sorry for this. 95.251.1.22 (talk) 13:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Most of the debate (including proof of the bad faith editing of Emryswledig a.k.a. Artoriusfadianus a.k.a. Alessandro Faggiani, one of Linda Malcor's co-authors and attack dogs on Wikipedia, Facebook, and other online communities) is occurring in the talk page for Lucius Artorius Castus; Alessandro is editing any related article, embedding all sorts of crazy stuff in them, in order to support his and Linda's latest fringe paper and upcoming book on Lucius Artorius Castus, so multiple good-faith editors are involved in undoing the mess he has created. 2603:8000:CF40:2EDB:31EF:E809:1C73:5F3 (talk) 18:24, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I have only one account. This. I'm Alessandro. and you?Who are you?Sullivan, Gwinn.Show your real name. I'll show your message in the group of Facebook.

Someones write books with no evidence and full of nonsense and fictional facts and they want to teach how to make research and to write. You can edit on Wikipedia. I'm no longer interested in. Emryswledig (talk) 07:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

This isn't the place for you to carry on this dispute—the facts relating to the articles should go on the talk pages for Castus and/or Artoria gens, and anything about the propriety of any of you—however many people are involved—should either go there or in some dispute resolution or edit warring board (might need to ask an admin to advise you how to proceed with that). Some random, mostly uninvolved editor's talk page (this one) won't help anyone try to resolve the disputes in question! P Aculeius (talk) 10:44, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Rape of Endymion by Selene

If their sexes were reversed then it would be rape, wouldn't it? I wanted to see if you would say that it "has none of the connotations of the modern concept" if it was Endymion copulating with an unconscious Selene. --FábioScorpio (talk) 16:48, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

This is not how "rape" was defined in classical mythology—the word has its literal meaning there, from Latin raptus, a capture or carrying off, usually referring to the already antiquated tradition of bride abduction. Just as modern concepts of morality are difficult to apply to mythological subjects, so the use of "rape" to describe the relations between Selene and Endymion is at best highly dubious, and not at all obvious, as your edit summaries implied. It suggests that mythological subjects should be re-evaluated in a 21st century human context, which is jarring and unencyclopedic. Wikipedia is not the place for novel reinterpretations of mythology. P Aculeius (talk) 16:55, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

So Antiope (mother of Amphion), whom Zeus sexually violated and impregnated her, was not raped. Or Medusa. Or Hera. Or Ceneis/Ceneus. And more than half of the women in Greek mythology who are labeled as "raped". --FábioScorpio (talk) 18:13, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

If you want to argue for labeling Selene a "rapist" and Endymion a "rape victim"—literally the names of the categories you added—I suggest starting a discussion on the talk pages of those articles and trying to build consensus for doing so. P Aculeius (talk) 18:46, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

I did it. --FábioScorpio (talk) 22:35, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Ruwenzori Mountains

The expedition of the Count of Abbruzzi in 1906 was the first one Vittorio Stella made in the Ruwenzori, and the third expedition he accompanied the count. The expedition was done to fulfill the wish of Henry M. Stanley (https://www.nytimes.com/1908/11/15/archives/abruzzis-conquest-of-lofty-ruwenzori-the-great-snow-range-known-to.html)

The resulting publication reports in detail how the expedition fared and which mountaineers before him tried to reach the highest tops of the mountain range. The Count of Abruzzi was the first who covered the whole range and not only reported on the climbing of mountains, but also gave much antropological, glacial, botanical, meteorological and astronomical information, and reported how his fellow expedition-members fared.

The reference should be changed to:

It seems to me that it is strange that you my qualify my Addition of old self-promoting information of limited relevance to the article as the report shows a lot of data on the Ruwenzori that is of importance for several sciences and history.

As such I would like my addition restored with the different reference.

Smi953 (talk) 10:19, 18 October 2022 (UTC) Smi953 (talk) 10:19, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The fact that he was on an expedition by a nobleman with a title is quite irrelevant, as is the fact that one of the mountain peaks was subsequently named in honour of said nobleman, and the nobleman's official nomenclature taking up most of the length of the title of the account of his glorious exploits. If the publication contains relevant data that isn't found elsewhere in the article, then it can be cited for that—the fact that the mountains were visited by a prince so that he could claim the honor of having discovered many things in the name of the house of Savoy and the province of Abruzzi is not particularly noteworthy in an article about the mountains. Only what was actually discovered, if it's still accurate and relevant to the topic. Perhaps an account of the expedition could go in an article about the prince himself. There it would be much more relevant. P Aculeius (talk) 13:54, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

In his report of 1909 (which I read myself) there is no mention of his origin, neither of the fact that he was of noble birth. It is a pure report of how the expedition took place, with the photographs of Vittorio Stella as illustrations of what they encounted on the expedition. Besides Abruzzi was the first who mapped the whole area.

The fact remains that it was the first expedition that covered the whole of the Rwenzori and the descriptions added to the knowledge of the natural environment of this area. E.g. in the German report of 1909 (p. 208-209) he writes about the nomenclature of the area by indigineous people and explorers.

In January 1994 I took part in a Rwenzori expedition of the Royal Dutch Alpine Society and with hindsight I wish I then had been acquainted with the 1906 expedition-report to be able to compare the natural environment as it had developed since then.

In my opinion those who study developments in the Rwenzori should be aware of this report because of its detailed description of the natural and glacial environment and the indigineous people who lived there.

As far as the text shows the sentence Photographer Vittorio Sella took a number of photographs of the Ruwenzori Mountains during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, documenting the retreat of the range's glaciers. is not substantiated from the reference. His first encounter with the Rwenzori was probably in 1906. Maybe it should read: Photographer Vittorio Sella took a number of photographs of the Ruwenzori Mountains, that make it possible to follow the retreat of the range's glaciers in modern times.

Smi953 (talk) 10:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

He doesn't have to talk about his nobility or origin—it's in the title of the publication: an account of the expedition of H. R. H. Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of the Abruzzi. In fact, it's almost the whole title. The mention of the expedition amounted to little more than bragging rights as to who was the first European to visit the mountains and send back a report; it catalogued all the types of things that the expedition heroically reported on—but included none of its actual findings, and added nothing about the physical description of the mountains. Added to this, it's improbable that there would be significant astronomical findings—the only things that change about astronomy as one moves from point to point on the earth are what's above or below the horizon, and how good the observing conditions are due to weather.

That the photographer did not in fact document the retreat of the glaciers, since he was only there during one brief period, long before glacial retreat became the subject of global attention in the yet-to-be-established field of climatology, is a valid and logical criticism, and grounds to edit the text. But it's unrelated to the issue of whether and how the expedition he was on should be described in the article.

It might be possible to incorporate a brief account of the expedition that doesn't focus on the fact that a brave Italian prince funded and participated in it—but that isn't what was done. And unless the account contains something novel and significant about the mountains, there needs to be a reliable secondary source to establish the significance of the expedition. This could potentially be fulfilled by the linked article from the New York Times, but that primarily goes to the priority of the expedition—not to how significant it turned out to be in the course of the history of the range. P Aculeius (talk) 15:08, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Upon reading the article in the Times, I note that it is very much concerned with the naming of various peaks after people whom the prince held in high esteem, with the greatest detail being a discussion of how the English Geographical Society insisted that a peak he named "Mount Thomson" should instead be named "Mount Luigi di Savoia". The native names, which he is said to have preserved for the lakes and rivers, are not mentioned. The article is also concerned with the natives, whose description and activities are given in the typically dismissive tone of the era; and the fact that there was a leopard that ate two sheep and worried everyone, but could not be hunted out. Besides the climbing of the peaks and the fact that they were topped by snow and glaciers, the only really relevant thing is that the glaciers are in fact said to have been in retreat, based on the evidence that they had once been considerably more extensive. This at least is scientific data relevant to the Wikipedia article about the range. P Aculeius (talk) 15:26, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Luigi Amedeo gathers all necessary available information, chooses his companions, prepares materials and equipment with the help also of cameras and topographic instruments in order to measure the heights of the various peaks. Geophysical, meteorological and magnetic studies were also to be carried out. The scientist of the expedition would further the geological and glacial knowledge of the region, without forgetting the flora and fauna of the mountain zone.

In the end, Luigi Amedeo of Savoy’s team was made up Captain Umberto Cagni who, with Lieutenant Edoardo Winspeare, is to assist the Duke with geographical observations; the photographer Vittorio Sella and his assistant Erminio Botta; Dr Alessandro Roccati, director of the geomineralogical laboratory of Turin Polytechnic, entrusted with geological and mineralogical research; Major Achille Cavalli Molinelli, naval doctor, who, among other things, has the task of collaborating with Roccati in the collection of zoological and botanical specimens.

Then there is the group of Alpine guides who are fundamental for the mountaineering part of the expedition: Josef Petigax, a tried climbing companion of the Duke’s (he took part in the expeditions to the pole and St Elias); Cesar Ollier and then the porters Josef Brocherel and Laurent Petigax, all from Courmayer. Lastly there is Igino Igini, Luigi Amedeo’s cook.

From: http://www.rwenzoriabruzzi.com/the-1906-scientific-climbing

In chapter VII on p. 193-230 of the report (which counts 403 pages) [[1]] Formation and general features of Ruwenzori it is clealy shown what kind of errors former explorers made and how features have been renamed.

Looking at the composition of the expedition-members and the text in the report one cannot say that the aim of the expedition was to become famous for reaching the highest peaks, but more to describe scientifically the whole area of the Rwenzori. And of course Luigi Amadeo was the organizer of this 5-month trek that revealed a lot of new information concerning all aspects of the mountain range. Smi953 (talk) 10:47, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

These three paragraphs are all about the people who made up the expedition—and the source describing them does not appear to be a scholarly source independent of the subject, but seems purposely-designed to publicize the expedition: 1, it's a website, which anybody can create; 2, it's got a commercial domain, rather than an academic one; 3, the address tells you that it's about this specific expedition with emphasis on who it involved rather than what was discovered. I'm not saying that thee are no-nos that can simply be corrected to fix the problem; I'm saying that these are prima facie evidence that there is a serious problem with the source.

You need a scholarly source independent of the subject to demonstrate that the expedition has some kind of historic significance. Listing the main people who went on it doesn't establish that. What were the qualifications of Cagni and Winspeare to make geographical observations, besides being a captain and a lieutenant? What kind of geographical observations are we even talking about? Does it require an expert to say, "yep, that's a mountain!", and if not, is it particularly important who says so? What is the significance of the photographer's assistant? Did the geomineralogical laboratory of Turin Polytechnic have a good reputation for the expertise of its faculty? Besides being a "naval doctor", what were Molinelli's qualifications for collecting specimens? A background in surgery doesn't necessarily qualify someone as a botanist or a zoölogist. The fact that the expedition included experienced climbers and alpine guides is relevant to the safety precautions of the expedition—but what does it have to do with the mountains? How could the names of the porters—or the Duke of Abruzzi's personal cook (!) be relevant details in an article about the mountains?

All of these questions go to the essential point of the criticism: in order to be worth including in the article—and to satisfy Wikipedia's standards for sourcing and relevance—it's necessary to show that the expedition and its report aren't essentially an early 20th century travelogue. You can't do that merely by listing the people who went on it or by describing them in general terms; you need to know if they were experts in the scientific fields they were purporting to represent, and then you need to report what they discovered by means of their expedition—not just that the Duke of Abruzzi named the highest peaks after various people he admired, and that his feat was recognized by having one of the peaks named after himself, over his own modest objections. Do any scholarly descriptions of the Ruwenzori over the last century or so cite this expedition's descriptions and findings with respect to the mountains, their geology and climate, flora and fauna? Or do they merely report that the Duke of Abruzzi went there with various dignitaries and named some peaks?

There is likely some relevance of the expedition to the article about the mountains—the fact that it resulted in the names of the peaks, perhaps, or as already seems established, the fact that the glaciers already seemed to be in retreat. But they need to be discussed both in the relevant context and in proportion to their long-term significance. Anything beyond these bare facts needs to be supported by additional sources independent of the topic that demonstrate the expedition's historic or scientific significance. P Aculeius (talk) 12:51, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for amending the article! Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco, duke d’Abruzzi. In 1906 he was the first to scale the highest summits of the Ruwenzori Range in east-central Africa. His expedition investigated the geology, topography, and glaciology of the range; it mapped the range and named its major peaks, passes, and glaciers. From: Encyclopedia Britannica on https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luigi-Amedeo-Giuseppe-Maria-Ferdinando-Francesco-duca-dAbruzzi

Smi953 (talk) 10:35, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

References

About the ash ligature

Was there any difference in early modern books in the use of ash when writing titles in upper or lower case? 82.37.67.151 (talk) 13:25, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking about. The ligature would be capitalized when it began a word that was capitalized, and otherwise be lowercase; upper- and lower-case were never mixed in a ligature for this character. For alphabetization, it was always treated as two letters, never as a single letter occupying a different position in the alphabet. If anyone ever alphabetized it before or after all other 'A' entries, I haven't seen it. P Aculeius (talk) 14:06, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Centaur

Did you bother to click the reference before irresponsibly reverting my edit? It doesn't say anything about lower or upper bodies. Don't restore false citations. If you want that description, change the reference. The night king kills Arya in the winds of winter (talk) 05:13, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Already stated twice there that this is not a controversial description—fix the sourcing if you find it lacking, but don't remove uncontroversial contents because you think the sourcing needs to be better. P Aculeius (talk) 05:36, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Per aspera ad astra

Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed comment about what is worth merging from this article. As I mentioned in the discussion, it is SO helpful to the merging editor (in this case: me) to get opinions about what is worth moving, especially in a huge giant enormous long list such as this one. I appreciate the time it took for you to answer so fully. Joyous! | Talk 22:20, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad to have been of service! P Aculeius (talk) 22:31, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

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Punctuation

You left this edit summary on Roman dictator: fixing misused n-dashes and eliminating non-breaking spaces from dates. I think the adjective "misused" is unapt. The MOS recognises both en-dashes (MOS:DASH: use either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes) and advises using non-breaking spaces to separate years and era markers (MOS:ERA: It is advisable to use a non-breaking space). Ifly6 (talk) 22:39, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I see your point with the n-dashes—not sure if this is new, but I overhauled the entire article a few years ago—only to have someone else come along and redo everything earlier this year—annoying, but so much work had been done that I could not see arguing about it without risking "ownership behaviour". But whatever was left of the previous version used unspaced m-dashes consistently, so essentially I was trying to restore the previous uniform style. If you really want to change it back, I guess you can go ahead.

At the same time, I don't see any advantage to the non-breaking spaces and cannot fathom how they assist anyone—who exactly is confused if the era occasionally shifts to the following line? Why should dates be different from any other text? When editing an article, the more code/markup is inserted, the more difficult it becomes to navigate the text and find mistakes or other issues. This is one reason I switched citation styles several years ago, from full citations in references to short cites with a separate bibliography, especially when the works cited link to an external web site. Relatively dense, academic articles such as this one are already somewhat hard to navigate when footnotes, short footnotes, citations, and parentheses both inside and outside of cited and quoted material all appear together; sometimes it can be a nightmare figuring out how the body text flows around all of the markup and notes and whatnot. Special characters inserted wherever a date appears only add to the confusion, especially when an article is peppered with dates (and, I add, the era is perhaps overly repetitive; all or nearly all dates in the article should be BC, because the dictatorship was never revived after the death of Caesar); they really are rather useless, and I see no advantage to having them. P Aculeius (talk) 01:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see you decided to revert me before I had a chance to reply. Why bother posting here, then? P Aculeius (talk) 01:09, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, P Aculeius!

Happy New Year!

P Aculeius,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Flavii

Hi, I wanted to discuss about the whole "Flavius" thing in the article of Flavia gens, hopefully to reach an understanding. There are not that many sources on the matter, but usally the most cited are Keenan 1973, Cameron 1988 & Salway 1994 (pp. 137-141).The issue with the name is that after the 300s it became no longer a "name" but a symbol of status, something like a courtesy title. The situation kinda reminds me of the "Sir" honorific. Many biographies here (e.g. Paul McCartney) have "Sir" alongside the subject's name, but it's quite obvious that "Sir" is not supposed to be a part of their actual name. In this case Flavius became an honorific that showed that you had a high social status, meaning that it was not really treated as a "name". This change appears to have happened shortly after the beginning of Constantine I's sole rule in 324, since a sudden amount of "Flavii" started to appear after that date (notably consuls).

Yes, I know no other gentes article makes these distinctions between actual members of the gens and such, but in this particular case I believe something should be done, as it's an special case. I don't think the "Flavii" after the Constantinian dynasty should be included, because if we treat "Flavius" as a proper name then we would have to add the hundreds of consuls, generals, officers and kings that used it (and that would be a big mess). Regards. Tintero21 (talk) 08:46, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

On digging deeper, you may find that Flavius was not the only nomen that was treated in this manner, but merely the latest and ultimately the most widely-used for this purpose. Julius, Aurelius and Valerius all came to be prefixed to the names of various high-ranking Romans, sometimes apparently being substituted for one another as the individuals ascended the social ladder, with Flavius coming to dominate following the Constantinian dynasty—perhaps because they themselves used Flavius as a nomen. However, in most cases it is impossible to determine who "genuinely" came by it through heredity—and one must remember that in Imperial times, nomina could come through either the paternal or maternal line, perhaps skipping a generation, so knowing or being able to guess the father's name, often itself incompletely known, does not necessarily resolve the matter.

And irrespective of how the name was acquired, it still bore the characteristics of a name such that it cannot be safely distinguished as a title—unlike, say, Caesar or vir perfectissimus. As far as we know, it was not bestowed in some ceremony or removed upon the occurrence of an event, and it bore no special meaning or other accoutrements. This distinguishes it from actual titles, such as "Sir", which is not and has never been a name; in the use you mention, it indicates that the subject has been inducted into an order of knighthood: it comes into use from the moment of knighting, and in theory vanishes if the person is attainted; it is superseded by any higher order of nobility. Flavius was never subjected to any of these rules or customs, nor were the other names that were used similarly, except to the extent that they might be assumed or discarded by the user—something that seems to have been the case for most names among the Roman aristocracy dating to early years of the empire.

Lastly, because it was a name and the persons bearing it are so called in both Roman and modern sources, people will search for them with that name, and expect to find them at the Flavius article. Removing some, but not all persons who could be included on the grounds that some of them probably assumed it in the midst of their political careers is arbitrary and guesswork, and doesn't help readers locate or identify the persons so named. For this reason, the only useful basis upon which to remove anyone would be if there were clear evidence that the person did not use the name at all—and even then, if it appears erroneously in scholarly sources, it might still need to be included, since those sources would still lead to the belief that it was the person's correct name, and cause readers to search for the subject there. P Aculeius (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe the word "title" is not the best in this context. It appeared to be more like an honorific simply used to show that certain person had a high status. The issue is that it was not treated as a name either. Cameron points out that in many instances Flavius appeared only with the "diacritical" (main) name; if the full name was used, Fl would not appear (as it was not treated as a proper name). In the East it eventually did appear in full nomenclature (notably Justinian's diptych). Chris Doyle calls it a formal prefix, akin to the modern "Sir" or "Mister". When I mentioned the "Sir" honorific I was thinking more of its informal use, as in, a respectful way to address someone, in this case someone with a high social status.

Yes, it's impossible to determine who was a "genuine" Flavius after 325, but that's the problem. If we follow the PLRE (which is in error according to Cameron) then we would have to add all the countless consuls, generals and soldiers that appeared as Fl. I don't see how this with affect most readers, as I'm pretty sure most people will search for, let's say, "Emperor Theodosius I" rather than "Flavius Theodosius", or "Stilicho" instead of "Flavius Stilicho". The lead already mentions that Flavius stopped being treated as a personal name after Constantine I, so the inclusion of a few consuls and generals at the end (even tho countless other people were called Flavius) just doesn't make sense to me. Tintero21 (talk) 03:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for leaving this reply—I thought it would be better to wait and ponder the subject before answering, and maybe that will have led to a better reply. First, I am not seeing your distinction between Flavius and a "proper name": certainly not as the term "proper" is used grammatically, but also in the narrower sense of names: names can be common or undistinguishing without ceasing to be names, and it seems contradictory to say on the one hand that Flavius was used to indicate the status of the bearer, but at the same time maintain that it was not really a name because it wasn't "diacritical" (which, as I'm sure you realize despite its appearance, means "distinguishing" rather than "of chief importance"). But perhaps it is an error to say "used to indicate status", because there is no clear evidence of it being bestowed automatically by others, while at the same time being ignored by the bearer; as I understand it, its use was initiated by the person so called, just as other names like Aurelius and Valerius had been and were by aristocrats of a lesser degree, though all three, and others like them, were treated like names in the manner in which they appear in writing. I suggest that those scholars using terminology such as "formal prefix" rather than "name" are making a distinction without a difference.

I believe it is erroneous to conclude that "we would have to add all the countless consuls, generals and soldiers" whose names included Flavius, any more than we have to do this under any of the other articles about Roman gentes. There are many articles that would become unwieldy if every person who bore the name in question were added; this is the case for most common gentilicia, for which the articles as a rule include only those members important enough to have their own articles—whether or not the articles actually exist, since in many cases too little of interest is known to say more than one or two sentences about them, besides their relationships to other notable persons. Epigraphy often supplies hundreds of additional examples who are not included, although in theory they could be. In small and obscure families they probably would be included just so as to provide more context about the gentes in question, but this becomes unnecessary when there are many notable members.

The "common names" (as that phrase is used in Wikipedia) are not really relevant to these articles, since the entries are always meant to use people's full nomenclature, rather than common names (although these are sometimes provided using parenthetical language, when necessary). There should never be an entry listed as "Emperor Theodosius I" (and I note that his article is "Theodosius I", not "Emperor Theodosius I"), and without Flavius he could not appear in any article in this series, since there was no "Theodosia gens". But the point of this is not that "persons named Flavius have to be listed because there is nowhere else for them to go", but rather that if we don't consider Flavius a name at all, then many prominent Romans of the later Empire have no gentile names that we can recognize—leading to the conclusion that the best way to interpret Flavius in such instances is as a gentile name.

Ultimately the inclusion or exclusion of individuals from any article about Roman gentes to which they might be supposed to have belonged based on nomenclature comes down to whether it is practical to include them. And so long as the number is not overwhelming, the argument that countless others would have to be included does not seem very persuasive when they are not presently included, and there is little prospect of them all being added or confusing anyone (part of this being due to the existence of subsections that can be conveniently separated from those who more clearly came by the name in the traditional manner, such as "late Imperial Flavii" or similar headings). "It's not a name" is simply incorrect; it's certainly a name, even if it's merely been assumed by some of the bearers (and which of them assumed it, without inheriting it from their fathers or grandfathers, can rarely be established). So on the whole it is probably better to include those persons for whom articles exist or foreseeably might be created. P Aculeius (talk) 14:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello, it's me, again. I was just wondering what you think is the proper way to communicate what I want. I believe the article should elaborate a bit more on the sudden increase of Flavii in the later empire. In my last edit I just tried to give the same information found in the nomen gentilicium article (about how nomina lost their meaning as family surnames and could be changed to indicate status). Tintero21 (talk) 07:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not at all clear that nomina generally "lost their meaning" or that they were "changed to indicate status". The phenomenon you're describing is a poorly-understood aspect of the late imperial aristocracy, but there is every reason to believe that even persons who assumed additional nomina reflecting their increased prestige or status still possessed hereditary nomina, whether or not they were used on a daily basis—and the evidence indicates that we seldom can say whether we know someone's full nomenclature during this period, particularly with the upper echelons of the aristocracy. The belief that nomina in general were discarded or lost all meaning is more reflective of the utter confusion of past generations of scholarship than what is reflected in the studies you're citing—and it is far too complicated to make the kind of generalizations you're trying to add into the article. Not least because many people were genuinely named "Flavius", either by descent from persons who obtained Roman citizenship under various emperors, or from those who might possibly have assumed the name for some other reasons.

I can't comment on the nomen article you mention—I didn't create it and haven't had a hand in editing it, so it may well fail to explain the situation clearly or accurately—in fact given how complicated the issue is, I would expect it to be a muddle. That wouldn't justify importing similar confusion into other articles.

In the great majority of cases we simply cannot know the circumstances, and can only speculate as to possibilities. But while it is tempting to describe such a situation as unstable and the resulting nomenclature largely meaningless, or to label names as "titles" when they really were not, it is difficult to convey the complexities of the situation in the space afforded by this article, of which it necessarily forms a small part. The basics are already described in as much space and detail as necessary; adding paragraphs of detail that doesn't—and can't—fully explain clearly or comprehensively is needlessly cumulative. There may be space for this kind of discussion in a separate article on the nomenclature of the late imperial aristocracy—certainly that is the only way to provide sufficient context, as the scholarship on the subject is extensive—but the article you're trying to add it to is not the right place to go into that level of detail. P Aculeius (talk) 13:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Sponsianus

You reversed my edit so quickly (within a few seconds) I am not convinced you can have spent more than a few moments considering the point. I feel you're creating the impression that Wikipedia is a personal fiefdom in which you dismiss anything you don't like on a whim and just delete it. In my very long experience as a published author, the most dispiriting and usually unhelpful editing by an editor is that executed in haste, because it usually requires reversal or substantial amendment. This is in marked contrast to considered and constructive editing. The Greek lamp to which you refer you removed in an earlier edit, though in fact it is so modern a reference it can be left out. The provenance and nature of the inscriptions is relevant to the discussion on the page because they don't just come generally from Rome. Their incompleteness is relevant since it is only one of the complete two that can be traced back to multiple pre-1713 publications, and the two complete ones come from a very specific location which was famous and therefore why they were prominently published - the one found before 1713 being the important one (in fact published back at least to 1570); this is of manifest relevance to why they name was available. You also dismissed as 'patent nonsense' some earlier additions based on what seemed a wholly subjective assessment on your part of two 17th century sources. The books exist and that's what they say, amounting to the only contemporary written reference to the discovery of a hoard of forged pastiche gold Roman coins - one may question their reliability but is it a Wikipedia editor's job to suppress something simply because they don't like it? I thought the point of Wikipedia was to provide an authoritative and substantiated account of what information there is. In fact that information has ben welcomed by one of the most prominent museum coins and medals departments in the world.

In the end it becomes pointless contributing to Wikipedia if something that takes hours to put together is cut out in a moment by an editor who clearly isn't familiar with the material and hasn't spent the time considering its merits. I spent a lot of time on this material. If you can't be bothered to spend any time on editing it, I'd question your commitment to Wikipedia. I'm not going to engage in an argumentative spat; apparently it's your prerogative to do what you like - I just won't bother with Wikipedia, just as I wouldn't bother with a book editor who acted in the same way. Junius Avitus (talk) 16:22, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I reviewed the edits and considered their relevance before reverting—then made some slight revisions based on your concerns before saving the changes. It wasn't mere "seconds"; the page history shows thirteen minutes elapsed between revisions, which is more than enough time to decide how best to deal with them. But as to the specific edits, I'm happy to supply a more thorough explanation than the edit summary allowed.

Your emphasis on the inscriptions being "restored" or "restorable as" seemed like an unnecessary aside, given that no alternatives have been proposed by any of the cited sources. The question is whether the existence of the inscriptions could have supplied the name to a seventeenth or eighteenth-century forger, and clearly the answer to that is "yes". Questioning the interpretation of the inscriptions serves no purpose, since none of the sources indicate significant doubt as to what they represent, and your point presumably is that such a forger would have interpreted them correctly. Why introduce doubt as to their reading, if the scholarly sources and the possible forger all agree on the name? The additions to the text—which I wrote yesterday while editing down a much, much longer version—simply complicate it for no clear reason.

There are five inscriptions from Rome. It seemed unnecessarily wordy to describe them as "[a]ll four, as with the one originally noted by Pearson", and there seems to be little relevance to their being funerary, as are a large percentage of all Roman epigraphy. The question again, is whether a forger could have known of any of them—and the section already establishes that this is possible. That they are all from Rome, although the lamp inscription is not, is of only slightly greater relevance: if Sponsian were a genuine usurper, then it would make little difference where inscriptions referring to other persons centuries earlier were found; and if the coins are, as you've been positing all along, the work of a forger, then the forger wouldn't have been precluded from using the name because he found it in funerary inscriptions from Rome.

However, I did mention that all five inscriptions in CIL are from Rome, noting that the name is also found in other sources—the lamp inscription, at least, being from Greece. It is not necessarily important when the lamp was first discovered or described, if it is merely representative of the fact that the name "Sponsianus" could have been seen or read from inscriptions found at other times and places than the five inscriptions in CIL—perhaps even ones not currently documented, although it would be inappropriate to say so explicitly in the article text, unless some scholarly source posits the existence of other examples besides the ones mentioned; but is seems reasonable to say that examples exist besides the five from Rome, since the lamp proves that.

As for my "patent nonsense" comment, that referred to the additions of user "Bedoyere" describing the contents of a YouTube video attributed to "the historian Guy de la Bedoyere" (evidently himself) concerning a secondhand account of the alleged discovery of a massive hoard of gold, not discussed by any of the other sources for this article. The source cited does contain the quoted language, more-or-less, with various typos and other alterations presumably introduced by "Bedoyere", but it is an extremely old source, by an author who did not see the hoard himself, describing ostensibly poor and obvious forgeries that are not apparently connected with the Sponsian coins (which were supposedly unearthed in Transylvania, nowhere near Bonn), and relating them with archaic and unclear terminology ("one of them weigh'd Eight Hundred Dolars of the finest Ducat-gold"). To this the editor has added: "[t]he siege was won by an Austro-Hungarian army; the Sponsianus coins turned up in the Austro-Hungarian capital of Vienna", evidently unaware that Austria-Hungary did not exist as a political entity until 1867. Since the Sponsian coins were from Transylvania, Bedoyere's statement is a misleading non-sequitur intended to connect two apparently unrelated hoards.

The entire section is quite florid for modern writing, and in any case, a YouTube video is not a scholarly source, subject to peer review, and cannot be used as such on Wikipedia. The fact that the editor who posted all of this is the "historian Guy de la Bedoyere" suggests that it's self-promoting, and therefore doubly inappropriate for Wikipedia.

In all, the purpose of the edits was to keep the passages as simple and clear as possible, by eliminating asides that seemed unhelpful or irrelevant, or rewording things that might be slightly relevant, to avoid placing undue weight on them. This was not the process of a few seconds, but of several minutes' careful consideration of which things seemed important to mention, and how best to include them. P Aculeius (talk) 17:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

You are clearly an expert

...on classical matters, including on subjects relating to Roman names. I would ask that you support encouragements (edits) that seek to move that and related articles toward being compliant with WP policies and guidelines, including WP:VERIFY and WP:ORIGINAL RESEARCH. At present, readers are asked in many articles on the classics (and maths, etc) to take in material that is based simply in the knowledge and experience of an editor or small group of editors, with no traceability to good scholarly secondary sources. I ask this freewheeling for all non-"sky is blue" historical and etymologic material begin to move away from our interpreting primary sources, and displaying our knowledge, to our clearly presenting the scholarly ideas available on these subjects, from secondary sources. With regard, an educator. 67.167.8.18 (talk) 15:52, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

You might want to think twice before you spam articles with dozens of tags when one or two at the beginnings of sections will do, or condescendingly tell people that they don't know how to follow basic Wikipedia policies. You may need to review some of these policies yourself: there is no need to "move away from" simply citing a statement in an ancient writer to that writer's work, when all you're doing is reporting that he said it. Maybe secondary sources can be found stating that he said it—but there's nothing wrong with reporting that it's what he said and citing it to the place he says it! If you actually want to improve articles, try finding additional sources instead of adding a tag at the end of every sentence. Cleaning up the mess you made, as opposed to simply reverting it, could take days, and simply making work for other editors while denigrating their work as merely "displaying their knowledge" is far from what Wikipedia describes as collaborative editing. P Aculeius (talk) 16:05, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

At or In

Noticed that you reverted the change I made to the page on Titus Larcius though I'm not sure I agree with it.

When referring to his family in the article the word "at" was originally used - "his family living at Rome" - but this to me does not sound right.

The man and his family more than likely lived inside the city given his status in Roman society, not to mention that I'm sure that in common language most people would refer to someone or their family living "in" a city rather than "at" it.

For example - "he lives in London", "his family lives in London", "whose family lives in London" - where as "at" referring to a place in the context of describing where someone or their family lives would be better served in a sentence such as - "he lived at the castle in Stockholm" or "his family lived at the lumber mill in Saskatchewan".

Rome was a city and what we would define as a country (or at the very least a city-state) at the same time so saying they lived "at" Rome to me is not proper grammar. I am not a native speaker, but to my ears and from what I've found it should be "in" and not "at" when looking at the context of the sentence.

I hope this did not come off as too antagonistic, was not my intention if so. I merely wish to open a dialogue with you regarding this and reach a consensus.

//"Meade" MeadeIndeed (talk) 20:08, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your willingness to discuss this, and for the civility of your approach. Far too many editors take an approach that is decidedly uncivil, and it is difficult to resist the temptation to respond in kind. I apologize in advance for the following wall of text. But as to your question:

From a grammatical standpoint, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using "at" when referring to cities and towns. Not only is it good grammar, but until relatively recently it appears to have been the standard preposition when describing an indefinite spatial relationship to the place. Both prepositions are correct in certain circumstances: "at" used in this context means "in, around, or in the vicinity of" a particular place. "In" necessarily means "inside, within the boundaries of" that place.

Either preposition can be used to describe someone or something within a place, but "in" cannot properly be used to describe anything that lies just beyond the city walls or legal boundaries, or nearby—closer to that place than to any other distinct location. This makes "at" preferable in cases where the precise location of a person or thing with relation to those boundaries is uncertain, as it generally is with people over an indefinite span of time—for instance, the lifetime of a person, as people are mobile and may or may not be within the boundaries of a town at any point in time, even though the name of that place is a general description of a person's location.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that "at" is used of all cities, towns, and small islands, and it provides various examples. The entry goes on to state a curious exception, in that "at" is supposedly not used with regard to the city of London. However, it then goes on to state an exception to this exception, noting that it was formerly done with London. Whether either of these constitutes an actual rule or merely the common practice at the time the entry was written I do not know, but that is really beside the point, since it is explicitly stated to be correct with regard to all other places. And historical writing demonstrates that "at" is used particularly often with Rome.

I suspect, though I do not know, that this is partly because "at Rome" is the standard translation for the locative Romae found in Roman Writers. If you consult Reading Latin by Peter V. Jones and Keith C. Sidwell, you will see that this translation is still recommended.

The use of "in", even in cases where it makes less sense or is misleading, seems to have become much more prevalent over the last few decades, evidently crowding out "at" to the point that some people seem to regard "at" as a mistake, although no clear reason can be offered, other than greater familiarity with "in". But "at" is still used in this way in ordinary English, and doubtless would be more common if well-meaning but misinformed editors—and I do not mean to include you in this remark—did not make it their mission to seek out and eliminate what they mistakenly regard as an error.

I have written a large number of articles about Romans, in many of which "at" is preferable when describing an indefinite spatial relationship to a place. And as a result, from time to time someone comes along and attempts to "correct" something that was not wrong, and thereby changes the meaning of the sentence to something that was not intended. And this has led me to begin noticing the use of an innocuous phrasing that I had previously overlooked.

I note that in forms published in the 19th and 20th centuries, the location of certain events is presumed to occur "at" places to be filled in; "in" appears in the same places on forms that appear to contemplate location within a region—typically rural—rather than a city or town. And I have begun to take note when I see "at" still being used in the traditional manner, although I have not quite enough energy to begin cataloguing uses as I note them. But just yesterday, I saw "at Pompeii" in an article about carbonized Roman bread on BBC News. This leads me to wonder whether the use of "at" with the names of cities or towns is more common in British English than it is in America—but it would take a lot of time and energy just to begin researching that.

But to return to the basic question, either "in" or "at" is technically correct when referring to someone or something that is definitely within the boundaries of a place. Only "at" can correctly be used when the subject is merely in the vicinity of the place, or when the spatial relationship of the subject to the place is uncertain. I generally prefer "at" because I do not ordinarily mean to imply a spatial relationship, even though in many instances "in" would be equally correct. You are probably correct in supposing that the people referred to lived within the city.

However, Rome depended heavily on agriculture and trade beyond the city walls, including a swath of territory far larger than the city itself, even at this early period. We can only assert that they probably lived within the city, but we cannot be certain. And in any case, there is no need to limit their spatial relationship to Rome by stating it as definite. For that reason it seems to me that "at" is preferable in this instance; it is the broader and more flexible word. And it is not "incorrect", so there is no reason to change it to "in", when it is perfectly good grammar to say "at". If it sounds odd to you, it is not because it is wrong, but because people who do not know the difference have made a habit of using "in" even when "at" would be more appropriate. And "correcting" what is not wrong, merely because it is less familiar, only serves to add to the confusion by making it less common still. That is why I disagree with changing "at" to "in" in cases where either would be correct, or where "in" restricts the meaning of a sentence in a manner that was not intended by the writer. P Aculeius (talk) 03:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

What you said previously, I now have to repeat to you, I suppose you can think of me as an echo in that regard - I appreciate the civility shown in your reply and agree fully with your statement that things far too readily devolve into a brawl not only between editors on Wikipedia but in general when it comes to interactions online, especially those over plain text. I suspect it has something to do with the total lack of a face to read or a tone of voice to listen to... but I digress.

Luckily, I flourish when it comes to walls of text, at least when they're composed of valuable information and proper dialogue. I believe that you summed it up for me when you wrote - "as people are mobile and may or may not be within the boundaries of a town at any point in time" - especially after you correctly pointed at the inconclusive nature of the span of time in question.

I suppose my feeling of "in" being correct as opposed to "at" is partly due to me not being a native speaker and the points you make regarding how "in" seems to be used more and more often. I'd personally equate this to the use of "alright" instead of "all right", I'm certain that the former will become the accepted norm in not too long as it is the "common" way of spelling it. Language is a fluid thing after all, even if it's as viscous as pitch.

Either way, I do agree that I did do some assuming when it comes to where the family lived and thus changed the "at" to "in" and this would not be proper editing. However, I think it might also be because of the confusing fact that the word "Rome" is used pretty interchangeably between meaning the city itself, the latter city-state and even later the country / empire. In this case, after reading through your reply and garnering a deeper understanding of the issue thanks to your information, I do believe the use of "at" is correct as what is referenced on the page is the city of Rome.

Though I think there should be some dialogue on how to treat "at" and "in" specifically in terms of Rome, seeing as how the word can mean several different things and that the definition of using "at" from your quote out of the Oxford English Dictionary is "cities, towns, and small islands" and not nations (a definition which arguably also includes ancient city-states) where then "in" would be more applicable and proper grammar if I'm not mistaken?

Thanks for taking the time to write out your reply and also thank you again for a calm and respectful discourse.

MeadeIndeed (talk) 23:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

The nebulous distinction between "Rome" as a city and a vast empire has occurred to me at various times as a reason both for and against my wording. But at any point in time the majority of Romans known to us were connected with the city of Rome in some sense; certainly most of those mentioned in Roman writers, and a large chunk of those known solely from epigraphy. And it is somewhat idiomatic to say "at Rome" with the assumption that people are in or around the city, rather than elsewhere in the empire. The latter usage is, after all, somewhat informal, referring to the whole Roman world as "Rome". But I think we risk opening up a can of worms by trying to draw a sharp distinction where the need for one is unclear.

I would hesitate to suggest that your edit should be attributed to not being a native speaker of English. Your English appears to be excellent, and native speakers are just as likely to ignore the distinction, and assume that only "in" can be used with the names of cities and towns—although perhaps this is more so in American English than in British English. However, I think it is important to choose one's words carefully, and that where there are valid reasons for preferring one wording, it should not be changed to something with a different wording unless there is a good reason for doing so. I don't mean to berate your actions so much as to explain mine. Thanks for engaging with me on this. P Aculeius (talk) 23:48, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Romani Ite Domum

It may be validly sourced to a very eminent author, but its actual relevance to the article seems rather minimal... AnonMoos (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It demonstrates the influence of the scene on that author's views or work, and serves to illustrate the point that he's making. That would seem to be worth mentioning when discussing the cultural influence of the scene--and cultural influence would seem to be important for an article about a topic in popular culture. P Aculeius (talk) 02:26, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

It may be important personally for that individual, but that's different from showing that it has any real general importance or relevance for the "Romani Ite Domum" article... AnonMoos (talk) 11:02, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your criteria for importance or relevance are. It seems to me that being discussed at length in a widely-read book by a notable author demonstrates additional influence on popular culture, which is precisely what those claiming that the subject was non-notable were asking for proof of. You cannot simply dismiss it on some vague notion that its relevance to one work of literature is irrelevant to the work itself, thereby reducing the notability of the work. If it were a major work of the western canon, such as a Shakespeare play or Dickens novel, then a passing mention in a contemporary work, however notable, would not be significant enough to mention in the article about said play or novel.

But this is a single episode in a contemporary film, and its notability is demonstrated precisely by showing that it has influenced contemporary thought, scholarship, other works. Removing those works gives the false appearance of lesser notability to an article that was recently challenged on the grounds that the subject was not notable. Thus, claiming that the discussion or comparison made by Mr. Halberstam has no significance to the article makes no sense unless you contend either A) that the work in which he does so is trivial, or B) that the subject of the article is trivial. But you will have to make such claims explicit if you expect to justify deleting the claim for which the book is cited, or you must replace the citation with one you feel better illustrates the same point. P Aculeius (talk) 11:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Justin (historian)

Just about every ancient/Roman article I have come across uses DMY - including FLs such as List of cities founded by Alexander the Great and GA such as Alexander the Great - so why are you opposed to it on the Justin article? GiantSnowman 15:03, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of requiring specific national varieties of English—including date formats—is to prevent disputes over the matter in places it's likely to occur. But nothing in our policies says that a particular variety of English needs to be applied to all articles in entire subjects—such as Greek or Roman history. Placing this template—or its alternative—in an article is effectively claiming that article for British or American English and forbidding anyone from writing dates in another variety—and if dates must be in one form, then it would be inconsistent for anything else to be different. It would make no sense to require, for example, British dating formats, but allow American spelling of words, or vice-versa.

But why would we even bother designating the variety of English that an article should use, when it has no strong ties to any variety of English? This is not a figure in English history, and it is of little concern whether the majority of Greek or Roman articles use British English or American English—that is no reason to require all the others to conform to whichever variety that might be. Why tell people which dating format to use in an article that contains no dates? What is the rationale for telling editors to do things this way or that way in an article that has no history of disputes over language or formatting? What policy actually supports claiming articles for one variety of English, merely because one occurs more frequently than the other in a particular field, that by nature is neither British nor American? There is no justification for trawling through articles looking for places to post rules that are not needed for those articles, restricting how they can be written or edited in the future. P Aculeius (talk) 15:51, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 21

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Aresas, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Croton.

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Lucius Tarquinius Superbus

Yep, I totally see what I missed re: claim vs claimed. I think that indicates ambiguity in the wording, but that’s not my game here, so reversion for sure returns it to proper subject/verb agreement. Thanks! Huskerdru (talk) 01:53, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I'll look at it again and reconsider the wording, and whether there's an obvious solution if it needs to be reworded. P Aculeius (talk) 03:58, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I've had a go at improving the language in that and the following paragraph, both to resolve any ambiguity about what Sextus was saying, and to clarify both the nature of his threat, and the reason why Lucretia killed herself. Replaced a few words as well. Hope it reads better now! P Aculeius (talk) 04:32, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Bludgeoning RMs

I think you are right. A few days ago I drafted an ANI report on a certain editor, on grounds of WP:BLUDGEONing the Ptolemy RM by trying to change things elsewhere to influence the outcome of the RM. But I withheld submitting it. It is a unfortunate pattern of behavior. He performed similar stunts during the "Muslim conquest of Spain" RM to aggressively achieve his preferred outcome, and I have documented that too. I think you're right on his intention in this as well. But I am not sure it is worthwhile pointing that out and getting into that in the RM itself. Walrasiad (talk) 19:11, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

My recent experience from reporting a disruptive activity at ANI was not encouraging. However I. is definitely having trouble accepting anyone else's viewpoint, and clearly it is becoming difficult to point that out without incurring his wrath. But I mean to remain as calm as I can manage, and see if he can be talked down instead of beaten down to the point at which he no longer is willing to contribute to the encyclopedia. He puts a lot of energy into working on articles, and if he were a little more tolerant of dissenting views he would be a good editor. It's just a matter of patience—I hope. P Aculeius (talk) 19:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

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Ancient Roman religion template

Can you help me? I've just discovered that someone has made a colossally misguided edit to the thingy (see how I've forgotten my WP terminology?) that appears at the top of articles such as Religion in ancient Rome and Glossary of ancient Roman religion. They've replaced the excellent representation of Roman sacrifice with an image of Cybele. Good image, and of course Cybele is signficant. But not the best representation of religion in ancient Rome! I don't remember how to get to these… these… graphic things to edit or discuss them. I don't see a discussion at the Greece & Rome project page, and something this major should definitely be discussed. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:01, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'll look into it tonight and see what I can find out what's going on. P Aculeius (talk) 00:05, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

The change was made three days ago by an editor whose only contributions to Wikipedia involved changing this image and its caption, and deleting some adjectives from an article about a twelfth century Arab writer—a total of four edits, three of them to the Roman religion sidebar. The only explanation given was that the image was supposedly "clearer", but comparing the two images, I think that both seem sharp and detailed. Perhaps the editor was confusing scale or contrast with sharpness. I agree that Marcus Aurelius makes a much better depiction of Roman religious practice than a statuette, and have reverted the changes. Glad to be of assistance! P Aculeius (talk) 00:19, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I did finally stumble about and remember where to go, and then you had already fixed the problem. It seemed like a good faith edit, but I noted the red-link user name and talk page as well. I was going to suggest to the person that consensus be sought at the G&R project. Thank you also for your kind words recently. (This is me dipping toes back in.) Cynwolfe (talk) 00:22, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry

Hi P Aculeius. Hope you're doing well. I have just created an SPI [2] which might be of interest to you, since you seem to be well acquainted with the editing history at Gelae (Scythian tribe). Basically, if you have more evidence in mind, that would be greatly appreciated. Bests. HistoryofIran (talk) 16:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, and I appreciate the help, but I'm not certain all of the sources cited are as useless as they seem, and I don't feel like I'm in a position to evaluate each one beyond the cursory level I did before. I think that the editor in question is using some poor sources, but I think that further research might support some of them, or their conclusions. The heavy-handed way he re-inserts substantially the same previously-deleted material is annoying and the insertions are not as encyclopedic as they should be. But I'm not convinced that all of the material is worthless, and it's going to take a much more thorough investigation to be sure.

I'm not really worried about whether he's a sockpuppet. If he is, he'll just come back under a new name, and do the same thing again. It'd be more useful to see if there isn't something useful that could be incorporated into the article from these sources, perhaps less substantial than he's doing, but still acknowledging the opinions of some of the sources (without necessarily indicating whether their views are correct—they may be dubious, but they could still be valid opinions). This is so far outside of my area of expertise that I'm ready to cede the field to other editors. P Aculeius (talk) 17:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

July 2023

Hello, I'm Mvcg66b3r. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, WJOS-LD, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at referencing for beginners. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Mvcg66b3r (talk) 17:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Charles III requested move discussion

There is a new requested move discussion in progress for the Charles III article. Since you participated in the previous discussion, I thought you might like to know about this one. Cheers. Rreagan007 (talk) 06:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Other British monarch requested move discussions currently taking place

Since you recently participated in the Charles III requested move discussion, I thought you might like to know that there are two other discussions currently going on about other British monarch article titles here and here. Cheers. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

My citations on gens articles

Hello Aculeius, I have been editing some gente articles again recently, and it struck me that while I have always been very grateful for you taking a second look at my edits and improving on them (especially in terms of citations) I started to wonder if maybe you find this tiresome, am I taking your cleanups for granted? I don't want you to grow annoyed at me for not using the common citation method, I am not very familiar with the one used on most gens articles and I feel like I've been a bit lazy and maybe its finally time for me to learn it. ★Trekker (talk) 15:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

TBH I have no good reason to complain. I'm just a bit fussy about small details—that's why I go over and edit the changes.

As far as formatting, there's no prescribed format for citations in Wilipedia—for which I'm glad. For the last several years I've used a modified version of a pretty general citation format for all Roman gentes and most other articles I've written, although if not rewriting an existing article substantially, I usually follow the format already in use—if there is one being used consistently. This is mine, but I can't force you to use it; I just find it convenient: author name, title of work, name of publisher, location of publisher (if stated), year in parentheses. I don't usually bother with last name first, as I list sources chronologically rather than alphabetically, and for some reason more typically the location of the publisher usually comes before the publisher's name, although I'm not sure why.

Of course when sources are provided in detail in a bibliography, you can just make a short citation in the article text: author's name (in the case of Romans, however they're usually called in English; in the case of modern sources, the surname, except in some encyclopedias, where I skip the author's name, although I may provided it with an article title if it's signed), title of work (shortened if necessary), page number. No need to give the year if it's in the bibliography; the title is more useful than the year, even if the author has multiple publications cited. I find short citations much preferable to citation templates, which can take a whole line or more (much more if they include links to external sites), with lots of parameters, markup, and details that make it harder to read the text you're editing as you go. A paragraph full of citation templates can really be hard to wade through without making mistakes!

Note that in gens articles—and the singular is "gens", not "gente", which isn't a word in Latin or English—individual people's entries always have the citations at the end, not some in the middle of the entry and others at the end. Only explanatory notes can come immediately after the name or in the middle of an entry. The reasons for this are that notes usually go next to the word or phrase they need to explain, and separating them from the citations makes them easier to recognize.

You're entitled to use whatever format you like—I just tend to regularize things in the articles I patrol (basically all Roman gentes, and a more limited selection of other articles, mostly but not exclusively in Roman history) so that they're consistent and easily understood by the reader. If I've annoyed you by changing your citations, I apologize. P Aculeius (talk) 21:39, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

No need to appologize, you havn't been annoying me at all, I'm thankful you often go over my edits. :) ★Trekker (talk) 21:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move discussion

There is currently a Request Move discussion about William IV. Since you participated in the previous move discussion involving William IV, I thought you might want to know about this one. Cheers. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

2010: The Year We Make Contact

Did you look at the moments I cited? Marcus Markup (talk) 23:59, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Nevermind, this belongs on the talk page of the article, I'll ask you there. Marcus Markup (talk) 00:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Signing in articles

Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I've noticed that you have been adding your signature to some of your edits to articles, such as the edit you made to Utilia gens. This is a common mistake to make and has probably already been corrected. Please do not sign your edits to article content, as the article's edit history serves the function of attributing contributions, so you only need to use your signature to make discussions more readable, such as on talk pages or project pages such as the Teahouse. If you would like further information about distinguishing types of pages, please see What is an article? Again, thank you for contributing, and enjoy your Wikipedia experience! Thank you. - Arjayay (talk) 13:25, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

There's no need to display a warning message written for newcomers just because I accidentally signed an edit. I know how to edit articles, and have been doing it for quite a long time. I don't need to consult a variety of help pages in order to do it right—maybe you never make a careless mistake, but the rest of us occasionally do! P Aculeius (talk) 14:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit-warring on Spurius Cassius Vecellinus

Hi, I've opened a new topic for discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spurius_Cassius_Vecellinus#Edit_war --Quuxplusone (talk) 16:16, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

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Homie bro

Hey, I found a picture of an Ipotane on Google, so I figured I'd add it here. I don't understand why you put the line drawing back :sadface: Sliced Up Peaches in a Can (talk) 07:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

There was clear consensus against having that image—which I think you created—the last time you tried repeatedly to add it to the article. If you continue to follow me around the encyclopedia pursuing your vendetta on other pages, I'll be taking this to Sockpuppet investigations and the Administrators' Noticeboard. P Aculeius (talk) 12:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

List of Roman gentes

I have thought about what you wrote. My attention was first called to the article by seeing some unambiguous vandalism, which you have reverted. Having seen that vandalism, I checked other entries on the list, with the result which I described. I had no reason to realise that you were guarding the page as assiduously as you have now made clear is the case, and therefore no way of distinguishing correct but unsourced entries from false ones, such as the vandalism I had seen. The fact that for EVERY example I checked I was unable to find verification did not encourage me to give the benefit of the doubt. However, my searches were really rather minimal, as in each case I searched only for the name in the list plus the word "gens", whereas obviously I should have tried other search terms, such as "nomen gentilicum". If I chose to insist on sticking strictly to policy I could insist on removing the material again as unsourced, but I don't think doing that at present would be helpful. JBW (talk) 09:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

When I wrote the message above, I had seen your message on my talk page, but not read it apart from the opening words. I rushed over to this page without reading it, because I wanted to quickly get rid of my earlier message here, which under the circumstances I now saw as unhelpful, and replace it with a brief description of my more recent thoughts on the matter. I have now read the whole of your message on my talk page. Thank you for giving me such a full and thoughtful account of the relevant issues. It was very interesting and informative. ☺ JBW (talk) 10:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. And I apologize for writing multiple walls of text! I think of the list as one of my better contributions to Wikipedia, and one that hasn't been too heavily modified, apart from the columnar format—whether I can ever finish it is another matter. As I said, I didn't add most of the redlinks in the first half of the alphabet, but I didn't see any benefit to deleting the ones I could find in reliable sources.

Epigraphy often joins several different people (sometimes dozens, or even hundreds) in an inscription, and includes quite obscure names that seldom or never show up in Roman literature, so since I was working on the letter 'S' or about then, I've been keeping a list of names to add later in my sandbox, instead of adding new redlinks. If I run across one that doesn't sound familiar, I check the list of Roman nomina (which is slightly more expansive, as it includes nomina that probably will never have their own article), and the number of individuals I can find in the C-S Datenbank. If there are just one or two, I won't be writing an article, but I'll add it to the list of nomina with citations to the major sources of those inscriptions. If there are enough for at least a stub article, I'll put it in the list in my sandbox. I could, I suppose, move the redlinks currently in the list of gentes to my sandbox, but I had hoped to write articles sooner than this!

I don't know whether this project—writing about as many Roman gentes as I can find, documenting those nomina that won't support articles, etc.—can be finished within the next few years, but I mean to keep chipping away at it when I can find the time. The redlinks serve as a reminder of the work that's yet to be done—though as I said, I have a list of others not even on the list yet! But thank you for being understanding about the situation. P Aculeius (talk) 14:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Although, unlike you, I have never made a significant study of it, I find it intriguing that there are various odd bits of information in various forms, such as epigraphy, which give little glimpses into aspects of Roman history of which there are no records in the literature. As you are no doubt aware, the ruins of Pompeii afford numerous small insights into everyday life which nobody was ever likely to think worth putting on record in literature. Long ago, when I was young, I made some study of the history of the Latin language, and epigraphy is, of course, one of a number of ways of getting small7 glimpses into part of the history of how the language operated elsewhere than in formal classical literature. However, the loss of information about Latin pales into insignificance in comparison to the loss for various other languages which in their day must have had substantial records, but for which all, or almost all, that we can now know about them is what can be gleaned from fragmentary bits of epigraphical evidence. JBW (talk) 14:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

You're quite right, I find these little insights fascinating. My interest in Roman gentes arose from a long-ago Latin class quest to make a "complete" list of Roman praenomina—a topic about which I could find very little of substance at the time—which led me to cataloguing individuals in classical encyclopedias—where I learned about various families and their unique habits in relation to praenomina, and often (at least in the Republic) branches distinguished by cognomina. I've always loved names, and when I had been editing Roman articles on Wikipedia for a while (some years later), I realized that little had been written on Roman gentes, compared with the material I'd already seen, and that it would be a good idea to preserve, expand upon, and perhaps update what was available from the sources I had.

Originally I hewed quite closely to encyclopedic sources, until I noticed some editors adding persons known from epigraphic ones, and on further investigation I discovered that there are probably ten times as many Romans whose names are known solely from epigraphy as one might find in the largest encyclopedia (PW)—perhaps many more than that. You probably know there's a lot of epigraphy from Pompeii; some of the names found there are now incorporated into articles about Roman gentes. Of course, for practical reasons I'll never be able to incorporate every name known from epigraphy! But at least I can document gentes, and dispel one myth I read in some source or other a few years ago—that there were only a couple of hundred Roman gentes!—when epigraphic sources prove beyond all doubt that the number of gentes was practically unlimited, and that we'll never know them all! Which makes this work, minor as it is, all the more satisfying. P Aculeius (talk) 15:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Invitation

Hello P Aculeius, we need experienced volunteers.

• New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
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• Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision (if it looks daunting, don't worry, it basically boils down to checking CSD, notability, and title). If this looks like something that you can do, please consider joining us.
• If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions. You can apply for the user-right HERE.
• If you have questions, please feel free to drop a message at the reviewer's discussion board.
• Cheers, and hope to see you around.

Sent by NPP Coordination using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho

★Trekker (talk) is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec14c}} to your friends' talk pages.

★Trekker (talk) 10:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! The Nativity scene on the Pulpit in the Pisa Baptistery by Nicola Pisano is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the Season's Wishes. (Sorry for the delay in responding; just logged into Wikipedia for the first time in days.) Same back atcha. -- llywrch (talk) 18:38, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Season's greetings

~ ~ ~ Merry Christmas! ~ ~ ~

Hello P Aculeius: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Spread the love; use {{subst:User:Dustfreeworld/Xmas1}} to send this message.

CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:31, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Here's to a 2024 full of intriguing discoveries …

I don't know what Father Time's looking at,
but I appreciate Wikipedia editors like you.
Cynwolfe (talk)

Time (1810) by Pieter Christoffel Wonder

Cynwolfe (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year, P Aculeius!

Happy New Year!

P Aculeius,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Final warning

If you do not revert this edit [3], I will report you to WP:ANI. One thing is disputing the content of an article and another is disregarding other editors' concerns, specially knowing that the topic has been controverisal in the past. I've started a discussion in the talk page but I will not continue participating unless you undo your edit. I highly recommend you to do so because you've broken the three-revert rule. I have too if this is interpreted as a revert [4] (I don't think it is), but I don't mind if I get blocked too. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 23:48, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I can only assume that you have not read the policy you're citing, since neither of us are (yet) in violation of it. Please don't threaten other editors with sanctions for rules they haven't broken—or anything, really, as that's really uncivil. If you read the relevant policies, you'll see that discussion is the appropriate remedy for content disputes: when an edit that you've made is reverted because someone else disagrees with it, that's when you go to the talk page—not simply re-do the edit or make variations on it, such as tagbombing the text you don't like.

I note that you decided to post this "warning" as though you were entitled to apply sanctions for anything you don't like—without waiting to see whether I replied to your post-post-post-reversion talk page discussion, which I did before receiving this "warning". You're not getting blocked because you haven't violated any rules—merely the spirit of collaborative editing by charging into a controversial proposal guns (and bludgeons) blazing, and determined to force unnatural readings, invisible commentary, and unnecessary POV tags on an explanatory footnote that doesn't say what you think it does. Maybe this would be a good time to ratchet down the level of hostility, and consider the points made about the language you're determined to change—particularly given the situation from which it arose: a talk-page discussion where consensus seems far from likely. P Aculeius (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay then. I've readded one of the two tags even though I am in my right of restoring the second one so that I am not accused of tagbombing, and linked to the discussion that I started. I will not hestitate this time if there is a revert. As I said one thing is content disputes and another disputes regarding user interactions. And now there is a discussion to link to with the tag. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that's a mistake—both a potential violation, which you had avoided, and based on a misunderstanding of what the footnote says. But at this stage it's time to avoid edit warring, so I'll step aside and see if other editors feel the need to do anything about your tag or wording. Reporting people to ANI for technical reasons in a minor content dispute seems unproductive to me. P Aculeius (talk) 00:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, this is definitively not a revert [5], which I just realised after writing the first comment here. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:34, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Arguably editing the same piece of text for the same purpose is potentially edit warring in the spirit of 3RR. However, as I've already said, reporting people to ANI in situations like this isn't my style. I have better hills to die on than this, and will wait to see if other editors have an issue with your changes. I still believe you have misinterpreted what the note says, but it's not worth fighting over ad magnam nauseam. P Aculeius (talk) 00:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Warning

You are removing innocuous editions by crudely calling them vandalism.

There is no vandalism or anything negative in adding that "the origin of the Ulpia gens is Umbria", instead of saying that "the Ulpii come from Umbria", which is quite generic and even misleading.

Your recent interactions with other users show that you use inflammatory language. Whatever you have against Spain, keep it for your personal sphere, not here.

I warn you that you are about to violate the 3RR. 46.222.234.189 (talk) 17:31, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism, which is what your edits are, does not violate the 3RR. You're clearly trying to change what the article says to emphasize your personal view that this was a Spanish family, as you're engaged in pro-Spanish nationalist editing. The section already says that the family of Trajan lived in Spain; that doesn't mean that the Ulpii were from Spain, no matter how badly you want to plant your flag on them. You've already received topic bans for similar reasons across multiple topics; don't add more to them by acting like you're entitled to come here and "warn" me about reverting your vandalism. P Aculeius (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

None of my edits mean that the gens/family were from Spain. You are a native English-speaker, read correctly.

I added that the ENTIRE gens Ulpia was from Umbria. Umbria is in Italy, did you know that? Umbria is not in Spain, lol

In any case, as your recent interactions with other users on topics about Spain demonstrate, it is clear that you have something personal with Spain and the Spanish.

I waste my time with you, you have a clear negative bias towards things related to Spain, that's why you haven't even known how to read well in this situation.

Get over that complex with Spain someday. Bye bye.

PS: Trajan was from Hispania (Spain), I guess that bothers you. Take that flag ;) 46.222.234.189 (talk) 22:05, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I believe you're the one who isn't reading well. If you're referring to the discussion over the "Muslim conquest of Spain", my position was that "Spain" in the early medieval period included, and that modern historians using "Spain" to refer to the early medieval period include what is now Portugal, and that therefore there was no need to move the article to "Muslim conquest of Iberia", or the subsequent "Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula". That's certainly not anti-Spanish bias. There I and the other people who felt the previous name was fine were accused of having an anti-Portuguese bias.

But here, the issue is that the Ulpii were an Umbrian family that spread to other areas of the Roman Empire, including Spain, where Trajan was born. That's clearly stated in the "origins" section, but you and your predecessors—in spirit, if not sockpuppetry, for which you were just blocked from editing—seem to be trying to emphasize this Spanish branch by duplicating the mention of it at the beginning of the section, and changing the language that the family was Umbrian to that they were of Umbrian origin, with the implication that they stopped being Umbrian, presumably when they became Spanish!

This is not how the "origins" or "branches" sections of articles on Roman gentes work. They always begin with the original home of the family, if it's known or at least inferrable from something such as epigraphy. Only after this do subsequent paragraphs describe individual branches, and where they lived or who was descended from them. And this is the case with the family of Trajan: they were one branch of an older family.

I read your insistence on duplicating the mention of Spain at the beginning of the section, and changing "from Umbria" to "Umbrian origin" as an attempt to suggest that the family was really Spanish, wherever they had previously come from. Since you're editing from Spain, and ignored the fact that the Spanish branch is already discussed—something that I called attention to multiple times in my edits summaries—this appears to be nationalist editing, emphasizing the Spanishness of one branch of the family to the main point of the article. That clearly violates Wikipedia's core policy requiring a neutral point of view. P Aculeius (talk) 00:42, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

User:P Aculeius, this guy who warned you and vandalised the Ulpia gens page is a well-known gaslighting user and sock-puppetter who systematically accuses others of doing what he is doing. He violated basically every rule of wikipedia. Vandalism, NPOV, peacock, socks, insults to other users, everything. He is a Spanish suprematist obsessed with genetics and with the idea of that any mention of other countries has to disappear if there's Spain involved (basically wanted to turn wikipedia into his pravda). He has had a vast network of socks and IPs to poison wikipedia with his agenda. Whoever goes against him has been accused by him of being an Italian, British, Portuguese, Islamic nationalist etc etc. See User:JamesOredan and User:Venezia Friulano. Just to inform you. Barjimoa (talk) 11:45, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the information! P Aculeius (talk) 12:17, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Concerning editio princeps

Hello Publius. I’ve noticed that some time ago you took to task to drastically reduce the list editio princeps by creating three new lists (list of editiones principes in Latin list of editiones principes in Greek, etc.), since the original one had become rather cumbersone. I would like to hear your opinion concerning some work on the articles that I have in mind: I was thinking of splitting the Greek and Latin lists by creating one for “Medieval Latin” and the other for “Byzantine Greek” (600-1450 for both).

I also wanted to know your thoughts concerning the removal of the list that is found at editio princeps; I’ve noticed that you put it there, but I have strong doubts concerning its utility and find it, I’m afraid, pleonastic as it repeats information from the other lists and also marred by POV (unavoidably, since, just to make an example, in a selection how to explain exclusions like Procopius, Euclid, Plotinus and inclusions like Stephanus of Byzantium and Zonaras?). From what I get from the article’s talk, you weren’t totally sure about the list’s need and anyways you meant it shorter than it currently is.

I’ll be very grateful for any advice you can give me and sorry if this message came rather wordy.Aldux (talk) 03:01, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe you're mistaken about what happened: I didn't split the list; I just participated in the talk page discussion about doing so, in the course of which I made a list of the works that were in Latin. But someone else carried out the actual splitting. I don't have a strong opinion about Medieval Latin or Byzantine Greek, although in principle it's not wrong to keep them together.

Again, I didn't put the list there. It looks useful to me, even if each of the authors is also covered in one of three separate lists. You're welcome to add significant omissions back in, but remember that the list here is only meant to be a selection from a much larger list that was split precisely because it was cumbersome. That's not a violation of NPoV; it's just some editors' approximation of the most important works to include. You're as entitled as anyone to have a different opinion, and add works to it. I could certainly see the authors you mentioned listed.

In general, I'm an inclusionist, and think that information is better preserved than deleted. I can't imagine why I would suggest that such a list wasn't necessary in 2021, and if that's actually what I said—perhaps you misread my comments—the reasoning completely baffles me now. A list of editio principes is an eminently good thing to have on Wikipedia, even if it's so big that it has to be split among separate articles. I'm not particularly worried that the list is too long, since very few people have significant browser limitations now, and if the article did seem unwieldy, it could be split again. P Aculeius (talk) 03:15, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Alas, I have indeed been awfully sloppy; I took for granted it had been you instead it was Zsteve21. I do plan to consult with Steve, as well as with Charles Matthews, who helped in building the original list.

The original list had become so awfully unwieldy, that indeed a split was necessary, and this was pretty much all my fault (I should have done that myself ages ago, but compared to when I started partecipating I have been very lazy in editing). As for why I was thinking on the possibility of removing the brief list found at the main article, that’s because I was considering if it would be better to treat editio princeps as a sort of directory pointing to the other lists. Otherwise, if there is a consensus on its usefulness I’ll work with trimming the selection and reducing the notes section.

As for why to divide the two big lists, it’s because they both passed 200 KB and I’m currently still making additions (well, for now I’m working on the Latin list); you are indeed correct that article size is not the issue it once was, but I’m planning a major expansion to cover also the Middle Ages. But it’s not really a burning issue, honestly.

I hope you will accept my humble excuses for my misunderstandings regarding your edits and comments. Saluti,Aldux (talk) 14:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad to see editio princeps has been prolific of further work, now over 18 years.

I think we're facing having the original page becoming list of lists of editiones principes, with editio princeps redirecting to that. The current table content should maybe become list of major Renaissance editiones principes, with exact content hammered out on that list's talk page. Splitting lists by language and century etc. is OK. The main point is that readers should be able to navigate swiftly to the area of interest. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello Charles, thanks for coming; I was going to ask your thoughts on further developments. I think keeping editio princeps would be useful to explain the concept of editio princeps and when it is commonly used. As for splitting, it's better to go, I think by languages, and when the biggest may have to be split (like List of editiones principes in Latin) in, say, List of editiones principes in ancient Latin and List of editiones principes in medieval Latin. You never know, maybe one day even these could have to be split in articles like List of editiones principes in early medieval Latin and List of editiones principes in high medieval Latin or the formation of List of editiones principes in late antique Latin (no panic; such possibilities seem distant)..... If there are fears concerning notability, I cat put these to rest; at least regarding Greco-Roman antiquity, I have yet to discover works that no matter how obscure have a relatively rich bibliography dealing with them (this doesn't count for inscriptions and papyri, which I have excluded from the lists).

Please let me know of any further thoughts.Aldux (talk) 17:13, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, such a list page can still have an introduction to the editio princeps concept. The important thing is clarity of navigation. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Hubert Klyne Headley, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Langley, British Columbia.

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Follow-Up on Pan

Hello, @P Aculeius. Thank you for your cleanup in the opening section of Pan (god). Since I try only to make edits I can justify, I wanted to say a little more about my revert that started the process.

First, I am wary of deriving information about one topic from a source about another. The scholars compiling that book about pastoral drama presumably researched Greco-Roman mythology, but it is not necessarily their area of expertise. There is a danger of the information being truncated or distorted in the process of their taking it from its original context. My concern was amplified because the addition in question was made by an editor with a history of citing books tangentially related to the article being edited.

Second, unhappy experience has taught me never to trust secondhand renderings of Roman mythology. Historically the topic has been treated in a careless and disrespectful manner, and modern non-experts have not shaken off the habit of ignoring nuance. The seemingly uncontroversial statement that Pan was worshipped by the Romans becomes, upon consulting proper sources, a complex business of the native Arcadian god Pan interacting with three or more rustic Roman deities.

Thank you for your time. I have come, not in a spirit of combat, but because this business raised points that seemed worth airing. ManuelKomnenos (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining your process. I understand why you would be wary of this source, and obviously sources specifically about classical mythology would have been better, which is why I consulted them after restoring what I felt to be an uncontroversial claim. I did not find an explicit statement that Pan was worshipped at Rome, but a number of the descriptions of Faunus and his worship by both ancient and modern scholars seemed to imply that Pan was part of the Roman pantheon, and also that the two names were somewhat interchangeable. Greek and Roman writers both seem to have referred to Pan, as well as made the identification of Pan and Faunus explicit, and this was what modern writers say. So I modified the original claim to be a little less insistent on Pan being worshipped separately, and more on the identification of Pan with Faunus.

As for the judgment involved in the edit, I note that Wikipedia's language on sourcing strongly recommends that material for which a source is missing (or inadequate) not be deleted unless one first attempts to determine whether appropriate sources exist. Obviously that wouldn't apply to anything that you know to be wrong, implausible, or patent nonsense, but in this case it was something that likely was supported by scholarly sources that could be located fairly easily. In this case, I had multiple sources on the topic in print to consult, although I didn't pull my ancient copy of the DGRBM off the shelf when Archive.org has it online.

My feeling is that editors tend to be overzealous with deleting material that could be sourced fairly easily, without making the attempt. I don't mean to accuse you of being similarly overzealous, but this tendency is the reason why I approached this instance from the perspective of keeping a plausible—IMO probable—statement until the claim could be sourced or refuted. I note that different areas of Wikipedia obviously rely on different standards: biographies of living persons generally require a source for anything to be kept, while other articles that are entirely unsourced may be kept indefinitely as long as they seem plausible, awaiting attention from editors who have the time and expertise to look for and cite sources.

I'm sure we're both doing our best to improve articles in CGR, and I'm glad that we can do so in the spirit of collaboration, instead of conflict. P Aculeius (talk) 15:56, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Upon reflection, it is quite rare that I delete dubiously-sourced material outright. The practice breeds laziness, and leaving a gap in the article is not an improvement over leaving an ambiguous piece of information— a parallel could be drawn with museum curators removing modern "restorations" from ancient statues, leaving behind gaping sockets and dowel holes which are no more true to the statues' original appearance. Specifically with the treatment of Roman religion I reflexively expect statements which are wrong, implausible, or patent nonsense, and in this case that translated sound principles into an act of excessive zeal. ManuelKomnenos (talk) 17:00, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@ManuelKomnenos: The reservations you express above about certain sources are all certainly valid ... in general. But perhaps not in this specific case? The assertion that "Pan was also worshipped in Roman religion after the conquest of Greece" (even if lacking in the nuances you suggest: the native Arcadian god Pan interacting with three or more rustic Roman deities), and seems (to me) to be true enough and to hardly need a source at all. In any case, I want to support P. Aculeius's view here. When an editor believes content to be both true (enough?) and uncontroversial, but inadequately sourced, then it is better to simply leave things the way they are, rather than deleting it. Of course, best of all (as P Aculeius has done) is to find better sourcing, and (if needed) to rewrite it to include any missing nuances. Regards Paul August ☎ 16:34, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, @Paul August. I broadly concur, although I found this specific case to be muddled. There was already a statement in that paragraph about Pan being equated to Faunus and linked with Silvanus; the addition I reverted reads to me like Pan being transplanted, intact, into a Roman context, as something distinct from the syncretism mentioned above. It is something of a challenge to text already present in the paragraph, and the source chosen was an unstable platform from which to mount a challenge.

However, as you say, I should have found a better source instead of resorting to deletion. I have a chance to act upon what you've both said in the article for Pales, where the same editor added a citation from the same source. ManuelKomnenos (talk) 17:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Edit-warring and violation of Verifiability policy at Franglais

In these two edits you have restored original research to the Franglais article in the form of six example sentences written in a combination of French and English. After I removed the unsourced material, you immediately restored it, claiming WP:BLUESKY, and that they are "patently obvious" and "do not require a citation". That is merely your opinion, in support of several examples which are half in a foreign language; about as far from BLUESKY as you can get. I have already issued a formal WP:CHALLENGE to source these examples, or to leave them out, and quoted our WP:Verifiability policy to you:

All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable. ... Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed.

but in response you immediately reinserted them again.

It is not up to you (or any editor) to create content that is unsourced and add them to a Wikipedia article; in this case, I believe you did not create them, but merely restored content created by some other user, but the effect is the same: by restoring the examples, you take responsibility for them, and if you want to keep them, they must be sourced; there is no alternative. Verifiability policy is clear on this point and the WP:BURDEN is now on you to source them. Please either source them now, or revert your last edit. Failure to do so will land you either at the Edit-warring noticeboard for repeatedly inserting the same material that another editor objects to, or at WP:ANI for refusing to adhere to the requirements of our core policy of WP:Verifiability when a request to do so has been issued. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:49, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Please, by all means report me for restoring something that was patently obvious: the article already says that Franglais consists of macaronic combinations of French and English, and provides citations; examples of macaronic combinations of French and English following such a definition do not "need an inline citation". This is not original research; they are grammatical examples. You will have trouble proving edit warring simply because you have been reverted twice for reasons clearly stated in my edit summaries; demanding the intervention of administrators and punishment of the person with whom you disagree will simply look like you are claiming ownership of the article and enlisting their help in your own edit war.

Since you are so determined to delete these examples and claim that they're somehow "original research" (they're not any kind of research—they're usage examples; on Wiktionary, for example, which also requires verifiability, example sentences do not need any kind of citations unless they're quoted from something), perhaps you should request input from other interested editors on the article's talk page, instead of threatening to go nuclear without so much as a violation of 3RR? P Aculeius (talk) 23:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Correction: I am *not* determined to delete the examples; the article *should* have examples or nobody will understand what the article is even talking about (unless they already know). I am determined that the article comply with verifiability policy and that is all. As I see it, you are determined to keep the unsourced material without citing it, and that is about as clear a violation of policy as you can get. I don't claim ownership, and I don't want you punished, and I don't want to waste words on your Talk page or at a drama board; I want the article cited, and this all goes away. What objection could there be to just citing it?

This is not Wiktionary—they have their own rules, and we have ours. Example sentences which some random Wikipedia editor invented some time back most certainly require citations. Maybe you've been doing this for a long time and haven't been called out on it, so didn't realize it was an issue; I get it, so no problem, just cite this one. I urge you to re-read WP:Verifiability, there are no exceptions to citation requirements, not even for captions under photographs, and certainly not for examples. I issued a WP:CHALLENGE to you and the next step should be simply to cite the material. What's the big deal about this, it looks like there might be citable examples out there—why not just cite them? Is this really a hill you want to die on: "I don't have to cite examples if I don't want to"—because, yeah, you do.

If you do decide to go cite them, beware of WP:CITOGENESIS—the Wikipedia article has been around for a long time uncited, and many of those sources I see are clearly copied from Wikipedia. Those sources cannot be used to cite the examples, they have to be WP:independent sources. Mathglot (talk) 23:17, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the citations; hopefully the sources are not copies of the WP article itself. Afaic, this resolves the outstanding problem, and I'm good. (With the possible exception of the last example, which may be bogus; see the TP discussion.) Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 07:12, 22 April 2024 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Independent versus reliable

Hi - the AfD has been closed as keep, which I am entirely fine with, but I still don't think you understand the point I am making. I'm not sure whether you've actually read what I've written. I have not said that statements by someone's employer are not authoritative, or reliable, or indeed that they cannot be cited. I have said that they are not independent, and that cannot in an of themselves establish notability via GNG. By all means, they can be used in any article to support assertions about someone's employment history, but they do not establish the individual's notability for our purposes. Can you see the distinction I'm getting at? Now, in this particular case there is a route to notability via WP:NPOL, which does not require independent sourcing - which I am absolutely fine with, and will admit to having failed to consider when I nominated the article for deletion - I just want to explain the difference between reliability and independence when considering notability via GNG. Best Girth Summit _(blether) 21:27, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

No, I do not. The governor's announcement and state websites establishing an appointment to office or other facts—not opinions—that would make someone notable are sufficient to establish notability by themselves irrespective of whether you choose to regard them as "press releases by an employer". You cannot disregard them for notability purposes any more than you can ignore them for other reasons. There is no logical rationale for doing so; they are the best possible sources for the facts that demonstrate notability, as are independent media sources that may rely on them—claiming that they are merely "rehashed press releases" does not allow you to disregard newspaper articles or other sources that are plainly independent of the subject. There is nothing about GNG that would allow you to disregard official statements by government sources for factual data simply because they establish notability. Such an interpretation of GNG is simply erroneous. P Aculeius (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

You know, you keep making assertions like 'such an interpretation of GNG is simply erroneous', but I have participated in >500 AfD discussions, most of which I initiated, and my track record is somewhere north of the 90% mark in terms of accordance with the final outcome. I was wrong in this case, and I conceded that pretty early on when the NPOL argument was put forward, but if my interpretation of GNG was so far out of line with that of the community I think that someone might have pointed that out to me before now. In my experience, the community feels that sources like that do not in and of themselves establish notability. In this case, it was the role that the subject held that established it, because that role is afforded presumed notability - that's the winning argument. If the governor appointed someone to a role that is not afforded presumed notability, an announcement from the governor would not be sufficient, regardless of whether or not it was reprinted in the local press. For a GNG pass, you need organic coverage, articles that go beyond the content of a press release and demonstrate true independence. Does that make sense? Girth Summit _(blether) 22:25, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

IMO his appointment to the Intermediate Court of Appeals makes him notable, even without his earlier service in the legislature or administrative positions. I have no particular opinion about awards or statements about him as a person, and I don't know that his family members are very important to the article. But those aren't matters to do with notability. The Intermediate Court of Appeals is a small but statewide body, recently created and responsible for handling most appellate matters that don't go directly to the Supreme Court of Appeals. Its creation was a bone of contention for many years in state politics. So I think it's pretty significant, and this appointment is fairly notable within West Virginia politics, compared with, say, the hundreds of state legislators who've served over the last decade or two. So any reliable source that proves the appointment is appropriate to demonstrates notability. There's no better source for this than the announcement by the governor, and no justification for disregarding it or anything based on it when it comes to demonstrating notability. P Aculeius (talk) 23:21, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I think you would have a good case that his appointment to that court might constitute an NJUDGE pass - it looks like that's a state-wide body, so you would have a case there. In future, that's the argument I recommend you make - you can't get a GNG pass on affiliated sources, but pointing to an WP:SNG that affords presumed notability makes whether or not they pass GNG a moot point. Girth Summit _(blether) 10:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Theory of [f|F]orms

I appreciated your detailed source analysis there. However, you missed three important elements of the analysis from a WP:P&G perspective.

1. Capitalizing "Forms" in that sense to distinguish it from another sense, or other senses plural, is precisely what MOS:SIGCAPS says not to do. It is capitalization for "signification", and it is a poor idea in encyclopedic writing (or any writing for a broad audience) because it does not signify anything specific and understood to the reader, unless the reader is already steeped in the topic area; it simply browbeats all other readers with a vague and unexplained (and unencyclopedic) "This is Super-Duper Important!" implication. Moreover, the specialist reader who does actually understand what is being signified does not need the "sig caps" in the first place since they do in fact already understand the contextually specific meaning; the sig caps for them is simply a style habit of insiders-to-other-insiders writing (the specialized-style fallacy; while that's an essay not a guideline, it describes accurately how WP approaches this, and reflects thousands of down-casing RM decisions). In total, it's a sloppy writing technique that was overwhelmingly common in the Victorian era, fell increasingly out of fashion in the early 20th century, and has almost completely died out today. If you do a lot of reading across this entire publication-era range, you will notice this pattern of decline quite strongly, across every subject.
2. Where this over-capitalization-for-emphasis style still survives, it usually represents aggrandizement, as found in marketing ("Our VPN protects your Privacy with a Proprietary Solution!"), officialese ("Remember that the Weekly Staff Meeting is mandatory for all Managers and all Program Directors in the Division"), attention-demanding text as found on signage ("Danger: Do Not Look Into Laser with Remaining Eye!"), and in other aggrandizing material trying to impress upon the reader a subjective sense of importance, e.g. about a position/office/role, institition, social class, etc. ("She became the Vice President of the University in 2007", "He became the Clan Chief upon the death of his father in 1995", etc., etc.), and this is by definition a WP:NPOV problem.
3. Perhaps most obviously, or at least without any debate wiggle-room at all, the very fact that the source usage was wildly mixed, often even within the same work on this specific subject, means automatically that it fails the test at the top of MOS:CAPS ("capitalized consistently in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources"), which test is mirrored (in different wording) in WP:NCCAPS.

So, that RM really only had one possible outcome (well, one that was P&G complaint). Your source examination actually helped prove that, but the way you wrote it quite clouded the matter and seemed to imply that it was instead casting doubt on what the outcome should be and supporting capitalization of at least "Forms". In short, "some academics or other specialists inconsisently like to capitalize this" is never a reason to capitalize anything on WP, and is instead a strong a signal that we should not do it here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:26, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Vindicius

I'm here to try to entice you to figure out Vindicius as a nomen. The name appears to be an etiological invention for a patriotic slave who is credited in Livy with saving the brand-new Roman Republic and is rewarded with manumission and citizenship – the fanciful and incorrect etymology then being used (Livy, Plutarch, John Malalas) to explain the origin of manumissio vindicta (this link is to my sandbox; I've been plodding away for months on an article on manumission that I never find adequate enough to foist on the public). But Vindicius turns up in Imperial inscriptions and, for instance, as the name of a deacon in the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris. See also the figurine I've plopped into the article, which came from a Jupiter Dolichenus hoard from one of the numerous places in Austria named Mauer. My conjecture is that Vindicius came to be used for obvious reasons as an aspirational name given to a slave, and as a nomen (as with the two names attached to the figurine) may indicate libertine descent. But so far, all my sources comment on the name as an invention and not on its subsequent real-world use. Just thought you might be able to keep a lookout for useful stuff? Cynwolfe (talk) 15:25, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm, after reading the relevant sections of Livy and Plutarch, and giving it some thought, I agree that the connection between Vindicius and manumission is probably fanciful. It may even have been invented for the story of his discovery, if the story was not instead invented to explain his name. I think that the name is rather transparently derived from Vindex, which we know as a surname from imperial times; but there do not seem to be any notable examples from the early Republic. The dictionary gives the main definitions of vindex as a "claimant" or an "avenger", but whether these evolved from a common meaning, or one of these meanings was influenced by the story of Vindicius, I can't begin to say.

I believe you're probably familiar with the Clauss-Slaby Datenbank, an invaluable resource for epigraphy (though nearly all of it is from imperial times). A search for "Vindicius" or "Vindicio" turned up just a few instances: from Africa, Terticus Vindicius (perhaps a freedman), Vindicius Optatus, Vindicius Rogatianus, Lucius Vindicius Saturninus; from Noricum, Vindicius Verecundus; from an uncertain province, Gaius Vindicius Fontanus (evidently not a freedman), AD 113; a soldier, Vindicius Felix, at Rome, AD 212; a senatorial Vindicius, also from Rome, date uncertain; Vindicius Hilarus, fourth or fifth century; Nonius Vindicius Protus, fourth century; Aurelius Vindicius, brother of Aurelia Jovina and Aurelia (Prima?), buried, aged twenty-six, fourth century; and no others I can be sure of. This is evidence that the name existed, but it lurked in great obscurity until at least the third century, and was not necessarily a gentilicium (though in a few cases it looks like one). There may be some Vindicias, but the inscriptions will need more sifting through.

My first impression is that there were Vindicii who were not obviously freedmen or their descendants (though of course that cannot be proved), even if there were freedmen by the name. But it cannot have been an especially old nomen at Rome, or there would be many more of them, and more instances with praenomina. It could be a name originally from some rural village or town. True, it could be the kind of name that would be invented by a newly-enrolled citizen; but not likely a name chosen by a foreigner. Rather something that a native Italian who already spoke Latin would come up with, and that argues for old but obscure. The fact that Livy, and presumably his sources, considered it a valid gentilicium, argues that it was a credibly native coinage, even if the story of this particular Vindicius in 509 BC is in reality a much later explanation.

My apologies if I have misunderstood your question, as I have been depriving myself of sleep lately and feel a bit groggy ATM. Let me know if any of this helps, or if you can help me grasp what you're looking for better than I seem to now, and I'll try again later. P Aculeius (talk) 16:49, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Yes, this is broadly what I'm getting at. The sources who discuss the Vindicius in Livy like to point out that naming the slave in question Vindicius was one of those ways the Romans claimed to find history in etymology (also a habit of some Wikipedians) – that the name was given to the legendary slave to explain vindicta. My question is about how to incorporate this view of the name as a false etymology into the article, since what about the real people named Vindicius or Vindicia? Are they saying that the nomen (not necessarily gentilic) did not exist before it was "invented" for this purpose? And if that is true, does it mean that the name caught on? Was it used as a "good" slave name? It might make more sense that this person actually (or traditionally) was named Vindicius, as an existing name, and the flight of etymological fancy was to connect the name to the word vindicta. So I'm just looking for a source that brings some coherence to the understanding of the name.

Just as a side note, in Gaul, there are several Gaulish names (several, considering how sparsely attested Gaulish is) listed in Delamarre's Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise that come from vindios, "white", and are orthographically similar. Some scholar mentioned this similarity to Vindicius, and it's thought generally that Latin names that resembled Gallic names might have been an appealing way to bridge Gallo-Roman identity. Not that this helps me explain the use of the name better. The name was attached to the slave in the story, whether or not such a person actually existed or bore this name, but was the name itself "invented" for the story or already in use (common or not) at the time of Livy? This is what's unclear to me. There's apparently a note in Ogilvie's Livy that might be relevant, but I haven't tracked it down yet. Really, I'm not asking you to spend your time on this picayune interest! I just noticed in my watchlist that you had added a nomen to a list article, so I asked in case you happened upon something as you were going about your usual business. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:08, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, yes! I have developed a practice of scanning (visually) shorter inscriptions I come across for nomina that I don't immediately recognize, and then checking them against the "List of Roman nomina", which currently contains all the gentes for which an article exists, as well as a number I consider sufficiently attested from epigraphy, but which are too sparsely attested even to attempt an article about.

Typically I regard a gentilicium with at least three separate instances potentially article-able (preferably with more, but when I started working on gentes, I only required one as long as I was certain that it was a nomen gentilicium, and sometimes there's something to say about office, locality or etymology to add a little bulk). If there's just one or two obscure persons from epigraphy, I go ahead and add them to the list of nomina and cite the inscriptions mentioning them.

If I don't have time to figure out just how many there are, or there are clearly enough to do something with, I add them to a list of nomina in my sandbox to work on later. That way I'm not adding redlinks to the nomina or gentes lists, and will know if new articles are created and added—I don't like the idea of new ones appearing without my knowing about it, because the formatting is almost always inconsistent with the current standard, and with these relatively obscure ones I want to go through the epigraphy carefully and include each individual—something that due to scale would be impractical for huge, well-known families!

But I digress. It's not clear to me how long new nomina were being coined in Italy for Italian natives. Nomina seem to have been already in existence at the time of our earliest records, and are included even in Rome's foundation myths, despite citations to those same myths for the purpose of demonstrating that people once had "simple" names, i.e. praenomina, before there were other names.

There will have been a transitional period during which some areas had partial adoption of nomina, perhaps lasting a generation or two and then disappearing or being exchanged for more relevant ones, along the lines of reasoning of, "why are you still calling yourself Miller because your grandfather was a miller, when you make arrows?" That situation may have lasted for centuries, and in different areas at different times. And even if it had passed at Rome or throughout most of Latium centuries before the time of the oldest Roman writers on history, say Fabius Pictor and Cato the Elder, the process would still have been known and understood by them, affording them a good way to explain "how Vindicius got his name" or "why some people are called Vindicius," or "what was the name of the slave who turned in the Aquillii and their co-conspirators?". It may not even have been a conscious process of myth-building. A bit of speculation about etymology, a placeholder name, an overheard allegory subsequently taken as a record of something that actually happened, and boom, at one or two removes, the myth of Vindicius, the patriotic slave who saved the Republic.

If we imagine that some Roman writer, probably generations before Livy, used the story to explain how the name came about, it could be true, but it would more likely be folk etymology. I would not want to suggest that it was a name that people would bestow on a slave in hopes of encouraging him to "be good", since the example of good behaviour A) involved betraying his masters to their deaths, and B) implying the reward of freedom would necessarily follow (dangling the prospect of freedom before one's slave might be something a wealthy Roman would have to consider very carefully).

And then, as we know, most Roman slaves acquired nomina at the time of their manumission, and assumed those of their former masters. So a freedman named Vindicius would be more likely the freedman of someone else named Vindicius than to have assumed the name in triumph at obtaining his freedom (potentially offending the former master who had likely become his patron). That is just my guess, of course, not a pretension of truth! And it's certainly true that not all manumitted slaves assumed (or kept) the nomina of their former masters.

The idea that a foreigner being enrolled as a Roman citizen would choose a name similar in sound to his original name, or another word or name familiar in his language with positive connotations, is both logical and fairly certain to have been a regular occurrence. I should not have dismissed this possibility before. It would be as good a reason to find Vindicius in Gaul—or Africa—as assuming that a Roman colonist brought it there and spread it amongst his descendants.

My suggestion for explaining the etymology would simply be to report that A) it is obviously derived from the cognomen Vindex, B) Roman writers recorded a story that it was the name given to or assumed by the freed slave who had exposed a plot by the Tarquins to regain power, and C) that even if the story is true, the name is of very sporadic occurrence in Roman epigraphy, and may have been assumed independently by different persons at different times and for different reasons. It would be fair to include discussion from writers who have mentioned that it could have been assumed by Gauls because it resembled a word in Gaulish that had favourable connotations to them. Apologies if I'm just stating the obvious rather than helping you parse the possibilities much! I'm still rather scatterbrained when it comes to distilling data. P Aculeius (talk) 20:29, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

As I was going to St. Ives

It was a joke. I wasn't quoting Mad Magazine for academic purposes. Bkatcher (talk) 23:07, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Not what talk pages are for—and this was an old (ancient, actually) discussion of little relevance to the article—hence the title, "Muslims!"—and it's not clear why a joke about people having multiple wives in France is relevant to that discussion. Plus, if you're going to quote from a magazine that published over many decades, it would help if you would identify the issue and section—otherwise you may give readers the impression that you either made it up, or just think you remember how it goes and where it comes from. In an ongoing discussion, you could allude to something you think you remember without citing it precisely, but here and without having provided any explanation of why you thought it was relevant to a fossilized talk page discussion, the fact that you were just making a joke without intending to discuss anything or suggest an addition to the article can't be taken for granted. P Aculeius (talk) 23:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Actually, the last comment on that discussion was this May, about someone suggesting the wives weren't his. But like the answer to the original riddle, I don't think we'll ever reach a consensus.Bkatcher (talk) 02:43, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

And it was nonsensical to reply then, ten years after the previous reply, which came eight years after the original nonsensical post. Someone might have deleted it then, but I'm guessing that people figured the reply was at least on topic. I was not at all sure why you replied still later.

As for the riddle, anyone who asks it presumably has an answer in mind, and the usual answer has always been "one". You can't prove that's "the" answer because other people have answered it different ways for centuries—and worded it differently, which may change what appears to be the most natural reading, something that itself changes over time.

For instance, we tend to assume that "I met a man with seven wives" means that the man is married to seven women. But an older version of the riddle says, "I met seven wives", meaning only "married women", and in this version we wouldn't assume they were married to the same man; one could still suppose that they were all married to different men, perhaps just one or none of them to the man the narrator meets.

One can easily get lost in all of the possible interpretations—but to the extent that consensus is possible, I believe consensus is that the most logical answer is "one", since it is a riddle: the most obvious answer would be 2,403, and the answer to a riddle is unlikely to be the most obvious one, while the simplest answer is that no calculation is necessary, due to the ambiguous wording allowing for the possibility that nobody but the narrator is going to St. Ives. P Aculeius (talk) 04:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, the producers of Die Hard With a Vengeance would agree with you. Have a great week. Bkatcher (talk) 05:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Manius

Could you see whether I've made a mess of this when you have a minute? It seems to me to be a set index or a list article, not a dab, because it has informational text. I mean the peripherals; I didn't do anything to the content, Cynwolfe (talk) 23:50, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

It's an old list that predates the article I wrote on the name by a few months in 2009, when I was doing separate articles on all of them. I kind of want to rewrite all of those now with what I've learned and the sources I have available now, along with my experience in Wikipedia, but I still want to gather more. But "Manius" has always been a list of prominent Romans with this praenomen, and I've never felt confident that trying to do anything about it wouldn't stir up trouble, so I've left it and others like it alone. Most disambiguation pages have some informational text; this isn't much, and it's less than the article about the name itself (which could be bulked up if I really work on it, or merged into another article, though that might become unwieldy if it includes all praenomina). I'm not sure that it's a disambiguation page per se, or whether it couldn't be a "prosopography page". Your opinion would probably be better than mine. P Aculeius (talk) 02:23, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

If I understand what a set index is (and this is the sticking point, because I don't think I do), this would be one because it's limited to a set of names that might be confused or related. Like, if there was a goth band named Manius, a racing horse named Manius, and a clothing brand named Manius, then one would have a dab page, with the list of Manii under a People heading. But I think it's the little intro limiting the members to Romans with this name that makes it a "set" (not a list article). Not sure! No big deal. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:42, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I guess it's a "set" of the most important people named Manius, which perhaps seems odd to us as we're familiar with Roman names. But as Manius is not a very common name, and was hereditary in a few important families, I don't think it's imperative to do anything to it right now. Thanks for asking my opinion, and sorry I wasn't more helpful! P Aculeius (talk) 00:53, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

History of Christianity

I have finally nominated the article. Please take a look if you can: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Christianity/archive1. Thank you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:19, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

As I was going to St Ives

Hey, how's it going? I just wanted to clarify my problem with the current description and why I changed it. The description as laid out at present makes out as though the poem explains the man and his wives as travelling themselves, which it doesn't; it doesn't explain the wives as doing anything, just that the narrator met them on the way of his own journey. GOLDIEM J (talk) 13:58, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

That's the whole premise of the riddle: it doesn't say where the man and his wives are going, but relies on the listener to assume that they are going to St. Ives when it implies that the listener is meant to count seven times seven times seven times seven. However, the riddle doesn't state that they're not going to St. Ives either. That's just the traditional interpretation, to which there are also several alternatives.

The explanation of what the riddle is traditionally understood to mean must be clear about who is thought to be going to or coming from St. Ives, not be ambiguous. It's quite clearly worded to express that meaning now; the change you're trying to make makes that less clear, because it suggests that one cannot answer at all due to not knowing who is going in which direction. That's not the intention: the traditional answer is that only the narrator is going, because all of the others are coming. The article even quotes from an old source stating that explicitly.

Similarly, last night's edits unnecessarily focused on whether the sacks were counted as inanimate objects. But the riddle explicitly includes them in the counting—both in the question and as part of the calculation if the reader is meant to count them. There was no need to mention them a third time between those two, or specify that they're inanimate. Not only does the riddle not suggest that it is distinguishing between persons and objects, but it clearly implies that they are meant to be counted if they are going to St. Ives—which under the traditional interpretation they are not, although in most of the alternative interpretations they are.

Because this riddle and all of its possible answers turn on very precise interpretations of language, the article needs to be very carefully worded so that the reader knows exactly which possible meaning is being discussed. Combining sentences and introducing new ambiguities in the middle of those explanations makes it less clear what is being said. P Aculeius (talk) 14:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The poem makes crystal clear the necessary details of the travelling direction of the narrator and identity of the individuals encountered on the way there. The others are not required to be actively travelling contrary to the narrator in order for the narrator to encounter them, or for the audience to count how many of them there are; in other words, the narrator could encounter the others in whichever location they're already present that happens to be on the way of the journey. I do give you that this isn't the definitive interpretation, but neither is yours, as the poem is ambiguous in this regard (it's a detail unnecessary to the point;) so to claim as definitive fact that the others are coming from the destination, in my opinion, constitutes personal analysis, a violation of WP:NOR. I'm happy to leave the sacks part alone, but I would like this original analysis removed from the article. GOLDIEM J (talk) 16:20, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

You're confusing the riddle with the answers: there is a definitive interpretation of the riddle, which is that it does not state which direction the other persons or their burdens are traveling in. But for any answer to make sense, it must choose an interpretation, and the usual interpretation is that only the narrator is going to St. Ives. This is not original research; it is expressly stated by multiple sources that are cited for this point, and one is even quoted from. The fact that other interpretations are possible is also accounted for in the article. So I don't understand your argument: apart from stating that cited facts are somehow my personal analysis and should be deleted as original research, you're only repeating what the article already says. P Aculeius (talk) 17:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

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