Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome

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Clean up of other minor battle articles from TableSalt43

There are other articles on obscure or minor battles with minimal descriptions:

• Battle off Carteia (46 BC) nq
• Siege of Apamea
• Battle of Tauris (for disclosure I was involved in the draft → article stage; when it was moved to mainspace I objected but did nothing)

These all suffer from similarly shoddy sourcing, exceptionally long introductions etc for a battle with a description no more than a paragraph in ancient sources, and I think should all be stubified. I recently moved them all to draft but was, on consideration of the explanation, rightfully reverted. I seek a consensus that stubification should be done. Ifly6 (talk) 18:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

RFC proposing the MOS recommend infoboxes for articles on events, people, settlements, etc

Editors here may be interested in the RFC discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes. The proposed MOS text begins The use of infoboxes is recommended for articles on specific biological classifications, chemical elements and compounds, events, people, settlements, and similar topics with a narrow and well-defined scope. NebY (talk) 17:32, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Afrikaans exonyms

This is an AfD on several dozen similar lists, including Latin exonyms, a list of the Roman names of various places that existed in Roman times and today. Looking over the Latin list, it seems to have a decent rationale for existing, although I cannot say the same about the Greek list, which seems to consist mostly of modern places that did not exist as part of the Hellenistic world, or even in Roman times, and so is a list of Modern Greek names, not Ancient Greek names of places that have since been renamed or transformed in modern languages. I don't have the knowledge to give an opinion about any of the other lists, but I think the Latin list should be kept. Members of this project might want to give their opinions, pro or con, regarding whether to keep the Latin list. P Aculeius (talk) 14:41, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Duplicate artcile: Porta Caelimontana and Porta Querquetulana

Three articles partially deal with the same subject: Porta Caelimontana, Porta Caelimontana and Porta Querquetulana, and Porta Querquetulana. I don't know what to do with the second one. T8612 (talk) 07:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I understand the rationale for the existence of the joint article. Looks like I created both Porta Caelimontana (2010), which someone has now confidently illustrated with the Arch of Dolabella though that identification is not certain, and Porta Querquetulana (2013). I don't see a huge amount of actual information in the joint article that could be extracted and digested encyclopedically; it's more a loose review of the history of the scholarship. I admit, though, that I don't love articles that read like a research paper or the dreaded first chapter of a dissertation. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:04, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

After a brief perusal of the three (and some small tweaks), my first thought is to merge the contents of the joint article into the two separate ones. There should be some overlap. Overly technical details about the scholarship could be turned into electronic footnotes (I use {{efn-lr|text}} and {{notelist-lr}} to avoid confusion with references, with which I don't usually include explanatory notes, but any format should work). Some of the language could probably be simplified. As the joint article has very few contributors, has gone largely untouched since its creation, and its primary author doesn't appear to be active on Wikipedia anymore, I suggest being bold rather than proposing a merge first; merge discussions on short articles in CGR don't seem to attract much participation. P Aculeius (talk) 13:29, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Help with a Stand Alone List Going Live on Thursday

Can you review a Stand Alone List for me that is being developed as a WikiEdu class project? It's on archaeologically attested women from antiquity (none of whom have a presence on Wikipedia, although presumably that could change). I've done several drafts of the intro following the guidance of a Wiki editor and WikiEdu staff. One ancient woman has been added to the list as an example, the other women will be added to the holding places by the students on Thursday during a group editing/posting session.

Can you give it a look and give feedback? I'm particularly hoping to avoid the entire list being rejected immediately and all the students' efforts being for naught.

List of Archaeologically Attested Women from the Mediterranean Region

--EtruscanMayhem (talk) 14:58, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm, well, I can see a few issues that might come up in review. I won't be involved in the decision to accept or reject it, it that helps. I'm also curious as to who the students are—not individually, but at what educational level? I would hold college students to a higher standard than high school or junior high school students. But that's beside the point, I suppose, because in order to get the article accepted, there are things that have to be addressed, no matter what grade level the students who produced it. Issues that I see:

1. Are being "archaeologically attested" and from the Mediterranean region a valid intersection of categories? The Mediterranean is a pretty vast area, and it's not clear why the three ethnic/cultural groupings belong together: Assyrian, Greek, and Roman. It would be easier to see the intersection between Greek and Roman women, but including them in the same category with Assyrian women seems like a stretch. If Assyrian women are included, what about Babylonians, Hittites, Canaanites, Hebrews, Philistines, Phoenicians, Egyptians, etc.? Is there a reason for including Assyrians specifically?
2. If "archaeologically attested" includes women known from epigraphy, then there are thousands of Roman women known exclusively from inscriptions—though a few of them may or may not count as being "from the Mediterranean region"; are all Roman women included because Rome is a Mediterranean culture? If Assyrian women count, then maybe all Romans should too—and probably a lot of Greek women as well. I don't know how much epigraphy relating to otherwise un-notable individuals there is from Assyria. But for the Greek and Roman categories, there are presumably more women who are "archaeologically attested" than could comfortably fit in one article, much less a combined list of all Greek and Roman women known from archaeological sources. It's true that the list currently has just a few entries, but lists on Wikipedia should anticipate the possibility of being expanded based on the scope of their contents, and it would be problematic if we had a short list of persons that suggested that it's all, or even most of the persons in the category who are known to scholarship.
3. Only one of the entries so far has any biographical information or sources. Without anything further, all we know is that "there was a Greek/Roman/Assyrian woman by this name", and even that doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards for verifiability without any kind of source. Facts asserted on Wikipedia should always be cited to a reliable source. Many aren't, and get deleted for this reason. Without sources, all but one of the entries is liable to be deleted by any editor who comes along and doesn't feel like looking for a source. More helpful editors might look for sources instead of deleting them, but of course that might be something your class should have the chance to do first. Fortunately, it's not necessary for each of the women to be individually notable. But there should at least be some identifying information, such as, "known from an inscription at Smyrna".
4. I can say with certainty that there were countless Roman women named "Maxima", which would make verifying an entry with no further identifying information impossible. Meanwhile, there were probably many women named "Phryne", but it's a Greek name, and by far the most famous person by the name was a wealthy Greek courtesan accused of impiety, who was acquitted by a jury after displaying her magnificent bosom to them (technically, "Phryne" was only her nickname, but there were probably lots of women called "Phryne" for various reasons, and most of them would have been Greek). Presumably the "archaeologically attested" one is somebody else, but without any further information, the reader won't know.

I hope this isn't just pouring cold water on the project. Some of these are curable issues. Others may require re-examining the scope of the list. I can't say whether any one of these will or won't be a roadblock to getting it accepted, but all of them could be, and there may be other issues that I didn't think of. Good luck with the project, though! P Aculeius (talk) 17:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree with P Aculeius: the scope of this list looks way too broad to me. If you are committed to creating a list of ancient women, neither List of ancient Greek women nor List of ancient Roman women currently exist, though List of ancient Romans and List of ancient Greeks both do. If you were to make such lists which were limited to only entries which already have an English Wikipedia article, I think it would be much easier for you to make the case for inclusion. (Similarly, I would presume that a case could be made for lists of women from other ancient cultures, though I am in less of a position to comment usefully on those!) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:45, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

(For the sake of completeness, I will note that we do have list of ancient Macedonians in epigraphy, which is perhaps a closer parallel to what EtruscanMayhem is suggesting. That looks to me like a case study in what not to do, though: it's linked to from three mainspace articles, averages two page views a day (which admittedly is two more than I expected!) and hasn't had a substantive content change since 2009, less than two weeks after it was created. The best which can be said about that article is that nobody cares.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:54, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

There are some Wiki lists of ancient Roman women, and here's one of the lists THIS list is responding to: List of distinguished Roman women. Most of the women on the list are either elite women described in literary texts written by male authors, or are literary/mythical constructs. In other words, that list doesn't tell us much about real historical women at all.

Another list of note is List of prostitutes and courtesans of antiquity, which has a regionally wide scope. A great list, but again, these are women who we only know about because they are described in literary texts almost entirely written by male authors.

The point of the list is to fill in Wikipedia content gaps (in keeping with Projects like Women's History), and since many well known and/or interesting women discussed in the scholarship have no presence on Wikipedia whatsoever, this list is meant to address that content gap. Some archaeologically attested women DO have Wikipedia pages, such as Claudia Severa and Enheduanna, and they would be appropriate for this list as it is imagined.

Moreover, these are all 'real' women who we can study archaeologically, not simply through biased literary texts.

EtruscanMayhem (talk) 15:59, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, besides funerary inscriptions there will be relatively little written about what you refer to as "real" women—and very little in funerary inscriptions, apart from the names of their relatives, whether they were freedwomen, and sometimes how old they were or how long they were married. Details beyond that will occur almost exclusively in literary sources—though for most, literary mentions provide few details beyond what would go in a funerary inscription.

I'll add, virtually all epigraphic details will also have been carved by men, although some of them may have been at the direction of women who paid for them to be carved, but at best we can only infer this in some cases. So this list will in no way address the complaint about authors being male; even if a percentage of inscriptions were carved at the direction of women, they don't differ significantly in content or tone from those carved at the direction of men. To the extent that literary sources reflect a "male" perspective of women, that can't really be "corrected" by using epigraphic sources.

If there are additional details to be gleaned from archaeological materials, the list fails to address such content gaps unless it provides those details, which as of yesterday were only provided for one person. Without anything else, it's just a list of names.

The reason why many of these "real" women have "no presence on Wikipedia" is that individuals generally have to be notable to have an article about them; and persons known exclusively from epigraphic sources are rarely notable, whether they are men or women. This necessarily means that individual notability is largely dependent on literary sources, not because there were no other notable persons, but because epigraphic sources rarely provide enough information about anyone to establish notability or justify a biographical article.

For instance, the Fasti Ostienses record the names of hundreds of men who rose to the top of the Roman aristocracy, held consulships and probably were regional governors with long and distinguished careers prior to that. But many of them are not known from any other sources, and so even though they were "elite", their careers are largely unknown, and so they appear only in lists that have nothing further to say than that "Gaius Bolonius Maximus was consul some time during the reign of Antoninus Pius, possibly around AD 145".

There are exceptions, however. If you browse through the List of Roman gentes, you'll find many articles that list individual men and women known exclusively from epigraphic sources. Most of these will be articles about minor gentes, with fewer than a hundred known members; it would be impractical to include everyone known from epigraphy in articles about major families, like the Julii or the Valerii. But since you're trying to avoid describing "elite" women, you can certainly find a large number of "real" women in them, each of whom is cited to an epigraphic source (the ones from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and L'Année épigraphique are linked to a database that will provide parallel citations and other sources, sometimes even a picture of the inscription).

Starting at the very top of the list, I see eight women known from the epigraphy of the Abudia gens, none of whom seems to belong to the "elite". Eight more examples are found at Accia gens, two at Accoleia gens, six at Acerronia gens (plus one who certainly was "elite"), thirty-six at Acutia gens, not counting the aunt of Aulus Vitellius. So "non-elite" women known from archaeology do have a presence on Wikipedia, although in most instances the information known about them is quite limited. P Aculeius (talk) 17:11, 24 April 2024 (UTC)