Talk:Caesar's civil war

Response

Hello Ifly6, just to answer your questions-

Gaius Fabius- A legate of Caesar who played instrumental in the Battle of Ilerda. Bedsides that, little else is known so I agree with you that, he in particular isn't a important asset to the war and I probably shouldn't have added him.

Saburra- A Numidian general who served the king of Numidia, Juba I, and fought Julius Caesar during Caesar's Civil War. He was crucial to the war in Africa. He decisively defeated Caesars lieutenant Gaius Scribonius Curio at the Battle of the Bagradas. He would go to command Juba's army in Numidia, while he was fighting Caesar directly before eventually being killed in action. I figure he is important enough to be on the list due to him being Juba's best commander.

Sources about this two come from ancient and modern sources.

I created the article about Saburra and my sources are linked but I will link some of the ones I used:

Modern-

• Goldsworthy, Adrian (2006). "XXI". Caesar: Life of a Colossus. New Haven: Yale Press.
• Gardner (translator), Jane F (1967). Julius Caesar – The Civil War. Penguin Books.
• Holmes, T. Rice, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire, Vol III, Oxford University Press, 1923
• Roller, Duane W., The world of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene: royal scholarship on Rome's African frontier, Taylor & *Francis e-Library, 2004

Ancient-

• Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili 2.40
• Cassius Dio's Roman History (not often accruate)
• Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars - Caesar.
• Appian, B.C. i. 80.
• Marcus Velleius Paterculus ii.

I think that about covers it, and yes I will admit, one day I saw the flashy tables and added wayyy more people than I should have.

Thank you, Have a great day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by TableSalt43 (talk • contribs) 22:03, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 1 May 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Vaulter 03:52, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

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Caesar's Civil War → Caesar's civil war – MOS:CAPS avoid unnecessary capitalisation Ifly6 (talk) 18:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 03:35, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support move. Turning into a full requested move to allow for discussion given that a move would require non-controversial interpretation of guideline. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) refers to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters, which says only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of...reliable sources are capitalized. (emphasis mine) Note that a "substantial majority" is required; in this case, the sources are split almost 50-50, so lowercase capitalization is preferred automatically. Pinging BarrelProof and DrVogel who participated in the original technical move request. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 03:35, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support, and also move all the ones listed at Template:Ancient Roman Wars that are not already lower case, for consistency. Dr. Vogel (talk) 03:47, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Also, in general, I think a lot of the Roman-topic articles have a lot of capitalisation ... if not errors, at least inconsistencies. A lot of older scholarship, especially under German influence, used a lot of capitalisation for all sorts of things (Senate, Comitia Centuriata, etc). That doesn't seem to be as common in the English-language scholarship anymore. Ifly6 (talk) 09:49, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, not because it's a great title, but because the proper name of this war in Roman history is usually The Civil War. Other civil wars in Roman history aren't usually called something else or otherwise described so as to make them clear which war or revolt they refer to, if it isn't already clear, but "the Civil War" with no other context except that it's Roman always refers to this war. Perhaps parenthetical disambiguation would be better—I suspect this title was written analogously to the "English Civil War" and the "American Civil War", which is what "Civil War" always refers to in English or American history—"English" and "American" are only included if the context is unclear. I've never cared for "Caesar's Civil War" as a title, but it's still the Civil War of Roman history, perhaps because it's the title used by Caesar for his commentaries, and Appian also used the title, although he seems to have covered all of the major conflicts of the first century BC under the same (singular) title. Other such conflicts can be described as "civil wars", but always have to be distinguished, or are referred to by other names. "Roman Civil War" might seem ambiguous, since it's not usually so called, although I think it's a marginally better title than the present one. P Aculeius (talk) 13:44, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

  but by that argument, shouldn't we then be capitalising anything and everything of which there's only one? Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:22, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

  No, no more than we capitalize anything else. When something has a proper name, it's capitalized; this is the Civil War in Roman history, just like the Civil War in American History refers to a different conflict—we don't treat it as a common noun because it's unique, but because it's a proper name, like "World War I" or "the Hundred Years' War" or "the Russian Revolution". It's true that many conflicts have multiple names—the "First World War", the "War of the Rebellion", etc., but they don't stop being proper names—we don't refer to the "first Punic war" or the "third Samnite war" or the "third servile war" as though they were common nouns, although that seems to be what your comment above implies we should be doing. I don't think that comports with standard rules for capitalization in English, however. P Aculeius (talk) 18:13, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support, since sources do not consistently capitalize this (or even use this exact phrase). This is not a proper name, it's a descriptive phrase.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support per SMcCandlish. As for the comments by P Aculeius, I think that can be a separate discussion held later. This is, at least, an improvement over the current title. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support per SMcCandlish. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support This is more a descriptive title than an actual name for the war, which requires lower-case initials. Avilich (talk) 14:58, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Revert, March 2024

Romulus Cyrus (talk · contribs): Hi. I reverted your edit leaving the message failed verification? see talk. The citation to Plutarch's Caesar is, I think, rather unclear. Can you provide the specific passage? Nor do I see anywhere in it where it says that the total number of dead is 170,000. Nor do I think that Plutarch's biographies are at all reliable without expert interpretation. See WP:PRIMARY, WP:SYNTH, and WP:CGR guide on primary sources. In general, ancient sources are awful when it comes to numbers like these. And Plutarch is especially bad. If you're interested in Plutarch's Caesar, I would also consult the Pelling 2011 commentary. Ifly6 (talk) 14:12, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, in the source I cited, on page 571, it states, "After the spectacles, a census of the people were taken, and instead of the three hundred and twenty thousand of the preceding lists there were only enrolled one hundred and fifty thousand." So that means roughly 170,000 Romans died. You are correct, however, to say that Plutarch is not a very reliable source. But at least he provided a figure. Romulus Cyrus (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

What's the standard citation – chapter and section; classicists do not cite primary sources by page number – for that? I'd want to take a look in Pelling's commentary. Moreover, Roman censuses were regularly dodged (see eg Gracchi brothers and Rosenstein Rome at war 2004). Mere statement that the numbers went down does not mean that we can attribute the entire difference to deaths in the civil war. Ifly6 (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, if you go to Plut. Caes. 55.5, the old Perrin Loeb includes a footnote that says Suet. Iul. 41 says that this was not a census of all the people, but a revision of the number of poorer citizens entitled to receive allowance of grain from the state. Added to the broad WP:SYNTH issue, I don't buy that this passage can support the claim of 170k deaths in the war. Ifly6 (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Tribunician rights

@Lumbering in thought: I am very unclear as to why you are so insistent on softening the passage related to Caesar's actions with Lucius Metellus in the treasury being inconsistent with claimed war goal of defending the rights of the tribunes.

The inconsistency between Caesar's supposed casus belli, protecting the rights of tribunes, and his actions is regularly brought up in the scholarly literature. The sham nature of the casus belli was even brought up in ancient times (see Suet Iul 30.1–2), but for modern sources see among others:

• Morstein-Marx Caesar (2021) pp 408–10 discussing impact on the plebs (bad for Caesar), historicity of the story (Plutarch's story probably not historical), and Caesar's extreme anger re Metellus' actions including a threat on Metellus' life that then led to Metellus fleeing to Pompey in Macedonia (citing Cic Att 10.4.8: Cicero saying Curio, who is a gossip, said Caesar wanted Metellus killed after the matter with the treasury but did not do so because it would be unpopular – LCL 97 p 121);
• Ehrhardt Antichthon 29 (1995) p 36 noting Caesar's "concern for the 'rights of tribunes' was too obvious a sham.... what [he] actually thought about the inviolability of tribunes and their right of veto was unmistakably displayed three months later";
• Rawson in CAH vol 9 (1994) p 430 noting "More embarrassing still was the action of the tribune L. Metellus ... [barring of treasury] ... the defender of tribunician rights [Caesar] does not mention this contretemps, and he set off for Spain angry at his loss of popularity with the plebs and the time wasted"; and
• most damningly the episode is seen in Raaflaub Dignitatis contentio (orig 1974) and Meier Caesar (orig 1982), iirc, as evincing that Caesar's casus belli is entirely a sham and he overthrew the legitimate government for personal reasons.

Nor am I entirely clear as to the meaning or veracity of this portion added: his life, claimed by Caesar to have been to been under the same threat as himself by Pompey for staying in Italy. Can you point to where it is supported in Goldsworthy? Rawson – although accepting Plutarch's narrative, which Goldsworthy relates in indirect voice and which Morstein-Marx (probably rightly) rejects as ahistorical, – notes that nothing much from Caesar is said. Cicero's letter contrarily states Caesar wanted him killed but did not do so because it would be too unpopular. Ifly6 (talk) 04:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Appreciate someone doing the work to get Talk pages working by using that at sign. Mentally I think I'm also in a better place to start using the Talk pages again. They provide a lot of space to write, even if they don't remake one's image perhaps braggadociously in the article. I'm most happy with my latest edit on this article at this time. I'll be sure to continue the practice.

Anyway, on the substance. I'll soon get into why equating the perfection of Caesar's initial statement implied with the casus belli just using Goldworthy is inadequate. After finding an electronic version (that's out there) you can find this entire quote that is dovetailing into the subject at hand or at least providing Caesar's mental state. This end-of-paragraph is two paragraphs preceding "Metellus stood in front of the doors and imposed his veto" on page 396 I assume.

In the Commentaries Caesar claims that Pompey had threatened to treat even those who stayed in Italy as if they had sided with Caesar. In the end, most people of all classes felt no strong attachment to either side, wanted to be neutral and simply hoped to survive the Civil War unscathed. Some were convinced by Caesar's words and attitude, but most remained wary. The only open resistance to Caesar came from one of the tribunes, Lucius Caecilius Metellus, who began by hindering him in the Senate.

— Adrian Goldsworthy, page 396

I would advise not to assume I'm the one trying to soften Caesar's image. In fact, I was a bit furious though I hate to admit it at the start, because I thought your initial edit "This also showed the sham nature of Caesar's supposed casus belli in protecting the rights of tribunes:" was paraphrasing the book which is a big statement for anyone to make, and I looked at the Amazon reviews to see whether this source could be trusted, only to find that it's a bit of a hagiography already:

So then, less incensed now that the source didn't say that, I simply adhered to it. Now I see you are taking issue with Goldsworthy via Plutarch. If you want to have dueling sources about Caesar, I would be fine, make it as long or short as it needs to be. That's what I was setting out to do. However I found that I didn't have to put in the work with Goldsworthy's source. I would just have Goldsworthy on the dignitas-means-bluster,-comparable-to-Pompey,-doesn't-mean-sham-of-casus-belli side. If you look around the article page you'll find that point of view represented from Gruen, 1995. The way I paraphrased it, "Caesar was willing to invert his proclaimed championing of tribunes' rights", with the crucial use of invert rather than revert, as adequately representing Goldworthy:

In Plutarch's version blacksmiths had to be summoned to perform this task, and there was a confrontation between Caesar and Metellus outside the building. As the tribune repeatedly tried to halt the work, Caesar's temper flared up and he threatened to kill him. As Metellus at last backed down, Caesar declared that it was harder for a man of his natural clemency to make such a threat than it would be for him actually to do the deed. The man who had proclaimed that he was championing the rights of the tribunes in January was now as ready as his opponents had been to override and threaten one of these magistrates. He had never hidden the fact that his greatest aim was to protect his own dignitas.

— Adrian Goldsworthy, pages 396-397

If I wanted to capture the full swath of authors' opinions, I would look more into Raaflaub Dignitatis contentio (orig 1974) and Meier Caesar (orig 1982) that seem to really call the casus belli a sham. Caesar's true opinion being merely less than than his initial statement is not at odds with my latest edit. To have none of your first three sources (and Goldworthy's) represented on the page would raise eyebrows. Lumbering in thought (talk) 17:15, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm ... somewhat unclear as to what your response is claiming. I'll divide into two issues. The first is whether Caesar's casus belli was borne out by later events. The second is about Caesar's interactions with Metellus (pl tr 49).

Re 1. My reading of the secondary sources is that there are many of them which view his casus belli as a pretext. Goldsworthy does his normal thing of presenting both sides. His general reliability, especially on military affairs, is also not in question: the author is well credentialed; his work is engaged with (eg cited at Morstein-Marx 2021 p 409 n 401); real reviews – contra Amazon ones, BMCR ("a comprehensive and very readable review of Caesar"), CR ("the overview is balanced") – are positive for a book meant to be an overview and have a wide audience.

I am unclear as to what your reference to Last generation is meant to mean: LG ends with the start of the civil war and does not discuss the episode before the treasury. Gruen's discussion of Caesar's motive is that (1) Caesar motivate his army with destroying the republic but instead vindicating it (p 492) the core thesis of the book is a reaction against Brunt: that nobody in the last generation was intending to kill the republican system and (2) that defending tribunes was a "pretext" and "not [a] motive" (p 496). In general this claim of yours also seems very confused. The more Caesar is fighting for dignitas, the more that defending tribunes is a sham. The two are necessarily in tension as fighting for dignitas is not fighting for the tribunes; that is why I wrote that passage the way I did.

Re 2. Joining Caesar's claim that senators who remained in Italy were under threat from Pompey, made in the commentaries on the civil war, to a confrontation with Metellus is WP:SYNTH. This also probably could not have happened, as Caesar would not have crossed the pomerium before being made dictator comitiorum habendorum causa, something noted in Dio 41.16–17 and Morstein-Marx 2021 These objections are why Goldsworthy writes that Plutarch says Caesar was there. We should not be repeating dubious primary source claims like this in wiki-voice.

I intend to rewrite the passage again to emphasise how this episode was embarrassing for Caesar's casus belli with reference to the above sources:

When one of the tribunes, Lucius Caecilius Metellus interposed his veto against Caesar's attempt, probably via his soldiers, to raid the state treasury, his veto was either ignored or his life threatened until he backed down. The episode was embarrassing for Caesar, who omitted mention of it from his commentaries, as it harmed his popularity among the plebs and showed that his claimed casus belli of protecting tribunician rights was a sham.

Have you any objections? Ifly6 (talk) 19:53, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to treat the Talk page like a micro-Article page, rather deal with the points of contention and let it materialize how it may. Fundamentally it seems you've misinterpreted or refused to provide secondary sources of dignitas-means-sham-of-casus-belli,-doesn't-mean-bluster,-comparable-to-Pompey and choose sides on Plutarch's historicity from the get go with probably rightly[.] This actually means you would be participating in WP:SYNTH:

it expresses a Wikipedia editor's opinion that, given the Harvard manual's definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it. Making the second paragraph policy-compliant would require a reliable source specifically commenting on the Smith and Jones dispute and making the same point about the Harvard manual and plagiarism.

R1 - It would be better to cite Gruen's use of pretext as narrowly "false", doesn't elaborate on the origins and is an "after the fact vindication" rather than the general connotation "deceiving." Having the definition of sham as intending to deceive, held against the widely accepted clemency as part of Caesar's self-descriptors, I would balk at that descriptor, which is why anything approaching sham doesn't appear in Gruen.

R2 - If you require it, this is all from Goldsworthy's lead-up, I didn't separate authors. Having an entire paragraph from one secondary source did look unusual, but it was because of this article not mentioning conflicting sources that I made it all one source. Then playing on Goldworthy's small distance from Plutarch quote to mean the senators were not under threat is just more of the same.

Instead of tearing down, you with Goldsworthy's take on historicity or Gruen completely dismissing Asinius Pollio's statement by baselessly claiming the Battle of Pharsalus to be a "massacre[,]" it seems telling that you will not expand at all about the addition of the comments Raaflaub Dignitatis contentio (orig 1974) and Meier Caesar (orig 1982).

There's a reason the best of our scholars are citing all these things with different qualifiers, so don't choose one side and only give that side's reasoning, especially when in Wikipedia it is normal to exclude primary sources altogether. Lumbering in thought (talk) 00:26, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm again very unclear as to what you are claiming and why. These lines especially – dignitas-means-sham-of-casus-belli,-doesn't-mean-bluster,-comparable-to-Pompey; It would be better to ... deceiving (it feels ungrammatical); Instead of tearing down, you with ... massacre (this also feels like some words are missing; is this comma misplaced?) – I find incomprehensible. The fictitiousness of the conversation between Caesar and Metellus is argued at MM pp 408–10 and elsewhere. It is rightly rejected and should not be included. How "motives for the civil war are nowhere to be found... [but] pretexts, of course, abounded" (Gruen 1995 pp 495–96) somehow has little to do with origins is similarly mysterious.

The paean to qualifiers is just an open door to fringery. I am unaware of any scholars seriously suggesting that Caesar's action against Metellus was consistent with his alleged support for tribunician rights. To say that the casus belli "save the tribunes from abuse" is not consistent with "I'll kill a tribune if he doesn't stop me from getting the money" is the communis opinio; that the pretext was a sham, as in a lie, is also very widely held. Ehrhardt Antichthon 29 (1995) p 36 explicitly; Mackay Breakdown (2009) p 292 "The visit to Rome also showed that Caesar's defence of the rights of the tribunes was a fraud. He was forbidden by one tribune... [Metellus]".

The relevance of Gruen calling Pharsalus a "massacre" is non-existent, as are the long quote of WP:SYNTH (it does not apply on talk pages) and the truthfulness of Caesar's casus belli with his clemency. (He can be clement and lie about why he went to war). I am also confused as to your comment on Raaflaub and Meier. Do you view them differently? I am operating on my recollection of what is in them, signalled with iirc, as I do not have them literally in front of me right now this weekend. You seemed open previously to including "it was a sham" views (iirc Raaflaub and Meier see others cited above). So can you answer a straight question: do you object to the proposed wording I gave above as amended? Ifly6 (talk) 06:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, from "probably Plutarch is wrong" (if you still believe this does make Caesar's statement inverted, not reverted and supports Goldsworthy, or seemingly you actually believe it with Ehrhardt Antichthon 29 and kettle logic as I'll get to) to "[uncontested] sham" for your proposed edit there is no mention of Goldsworthy "possibly" and where he literally says as I said before invert, not revert, weight is portrayed as being all on the dignitas means sham of casus belli, it doesn't mean bluster, comparable to Pompey side. WP:AGEMATTERS

With regard to historical events, older reports (closer to the event, but not too close such that they are prone to the errors of breaking news) tend to have the most detail, and are less likely to have errors introduced by repeated copying and summarizing. However, newer secondary and tertiary sources may have done a better job of collecting more reports from primary sources and resolving conflicts, applying modern knowledge to correctly explain things that older sources could not have, or remaining free of bias that might affect sources written while any conflicts described were still active or strongly felt.

But despite Wikipedia having a neutral POV without active choice of sides, I should restate my position (no need for emotional language like "balk") that issues can totally obliterate another side if need be, and that only extreme care is needed for historical issues which I can just bring up Goldsworthy and Gruen to prove is not happening.

I agree that "motives unknown" is not different from "origins unknown" in the Gruen source, it was just a matter of me not thinking you would try to find even more things to bolster my point. I was spending most of my time on Gruen because I had brought it up in the reverse of the aforementioned category concerning dignitas and also because in the beginning there was just Goldsworthy as the source. Not only does Gruen compare Pompey to Caesar in this article, but as a general book-end: Also Ehrhardt Antichthon 29 apparently including the death threat and calling the defence a fraud is another point for the dignitas means sham of casus belli, it doesn't mean bluster, comparable to Pompey side if the article will actually specify these authors trust the Plutarch quote of Caesar, some do not, to avoid using kettle logic about the historicity. For this reason I would add that in one case Goldsworthy is citing Plutarch, and in the other Goldsworthy is citing Commentaries or leave it blank because it's uncontested, but not because of WP:SYNTH.

I would advise you look into that Gruen section about Asinius if you want an actual understanding of more background to Caesar's civil war, rather than leaving it at "shoddy historian" and moving on to your next historians.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I wanted to complete this article this weekend, or anytime soon, so I will provide an example of the upper-limits of the work it takes to have dueling sources here. But in general, I would say to anyone who is seeing the dignitas means bluster, comparable to Pompey, it doesn't mean sham of casus belli side on Wikipedia doomed when the "authors wise up," that Caesar already broke the law on Imperium by crossing the Rubicon, and that what everyone is doing millennia later, reading tea leaves from Cassius Dio in the 20th century mostly, and perhaps avoiding the primary source making no qualms over Caesar apparently being inside the city violating the pomerium on occasion for res publica, may be "after the fact vindication[.]" Lumbering in thought (talk) 20:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea what this response is trying to say. I'm going to tag WP:CGR for a third opinion. Ifly6 (talk) 20:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

References