Talk:Culture of ancient Rome

message: I was wondering where the ancient Romans disposed of their urine and feces? I've heard about public toilets where the seats were made by marble. Marble was very cold and they had to keep slaves sitting on the toilet seats to warm them up for the free people. Is there any reality to this? Could someone please add this topic to the article? cun 21:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Toilets in Ancient Rome

message: Well done to everyone who worked on this - this is a great example to our critics of how Wikipedia is generally reliable. Two, three, or more heads are better than one. Charlie123 11:59, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Well done!

message: I've got some good information on Roman religious movements in the Roman peninsula.  If anyone thinks that, for some reason, it might fall out of the scope of "culture" then please feel free to say.
Stephensj74 01:35, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most historians of the Roman religion would mention Etruscan practice, filtered and colored by Greek, both in popular religion and in the religion of the literate class. The Roman approach to religion is well discussed in A History of Private Life : 1. From Pagan Rome to Byzantium Paul Veyne, editor,(1987). It's availablein paperback over the Internet, and reading it would give some perspective. --Wetman 19:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Info on Religions 

message: Is this going to be a list or a real article? Stancel 21:07, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Should be an article, probably containing some lists or links to lists. olivier 10:35, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
*In my opinion, although a "list" is ok at the initial state, ultimately COTW status and contributions  should result into a complete article Culture of Ancient Rome--Bhadani 15:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article or a list of links 

message: *Hi  all, comments and suggestions are desperately requested. Thanks. --Bhadani 06:13, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments & Suggestions 

message: In few moments, this COTW shall come to an end, the article has become bigger and more informative, its size has also reached the optimum level as set by wikipedia. I did a lot of edits. I request interested editors to continue to work on the article, to incert images whereever required/copy edit/re-edit, remove and add edits - all aimed to make the article better. As stated earlier, I shall step aside from this article for the time being. Thanks to all who had placed sections, on which I could expand. --Bhadani 18:06, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  This COTW 

message: Is there any direct authority (from historical sources) for the assertions that plebeians did not exist from a legal point of view in the times of the Roman kings? Even if there is, I think that there is much too much informqation on the earliest times (of which so little is known to us) and too little on the republican and later times (of which we know quite a lot). The article as it stands now gives the impression that plebeians were legal non-entities for most of Rome's existence. --Thomas Ruefner 16:50, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social structure 

message: Although there's a heck of a lot of good information here, the main problem with this article is that it's extremely vague, very close to being as vague as the top article of the Rome series, Ancient Rome. And considering how deficient Ancient Rome is in many respects, it almost seems like this argument is lowering the quality of the main Rome article by not integrating with it and having a somewhat arbitrary distinction between "culture" and "non-culture". People won't know what to come here to look for, and lots of the information that's here and not in Ancient Rome will never be found by people looking for it. So, we should be absolutely clear and what is and isn't Rome's "culture". Above all else, I'd say that the following things are certainly "cultural": art, music, literature, theatre, religion, language, and to a lesser extent, clothing, sports, etc. However, I'm not so sure that the following things are especially "cultural": social structure (I'd group that under "Society of ancient Rome", not "Culture" per se), political and legal institutions (would fit under "Government of ancient Rome" and possibly "Society" again, but really not so "cultural"), and Roman economy (again, if you're going for a vague and ill-defined concept, "social" fits much better here than "cultural").
In a lot of ways, though, it almost seems like this article is so generic that it won't help the readers who are actually searching for all this specific information, and could develop into a POV fork; that seems a shame, considering how much great work went into this article. It's very slightly tempting to consider merging this article into Ancient Rome just to make all the info and formating consistent and integrate a lot of redundant information, and then to re-summarize and compact it by making new sub-articles for more specific topics (like "Roman family", "Roman sports", "Roman clothing"). It just seems like a single "hub" would be much more efficient and ensure stability and comprehensiveness. I certainly won't take any drastic action, but I'd love to hear what others think about this. -Silence 02:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is our isn't "culture"? 

message: Is there an expert out there who can perhaps add a section on the "morality" of Ancient Rome since I believe this is an interesting topic? I have read in bits and pieces from various sources about the vast differences between the pre-Christian moral concepts compared to our moral concepts. For example, the ancient Romans tended to see "compassion" as a defect of character instead valuing courage and, to some extent "ruthlessness" (albeit not necessarily dishonesty).
Anyway, I'm not an expert in these matters but it seems an important aspect of the culture.
--Mcorazao 16:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good request. Tough to do. I would, however, point to clementia, important to both Julius Caesar and Seneca, contra your remark about compassion, though clementia is more like "mercy" or rather restraining yourself from being vindictive; "ruthlessness" would probably be more severitas or such, which meant being stern. As Mary Beard pointed out in a recent book, tradition held that the Romans of the early to mid-Republic were a stern lot, not given to a lot of schoolboy giggling. I think it was the father or grandfather of the famous Crassus who was supposed to have laughed out loud only once in his life — and then at his own joke. It was a pretty feeble joke, too, so a certain cluelessness and lack of wit seems indicated. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morality 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Culture of Rome, Italy which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 11:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: I have started work on fixing the lead section of this article. Hopefully I can finish it in a few days (It's not much work but I don't have much free time.)
You can view the draft here
Cheers,
C. A. Struck (talk) 21:45, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead Section