Talk:History of Rome (Livy)

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 13:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: DO "most modern scholars" really believe that Rome was founded in 753 BC?  Obviously that is the traditional date, and that became the date used in the Roman calendar, but there's obviously no contemporary evidence that would enable anyone to specify so precise a date as that.  john k (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at all. It's been recognized since the days of Newton that the reign lengths of the seven traditional kings have been inflated. Also archeologoy has shown that Rome didn't become a real city before c. 600 (which btw would fit the number of kings much better), though the first settlements goes much further back Fornadan (t) 10:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Disagree. It's an insoluble problem, or at least never has been solved. Archaeology is not precise enough to solve it. Archaeology has shown nothing whatsoever concerning actual events. Whatever you mean by "real city" has nothing to do with the foundation of Rome. All there is, is legend. We'd like to find an inscriptional king list, or an Etruscan bilingual with kingly names on it, or a lost manuscript detailing the history of early Rome, or some new Linear B tablets outlining transactions with a city on the far side of Italy (hither Italy and Thither Italy). So far there is nothing. I propose we write to the government of Italy proposing to reserve the whole city of Rome for archaeological exvacation and move the populace to British Columbia. What I mean is, not every problem has a solution and until solutions appear we just use the traditional date. It is hard to accept I know, especially for moderns who are accustomed to reconciled solutionary data. Sorry, there isn't any. Light is both waves and particles.Dave (talk) 02:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  date of founding 

message: casting vote: moved to Ab Urbe Condita (book): many readers do not know what "libri" means. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ab Urbe condita → Ab urbe condita libri —
"Ab Urbe condita?" It should be Ab urbe condita but there is another article of that name. I have proposed we change the other article name and when that has been done I propose we move this one. Hm. It may have to be Ab Urbe Condita. Let's bite the bullet and put this right.Dave (talk) 02:28, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I just a had a second thought (terrible strain to do that): let's move this to "Ab urbe condita libri", the actual name of the work. If no one opposes I will move it.Dave (talk) 02:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Move to "Ab urbe condita libri"

message: I removed this:
"This collection is vital to many descriptions, portrayals, histories and other projects referring to the history of the Kingdom and Republic. Although slightly biased, it contains many references to sources, and does present the general history of Rome in a good writing style which is very understandable and readable. However, the reliability of the work has often been questioned since Titus Livy was a Roman and his account of events seems to glorify the Romans. Even so, the books are invaluable in that they reflect the reactions of the people of ancient Rome to events and their interest in various traditions. Other sources, such as Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars tend to generally agree in their hintings of the periods covered by "History of Rome."
Here are my reasons: first, these views are unsubstantiated. Second, the style is that of a book report, and at the secondary school level. I got nothing at all against secondary schools. I once taught in one. However, this is an encyclopedia and we are not interested in student book report assessments of Livy. Third, this is too trivial to be of encyclopedic interest. I think, if you can't say anything significant, don't take up the space, let someone else do it. If no one steps forward to do it, well, Wikipedia has reached its limitations, nothing in equals nothing out. Trivia are still approximately nothing.Dave (talk) 21:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Book report material

message: I thought that writing was too good to be true for Wikipedia. In fact it was copied, cut and paste, from Webster's and I am probably going to find the same thing for most of the rest of it. This confirms my general impression of this being a "phony article" - bibiography that references nothing, otherwise no sources, larded thick with student opinions of the book report type, big discrepancies in style. Why do that? To give the impression that an article gap has been filled? Come to Wikipedia, you can look ANYTHING up, and by the time you finish with us you won't know which end is up, but then your significant other had better things to do with your time anyway than your wasting it on intellectual pursuits. So, I'm taking a hand here. This is on my list. You can't just cut and paste, you have to give credit; ethically, even where the copyright has expired. If you can't follow the ethics, write for some other Internet site. I'm going to rewrite a bit putting the plagiarized source in as a reference.Dave (talk) 12:09, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Fragmentary Palimpsest

message: I notice there is a growing number of refs in German. This is an English encyclopedia. Most folks can't read German. No doubt scholars are required to have at least a minimal reading knowledge but most folks are not scholars. I've had to remove references in Hungarian and Chinese because only a minute proportion of the English-speaking population could ever read them. Why is German any different? In principle, it isn't. However is some cases a particular language is critical to the article (Latin, Greek) and more people do know German than, say, Hungarian, German being at least partially in the same language family as English. A lot of the early scholarship on Livy was in fact German. There is no lack of English bibliography. Therefore I am going to leave the German in but I would ask that you keep it to a minimum. If you really want to see German, work on the German Wikipedia. I hear it is pretty good.Dave (talk) 20:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just FYI, because your point is otherwise taken, but classical scholars are expected to be fluent (not minimal) in German (also French). Tons of the research can only be found in German. GermanicusCaesar (talk) 13:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Language of the sources

message: I notice the move. For whatever it is worth, I approve. A second possibility, which I did not want to mention because my first choice would have been my own suggestion, was the one to which Appleyard actually moved it. It in fact has seniority, as it appeared in an internal link. This is fine. Thanks a lot. Teamwork is almost always better. I'm still plugging through the expansion/update/rework.Dave (talk) 09:12, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The recent move to "Ab urbe condita libri"

message: Wow.
Years of discussion of moving the page around without anyone bringing up the appropriate policies (s), the actual name of the work (The History of Rome), or any research into establishing that. Here's Ngram's top 10 results from "Livy's *": "Livy's history" and "Livy's History" are the 2d and 3d and "Livy's Ab" is nowhere to be seen. It exists but is nowhere near the top result. Libri ab Urbe Condita is the Latin title of the work known in English as Livy's History of Rome even among specialists. Every single English-language source or reference used by this page itself calls it the History of Rome, Roman History, or Livy's History. This article is completely in the wrong place, which is causing related articles (such as Livy's own) to become confused in their own handling: the relevant section of his page is still well-formatted but the lead paragraph now uses the Latin in its running text and an ad hoc  translation instead of the thing's English name and a link. The page should be moved and the lead sentence should be formatted something along the lines of
:The History of Rome () was a monumental work...
or if we're being really persnickety
:The History of Rome () was a monumental work...
Further, aside from that move, the editors above who were claiming that libri isn't part of the title, is somehow misleading, or is Italian obviously don't know what they're talking about. The Libri was patently part of the title... but so much so (for every Latin work of more than one volume) that it is almost invariably omitted from such titles. [It was a generic descriptor,—"Livy's Books on the History of Rome from the Founding of the City",—not a title as now understood.] As User:Noetica pointed out, the  "" name of this work is Ab Urbe Condita tout suite. Every move discussion above was inconclusive or opposed. How did the page get moved to the (even more) wrong title in spite of them? Even if the Latinists win out and y'all avoid using the thing's English name, we should at least be using its proper Latin name. — LlywelynII 15:23, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Move to "The History of Rome"

message: In a footnote this article asserts that Livy uses "the chronology of Varro" -- which is wrong. Every authority on Livy I have read says the opposite, that he drew on authorities who wrote before Varro. Further, the dates in Ab Urbe Condita fit better with a non-Varronian chronology: there are no Dictator years (as on the Fasti Capitolini); his date for the Battle of the Allia fits 386 BC better than 390 BC; & his date for the founding of Rome & the start of the Republic differ from those Varro gives. Lastly, there is no point to having this footnote in this article -- this assertion is not referenced anywhere else in the article. So I'd like to just remove it if no one objects. -- llywrch (talk) 18:45, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Noting the chronology he does use is worth mentioning. — LlywelynII 16:37, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Livy & Varronian Chronology 

message: Please visit Ab urbe condita and comment on proposals for moving or deleting the page and replacing it with this article.Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 02:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Commented there, but for easier reference, see the discussion above.  There's no evidence that Livy ever called his history this.  The original Latin title is unclear, and the likeliest candidate is Annales.  As far as I can tell, Ab Urbe Condita is a modern interpretation, and even if we use it, there's no reason to append libri CXLII to it, any more than to any other Roman literary production conventionally described according to the number of books that originally made it up.  The best title for this article would probably be English, "History of Rome (Livy)".  P Aculeius (talk) 12:45, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The title History of Rome (Livy) is unfortunately already occupied, but History of Rome (book) would still be available – that said, (book) is not ideal, given that the work technically consisted of 142 books originally, although these books were originally scrolls that probably contained no more text than a typical modern book chapter. The title Ab Urbe Condita Libri contradicts MOS:CT – it's a title in Latin, not English –, and per the above discussions, libri should not be added. However, since the work is so widely known as Ab urbe condita, the title Ab urbe condita (Livy) is a good solution, and I've therefore moved the article to this title per WP:BOLD. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:27, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I, at least, concur with this move. The previous name Ab urbe condita libri was hugely unwieldy; this name deals both with disambiguating AUC-the-epoch while calling it by what most people are probably going to hear it as. Ifly6 (talk) 03:23, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

text: It's not already occupied. It just redirects here. Yes, as discussed repeatedly above, History of Rome (Livy)'s where the page should be moved to. — LlywelynII 16:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposals for moving this page to [[Ab urbe condita]] 

message: I don't really understand what this section (for which I just created a title) is doing in the article.  It is a summary of the foundation myths described in the first book, but I think its contents would be better located in the pages of each of these myths.  And why only describe these events? was it the beginning of a project to detail all Livy's books? T8612 (talk) 21:53, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Summary of the First Book" 

message: The article should include the date of the first (Latin) printed edition (editio princeps). This year marks the starting point for the increased reception in (post-classical) European art and literature. (In the Middle Ages, Livy was not read that much, some humanists like Petrarca being rather the exception from the rule.)
--2001:A61:360A:F501:6169:C43E:5A78:D5BE (talk) 23:31, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a source? T8612 (talk) 00:31, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing information 

message: :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. Rough consensus to move (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Ab urbe condita (Livy) →  – It's been several years since this was last discussed, and while there were one or two attempts to discuss the best title since then, they didn't really resolve the issue.  Although the current title is widely used, I couldn't find any evidence that Livy ever called his history Ab Urbe Condita.  Yes, it's a history of Rome from the founding of the city, but "From the Founding of the City" doesn't seem to be part of the title—not even a subtitle (Historia Romae ab Urbe Condita would make sense, but there's no evidence that it was Livy's title, and while that might strike people as a practical alternative, it's a bit wordy and translates easily).  There is some suggestion that Livy called his history Annales, but that title isn't widely used to refer to Livy today.  "History of Rome" seems to be the best alternative, since it describes the topic and is widely used as a title; it would need disambiguation, but so does the current title.  It's certainly no less correct than Ab Urbe Condita, and unlike that, it doesn't give readers the false impression that it's what Livy called his work. P Aculeius (talk) 19:00, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 31 December 2023 

message: Does anyone have access to the Briscoe, Oakley, and Ogilvie commentaries on Livy? It doesn't appear that WP:LIBRARY is of any help in this regard. Ifly6 (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: You have Ogilvie here, and Briscoe's 31-37 on Archive.org. Oakley's commentaries are huge. T8612 (talk) 00:58, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commentaries 

message: The article needs a section on the history of the title of the work. How does it come to be known in English as History of Rome? How do we know it was "perhaps originally titled Annales"? Where does Ab urbe condita come from and why is it used by modern editors? Srnec (talk) 01:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title