Talk:Third Servile War

message: The article finally made it :) It was a long hard struggle, but the article finally passed its FAC review :) - Vedexent (talk) - 18:51, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured Article Status 

message: The first reference (seen in the introduction) doesn't follow the style of the rest of the references.  I'm unaware as to how to properly format it, but if someone could do that for uniformity's sake, I would appreciate it.  Kampfers (talk) 01:38, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: The last sentence of the third paragraph is quite long and complex grammatically. Perhaps it could be rewritten or broken into multiple sentence to aid readability. Kaldari (talk) 18:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead 

message: Hi there, I'm interested in that Slave ombudsman (as a ref, from Seneca's "On benefits". Where can I find more?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.70.113.244 (talk) 09:43, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slave ombudsman 

message: The size/strength of ancient armies is often controversial, and it would help to have sources for armies and other large groups. Especially with sizes above 80,000-100,000.72.66.37.62 (talk) 00:49, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why I added the Appian and Smith references in footnote #35; They discuss the ambiguity. It's also why I created size ranges not authoritative strength statements.  - Vedexent (talk) - 17:34, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Numbers

message: The article on Spartacus uses the BCE format, whereas this uses BC. Consistency (using BCE/CE rather than BC/AD, IMHO) should occur across Wikipedia articles. 69.42.13.45 (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  BC or BCE? 

message: There has recently been a bit of a tug-of-war about Roman force strength, and casualties - all made without citations or supporting arguments. I have reverted them back to the original - including some reversion of my edits, BUT I am willing to discuss the matter if there are supporting arguments and citations for the changes. 
To my mind:
* The quoted references are pretty clear on the variable size of Republican Legions, however - please feel free to read. I expanded the original troop counts to a more descriptive phrase showing the difficulties making a precise estimate. I originally used a middle-of-the-road estimate, based on Smith.
* Roman causality counts are also slippery - I could find no consistent claim for them in the 4-6 months I was re-writing the article for FA status back in 2006, so I left those results out. Since then, they've been added in as hard numbers - but without citation, even though I've requested such. As these have been unsupported - yet - I've been removing them again (with explanation).
* I can see there being claims for more legions - while it's quite clear that Crassus had 8 legions (the 2 consular legions, plus an additional 6), the Legions of Pompey and Lucullus need to be considered, although some references as to the number and size of those legions should be included.
Does anyone have any input on these points? - Vedexent (talk) - 10:52, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forces and Casualties Disagreements 

message: On this article it says he was last reported as MIA (missing in action), however on his personal article, it says it was confirmed that he was killed IN the war. What should his final status be noted as?????  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crelache (talk • contribs) 10:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I checked the Spartacus article, and it notes that while most of the classical historians count Spartacus killed, some sources note that his body was never identified. To me - when I did the FA re-vamp of the article - that translated as MIA, presumed KIA - but we'll never really know. Although, I'm pretty sure that - by now at least - he is dead. - Vedexent (talk) - 17:04, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No MIA, man - I am Spartacus! 83.254.151.33 (talk) 10:47, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spartacus MIA or KIA? 

message: Is that so? Is it an important enough name to deserve mention in the article? I see two problems with this name. First, it is misleading, since the gladiators were only the first of the rebels, and were soon a minority of the rebels. Second, it is ungrammatical, at least in my own dialect, because nouns do not work that way. Gladiatorial War, adjective+noun, Gladiators' War, and War of the Gladiators would be grammatical, though still misleading. I think I have seen the last form elsewhere. Ananiujitha (talk) 04:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Also called the Gladiator War" 

message: At present, the lead claims "The Third Servile War was the only one to directly threaten the Roman heartland of Italy and was doubly alarming to the Roman people due to the repeated successes of the rapidly growing band of escaped former slaves against the Roman army between 73 and 71 BC."
:So the revolt is alarming due to the rebel victories; it is doubly alarming due to what else? Ananiujitha (talk) 20:28, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably the revolt was especially alarming to the Roman aristocracy and to the Romans, of any class, in the paths of the contending armies. But I'm nervous about claims about the opinions of the Roman people as a whole in this period. Roman society was deeply divided at the time, as shown by the Sullan Civil War, and the ongoing Sertorian War to the west, and some Roman citizens are supposed to have joined the rebellion. Ananiujitha (talk) 20:28, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Doubly alarming" and "Roman people" 

message: I removed most Roman commanders' KIA status from infobox, because: 
* Glaber's status was unknown after his defeat, no records clearly say he was killed or survived.
* Varinius was confirmed to have survived.
* Furius, Lucius Quinctius, Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, Gnaeus Manlius were defeated by rebels, no records gave their fates as killed in their defeats.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.79.48.137 (talk) 13:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is why you put comments in your initial edits - Vedexent (User talk:Vedexent) 16:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman commanders' KIA status 

message: I note that someone has added unsubstantiated causality figures for Rome in the infobox. If you look at these casualty figures, they claim that the Roman militia and the garrison under Gaius Cassius Longinus (which only appears in some of the accounts), were butchered to a man, with no survivors - which seems extremely unlikely, and would have been specifically called out by the Roman historians.
Given the nonsensically high casualty rates, and inclusion of troops whose historical participation in the battles is uncertain, I've reverted the figure to "unspecified". If someone can provide concrete citations for the figures, I'd be happy to put them back, and update the body of the main text to accommodate the new sources.
Additionally, the differing values for those lost to Crassus' decimation have been removed in favor of the more sensational 4,000 figure. I've reverted that as well, since reported values do vary from 50 to 4,000.
Vedexent (talk) - 17:36, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman Casualties 

message: Various changes have been made to the lead since the article was featured on the main page. Not all have been beneficial; some of the details added over the years make for awkward reading. To be fair, almost all those changes have been sourced -- but then,  we shouldn't need to source the lead; it should be just a summary of sourced content in the main article. Readability has not been helped by the overuse of transitives, and convoluted sentences; perhaps a consequence of adding more detail than the original sentence structure can carry. The changes since then have been minimal, but even the smallest addition can muddy a formerly well-constructed sentence. Here's a link to the main page FA version;  for comparison. I intend restoring that version -- it's not perfect (what is?) but it's clearer than what we have, and can be edited. In particular, the long-term significance and consequences of the war belong in the final para. Haploidavey (talk) 10:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with lead 

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