Talk:Gracchi brothers

message: Have just made a moderately large edit to  expand the article.  I moved some of the original writing about a bit to keep it coherent.  Some  changes I’ve made are to make it more clear that the reforms were focussed on economic conditions, not so much at the army.  And to make it a little clearer that Equestrians were not an altogether separate class from senators.  Ive taken out the  mention of Gaius committing suicide as Ive never seen that in any of the sources, and it contradicts what was already written in the lede.  FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes April 2009

message: This article seems to present a somewhat romanticized view of the Gracchi.  Not only did Tiberius Gracchus claim that a tribune who opposed the will of the people was no tribune at all, he brought a bill to have said tribune, Octavius, to be voted out of office in an unconstitutional action.  And Gaius' attempts to curry the favor of not only the people but also of foreigners by attempting to grant citizenship to the Latins make it seem like he could very well have been gathering allies for war.  Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that just because a politician courts the good will of the people his intentions are pure.  To cite the goal of the two as the same and clear-cut is overly simple, I think.  It was a very common practice in the late republic to court the support of the people to increase one's own power, as Julius Caesar did.  On that note, footnote 1 as well as the sentence in which it is referenced seem to be lacking in sources.132.161.244.108 (talk) 04:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Had a quick search for a source to support the Gracchi being seen as founding fathers of socialism but couldnt find one thats clearly not derivative. So I guess you could remove the sentence if you want. As for the overall article, it has a less romantic view than the one on offer in some of the sources such as Stobbart. Gaius's plans to include Latins sounds more the desire of a man of principle than that of an opportunist's, he must have guessed it would cost him popular support. The evidence seems to be that he forged on with a noble reform project even though he knew it had cost his brother's life. Of course if there are any scholarly sources that speculate they may have had base motives those can be included. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled, 10 Dec 2010 

message: Please stop mentioning that the Gracchi were patricians. They were not. This makes the article self-contradictory and misleading. It would be incredible indeed if the most famous tribunes were patricians.Catobonus (talk) 13:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Gracchi were not patricians 

message: What is the justification for your revert at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gracchi&diff=1072468563&oldid=1072288182 ? There are major problems with the previous article. Among other things, it creates a far more cohesive narrative between the two brothers than is supportable by modern sources (the nature of land reform being especially drawn together even though that does not reflect things well). Ifly6 (talk) 03:09, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revert 

message: Gracchi is basically the entire branch of the family. If the vast majority of the article is about the brothers (with only minimal no discussion of other people in the family), a clearer organisation would be to split to Gracchi brothers and leave Gracchi as a stub. It doesn't seem this was considered in the past, the redirect from Gracchi brothers was created ab initio as a redirect. Ifly6 (talk) 03:12, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Move was completed. Ifly6 (talk) 23:27, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible move? 

message: What purpose does citing Oswald Spengler -- a fascist whose work inspired the Nazis -- in this article serve? The theory itself has very little to add to an understanding of the Gracchi beyond the author's speculations about human nature, and this is not exactly an instance where a person's political views are separate from their work. If this were part of a discussion of the reception of the Gracchi in later thought, or their political influence on the 20th century it would make sense to mention him, however it is in a section titled "Reasons for Failure", which a reader would expect to lay out an impartial account of events, and presented alongside professional modern historians. To be honest this whole section existing as a compilation of opinions in the middle of a page that's otherwise recounting historical events is a little odd, as is the use of the term "failure" in such a general sense. Menziesii (talk) 16:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it should be removed. I removed it in this diff, which largely rewrote the article, but was reverted. I qualified with two sources that Spengler was a proto-fascist at this diff but also was reverted. Note also that I am working on a rewrite of this whole article. Ifly6 (talk) 18:54, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That's good to hear. I'd support the removal of the entire section and its sources; I don't see why Spengler should come into it at all. Or Stobart (1911!?) Haploidavey (talk) 19:17, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Stobart's book is and wasn't an academic source even in his time. He even said so in the Preface: . The book received basically no academic reviews (or I cannot find them). The opinion sourced here, that C Gracchus was influenced by Greek political philosophy on popular sovereignty, is also rejected in more recent scholarship. I removed Stobart in my original rewrite of this article that was reverted without comment or explanation. The book adds nothing that could not be found elsewhere in a better source and is regardless obsolete. Ifly6 (talk) 20:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed! By the way, I've just had a read-through of your article rewrite. It seems to be headed in a useful, readable direction. Haploidavey (talk) 20:14, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

text: Spengler's tractatus is and never was a reliable source on Roman politics or political history. It should never have been added in the first place. Ifly6 (talk) 20:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

text: I just deleted the paragraphs on Spengler and on Weil saying that Gracchus, preceded by some ancillary possibly-fictitious character who was the best slave ever, was super kind-hearted. Ifly6 (talk) 20:17, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: And it already reads better for those small amputations. It amazes me how firmly the late Victorian scholarly establishment seems to believe that histories which don't provide a moral lesson are just so many wasted opportunities. Haploidavey (talk) 21:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

text: Thank you, that's definitely an improvement. Very encouraging to get this response and see such good discussion. Best of luck with your rewrite Menziesii (talk) 23:24, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oswald Spengler and "Reasons for Failure" section 

message: you placed a citation-needed tag after "Scholars today view these socialist comparisons as unapt", the last sentence of the lead, with the edit comment "Tagged claims of "proto-socialism" as needing citations". On the face of it, that suggests you too regard these socialist comparisons as dubious, but are you in fact saying that "view ... as unapt" needs supporting? Alternatively, it's the previous statement that "They were also portrayed inaccurately as social revolutionaries and proto-socialists during the French Revolution and afterwards" for which you're seeking citations, perhaps for them having been so portrayed or perhaps for that being inaccurate. Please can you clarify?
(There are citations in Gracchi brothers#Modern reception; maybe you'd like to say which you think need repeating in the lead.) NebY (talk) 09:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @NebY: Apologies, my edit summary should have been clearer. I tagged that part of the lead as I couldn't find anywhere in the body with sourced information on scholars specifically disputing their characterisation as proto-socialists. In fact, the only mention of proto-socialism in the body is uncited and frankly non-neutral:   So I think while parts of the tagged paragraph could be kept (like their influence on French revolutionaries like Babeuf), I'm wondering where their association with proto-socialism is coming from, when I can't see any sources for that. It's less that I find the claims of proto-socialism dubious, more that I'm asking for sources on their characterisation (or mis-characterisation) as such. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:04, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Got it, thanks. Pinging , who may have at their fingertips a cite for that sentence at the start of Gracchi brothers#Reception and historiography or for some rephrasing of it. Ideally, there might be some recent WP:RS overview saying that people used to call them proto-socialists but that's been refuted. Maybe alternatively we'd say that in the [early 20C or suchlike] some [called them / treated them as] [proto?]socialists (cite A & B doing so, or X's later rebuttal) but in [the late 20C or suchlike] this was strongly rebutted/refuted (cite X & Y doing so). NebY (talk) 13:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

text: On mobile. See the pre-rewrite révisions of this page. Ifly6 (talk) 16:46, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I too have looked through current sources etc and also cannot find a reliable source characterisation as porto-socialist. Looking through Google Scholar, I did find a few cases (which are so bad qua classical scholarship I feel bad even acknowledging their existence): this random "party politics" article and this website. This article in the Classical Journal (p 66) off-handedly remarks that people have called them revolutionaries, socialists, and demagogues. Ifly6 (talk) 17:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Thanks. Quick sampling of the article back to 2017 throws up Stobard The Grandeur that was Rome (1912) and Spengler The Decline of the West (1922) being used as sources, but no indication in the article if one or both used "socialist" or "proto-socialist", alas. Someone now blocked for socking put the article in :Category:Proto-socialists in 2021. NebY (talk) 17:39, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, there's a case for simply ignoring such talk of them being socialists! Something more like "they were held up as exemplary reformers during the French Revolution, the enclosures in the United Kindom and since, or described as martyrs but shortsighted, extreme and precipitating revolution", followed by a little about modern scholarship? (Martyrs etc is Scullard.) NebY (talk) 18:08, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's certainly worthwhile to weaken the wording to something more like  then with a short description. Speaking more personally, I know of people (in person and on the Internet) who think the Gracchi were socialists. Ifly6 (talk) 18:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest, I think that would still fall under original research. From what sources have been mentioned here, it seems they have indeed been labelled as proto-socialists (Taylor 1942) and socialists. But saying they were "mischaracterised" in wikivoice, without any reliable source disputing that categorisation, would be bad practice in my opinion. -- Grnrchst (talk) 11:42, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Two notes. First, the characterisation as socialist has been disproved; calling it a  or  seems a reasonable paraphrase. Second, WP:OR discusses the non-existence of sources and not their non-presence here. See Note  thereat:  Ifly6 (talk) 16:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, so are there sources that exist that disprove this? Because it would be helpful to cite those. -- Grnrchst (talk) 18:06, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not entirely sure to what portions you are objecting and on what basis. Ifly6 (talk) 13:40, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead tagged 

message: I reverted portions of your edits. There were a couple of reasons. First, there is no need to change proper spelling to American variants without consensus. This is not an American topic. See WP:ENGVAR for more details. Second, the population of Italy did not fall. Appian and Plutarch's claims thereof are wrong. Editing the portion cited to Roselaar 2010, below, has two problems:
The first is that it is factually inaccurate. Modern reliable sources, especially after with Rosenstein Rome at war (2004), are very clear that the archaeological evidence points toward the "population reductions" in Appian and Plutarch being fictitious and having no place in reality. This is why the text I wrote emphasises a reported decline: . Introducing material which treats the "population reduction" as actual misleads readers. It also is a WP:CUCKOO edit which miscasts Roselaar 2010, who presents the modern view of no pouplation decline, into being incorrectly equivocal on a matter that is well-settled. Ifly6 (talk) 19:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cuckoo edits; the population of Italy did not fall 

message: About 45 years ago I was living in Rome, and I spent the odd day wandering around the ruins of Ostia Antica.  One day I was there with a friend who had lived in Rome for many years. We were in the section of the ancient cemetery, and she said, "Look at this."  To the left of the pathway was what I can only remember as a sort of a hole that was almost overgrown with surrounding weeds. We knelt down and brushed the greenery aside and looked into it. There was a fairly small stone on which could be read "Gracchus".  I don't believe there had been much, if any, excavations in Ostia Antica at that time, and I haven't been back there for many years.  I just wonder if anyone else still knows the burial site of one of the Gracchi. 5.80.173.14 (talk) 08:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Am I the last person to know this?