Talk:Founding of Rome

message: Wow!  This is a great article! -- Larry_Sanger (talk) 10:51, 25 February 2002 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll second that! I wish there were some External links on this material. Wetman (talk) 13:31, 4 December 2003 (UTC)

text: Article as of 25 February 2002. Ifly6 (talk) 14:51, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled, Sanger 

message: add 3 name of rome.
pubblic, religious, secret.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.23.167.160 (talk) 01:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names of Rome 

message: This is the most thorough treatment of this topic that I have ever seen anywhere. 1307-100 14:03, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is fine, but the author is biased. ¶ For he/she, the legend is part of a  "propaganda" agenda. ¶ He/she should study a little more about Myths and their role in the rise and fall of nations. Studying Mircea Eliade should help. ¶ Obviously, from time to time, there are "historians" and politicians that pretend to use myths for ideological purposes.  They still do it now when they try to desacre ancient myths and when they explain that "human has always been corrupt". ¶ The roman mythical origin is synctactically correct in its symbolism; and to attribute a dark intention to it is unjust and seemes part of an agenda to wipe out anything which is sacred and to diminish the greatness of Rome. ¶ Is it because we don't want any other Benito Mussolini? Or because we are christians and "rome persecuted christians"? Or are we so contaminated by a dark and dirty vision of our own past?  Rome is not Caligula, nor Nero, but  Numa Pompilius and Marcus Aurelius. ¶ Rome lasted one thousand years, and you still can note the positive influence of Rome in western Europe, and that was because of a strong root this tree had.   --Ccho 16:50, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Rome is not Caligula, nor Nero, but  Numa Pompilius and Marcus Aurelius." - This is incorrect. Rome was both Caligula and Numa Pompilius, Nero as well as Marcus Aurelius. Rome was neither good nor evil, it merely was. -Silence 20:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: Section History & Archeology: On 21 February, 79.97.43.127 erased some paragraphs and wrote: "nope ITS ALL A LIE >:[". I have undone his/her contribution. Best wishes!--Alpinu (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism Report

message: In part the article currently reads:
:"Some have suggested an Etruscan word, "rhome", meaning "hard", cognate with Greek "ῥώμη, rhōmē", strength, vigor."
Since Etruscan was a non-Indo-European language, how can it have had a cognate with Greek, as opposed to a loanword borrowed from one by the other? "Cognate" implies a common descent from a parent language. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 04:42, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The word is Greek, not Etruscan. Dionysios mentions the relationship with a Greek woman named Rhome. The Etruscan word connected with Rome is rumon meaning river (see Bonfante's glossary on line) i.e. the Tiber. The secret name of Rome was perhaps Rumon, however I am presently unable to quote  a reference, I just rely on schooltime memories. I shall try and research the topic.Zanzan32 (talk) 10:26, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested meaning of "Rome" 

message: This article states as they were ascertained facts a heap of dubious and problematic points. The most disturbing fact is that nothing is referenced and none of the underlying problems is highlighted. Is this not a blatant case of OR?
The statement that original Romans were Celts or Germans because they were fairhaired is ridicolous (if not racist). Who is this R. Owen? 
What is most amazing is that such an article has been rated B by Wikipedia and has been here for almost 5 years! This fact raises questions about the competence of the people involved.Zanzan32 (talk) 10:19, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems 

message: The whole of that lengthy paragraph about eclipse dates looks like OR.
Havelock Jones (talk) 23:30, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't remember E.J. Bickerman in his Chronology of the Ancient World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968) discussing the importance of eclipses & the date of the founding of Rome at any significant length, mostly that the ancient Romans disagreed as to the year which is why they rarely used A.U.C. dating, & instead indicated the year by the names of the presiding consuls. Unfortunately I don't have access to that book at the moment, nor Gary Forsythe's A Critical History of Early Rome (Berkeley: University of California, 2005) which also discusses the differing dates & how they are estimates or guesses based on the assumption that Rome was founded by refugees from Troy. (Forsythe's book is at home, & I'm at work.) In any case, the expert consensus is that any date prior to c. 300 BC is unreliable, & moreover any date seriously offered for a precise year Rome was founded comes either from a late Republican tradition, or the industrious efforts of an unreliable source. Notable assertions deserve mention; the rest are not important. -- llywrch (talk) 16:21, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research? 

message: * "all versions agreed that the city was founded on April 21"
* "Rome was founded on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, which was April 21, as universally agreed."
Well, at least one author seems to differ, as we can see here:
Nevermind his calculations of the Earth creation at 4004 BC, the point is that it's a considerable source, coupled with the lack on inline citations on this section makes me think this should be better worded ou reworded. ZackTheJack (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure the archbishop is simply in error, or perhaps he was trying to perform some kind of calculations to determine the "real" (astronomical) date, which isn't how the festival dates on the calendar worked: they were established in relation to fixed points of the month, and retained these positions within the month after the Julian reform. The "feast of Pales" is the Parilia, which was observed April 21. Although a day was added to Aprilis in the Julian reform, only dates after the Ides were affected, and then only by one day. I'm not aware of any ancient sources, or any post-1800 scholars, who give the date as April 10; I don't know that such a thing doesn't exist, but in contributing to articles associated with Roman festivals and holidays, I can't recall seeing an alternate date. H.H. Scullard in Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic doesn't mention any date alternate to April 21, and the Calendar of Filocalus from the 4th century indicates that April 21 was still celebrated as the dies natalis of Rome. Of course the correct way to state this is that the Romans celebrated the founding on that day, not that the city was founded on that day, which is a fact not recoverable. Ancient sources do differ on the year, though. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:33, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Day of founding 

message: See  "evidence of infrastructure building had been found, dating from more than 100 years earlier. The daily Il Messagero quoted Patrizia Fortini, the archaeologist responsible for the Forum, as saying that a wall constructed well before the city's traditional founding date had been unearthed.
The wall, made from blocks of volcanic tuff, appeared to have been built to channel water from an aquifer under the Capitoline hill that flows into the river Spino, a tributary of the Tiber. Around the wall, archaeologists found pieces of ceramic pottery and remains of food.
"The examination of the ceramic material was crucial, allowing us today to fix the wall chronologically between the 9th century and the beginning of the 8th century," said Fortini." Dougweller (talk) 14:42, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaeology pushes Rome back about a century 

message: Wasn't the Trojan refugee story firstly written by Greek historian Hellanicus of Mytilene? Virgil just made it beautiful.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyferz (talk • contribs) 19:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hellanicus of Mytilene 

message: For WP:V, WP:SOURCES & WP:UNDUE, Also could have added WP:NPOV.  It's a very interesting idea, so I'm all for it being undone, so long as adequate verification can be provided. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 05:49, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: An interesting challenge. My initial response to the removal was more or less "wtf? everyone knows that's true..." But the only source offered for the claim (see article history) asserts that "Romulus" is a back-formation, without further argument. I've looked for verification of the rest, online; but have found nothing. And even if verified, this would shed no light on the possible etymology of "Rome". Haploidavey (talk) 11:51, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

text: On the other hand, the Roman belief that Romulus named the city after himself (Livy 1.7) seems relevant. Haploidavey (talk) 12:44, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's certainly my impression as well, however, the content's only reference does not appear to pass muster.  Also, the content itself asserted that "Romulus" was a back-formation.  It was not at all npov.  Even if it read "according to..." I would probably still have removed it, if that was the only authority cited, for the above reasons.  As for the claim itself, I'll keep on the lookout for something reliable to cite.  Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 08:54, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed "back-formation" claim of etymology 

message: Section expanded and improved by including relevant content copied from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome "Earliest history"" in edit of 16:15, 26 February 2017‎Rjdeadly (talk) 22:25, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The first sentence in the lead of the section is contradicted by the second.  Since the second one has no cite, I removed it.Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 23:01, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaeology 

message: I did not mean to give the impression of edit warring. The intro previously said "... Rome, Italy..." with both Rome and Italy as links. I removed comma-Italy as it disrupted the flow of the sentence, and then made an earlier occurrence of "Italy" a link in deference to whatever previous editor thought a link was appropriate. Later I checked the page and found that "Italy" was not a link. I thought this was some editing error on my part, so made a second edit to put it in. Only then did I check the diffs and discover that Cote d'Azur considers it overlinking. I tried to Revert but got it wrong, so simply did a reverse edit. Got even that description wrong. Too bad. 59.102.43.183 (talk) 06:31, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlinking of "Italy" in Introduction 

message: I pushed a rewrite to this article from User:Ifly6/Founding of Rome, emphasising the archaeology then going through the main themes from the myths with sourcing. Ifly6 (talk) 15:24, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pushed rewrite from [[User:Ifly6/Founding of Rome]] 

message: Apparently, going back as far as 2006 (above), the article has pushed the bizarrely hard line expressed in the current lead:
:Contrary to the gradual account given by material evidence, the Romans believed... 
:...Almost no historians take these myths as historical and there is no evidence of Alba Longa's historicity. The alleged royal line connecting Romulus and Remus to Aeneas is almost certainly an antiquarian fiction from the third century BC.
a) The Romans didn't believe anything in contrast to modern archaeology they had no access to. They did their best with what information and items they had at hand. b) There absolutely is evidence of settlement in the Alban hills. The article may intend to say 'no evidence of a powerful city-state ruled by an exiled Hittite client dynasty' but that isn't what the current (mistaken) overstatement actually means. c) Similarly, of course absolutely all modern historians don't accept the entirety of the Romulus/Remus myths as historical. By the same token, though, archaeology has kept pushing back the date of a fairly powerful settlement to the roughly Romulan era and, depending on the dating of the ancient Palatine walls, there's absolutely no reason not to think the archaeological account is entirely in keeping with a guy building up the initial hillfort there during the mythological timeframe.
I'm just going to trim the worst excesses of the phrasing, but the article would greatly benefit from a rewrite that only clearly expresses what the traditional account said, clearly expresses what modern archaeology has found (with caveats if some dating is meaningfully contested), and drops the massive chip off its shoulder that thinks there's a serious either/or being debated instead of a gradual process of research that might potentially end in some sort of reconciliation. — LlywelynII 15:11, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:BIAS]]