Talk:Roman Republic/Archive 1

message: I believe the correct translation of Senatus Populusque Romanus is Roman Senate & People, not Senate and People of Rome (which would be Senatus Populusque Romae). Homagetocatalonia 01:06 30 09 2005 (UTC)
Both tranlations are given on the link, but I guess "Senate and People of Rome" sounds "better".  I personnaly prefer: "Sono Pazzi Questi Romani"       Flamarande
Check the article on SPQR for more on this -- it can actually stand for different things, causing slight difficulty in translation.
128.36.72.41 16:19, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Latin didn't have a distinction between upper and lower case letters like we do, and -que is used as a suffix to the last noun in a list.  Abbreviations are sometimes odd like that - DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid. --Nicknack009 22:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motto 

message: Just wondering if anyone can find anything on Julius Caesar and giving the power to coin money to the Roman empire?
This is from http://reactor-core.org/money-changers.html#chapter13 (section 3)
"In 48 BC, Julius Caesar took back from the Money Changers the power to coin money and then minted coins for the benefit of all. With this new, plentiful supply of money, he built great public works. By making money plentiful, Caesar won the love of the common people. But the Money Changers hated him. Some believe this was an important factor in Caesar's assassination.
One thing is for sure: with the death of Caesar came the demise of plentiful money in Rome. Taxes increased, as did corruption.
Eventually the Roman money supply was reduced by 90 per cent."
:Hmmm, I read the rest of the page and it seems to me that it is the ravings of another madman of the type: "the very evil U.S. federal goverment is going to destroy the sacred american liberty and values through a massive conspiracy and manipulation of the money reserves" Just read the comments about Jesus and americans, they are soo funny. 
:Having said that I concede that: Monetary issues are vital to any goverment who wants to survive, but as far as we (historians) know, Cesar was murdered for political reasons. Remember always that most of our our (ancient) sources are suspect. Many of them wrote down history defending the republican system (or not) and could be excecuted for what they wrote.  Flamarande 20:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Julius Caesar and money reforms? 

message: Hi folks,
I'm contemplating the possibility of creating a portal for Ancient Rome, to replace Roman, which is a disambiguation page and has nearly 400 links pointing to it from articles (not counting the ones from Talk or Wikipedia pages).
If I was to go ahead with this, I would need help from other people on the content, as I don't know too much about the subject matter - my motivation for doing this is because it seems to be needed, and I believe I can figure out the technical aspects of making it happen.
Some possible issues:
# It needs a suitable name. I'm thinking "Ancient Rome", but there may be other options. My intention would be to redirect Romans to the portal so that every vague reference and accidental linkage to "the Romans" would end up in a suitable place.
# I think it would be appropriate to include Byzantium, and maybe Ancient Greece if it doesn't already have a "home".
# Other uses of the word Roman currently listed on Roman would probably be moved to Roman (disambiguation), which is currently a redirect.
#I would not like to become the sole maintainer. I would be willing to continue doing technical stuff, but selection of featured articles and suchlike should be done by somebody who can tell whether or not the content is accurate.
For examples of existing portals, see Portal:Egyptology, Portal:Star Trek, and many more are listed at :Category:Portals.
I am interested in opinions on this idea, and I invite discussion on the topic at my test page User:LesleyW/RomePortal. Please feel free to copy this notice to other places where it might be noticed by knowledgeable people. I will be away for the next few days, and will pick up discussions early next week at the latest.
--LesleyW 21:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't know how I managed to get this notice pasted in three times. It's probably a browser issue at my end. --LesleyW 20:46, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should there be a "Roman" portal? 

message: The image was removed as it was a copyright violation; it was an image which had been tagged as having no source information for more than seven days, and as such was (before being deleted) a candidate for speedy deletion. This was explained (briefly) in the edit summary. Cheers --Pak21 18:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image removal 

message: Should the conspirators to Caesar's assassination, such as Brutus and Cassius be listed under late Republic? After all, their actions helped bring Octavian to power and effectively end the Republic. Tim 01:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Do it! Be bold! Perhaps at the side of Gaius Julius Ceasar, like the line about the Punic Wars Flamarande 16:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important figures 

message: I think this section needs to be looked at. It's accurate, but only for a brief slice of history. Populares and Optimates didn't exist until things started to go downhill with a tug-of-war between the Senate and the Plebian assembly. It's not wrong it's just overly focused time-wise. Sadly, I don't know enough about the historical changes over time in the Roman government to take a crack at it. - Beowulf314159 22:26, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Government institutions 

message: I am kind of overwhelmed by the attention and most importantly the good quality of the improvements this article has recieved in more recent times (for alltoo long I was "kind off" the sole "Keeper" of this article). I think that this article is (more) quickly getting better and better (and to be really honest I don´t know why this article is not getting oficial "featured article" proposals. Jesus Christ, some (few) featured articles were simply worse than this article). I can only critize (constructably) that ppl are seing some basic flaws in this article but give all-too vague proposals of improvements. Give us examples (other articles) to follow, don´t be afraid of saying: "this paragraph reads like communist propaganda", etc (I just hate political correctness) and more importantly: "Use this talk page" and be a bit more specific if you disagree with any part of this article. 
Meanwhile (repeating a ancient chalenge of mine): I hereby challenge all regular "Romans" to improve this article, by adding all relevant information about the marriage between Antony and Octavia (sister of Octavian). I could do it, but I have other articles to improve (besides I like to challenge ppl). Flamarande 16:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent improvements + Octavia

message: I notice that the section in this article on the Punic Wars contains more information than the stand alone article on the wars themselves. Should not the information here be mirrored there? It seems to me that a summary here, and more detailed information there is how articles are usually set up. Perhaps the information should be moved, rather than mirrored? - Vedexent 20:16, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article about the the Punic wars, is in fact, shorter than the summary here in the Roman Republic article, but there are three links there First Punic War, Second Punic War, Third Punic War which lead to three extensive articles about the Punic Wars. I would leave the article Punic Wars as it is, for if you expand it, you are simply competing with the other three articles and all four articles would repeat the same information.  Flamarande 13:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Punic War Suggestion 

message: Let´s try to reach a common consensus here. I am only a "amateur historian" who likes to read a lot (and in fact have a few books about the subject) but I have to tell you that the two paragraphs about the causes are in fact the more suspect (and least improved) of all. Real professional historians don´t agree amongst themselves about the real causes of the subversion of the republic into the empire. Let me try to explain you why: 
First we are simply limited by our ancient sources/historians. There are not that many of them, and the material (writting) that we have today is not that extensive. Then, with all due respect to Suetonius etc many of our ancient sources simply did not follow NPOV policies, to say it mildly. 
Many of them were roman patriots who in many cases degraded the enemy (let me give you two good examples: Hannibal, the cruel carthaginian and Cleopatra the vile seducer of virtous romans) and improved their own side (like Scipio Africanus, the paladin of antiquity and Octavian the bringer of peace and saviour of the Republic). 
Ancient historians were, most of the time, not present to the events that they wrote about. They would ask questions to real witnesses who would answer them as best as they could (Ask a thousand witnesses about a single event and you will get a few hundered slightly diffrent accounts). Ask a roman general about a certain battle and he will tell you about tactics and units. Ask a soldier and he will tell you about smell, fear and blood. Nevertheless, they are talking about the same battle.
Ancient historians could suffer repurcussions for what they wrote. In the more extreme cases they could be executed for what they wrote, but let´s not go that far: Let´s imagine a roman historian who would write a truthfull account about a battle in which the Roman troops behaved miserably (by cowardice, treachary, incompetence or cruelty). Would the historian be praised for his genuine account? Or (far more likely) would he be insulted by the familiars of the fallen, accused of treachary by the fanatics and despised by the crowd (despite the fact that he was only writting the truth)? Far more likely he would exagerate the numbers of the enemy and praise the heroic struggle of the romans who were overwhelmed by the numbers. His book would certainly sell better.
Then modern historians gather all these accounts and interpret them as best as they can. Some of them are cautious and  try to be reasonable, while others simply repeat the POV and accept blindly what the ancient romans wrote (I have a book written by a german historian who writtes about Cleopatra: "a worthless woman". The book was written in 1913 but notice my point). Notice also, that historians suffer the same problems  as their ancient counterparts: patriotism, limited sources, and social repurcussions. Let me again give two examples: Richard Lionheart the hero of modern England, the glorious crusader who simply abandoned his country. In contrast John Lackland the "evil brother" the devious and treacharous dog who maintained law and order while his brother was fighting thousands of mile away (not that John was a angel, far from it: he was a ruler and a politician :), but at least he was there at his post instead of playing hero like Richard). 
Im not telling you that modern historians are as bad as ancient ones, I personnaly think that they are better than ever before and are getting better all the time. But still, take everthing with a grain of salt and be reasonable, and most importantly read about the other side. Don´t blind yourself with: HE (insert historian or source) wrote it this way, therefore it is the absolute truth.
Let´s face it: "History is written by victors and by loosers, interpreted and sometimes rewritten by intelectuals and fools, manipulated and used by politicians, and simply ignored by rebels and the masses, who always make the same mistakes." Flamarande 14:25, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The worth of ancient sources and modern books 

message: As some may have noticed, I've replaced the  templates for the Macedonian Wars with the standard infoboxes from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history project for the wars. They also list links to the individual battles of the conflicts. I havn't run amok and tucked these infoboxes into all the conflicts because I wanted to get people's response to them first. What do you think? Are these useful additions, or just clutter? - Vedexent 14:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Military History Infoboxes? 

message: Another "suspected alteration" of the Fasti was powerful families "padding" the fasti by placing fictional consuls of their own family in the past to support their "present" political ambitions. This would tend to push the "founding date" back as well, would it not? - Vedexent 13:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And it may be responsible for the six consuls in one year: some historian saying: "Yes, Senators, your ancestors were all first." Septentrionalis 01:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consular Fasti