Talk:The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

message: Just a bit of kibitzing - this book is not that important, and so doesn't really need a description of its contents that is longer than for any other book at WP. Brevity will get more people to read this article. It would be more useful to refer to a review by classical scholars, but the only online reference to it I've found is a remark about the "Zinnification" of ancient history, not auspicious (the rest seem to be lefty websites, who have partisan motives but not the expertise to evaluate Parenti's claims). Some of the alternative theories could be added to other articles, not all piled up in this one place. Finally, you can just do the page refs inline with "(p. 45)" etc, since readers will understand that they're all to the same book; the link and "Ibid." don't add any info, and you won't see any other articles on books doing that. Stan 14:19, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As I mention on Parenti's talk page, there is no such thing as "nominated for the Pulitzer Prize" - you can be an entrant, which just requires filling out a form, or one of three announced finalists, and this book is not a 2003 or 2004 finalist. I haven't read the book, but I am somewhat familiar with Roman history and in particular the pitfalls that can trap non-experts like Parenti. It's all too easy to take some doubtful or conflicting evidence and come up with different interpretations; classical scholars have been doing that for centuries, their bread-n-butter is to weigh the evidence for different versions, then argue about it for a generation until all are convinced. For instance, the meaning of the term "plebs" is uncertain for us, because some of the richest members of Roman society belonged to plebeian gentes, and so to this day we're still not sure exactly what "plebeian" meant to the Romans. It's all too easy for the Parentis of the world to wade in, make all kinds of assumptions that don't actually have any evidence for them, then come to conclusions that sound good, but are nevertheless without factual basis. For instance, he critiques the ancient sources as reflecting the biases of the well-off - well duh, we all knew that already. That doesn't mean we know enough to be able to correctly choose which parts of those sources are factual and which are biased - the real scholars write whole papers on whether a single sentence represents reality or a political slant. So it's good to have a writeup of the book, but it's also good to keep it in perspective. Stan 18:52, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, glad to be getting some dirt like this fudging on Pulitzer Prize nomination. At present, I find the book (and the talk he gave on the book) to be quite compelling. However, I'm a bit like Brutus. Because I'm a skeptic, as soon as I become convinced of a truth, I like to find evidence to stab Parenti's truths in the back (but in a nice kind of way). In fact, I hope you don't mind if I take some of you comments and weave into into a "criticism" section on the book. WpZurp 19:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: On length in general, yes, most book writeups could and should be longer. You want to go for repeated summarization - the first 1-2 paragraphs give the basic facts and hit the high points, for readers to get the big picture and know if they're even at the right place, then a section to set context and background and how it fits into the structure of human knowledge ("Gibbon's Decline and Fall is obsolete but still readable", that kind of thing), and then a more detailed synopsis. Think of readers getting weary and dropping off as they work their way down - you want to maximize their understanding even if they don't finish the article. Of course, you don't have to get all this right the first time, everything is fixable later. Stan 19:00, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: I note that Wikipedia:Featured articles has at least two book articles on it, both fiction; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and A Tale of a Tub, so you can see what an "award-winning" book article might look like. Stan 19:16, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the advice. I'm definitely rambling a bit right now. Some stuff I'll toss as I add in better stuff. I'm an ok writer but hardly a great writer especially on a first try. WpZurp 19:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

message: :In fact only the Gracchi were killed by anything remotely like a "death squad": Cinna for example was slain by his own troops, Sertorius was betrayed by his own troops, Catiline was executed for an attempted coup, Drusus was slain by opponents of the optimates and not by them and Caesar was assassinated by a group of distinguished Senators.
:Parenti argues against unfavorable comments made against these populares while also acknowledging their various flaws. The actions of these populares are set in contrast to the reactionary 82 BC dictatorship of Sulla during which he alleges the various reforms were rolled back.
:Of concern is Parenti's willingness to attribute "populare" status to Tribune Marcus Livius Drusus because it helped his thesis that only Populares - and not Optimates (Roman conservatives) - cared about social reform, however Drusus is considered to have been an Optimate (see, for example: Ward, Heichelheim and Yeo, A History of the Roman People, 3rd ed., page 164). It is unclear whether Parenti deliberately or mistakenly attributed populare status to Drusus.
I believe these paragraphs are in the discussion of Chapter 4. I think it would be better if they were saved for a separate Criticism section near the end, so that readers could evaluate the book on its own merits before reading criticism of some of his points.
FWIW, I think Parenti is full of crap from beginning to end, and I've read other stuff by him that's just as ridiculous. But that's just my opinion. 169.199.125.31 19:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Critical Comments in the Article

message: Both Parenti and those editors who are adding criticism apparently regard all classical scholars as having the same point of view. This is not true at all. Having read just one academic-level book on Cicero, I recall a huge spectrum of viewpoints cited. Some of them were certainly similar to Parenti's own. Contrary to Parenti's view, not all "Caesarians" were "progressive/liberal" (some were authoritarian), and not all "Ciceronians" were "reactionary/conservative". So any editor who wants to say that something is "the opinion of the overwhelming majority of classical historians", either in favour of or as criticism of Parenti, needs not just to cite one or two historians who share that view, but to actually quote a classical historian who states that it is "the opinion of the overhwhelming majority of classical historians". --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Mainstream classical scholars"