Talk:First Mithridatic War

message: I changed 'genocide' to 'massacre.' I think we should guard against our contemporary tendency to call every large-scale massacre of a population 'genocide.' For one thing, the overuse of the term diminishes its usefulness; for another, it isn't accurate here. The word "genocide" was coined in the 1940s because circumstances required it; although there are earlier racialist policies of extermination to which it can be usefully applied (the first governor of California, for instance, stated "We will not rest until we exterminate them all", referring to those who populated the continent before the Europeans), it's almost always anachronistic in antiquity. One can argue that the institution of slavery and its economic "benefits" prevented genocide, because there was no reason to exterminate a population when it could be enslaved. In specific wartime circumstances when an entire town was slaughtered, this extreme action was meant to serve as an object lesson about the ability of the perpetrators to crush the enemy. It was not a racialist policy per se.
It appears to have been Mithridates's intention to rid the region of Romans, but it is not clear that he was calling for the extermination of all the Romans in the world. Or no more so than any general at war. I don't mean to make too fine a point. But as far as I know (and I could be wrong), this was a massacre confined to a single occasion for effect, not an action he implemented as policy for the long term. There's also a lack of understanding in the article as to Mithridates' options for addressing what he may have viewed as the economic exploitation of Asia by the negotiatores. The Social War and the Sullan civil wars meant that he could not count on dealing with a united Roman government that could keep its word, because of the factional to-and-fro between Sulla and the Marian-Cinnans. The timing of his actions exploited this division within Rome. To provide a more balanced perspective, one might also note that Mithridates could argue that he was on his home turf (as Ariovistus did, according to Caesar, at the beginning of the Gallic Wars), while the Romans were foreign expansionists in Asia. This is not to "take sides" either way, or to say who was right or justified (Mithridates can also be described as an expansionist), but the words "gruesome" and "racialist" strike me as crossing the neutrality line. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Massacre' vs. 'genocide' 

message: The section on "The Roman Command Structure" strikes me as too long and full of detailed inscriptional evidence that detracts from the main focus of the article. It's a valiant effort to make sense of this large cast of characters (and quite a lot of work to have put in!), but it's a lot to wade through for the general reader. Could I suggest a separate article called "Roman officers in the Mithridatic Wars"? This section could then be condensed and cross-referenced to that article. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. I made a new page and moved this whole exegis there. I linked to it so its not an orphan. Its like this, For the battle of the bulge article, would anybody want some shreds of German paperwork detailing whether 1st recon brigade of the 2nd SS panzer division would be in Malmedy on December 24th at 3pm? Its enough to make anybody close the book and never read about WWII again. I dont know who wrote it, and I wanted to delete it for the longest time, it sucks the life out of the article and destroys it, nobody cares about Greek inscriptions about Roman officers who arent even mentioned at all in the battles, they are reading about a war. I made a new page and moved it there, since the man that wrote it either put alot of work into writing it, or cut and pasted it from his own PHD thesis. I doubt anybody else THAT professional would be reading Wikipedia for prosopographical and numismatic analysis of Ancient History. MrMalax (talk) 13:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The Roman Command Structure" 

message: The articles says that consul Sulla was given command for the campaign against Mithridates in 87 BC. However Sulla was only consul one year earlier in 88 BC. In 87 BC he was proconsul and led the campaign as such. Cn. Octavius and L. Cornelius Cinna were consuls in 87 BC.
154.122.15.204 (talk) 15:45, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consul Sulla? 

message: We can't draw our own conclusions unless those are obvious but the one thing we can do is present. Besides the clean-up of the referencing I would say we still need work in presentation. Why is any given material in there? What is it trying to show and why? The detail has to support some thesis, otherwise it is not too comprehensible. The reader has to be able to follow the thread. Otherwise it is just he-said-she-said, like the material on command structure that was moved. What is the point of reading it? Why are we giving this gobbledeygook to the public? More conclusions, more connecting sentences, more explanation of whys and wherefores. You can quote the modern authors, you know. This article is not bad, but there is a distinction remaining to be made. The article treats Rome's gradual involvement in the affairs of Asia Minor as all Mithridatic War. The greater part of the article is not the Mithridatic War, which does not start until the Senate declares was on Mithridates. I guess I am being critical of the organization. The "Prelude" is everything leading up to the war. The war starts when Sulla as consul is assigned the task of undertaking the bellum Mithridaticum. Before then other officers have been assigned other tasks. I will be going more on this but not just yet.Botteville (talk) 09:36, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: We're not done yet

message: The section 'Pontic re-occupation of Cappadocia, summer 89 BC' contains several subjective statements about Sulla's election being 'surprising' or a 'shock'. I undertook a quick check of a few ancient sources (Plutarch, Appian, Livy, Velleius), and can find no reference for this view. If it comes from a well-known secondary source, this should be indicated (it is not). However, I suspect that it is the personal conclusion of whoever wrote this section, and therefore qualifies as 'Original Research'. With this in mind, I have deleted these statements. Drivingrevilo (talk) 13:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sulla's election to consulship