Talk:Caesar's civil war

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Infobox edits[edit]

Hello there, TableSalt43! I appreciate that you're adding content to the article. I have a few questions though. Who is Gaius Fabius and what did he do? Who is Saburra and what did he do? Are they major leaders in the war? What are your sources for their inclusion?

I know info-boxes are flashy tables that people like to edit, but they are supplements to articles rather than elements in of themselves: they should reflect the content of the article only. They also should not list every single person tangentially related to or mentioned in the conflict; otherwise, the Battle of the Somme should probably include a list of British soldiers hundreds of thousands of names long (ought Lt JRR Tolkien be included?). They ought include only the major commanders (imo, many people should be removed from it, M Junius Brutus included). See MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE.

If you are to include these people, I think you ought to add to the article and describe what they did, while citing modern sources (one of my biggest gripes with the older versions of this article was that it read like someone just translated some primary sources and called it day; the primary sources are not great and really need scholarly handling). I can help you on research etc if you would like. Ifly6 (talk) 21:37, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Response[edit]

Hello Ifly6, just to answer your questions-

Gaius Fabius- A legate of Caesar who played instrumental in the Battle of Ilerda. Bedsides that, little else is known so I agree with you that, he in particular isn't a important asset to the war and I probably shouldn't have added him.

Saburra- A Numidian general who served the king of Numidia, Juba I, and fought Julius Caesar during Caesar's Civil War. He was crucial to the war in Africa. He decisively defeated Caesars lieutenant Gaius Scribonius Curio at the Battle of the Bagradas. He would go to command Juba's army in Numidia, while he was fighting Caesar directly before eventually being killed in action. I figure he is important enough to be on the list due to him being Juba's best commander.

Sources about this two come from ancient and modern sources.

I created the article about Saburra and my sources are linked but I will link some of the ones I used:

Modern-

Goldsworthy, Adrian (2006). "XXI". Caesar: Life of a Colossus. New Haven: Yale Press.
Gardner (translator), Jane F (1967). Julius Caesar – The Civil War. Penguin Books.
Holmes, T. Rice, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire, Vol III, Oxford University Press, 1923
Roller, Duane W., The world of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene: royal scholarship on Rome's African frontier, Taylor & *Francis e-Library, 2004

Ancient-

Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili 2.40
Cassius Dio's Roman History (not often accruate)
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars - Caesar.
Appian, B.C. i. 80.
Marcus Velleius Paterculus ii.

I think that about covers it, and yes I will admit, one day I saw the flashy tables and added wayyy more people than I should have.

Thank you, Have a great day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by TableSalt43 (talk • contribs) 22:03, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 1 May 2022[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Vaulter 03:52, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Caesar's Civil War → Caesar's civil war – MOS:CAPS avoid unnecessary capitalisation Ifly6 (talk) 18:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is a contested technical request (permalink). 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 03:35, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support move. Turning into a full requested move to allow for discussion given that a move would require non-controversial interpretation of guideline. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) refers to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters, which says only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of...reliable sources are capitalized. (emphasis mine) Note that a "substantial majority" is required; in this case, the sources are split almost 50-50, so lowercase capitalization is preferred automatically. Pinging BarrelProof and DrVogel who participated in the original technical move request. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 03:35, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, and also move all the ones listed at Template:Ancient Roman Wars that are not already lower case, for consistency. Dr. Vogel (talk) 03:47, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Also, in general, I think a lot of the Roman-topic articles have a lot of capitalisation ... if not errors, at least inconsistencies. A lot of older scholarship, especially under German influence, used a lot of capitalisation for all sorts of things (Senate, Comitia Centuriata, etc). That doesn't seem to be as common in the English-language scholarship anymore. Ifly6 (talk) 09:49, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, not because it's a great title, but because the proper name of this war in Roman history is usually The Civil War. Other civil wars in Roman history aren't usually called something else or otherwise described so as to make them clear which war or revolt they refer to, if it isn't already clear, but "the Civil War" with no other context except that it's Roman always refers to this war. Perhaps parenthetical disambiguation would be better—I suspect this title was written analogously to the "English Civil War" and the "American Civil War", which is what "Civil War" always refers to in English or American history—"English" and "American" are only included if the context is unclear. I've never cared for "Caesar's Civil War" as a title, but it's still the Civil War of Roman history, perhaps because it's the title used by Caesar for his commentaries, and Appian also used the title, although he seems to have covered all of the major conflicts of the first century BC under the same (singular) title. Other such conflicts can be described as "civil wars", but always have to be distinguished, or are referred to by other names. "Roman Civil War" might seem ambiguous, since it's not usually so called, although I think it's a marginally better title than the present one. P Aculeius (talk) 13:44, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
but by that argument, shouldn't we then be capitalising anything and everything of which there's only one? Dr. Vogel (talk) 14:22, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, no more than we capitalize anything else. When something has a proper name, it's capitalized; this is the Civil War in Roman history, just like the Civil War in American History refers to a different conflict—we don't treat it as a common noun because it's unique, but because it's a proper name, like "World War I" or "the Hundred Years' War" or "the Russian Revolution". It's true that many conflicts have multiple names—the "First World War", the "War of the Rebellion", etc., but they don't stop being proper names—we don't refer to the "first Punic war" or the "third Samnite war" or the "third servile war" as though they were common nouns, although that seems to be what your comment above implies we should be doing. I don't think that comports with standard rules for capitalization in English, however. P Aculeius (talk) 18:13, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, since sources do not consistently capitalize this (or even use this exact phrase). This is not a proper name, it's a descriptive phrase. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support per SMcCandlish. As for the comments by P Aculeius, I think that can be a separate discussion held later. This is, at least, an improvement over the current title. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support per SMcCandlish. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is more a descriptive title than an actual name for the war, which requires lower-case initials. Avilich (talk) 14:58, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Revert, March 2024[edit]

Romulus Cyrus (talk · contribs): Hi. I reverted your edit leaving the message failed verification? see talk. The citation to Plutarch's Caesar is, I think, rather unclear. Can you provide the specific passage? Nor do I see anywhere in it where it says that the total number of dead is 170,000. Nor do I think that Plutarch's biographies are at all reliable without expert interpretation. See WP:PRIMARY, WP:SYNTH, and WP:CGR guide on primary sources. In general, ancient sources are awful when it comes to numbers like these. And Plutarch is especially bad. If you're interested in Plutarch's Caesar, I would also consult the Pelling 2011 commentary. Ifly6 (talk) 14:12, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, in the source I cited, on page 571, it states, "After the spectacles, a census of the people were taken, and instead of the three hundred and twenty thousand of the preceding lists there were only enrolled one hundred and fifty thousand." So that means roughly 170,000 Romans died. You are correct, however, to say that Plutarch is not a very reliable source. But at least he provided a figure. Romulus Cyrus (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's the standard citation – chapter and section; classicists do not cite primary sources by page number – for that? I'd want to take a look in Pelling's commentary. Moreover, Roman censuses were regularly dodged (see eg Gracchi brothers and Rosenstein Rome at war 2004). Mere statement that the numbers went down does not mean that we can attribute the entire difference to deaths in the civil war. Ifly6 (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you go to Plut. Caes. 55.5, the old Perrin Loeb includes a footnote that says Suet. Iul. 41 says that this was not a census of all the people, but a revision of the number of poorer citizens entitled to receive allowance of grain from the state. Added to the broad WP:SYNTH issue, I don't buy that this passage can support the claim of 170k deaths in the war. Ifly6 (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]