Talk:Roman Empire

Wiki Education assignment: Communication and Culture

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2021 and 14 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Waltersaraceni (article contribs).

GA Reassessment

Roman Empire

The following discussion 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.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: It's been a month, and there's been no real improvement. I'm already working on Byzantine Empire, sadly. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:04, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Uncited prose, including the entire "Painting" and most of the "Literature" sections. It has a good structure, but it needs a topic-subject expert to go through to cite or remove the uncited sections. Z1720 (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding to this, a few scattered thoughts:

• The "Fall in the West" section is very out of step with a complex and fast-moving scholarly field. It's been decades since one could respectably write a narrative that begins and ends with invasions of nasty foreigners with beards.
• The same is true of the article as a whole, I'd suggest: it reads like it was written by "fans" of the empire rather than people with a real background in its academic study.
• The Languages section is also pretty outdated in its treatment of "vulgar Latin" and non-treatment of other Italic languages.
• The "Society" section is pretty rose-tinted, put mildly. Again, most treatments of Roman society in the last few decades have not shied away from the general brutality and unpleasantness of it.
• The article seems chronologically confused: it's theoretically about Rome post 27 BCE or so, but occasionally lapses into talking about the mid Republic, centuries earlier.
• The Freedmen section needs to at least acknowledge the existence of women.
• The "census rank" section gets bogged down in the idea of the ordines (which included only a minute fraction of the population), and then tries, not very successfully, to talk more broadly about social class and mobility. There's also a lot of chronological confusion and imprecision, where situations that changed over time (such as labels like honestiores or conversion to Christianity) are presented as if always part of Roman life.
• This thing is a monster! I know it's a big topic, but it definitely needs hacking up and shrinking down.
• There are a number of points where complex debates are reduced to one side of them, and cited to a single source. The Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of "political capitalism" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues (cited to Potter) sticks out: it's not necessarily wrong, but at the moment the article is far too confident in its conclusions and often badly devoid of nuance, and will give the reader a false impression that ancient history is nicely settled and clear-cut.
• The "Legacy" section makes some rather odd choices as to what to focus on and leave out.
• More generally, and related: I don't think this article really knows what sets it apart from Ancient Rome: there's a lot here that's really about "the Romans" in general, rather than the specific material the article claims to cover.
• Citing Luttwak makes me sad.

UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with all of these comments, except as to the size of the article. There's no just way to cover everything that is relevant with the Roman empire without it being very long. Ifly6 (talk) 20:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I feel paring it down to focus on the Empire as opposed to Ancient Rome in general will solve the length problem. Generalissima (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

All good observations. This article deserves not just an general update, but for someone to drive it to FA status.

If any one decides to take on this challenge and upgrade this article I'll support you. I intend on spending most of this year reading sources as I work on the FAR of the Byzantine Empire and can offer my (unprofessional) perspective on modern scholarship where it overlaps. Biz (talk) 07:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I have long said that the Roman Empire article is impossible to write within the parameters of Wikipedia. Here are some thoughts from a long-time contributor who worked on an overhaul ten years ago (at that time, the key was to get a more comprehensive outline structure) and whose doctoral work is in classical studies.

• Length. The current article is indeed too long. Most sections that have their own main article, such as "Languages", are far too long and detailed. When some of the sections were sketched in ten years ago, there were no main articles for those topics. It's a harder writing task than you might think to offer both clear broad statements that are useful to the wide range of visitors to this article in combination with some concrete details that bring those to life. Maybe we should just link them to the Jason Momoa SNL video and be done with it.
• The dangers of recentism. Classical studies is not a field in which older work is discarded. It isn't like either the sciences (where older ideas are actually proven wrong and progress is made) or, say, literary studies (the latter meant to continually renew the vitality of texts for current readers). What you find in classics, because it's inherently multidisciplinary, is that areas of focus within the field change over time, so that research on some topics may be concentrated during certain decades, like republican prosopography in the Ronald Syme era. All that work is still valuable and perceptive; classicists took up other questions and other approaches. I have read some awfully lightweight published articles lately by newborn classicists in which I could immediately spot internal contradictions and research gaps that make me wonder what's happening in the field—support for the humanities in the US is drying up, of course. Still good work in English from the UK but more so from younger multilingual European scholars. Anyway, in classical studies the date of publication is not a measure of the depth or value of research, though archaeology and text retrieval (as of Philodemus from Herculaneum) continually provide new resources to build on.
• Neutrality. Neither rosy nor brutal should be the aim. If you go in thinking "my job is to show just how nasty the Roman Empire really was," then that's as detrimental a mindset as wanting to wear a toga and lie about on couches eating grapes. Scholarship is about trying to understand what the Romans were about in relation to their own time and to the world as they received, entered, and reshaped it. If anything, scholarship in the last decade has moved away from the "Romans bad" agenda.
• Audience. This article gets high traffic. What do visitors come for? My occupation IRL is book editing. At least half of all compositional problems in nonfiction can be solved by putting yourself in the shoes of the average reader. What questions are they likely to bring to the article, and how can the article be structured and compiled to best answer those questions?

Cynwolfe (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

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.

Capital

User: Rheskouporis, that date there in the infobox is very much a mistake, unfortunately. Constantinople becoming a new capital, a "new Rome" in the East, is not equivalent to the old Rome being stripped of its capital status. It's important to understand what the word "capital" ("caput imperii"=capital of the empire; "caput mundi" or "caput orbis"=capital of the world) meant to the Romans. Rome, as the city that originated the Romans, as the place where the Senate was based, as the most populated urban centre, as a community that was fed and supplied by the rest of the empire by law, etc. etc. was "capital" by definition. Even if the Emperor was elsewhere Rome was not stripped of its capital status and of all the privileges associated with it. This is why Constantinople, to be a new capital, had to be a "New Rome", had to have its own Senate, had to have its own 7 hills, had to have grain supplies specifically designed to feed the city like Rome etc. Rome lost its status as Imperial capital because the Empire there fell, leaving only the Eastern Roman Empire and hence only Constantinople as capital.

So I think the better dates for the capital should be: Rome "(27 BC-476 AD)", even though 476 is conventional as one could say Odoacer pretended to be a Patrician for the Emperor in Constantinople, but that is not a point I am raising; whereas for Constantinople we can mantain "(330-1453)", even though that's another convention as for example it's 357 the year in which the Senate of Constantinople was put on par with that in Rome, but this is not a point I am raising either.

A proof that Rome continued to be considered "capital of the empire" after 330 is that, when it is sacked in 410, ancient authors explicetely say that "the capital of the empire" was sacked. Let me quote Saint Jerome, Letter 128 (text here: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001128.htm), on the sack of 410:

The world sinks into ruin: yes! But shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, (in Latin: Romani imperii caput) swallowed up in one tremendous fire.

Barjimoa (talk) 19:09, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The various capitals of the Western Roman Empire were Rome, Mediolanum, Ravenna, Salona, and Spalatum. Dimadick (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

But these were not made official capitals of the Roman empire; rather they were, altough it's still significant, seats of the Western Roman Emperor. The presence of the Emperor by itself was not what made a city the capital. And even if we consider these cities capitals as well, their role did not strip Rome of its official capital status either. Barjimoa (talk) 18:30, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Community Consensus: Change semi-elective absolute monarchy (de facto) to Despotism (de facto)

Title says it all. According to Montesquieu, "monarchy" does not do justice to the despotic and autocratic Cæsars. In Spanish it's called "Autocracia", check out the Spanish wikipedia. 190.141.81.136 (talk) 02:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not our job to point fingers and moralise. However, I see no justification for keeping "semi-elective", and "monarchy" neglects the periods within the scope of this article when the empire had two emperors - and of course there was the tetrarchy. I'd favour simply changing Semi-elective absolute monarchy (de facto) to Autocracy, a term which does encompass single and multiple autocrats and isn't (unlike "autocratic") loaded. NebY (talk) 12:40, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Given the recent edit, adding my comment to show consensus: yes, autocracy is the most appropriate term. Biz (talk) 02:14, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Citation needed on Diocletian's Great Persecution

I saw this on the citation hunter in Wikipedia. While the Diocletian Persecution has its own article, it has no citation yet in this article.

Shouls we cite "Gaddis, 24" and "Eusebius: The History of the Church (1989)" there?

I'm a new user, so I can't edit the article and still asking for advice RFNirmala (talk) 04:36, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

21st century scholarship is preferred. Biz (talk) 22:32, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Reference 18

Can someone provide the quote of Wolff, Robert Lee (1948). "Romania: The Latin Empire of Constantinople? The whole text seems like OR. Beshogur (talk) 12:37, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

If you sign up for the Wikipedia Library you can read it yourself[1]! I assume that by "the text" you mean what's currently note a, beginning "Other ways of referring to the "Roman Empire" among the Romans..." Wolff's article, which begins "The name Romania was regularly given to the Latin Empire of Constantinople by its contemporaries. To save the tedious multiplication of examples, it is probably sufficient to point out that ..." seems to relate only to the last sentence of note a. You might want to start with his Conclusions on p32, beginning "This investigation has now reached the point where it is safe to conclude that by the year 1204 the word Romania had acquired in the west two distinct meanings and two distinct traditions. With the end of the Roman Empire in the west it had lost its meaning of Orbis Romanus and in most cases had come to mean simply the Romagna. In its first new meaning of Byzantine Empire it did not come into general vogue in western Europe before the year 1080 - although there are isolated instances of its appearance sooner ..." NebY (talk) 14:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

So whole text is a WP:OR? Beshogur (talk) 13:23, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Also can someone tell me what's the self referring name of the Roman Empire? SPQR? Beshogur (talk) 13:24, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

"Imperium Romanum" (Roman Empire) was the self reffering name of Roman Empire. SPQR was the name of senate, the government of Roman Empire.. 149.140.105.36 (talk) 23:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I mean is Imperium Romanum or Imperium Romanorum used by the Roman Emperors? Curious because the infobox should correctly use this. Beshogur (talk) 17:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Tacitus would still refer to the Res Publica and it's what the state was called for as long as people spoke Latin (ie, until the time of Justinian in government and in the military during Hercaclius). Imperium Romanum was more specific to the emperor, which I suppose reflected the government and superseded SPQR.

The Romans (and later the Byzantines) liked to pretend they were a republic for several centuries after this ceased to be the case in any real sense. Imperial decrees were given rubber-stamp ratification by the Senate. In the same way, from the 1720s to 1858, the various highly competitive powers in India, including the British, all formally recognized the Mughal Emperor as supreme ruler, when he had no power whatsoever. Johnbod (talk) 21:24, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. We can say that looking back that de jure power and de facto power were different.

Yes, it's the root of the word republic. But it actually translates better as 'public affair'. Which is also seen to mean as the state or the commonwealth. The Greek equivalent politia is similarly loaded with meaning, and still in use today with modern Greeks.

There was no pretending: that's what it was. (At least to the people per Beshogur's question, maybe not to the historians.) Biz (talk) 23:40, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

We've removed non-English names from the Byzantine Empire info box because the article name is priority and it just leads to never ending edit battles otherwise. The info box is no place to explain complexity. I suggest the same is done for this page. FWIW, Ancient Rome articles uses Roma and we should create consistency. Biz (talk) 23:57, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. But I was referring to official names on the infobox eg Mongol Empire -> Great Mongol Nation & Ottoman Empire -> Sublime Ottoman State. Since there was no clear definition was Roman Empire was called, we should leave only Roman Empire without translation. The text is pure WP:OR. Name section can be expanded with reliable sources tho. Beshogur (talk) 06:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. "Roman Empire" is a modern construct for periodisation of a state that spanned 2000 years. Biz (talk) 17:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

It's even more problematic because the concepts of Roman Republic and Roman Empire existed in antiquity, but their meanings have been altered in modern conventions. "Romanum Imperium" referred to Roman rule, and could refer to the job of ruling and commanding (as vested into consuls and later emperors), or to the territorial extent of Roman rule (which is more similar to a modern/colonial concept of Empire, as opposed to "a state ruled by an emperor"). Hence the Romans talked of a Roman empire way before Augustus. The "Res Publica" was the "public thing", something akin to "state" or "government" or "politics", and it continued to exist even after Augustus. In modern conventions we call "Roman Republic" what Cicero and Tacitus called the Libera Res Publica, that is to say the "Res Publica" as it functioned before the Caesars and the Augusti. And they have called "Roman empire" the age of the Augusti. Barjimoa (talk) 09:37, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Use–mention in the lead

I agree with @NebY that it's necessary to explicate that "Roman Empire" refers equally to a period of Roman history, and the territory controlled by Romans during that period. That said, might it be possible to write this in a way that avoids use–mention issues? i.e., implying that the article topic is the term "Roman Empire", as opposed to the period and territory. Remsense诉 14:05, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

How about changing it from "The Roman Empire is generally understood to mean the period and territory ..." to "The Roman Empire is, in common usage, the period and territory ..." or even "The Roman Empire is, broadly speaking, the period and territory ..."? NebY (talk) 14:27, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes! I think all are very much improved, with a slight preference to the last option. Remsense诉 14:30, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

What exactly is wrong with having a nice concise lead sentence and THEN saying "It is generally understood to mean..." in the second sentence? It's the same exact information, just laid out in such a way that allows the first sentence to not be a confusing run on with "the post republican state of ancient rome" slapped on the end. It has been like this for about a month? So why are we defending this new lead sentence so hard. SaturatedFatts (talk) 16:12, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican state of ancient Rome. It is generally understood to mean the period and territory ruled by the Romans following Octavian's assumption of sole rule under the Principate in 27 BC.

• This was changed 12 June because "The roman empire existed before the post-Republican state" which I agree with as change. Its covered in the history section.
• Breaking this back up into two sentences works for me,
• The use of "is" and "was". Although verbs, both are still in the passive voice so not appropriate. Active voice would be something like: "The Roman Empire succeeded the Roman Republic as the ruling regime of the state."
• Other pages of the Roman state seem to use "was" (and could do with rewrite if anyone is inclined)
  • The Roman Kingdom, also referred to as the Roman monarchy or the regal period of ancient Rome, was the earliest period of Roman history when the city and its territory were ruled by kings.
  • The Roman Republic (Latin: Res publica Romana [ˈreːs ˈpuːblɪka roːˈmaːna]) was the era of classical Roman civilization beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire following the War of Actium.
  • In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire refers to the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court.
  • The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centered in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Biz (talk) 16:35, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

So just like the Republic/Kingdom, it refers to a period and territory, but for some reason has to be the only era of Roman history that doesn't begin with a nice concise sentence saying "The Roman Empire was...". Also, the lead was exactly what I changed it to for a long time, until recently. And exactly what misstatement was there? I think leaving this new lead sentence up while we debate this is also very silly, it has been the lead sentence for only a month or so and in my opinion sounds horrible... SaturatedFatts (talk) 16:10, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

1. Longevity is not itself a reason why content should be one way or another, see WP:BEENHERE
2. There is a meaningful difference between the Kingdom and the Empire, at least traditionally.

Remsense诉 16:33, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

We shouldn't define the Roman Empire as a successor state of the Roman Republic. @Rjdeadly's slight rewrite has been here for weeks, and this article has a lot of watchers. WP:NODEADLINE is pertinent; we don't need to rush to revert it because one editor has just now noticed it and thinks it sounds horrible. NebY (talk) 17:21, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Some more non Roman historical empires that all have a lead sentence saying "x Empire was..." Russian Empire Empire of Japan German Empire First French Empire SaturatedFatts (talk) 16:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The point is that those are all discrete polities that were created and had more clear boundaries in general palance than the Roman Empire, of which much of the territory controlled by Romans was not formally organized as provinces. It doesn't make sense to define the Roman Empire simply as "the Roman state between X and Y", because it truly is more of a historiographical period than a political entity in itself. Remsense诉 16:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

All of the famous ancient Persian empires also use this type of first sentence, Achaemenid Empire Parthian Empire Sasanian Empire SaturatedFatts (talk) 16:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Not one of those first sentences describes its subject in terms of a predecessor, or calls its subject a "state" (a term whose applicability to ancient polities is disputed; Rome certainly doesn't meet Weber's criterion). I'd be fine with "was" instead of "is" in one of the openings I offered at the start of this thread - they weren't drafted to address that. NebY (talk) 17:06, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Alright, then why can't we just replace "is generally understood to mean" with "was". I mean, that's what the Roman Empire was right? SaturatedFatts (talk) 00:50, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

That is quite specifically the premise of my initial question, and we already had struck on a better phrasing. Remsense诉 00:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I see the user saying to use active voice. What exactly is wrong with passive voice though? Most articles on ancient civilizations use "was" in their first sentence across Wikipedia. SaturatedFatts (talk) 00:59, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Passive voice is not the same thing as the past tense. Moreover, the issue is the use–mention distinction, which is a distinct issue, i.e. The Roman Empire was... vs. "Roman Empire" is a term that refers to... for a more obvious illustration of it. Does that makes sense? Remsense诉 01:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I barely edit Wikipedia, and I've never heard of the use-mention distinction. But after reading about it, it makes sense. It does sound like it is implying that the article is about the term. As a reader, I simply thought the first sentence of such a prominent article sounded much worse than I remember. I wasn't thinking of any specific reasoning as to why that is. That's why I just changed it back without much thought. But could I or someone go ahead and edit the first sentence then? At least as a temporary placeholder, while maybe one of these other editors comes up with even better phrasing. SaturatedFatts (talk) 01:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

We're working on it! There's no rush. . Remsense诉 01:09, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Alright. In my opinion, "The Roman Empire was the period and territory ruled by the Romans..." would already be a large improvement alone. SaturatedFatts (talk) 01:12, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm opposed both to using the word both here, as well as the expression generally understood to mean. When something is "generally understood", that means it's majority opinion, and when that's the case, we just say "is" (or, "was") in WP:WikiVoice. The generally understood to mean sounds like there is major disagreement on the point, and this might be a plurality opinion. (We can get into quibbles about the end point wrt various sacks later, maybe even later in the lead, but not in the defining sentence.) The use of both period and territory is wrong on two counts, imho. First, nearly everybody in every empire article does territory first, period second: check out Austro-Hungarian Empire, British Empire, Byzantine Empire, Ethiopian Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire—of those, only Japan gets the period mentioned first. Secondly, none of them goes with the both-space-and-time formulation, which gives the impression that the title topic means two things, somehow separate. But I find that misleading, as in reality, the two are inextricably tied, and all of those articles pretty much all say, "The Fooian Empire stretched from Left to Right, and lasted from Early to Later", not in so many words, and not always in one sentence, but that's pretty much the pattern. How about something like:

The Roman Empire encompassed territories around the Mediterranean from 27 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD by most reckonings, and at its peak controlled much of Western Europe from Britain in the northwest through most of Western Europe, the Balkans, the North African coast and Nubia, and Western Asia.

This is kind of a hybrid, starting off with the extent and period briefly, then returning to backfill the extent in more detail. There's no need for the both territory and periodization formulation, it's not helpful, and may even be confusing to first-time readers; plus, nobody else does it that way. Also, this is a simpler formulation, in line with the "plain English" exhortation in MOS:LEADSENTENCE; mentions of stuff like the precipitate can wait till after the first sentence, imho, after we get a basic definition out of the way. Mathglot (talk) 09:32, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

The problem with that draft is this is historical periodisation heavily under the microscope right now and that is not adequate, lest of all because of future editors not as restricted to the conservative practices of academic consensus re-writing it making this a never ending debate here and edit battle.

Tangentially, it would help a lot if a decision is made on the time, less the space, that this article covers. Having it end in 476 is no longer appropriate. Having it end in the 8th century is more bizarre and being dropped from consensus. Having the classical Roman Empire "end" earlier, or mentioning the eastern empire along with the western empire, is better. (And in case someone misinterprets me my intentions here, I want to be clear that I prefer to scope down this article with summary style and other articles.)

Rewriting your version with less words:

The Roman Empire encompassed territories around the Mediterranean from 27 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 AD, and at its peak controlled much of Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. Biz (talk) 18:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)