Talk:History of the Roman Empire

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 6 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ChristopherNoell21 (article contribs).

Francesco Carotta

... has some interesting ideas about Biblical history ... interesting in a way that I think is the fringe of the fringe. There is thus a vote for deletion here. Those of you who are knowledgable and care about 1st century Roman history, please check it out. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Animation of the territorial development

Territorial development of the Roman Republic and of the Roman Empire (Animated map)

The animation of the territorial development seem to have been corrupted. It does, at least, not work on my computer that uses to show such animations flawlessly (I use Linux and Mozilla Firefox). --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 14:33, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if this is a Firefox thing or not, but some animated gifs don't play for me unless they're opened (i.e. clicked on). I'll see if I can figure out why this is. Swarm ^{u | t} 00:10, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't animate, clicked-on or not, on my computer running Firefox. Kdammers (talk) 11:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Byzantine history

<< The broader history of the Roman Empire extends through 16 centuries and includes several stages in the evolution of the Roman state. It encompasses the period of the ancient Roman Empire, the period in which it was divided into western and eastern halves, and the history of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire that continued through the Middle Ages and to the beginning of the Modern Era. >>

Since the prologue says that the history of the roman empire goes as far as the fall of the eastern roman empire, i think that we should have at least a few chapters about the byzantine empire. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christos200 (talk • contribs) 10:48, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

There is an article called History of the Byzantine Empire. Perhaps its contents could be summarized for this article. Dimadick (talk) 13:53, 2 April 2012 (UTC) I think that there is need of something about the Byzantine Empire in this article. This is the successor of the Roman empire. 85.118.69.41 (talk) 12:17, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

The Byzantine Empire wasn't the Successor. It was the Eastern split of the Empire which happened to survive longer. It was not not-Roman. The Western half did not fall and then the Eastern half suddenly appear. - Anon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.147.230 (talk) 13:16, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Plague

If one reads the Wikipedia article on the Antonine Plague, one gets the impression that it was a big deal. In this article on the history of the Empire, it is not even mentioned. That seems out of kilter. Kdammers (talk) 11:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Note on Coordination

This article tracks virtually verbatim with Byzantine Empire throughout the Byzantine period. While I know that one should not simply copy text from one article to another, as I am making copy edits to one, I am making the same edits to the other. Since they are already the same, it makes no sense to leave one unedited. There are instances where links are left out in one because they were present before the tracking began, but I'm essentially editing them together. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

It was noted above that there's no need to duplicate the content in both articles. The section on History of the Byzantine Empire should be summary style in this article. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:04, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm only duplicating copyedits of what is already there, primarily for grammar and coherence. If someone wants to undertake the project of rewriting one to distinguish it from the other, that is fine. I'm just noting that I'm making the same edits to the same existing text. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 19:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate that. I didn't look closely at what you were doing, and thought perhaps a more involved rewriting was involved. Best wishes, Cynwolfe (talk) 19:38, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries. My note was merely an attempt to steer clear of the 'Byzantine vs Roman' minefield. ;) All the best, Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 19:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

What for?

What's the point of this article if the Roman Empire article already cover this subject?Izraías (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The article on the Roman Empire originally focused on its history, but that was thought excessive and history was given its own sub-article. Currently the parent article only contains 8 short paragraphs on history. The rest of that extensive article covers geography, languages, society, government and military, economy, architecture and engineering, daily life, the arts, literacy, books, education, literature, religion, and political legacy. Dimadick (talk) 17:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

How anything that happened one thousand years ago could not be history at all? Izraías (talk) 18:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Because we typically use "history" to cover political and military events, not everything related to the past. Dimadick (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Roman Empire aims at a comprehensive overview of various aspects of the Imperial world, in keeping with historiography of the last few decades that emphasizes not just "great deeds" and political succession, but social, cultural, and religious history, and how ordinary people lived. This article is meant to cover old-school annalistic history in detail (dates, battles)—as Dimadick says, political and military events in chronological order. Both Roman Empire#History and History of the Roman Empire need some work. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:09, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't make any sense. "Political" history is as much history as social, cultural or whatever; despite the fact that 90% of history written today is "cultural". This article is just creating a 1st-tier narrative and banishing the others to the gatehouse. Izraías (talk) 11:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're saying. First, have you looked at the structure of the main Roman Empire article? Several of those sections direct readers to articles that go into greater detail (languages, food and dining, religion, military and so on). Some sections at Roman Empire still need to be developed into independent spinoff articles, and reduced proportionally in the main article. The purpose of History of the Roman Empire is to go into greater depth with chronological, annalistic history that focuses on dates, names, and events such as military conflicts. It aims at a level of detail that would make the already too-long main article much longer. If you think the current title of this annalistic article doesn't clearly delimit its scope, and that it should have a different title, you'll need to clarify what you think it should be called. In October 2012, Roman Empire had 300,557 visitors; History of the Roman Empire had 14,213. This month so far, Roman Empire has had 148,332 visitors, while History of the Roman Empire had 9,001. So perhaps I'm not understanding your metaphor of tiers and guardhouses, but content is not "banished" when it's at Roman Empire instead of in this more narrowly focused article; rather, it has a premium spot in one of the 1,000 most-viewed article of the encyclopedia. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:47, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"Late Roman Empire" page needed

"Late Roman Empire" has NO DEFINITION on Wikipedia, let alone a page of its own. As a search term it wrongly redirects to Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. That is a specific article about HISTORIOGRAPHY, and about the FALL, which is arguably only the last phase of the LRE. Anyone willing to fix this? And to affix the automatic redirect to either Fall of the Western Roman Empire, or much rather to History of the Roman Empire? This at least until a LRE page is created. Thanks, ArmindenArminden (talk) 12:17, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I've added to the lead here, which already covered Late Antiquity, and redirected here. Johnbod (talk) 12:57, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Late Roman Empire

I noticed that en-wiki does not have a stand-alone article for Late Roman Empire, whereas es-wiki, ca-wiki, fr-wiki, and it-wiki all do, sometimes quite a significant one. Most of them cover 274–476. Our "Late Roman Empire" is currently a section redirect to History of the Roman Empire#284–301: Diocletian and the Tetrarchy. (That section has two "main article" links on it, to Diocletian and Tetrarchy.) I've added a new major section header "Late Roman Empire" to the article, to encompass the content already existing in sections Diocletian through Decline. I've added a two-sentence paragraph culled from existing articles to introduce the new section. (Note that this period is sometimes referred to as the "Later Roman Empire" but after a quick study of sources, they seem about equally popular, and I ended up picking this one; feel free to change it if that's not right.)

There is currently a redirect, Late Roman Empire which currently points to the Diocletian section, but that was never correct, imho, and now it should be repointed to the new section that covers the entire period, and has the same name, to boot. Mathglot (talk) 05:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Abbott references

There are a bunch of short refs to an unknown "Abbott" title in the article. They probably refer to "A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions" by Frank Frost Abbott (1901) for reasons explained below, but there have been numerous reprints and editions, right up to 2018. So, we don't know for sure what edition "Abbott, 272" refers to. This needs to be resolved, so the refs can be associated with a title and an edition, in order to provide verifiability for the material they follow.

As of yesterday before my edits, there were five short "Abbott" references, for example: Augustus granted some of his powers to his stepson,<ref name="Abbott, 272">Abbott, 272</ref> and soon after..., but there was no occurrence of a filled out reference describing what source this unnamed "Abbott" title actually is.

The first time a reference including the word "Abbott" was added to the article was in rev 525769082 of 22:30, November 30, 2012 by user Cynwolfe (talk · contribs) with the summary: →‎27 BC–AD 14: Augustus: moving a paragraph from an old draft of Roman Empire now housed at Talk:Roman Empire#History of the Roman Empire. There is a subpage at Talk:Roman Empire called Talk:Roman Empire/History of the Roman Empire, and that subpage has numerous Abbott references that look like the ones in this article. But once again, none of them are full references, so we don't know what edition they refer to, either. Archive 9 at that article does have a section called History of the Roman Empire, with posts there by User:Cynwolfe in September and October, but unfortunately "Abbott" wasn't mentioned in that archive at all. In fact, the only archive that does, is Archive 8, and in one post (of 22:59, 17 August 2012 in section GA review) Cynwolfe says, "Abbott (1901) is over-cited, for instance." That's circumstantial, but doesn't tell us for sure even what title we are talking about, let alone what edition; much less whether the refs imported to History of the Roman Empire in 2012 are the same title or edition as the ones there. So, we're really in the dark about these "Abbott" refs, and if this can't be resolved, all of the material tagged with "Abbott" refs (except for one, noted below) will have to be re-cited to some reliable source.

(Note that as of rev 872422443 of 05:11, December 7, 2018, there is a fully filled out reference for Abbott-1963, but that is purely coincidental because it was copied from content I imported from Constitution of the Late Roman Empire for a completely unrelated edit that just happened to use Abbott-1963.) User:Cynwolfe has been editing sporadically in 2018, and we just have to hope they show up here and can clarify where all these Abbott refs came from. In the meantime, on the assumption that we're talking about "History and Description" (1901), I'll create a full citation for it from WorldCat #1069567291 and link all the short Abbott refs to it, along with an explanatory note for now, saying that we don't know for sure that the legacy Abbott refs in the article are actually from that edition. But if we don't hear back within some reasonable time, we should either reverify or remove all the Abbott (1901) refs. Mathglot (talk) 09:41, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

As a separate issue: the thirteen Historia Augusta refs cite no edition, but presumably come from the Bill Thayer web site which is a hand-typed and unproofread manual copy of Historia Augusta (1921) and Historia Augusta (1924). Better to site the Loeb editions directly. Mathglot (talk) 10:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)