Talk:Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Note

The date of birth is still said to be 95 A.D. at the bottom of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.242.108 (talk) 18:13, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I corrected it. Sapphorain (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Further sources

If you can read Italian, here are a couple of epigraphic sources on this major literary figure of the second century:

• An inscription from Formiae honors his daughter, where her husband (named Aufidius Fronto -- I'm amused my source is very modest about her name) is recorded as civic patron & she was priestess of the local cult Augustiae et patriae (M. Zambelli, Epigraphica 32 (1970), pp. 72f; an abstract in French can be found in AE 1971, 79)
• The sarcophagus of her son at Pesaro is republished by A. Giuliano, Parola del passato 27 (1972), pp. 271f

While both of these sources are over 40 years old, they're still an improvement on this article, which reflects the state of knowledge about Fronto from 90 years ago. -- llywrch (talk) 22:48, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

February 2020

@Sapphorain: With regard to this revert. You wrote This is about how his name was written, and not particularly about how he himself wrote it. And how it was written is well known (ex Dione Cassio lxix. 18: Κορνήλιος Φροντών ὁ τα πρῶτα τῶν τότε Ρωμαίων ἐν δίκαις φερόμενος,... et Can you please cite a reliable source in English or any language other than Greek that states that his name was written as (Φρόντων)?

Like I said in my edit summary, the Greek name is nothing more than WP:OR based on an editor's analysis of a primary source: The encyclopedia relevance of how a multilingual pro-Latin grammarian used to spell his name in non-Latin scripts needs to be established by reliable secondary sources, otherwise why stop at the name? Why not forget about what the scholars have to say and instead go through his personal letters, written mostly in Latin, and deduce whatever we want from them? M.Bitton (talk) 22:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Cassius Dio was a scholar, and a near contemporary of Fronto. Your request is absurd: a reliable source in English will spell his name as customary in English (Fronto) and not in Greek, a reliable source in French will spell it in French (Fronton) and not in Greek, and so forth. Anyway, we have several letter in Greek from Fronto: 144 or 145 AD: Ἡρώδῃ παρά Φρόντωνος; approx. 157-161 AD: Παρά Ἀππιανοῦ Φρόντωνι; approx. 157-161 AD: Ἀππιανῷ παρά Φρόντωνος, etc (C.R. Haines, Loeb Classical Library, Fronto I, p.168, p.264, p.268) . Sapphorain (talk) 03:31, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I wish to add the following. You appear to be confused with the type of «  original research » that is not allowed in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia does allow and even encourage original research, provided of course it comes from a published work in a reliable source. Otherwise we could never mention any mathematical theorem, even published in the most prestigious journal, unless it is mentioned in the New York Times (by someone who would probably not understand the first symbol of it), on the absurd ground that it is « original research ». If a contributor translates himself a Latin name into Greek, this is original research that is not allowed here. If a scholar does the same and publishes his translation in a good publication, this is original research too but can be mentioned. And finally if a scholar reads a name already written in Greek in a manuscript and print it in the said publication, it is not even original research. This is precisely what we have in the present case. Indeed the headings of the three mentioned letters by Haines are precisely printed thus:

<Ἡρώδῃ παρά Φρόντωνος>; Παρά Ἀππιανοῦ Φρόντωνι; and Ἀππιανῷ παρά Φρόντωνος. The heading of a fourth letter (p. 286) reads: Φρόντων Ἀπ<πιῷ> Ἀππολλωνίδῃ.

Now on page lv of the preface (« SIGLA ») we can read the meaning of the symbol < >:

«  < > Conjectural additions. ».

This implies that the headings of the second, third and (partly of the) fourth letters are not conjectural, and were read in Greek and in that form in the manuscripts. (And please don't try to tell me that this deduction is "original research"...).Sapphorain (talk) 13:04, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

My question has nothing to do with the spelling of his name. I asked you to cite reliable sources in English that state that his name was written as (Φρόντων), as they do for some ancient scholars when they deem it necessary or when the person is closely associated with a particular language. As an example: Reliable English sources that give the Greek name (using the Greek alphabet) of Strabo can easily be found.

Anyway, we have several letter in Greek from Fronto. That's right, we have access to a primary source that has been heavily studied by modern scholars, yet you're clearly struggling to find a single one of them that mentions how Fronto wrote his name in Greek. Doesn't that tell you something?

You appear to be confused with the type of «  original research » that is not allowed in an encyclopedia. Really? Let's see:

Wikipedia does allow and even encourage original research, provided of course it comes from a published work in a reliable source 1) No, WP does not allow original research and it certainly does not encourage it. 2) If something is published in a reliable source, it no longer qualifies as original research.

Otherwise we could never mention any mathematical theorem, even published in the most prestigious journal, unless it is mentioned in the New York Times (by someone who would probably not understand the first symbol of it), on the absurd ground that it is « original research ». If something is published in the most prestigious journal (considered reliable RS), then it is properly sourced and nobody in his right would qualify it as OR.

If a scholar does the same and publishes his translation in a good publication, this is original research too but can be mentioned. As far as WP is considered, the scholar's publication would be considered a reliable secondary source. The OR policy applies only to the WP editors.

And finally if a scholar reads a name already written in Greek in a manuscript and print it in the said publication, it is not even original research. This depends on the context. If a scholar analyses a primary source and then finds it necessary to highlight a name written in whatever foreign language, then their work is obviously a secondary source. But, if a translator translates a primary source from A to B (putting both languages side by side) without commenting on what's written, then the only secondary part of their source is the translation in English, which if done properly would constitute a good faithful translation of a primary source (the one that scholars would analyse).

This is precisely what we have in the present case. Here's what we have: 1) An outdated translation from mostly Latin and some Greek to English of an ancient primary source. 2) An editor concentrating not on the translation itself, but on the primary text and drawing a conclusion from it that isn't stated in any secondary source.

If someone is truly interested in Fronto's letters and their interpretation by modern scholars, then there is no better source than "A commentary on the letters of M. Cornelius Fronto" by Van Den Hout, which is described by RS as "the most extensive commentary on the literary, linguistic, and historical content of Fronto’s works and essential reading for all scholars of Fronto".

Does Van Den Hout mention how Fronto used to write his name in Greek? I don't know, but this is what he thinks of some Greek guy who apparently fancied himself a historian.

One of his follies is to convert names like Saturninus, Fronto and Titianus into Greek names.

With regard to the encyclopedic relevance that I mentioned above, all one has to do is read what Jimbo Wales said about it at the bottom of the WP:OR page (If your viewpoint is...). M.Bitton (talk) 00:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

References

All this colourful and adorned babbling is very interesting, but it carefully avoids the main point, in the last paragraph of what I wrote last. Which is that, according to the editing and translating of Haines, Fronto did write himself his name as Φρόντων. Now if you think this is not true, you cannot just voice your opinion of it: you will have to produce yourself a reliable source explicitly stating that these Greek headings of Greek letters are not in Greek in the original manuscripts and that they were translated from Latin to Greek by Haines. This appears extremely unlikely for two reasons: first, why would Fronto write in Latin the heading of a Greek letter?; second, why would a distinguished scholar like C. R. Haines, M.A., F.S.A., perform such a sneaky and undignified falsification? Sapphorain (talk) 09:54, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

My colourful and adorned babbling is a diligent dissection of your asinine interpretation of the OR policy. Your last comment tells me that you completely missed the most important part of my first comment: "the encyclopedic relevance of how a multilingual pro-Latin grammarian used to spell his name in non-Latin scripts needs to be established by reliable secondary sources."

Anyway, given the fact that you keep removing[1][2] the maintenance tags that were meant to draw input from the community, and having no wish to engage an edit war over it, I'll be advertising this discussion at the relevant WikiProject. M.Bitton (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Having been summoned into this dispute, I have to say that I don't see this as an OR issue. This is about relevance. At first impression, I don't quite understand the reason for including a Greek transliteration of a Roman name in an article about a Roman figure. Virtually all Romans who had any military, political, or literary presence in the Greek world would have had their names transliterated into Greek, but how their names were transliterated doesn't seem particularly important. If it were a Greek figure better known by a Latin or Latinized name, I could see the relevance. But that's not the case here. And even if you let it pass in the lead, there's absolutely no reason to give the Greek originals of every person of Greek origin mentioned in the body of the article. Those should be deleted. P Aculeius (talk) 05:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Like P Aculeius, I got here via the message at WT:CGR. As I see it, there are two issues here: 1. Do we have a reliable source for the Greek version of Fronto's name?, and 2. should we include it in the article?

In regards to 1, I would argue that Haines' edition of Fronto is a reliable source to the Greek name. The ancient text in a Loeb doesn't just appear from the void – it is edited, and Loebs usually even say what texts their edition is based off of. Unless different sources have different spellings of Fronto's name in Greek, I cannot see how it is problematic to use the spelling as given in the Loeb.

As for whether it should be used in the article at all, I must say that I am inclined to agree with P. Aculeius: Fronto was not Greek, even if he wrote in Greek, and Fronto is not a Greek name – his Greek name is apparently simply a transliteration of "Fronto". I don't think there's any compelling need to include it at all. (Origen is an example of a Good Article on a Roman-era writer who wrote in Greek, and there is no Greek version of his name in the lead.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm also here like P Aculeius and Caeciliusinhorto and have to agree: the Greek spelling of Fronto's name is not relevant and the transliterations of other Greek person's names in the article should also be removed. As I stated at WikiProject:Classical Greece and Rome, the article in general needs a lot of work. It appears to reflect the prejudices of a snooty aristocratic Oxbridge type from before 1950 at the moment, with judgments about the "artificialities" of some writers Latin, etc.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:30, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Came through WT:CGR as well. I've tried to search "Φρόντων" on Google Scholar... Uh, don't do that, apparently a nsfw site ripping WP articles is archived on there. It doesn't seem like Fronto was Greek, and as such a Greek transliterated name for him isn't really relevant if the issue must be pushed. If the argument is that he wrote in Greek, and happened to transliterate his own name (if this is true) in those writings, I still feel it's not relevant. Cicero wrote his share in Greek too, but we don't add "Κικέρων" in the lead there merely because of that. Sleath56 (talk) 04:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

As usual, I saw the invite at WT:CGR too late & arrived at this party long after all the beer has been drunk & the chips eaten. (Okay, there's some jalopeno-flavored chips left, but those taste nasty.) Anyway, I have to agree with the other four who were invited here & don't see the relevance of the Greek form of the name to this article. Unless archeologists in Rome found some graffiti in the lavatory of the Curia Julia written in Greek saying (in effect) "Fronto likes sheep" & "Oh yeah? Herodes Atticus likes girls". Seriously, this article has needed work to expand the details of Fronto's life & his influence on 2nd-century Rome since at least 2016, & all anyone can be bother ed to contribute is how to spell his name in Greek? -- llywrch (talk) 18:12, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

 Done I have removed the irrelevant Greek transliterations. Once gain, thank you to all those who participated in this discussion. M.Bitton (talk) 23:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)