Talk:Pagus

Comments

Good article, but, since Christians were heavily persecuted during Diocletian's reign, I found the following confusing: " Within the reduced area of Diocletian's subdivided provinces, the pagi could have several kinds of focal centers. Some were administered from a city, possibly the seat of a bishop ...".

The church tended to administer itself on the basis of the Roman civitates and pagi and that is why the city of secular administration could very likely be the seat of a diocese. Ecclesiastic geographical terminology preserved much in the way of Roman usages well into the Middle Ages. Srnec 20:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Diocletian's restructuring of the empire long outlasted him; it was still in effect when the Christian hierarchy came into in a position to do some of their own persecuting. --Wetman 00:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

To what exactly are you refering? The Constantinian empire, the Theodosian empire? Or later, like the Carolingian empire? The Church kept the terminology in use until the advent of the High Middle Ages and some of the ideas were appropriated by the Holy Roman Emperors, like the idea of "Gallia", "Germania", and "Italia" making up their empire. Srnec 04:06, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Article rescue

Rather than being a good article, this is a good candidate for article rescue, an excellent opportunity for scholarly research and a superior invitation to totally rewrite. The topic most likely belongs on WP. I don't think much of the write-up can be saved and I doubt anyone should even try. I'm putting this on my snack list. I responded to the request for organization. The reorg should not in any way be regarded as cast in concrete.Dave (talk) 14:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The lead section as you've corralled it is probably too limiting. You probably need a section on pagus in Republican Rome. Caesar's use of the term for the pagi of the Helvetii should follow that explanation, since of course Caesar is trying to find a Latin word to describe another polity's social organization. There's currently a large gap between the high-classical usage (Late Republican, that is), and Diocletian's reorganization, which Augustus and his reforms would probably be required to fill. The business about "folk" is dodgy, at least in the position it now occupies. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:22, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the critique. I will keep these in mind as I snack. I hope you continue to follow it from time to time. Smith has a lot of good things to say, but, it takes time - at least it takes me time - to get these things in. Meanwhile unless I'm going to change it people are happiest if I just leave it the way it is. I could put up the tags but it seems less messy to do it this way. I'm almost done for the moment. It's a matter of adjusting the length of my round-robin but I will be back before long instead of abandoning it in frustration as I used to do. Ciao.Dave (talk) 22:25, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Burgundy map

The article currently uses an unsourced map of 9th century Burgundian pagi as its main image. (Apparently there was a discussion of the map on the French Wikipedia, but the discussion page was deleted upon moving the image to Commons.) As the info I've added under "Post-Roman pagus" explains, more recent historians have suggested that the view of the pagus as an administrative unit under the Franks with clearly identifiable boundaries is basically inappropriate.

West comments on the attempt to draw 9th century maps specifically: "It is increasingly clear that this may not be the best way of approaching the issues at stake, at least as concerns the lands between Marne and Moselle. The elaboration of carefully delineated maps of ninth-century pagi requires a considerable tidying-up of the evidence."

Because of this I've added "approximate" to the caption as a bare minimum qualifier, but given the scholarly scepticism (and the fact that the map is unsourced anyway) I tend to think this might not be a good image to use in the article. —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 19:22, 2 June 2021 (UTC)