Talk:Publius Sulpicius Rufus

Requested move 20 September 2020

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: not moved – move proposer convinced to retain the original name (non-admin closure) Avis11 (talk) 17:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

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Publius Sulpicius Rufus → Publius Sulpicius – It's already explained in the first footnote of the article, but evidence that he had the surname "Rufus" is slim. For him to have it would imply he was a patrician, which he was not. Avis11 (talk) 15:55, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 17:33, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
• Lean oppose. I don't think it is that obvious. Münzer says he transferred to the plebs and this view is not completely abandoned. Jeffrey Tatum in The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher, p. 94, does not reject it. I would prefer keeping the current title and better describe the problem in a section, not just a mere footnote, in which you would talk about the "transitio ad plebem", the patrician status of the Sulpicii Rufi, and arguments in favour of him being born plebeian. You can say something like "after an article by Mattingly the academic consensus is shifting towards the rejection of his patrician status, etc.", but I feel that removing the name is a bit too much. T8612 (talk) 22:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
  • 'Publius Sulpicius' would still be correct even if he was indeed named Rufus; by adopting the shorter form you'd just be going the more cautious route. I'm not sure there ever even was an academic consensus on this supposed adoption: it was always just conjecture, based purely on his alleged kinship with the patrician Sulpicii Rufi, which itself is only supported by Valerius Maximus's questionable anecdotal evidence. Aside from Valerius, all other Roman sources call him simply 'Sulpicius'. With regards to modern sources, Seager quite categorically says here that "he almost certainly laid no claim" to the surname Rufus, and here that he was "never a patrician"; Sulpicius also made his debut as a speaker at around the same age as Cicero, which according to Evans all but assures that he had pleb/equestrian background.
  • As for Tatum's Clodius, I'm not acquainted with his full argument, but it can also not venture much further than speculation. He does say in p. 95 "the silence of the sources is probably best explained by the assumption that Sulpicius was plebeian from the start" (the full context of this I'm unaware). Avis11 (talk) 00:55, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I have dug further on this. There are a number of modern sources using the cognomen Rufus: 1, 2, 3, G. Sumner, Orators in Brutus, p. 133 ("P. Sulpicius Rufus, tr. pl. 88, must surely be another example from a patrician family."), 5 (p. 119, says it's not clear).

In fact, the scholars arguing against Sulpicius' patrician status and cognomen Rufus seem to have made their mind from Mattingly's article (1975). Ernst Badian (here) says about this article: "H. B. Mattingly has questioned the attachment of the cognomen to the tribune. He rejects (without any reason) the appearance of the full name in Valerius Maximus, who would hardly have much reason to make it up, and substitutes his own conjectures for it."

So I maintain that there is no academic consensus for the move and think the article should reflect that. Arguably it is best to avoid using Rufus in the text, but evidence is not supportive enough to remove Rufus from the title. Personally, I think he was a patrician; there is no way he could have such influence at the beginning of his career if he had been a complete new man (but it's OR).

I think it's better to give both opinions (he was a plebeian born patrician/from an equestrian family), with the reasoning behind each view. Since "Rufus" is the older form, the conservative approach is to keep it. T8612 (talk) 01:47, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@T8612: Lintott and Mitchell's articles were published before that of Mattingly in 1975, and Chapman doesn't mention Mattingly or the discussion behind the surname. I wasn't aware of those other sources/arguments you mentioned, however, so thanks for bringing them to my attention. I suppose with them in mind I agree in keeping the name as it is. I'll close the discussion. Avis11 (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

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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.