Talk:Castra

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Contents 1 Celtic Criticism 2 Too long 3 Pics of Istria 4 Etymology - original research? 5 Rename to Castrum

[edit] Celtic Criticism

Paragraph 2 and note 1 seem to have some sort of pro-Celtic bias. Italic and Celtic are both at the same level of hierarchy in the divisions of Indo-European language families, each deriving separately in the Centum branch; Celtic languages are not usually some sort of derivational intermediary for Italic language as the language of paragraph 2 implies. Further, talk of Celtic forts in the first note (which are beyond the scope of the article) and the "domination" by Indo-Europeans (presumably the Romans) of "non-Indo-Europeans" (presumably the Celts, though these were just as Indo-European as anyone else in Europe, save perhaps the Basque) are very out of place. Non-NPOV? I think so.

Hi buddy. You didn't sign the critique, a great shame, as now I cannot address you by name. Be that as it may you are entitled to a reponse (I think). The critique seems serious but to tell you the truth it is mainly a matter of words. No bias was intended as you will see.

without any historic intermediary, such as Celtic.--The Celtic dunum, or "hill fort", belongs to a different Indo-European military tradition, almost as ancient. While the castra was designed for large numbers and rolling countryside, the dunum was essentially the fortified crest of a hill or artificial mound. This type of fort appears on high riverbanks or hills when the Indo-Europeans begin to move into Europe, probably in small war bands. From these fortified locations, which the Greeks called akropoleis, the Indo-Europeans dominated the non-Indo-European countryside.--It is not a Celtic loan into Latin, but that is not to say the Celts did not have a word like it or did not borrow the word from Latin.

Basically because I seemed to bring it up you concluded I might have thought an intermediary existed. I can see how you might give it that interpretation. But in fact the real reason is that the previous writer on it tagged castra as a Celtic word. Thus I felt compelled to answer it. No, I don't think there was any intermediary. No one serious today does either although 40 years ago one was hypothesized.

Similarly the whole topic of the Celts comes up because the previous writer brought it up and we don't just discard the thought of previous persons without a good reason. Now you as a reader have brought it up so that is a good reason to delete the whole paragraph. After all the reader does not have the previous before him. Since I am deleting the paragraph and that was the reason for the Non-NPOV tag I am going to delete that too.

Maybe when correcting speculation from previous versions of an article, that sort of information should go on a talk page, or something like it, so as to make a main entry more accessible to "unsophisticated users."

Moreover buddy from your comment it is plain that you are an unsophisticated reader. The Celts of course are not non-Indo-European. That is fine, you are the reader and it is beneficial to have your take on the thing. Most readers are probably unsophisticated. I happen to be educated in the field, but that is neither here nor there. Talent does not necessarily follow education; in fact, some would argue that it does not.

Usually in such cases the "little professor" (me, but I'm not a professor) would give you a string of inaccessible books and articles to read, which you could only get at great cost and trouble to you from some college library or bookstore. But, Wikipedia keeps getting better and better. I'd say, if you still want to know who the Indo-Europeans are and were, look under Indo-European.

Now, the NPOV is actually in your mind. Don't "presume" to know what I mean in a field you don't know a thing about. Nobody who does know would have made such a presumption about what was meant. Having made that statement I now must thank you for having made the presumption. What the fresh and unsophisticated reader concludes is a valuable indication about whether the article says what it was intended to say.

Well that exhausts my momentary thoughts. I must go on. If you make any more comments eventually I will read them. Good luck, thanks for your interest.Dave 14:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I as the reader didn't understand why there was this sudden digression into the Celts. Without knowing that a previous version of this entry had something else and you'd corrected it -- on it's face it looked like some sort of agenda or personal opinion shoehorned into an article about Roman forts. I understand that the Celts are Indo-Europeans; I was a little hasty in my admonishment (or whatever this is).

Though I've used wikipedia as a source of quick facts for a year or two now, this is one of the first times I've used any of the interactive bits. I thought those paragraphs were really strange, and wanted to let someone know. I have occasionally fixed little bits of grammar (pronouns, articles non-native constructions) on some pages, mainly towns in Italy -- where it looked like the original writer was more accustomed to writing in Italian than in English. I haven't done any editing of content, and figured it'd be best if I flagged someone down who actually knew about Roman forts.

I appreciate you taking my brash, unsigned remarks into consideration.

--Bennyfactor 07:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC) (Hopefully I'm signed in this time)

Thanks. In fact the article is way too long so that was a good thing to cut out. I got to go through it again cutting down and moving material if necessary. It's easy to get carried away in writing but the sword of the editor sometimes must be wielded ruthlessly. Burn all your favorite toys. There are no Romans, no camps, no gates, no walls, ....

It sounds as though you are being drawn into Wikipedia. It is fun to do. There is a down side but I try to avoid getting dragged into harangues, sometimes unsuccessfully. Perhaps you should do more if you have the time and interest. It certainly is good experience, I dare say. You just have to know when to go on and not look back, but right now I need to go back and get this into size and format.

PS If I didn't take your comments into consideration someone would notice it down the line and paste notes all over the thing just as you did. Ciao.Dave 02:22, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too long

I see the article is really too long. Eventually I can address this by shortening the article but meanwhile it would be nice to have some reader suggestions as to how to shorten it. If you really feel strongly, go ahead, shorten it.Dave 15:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Later. I thought of a way to shorten it. Let's move List of castra to a separate article as has been done for some other cases, such as List of Germanic peoples. I'll let this sit for a bit until I see if you have any thoughts.Dave 00:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Later. I split out subsection on castra to a separate article, List of castra. However, that only cuts it down from 45 to 41 instead of 32. It seems as though a condensation is in order, with searches to see if some of that information is elsewhere and can be referenced there. Will work on it. Also I noticed the new pictures need some formatting.Dave 02:08, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Later. I had to move some commented material here to gain space. You have to edit to see it.

Later. Well, I declare. The article is down to 31.7 KB and the "too long" message is still there. I'm guessing that the list of long articles is only updated periodically and that the message depends on the list. Either that or it is the judgement of a system administrator. For myself I'm going on now. I did the best I could. There is more that could have been said. Bonne chance, whoever...Dave 16:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Later. I've been looking at some articles and lengths. All I can say is, the lengths do not in any way match the articles. For some reason the message is set for this article. Apparently the system isn't working. So, I'm just going to ignore it. If I see a system I can follow it. I don't see any here, certainly not the one written up in Wikipedia help. In any case I'm done with this article. If you have any issues and you feel you would like to contact me my talk page is always available. Later I will be working on the list of castra, which I have broken out.Dave 17:53, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pics of Istria

The picture of the city wall of Istria with main gate is a nice one, but it isn't the topic. The topic is castra. The gates and walls of castra are fair game but not city walls and gates unless they derive from those of the castra. As far as I can tell Istria was not primarily or originally a Roman camp but was a prior city fortified by the Romans. There are some wonderful city gates. Rome had some, but they were not CASTRA gates. So with regret I commented the pic out. One runs into the same sort of situation with rivers. There might not be a picture available of the river you want. You can't put in any nice picture of a river if you are presenting this article as fact. There are some nice city walls at Istria and some great sewer systems. These are too fine for castra and are part of the city's permanent defense system, not its forts.Dave 10:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology - original research?

"Considering that the earliest structures were tents, which were cut out of hide or cloth, one castrum may well be a tent, with the plural meaning tents." Doesn't "may well be" suggest original research, or at the very least enough doubt that it shouldn't be mentioned in an encyclopaedic article? I was always taught in my few years of Latin at school that castra was one of those words that simply had no singular form. And therefore there's no need to try to ascribe a meaning to the singular, especially if it doesn't exist. Is there a reference to the singular form being used anywhere? Else I'd suggest removing this bit. 59.167.61.14 12:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)DaveY

I know what you were taught. I was taught the same thing and I have an MA in it. But, as so often happens, what we were taught was wrong. These things get institutionalized you know, and I was taught that too. In graduate school you never use a "handbook." Everyone knows they are wrong. So I was as surprised as anyone when I did my etymological research and found that it just ain't so. The singular is just as good as the plural. Just get yourself any unabridged or comprehensive dictionary, look up the singular, and you will find that I speak rightly. What I wrote there I GOT from the dictionaries. Theirs also is the speculation about the tent. You got to CUT the hide or the cloth, right? Snip snip. I'm sure the topic has been researched many times before. Out there somewhere is an article or articles on which the dictionary conjectures are based. They aren't MY conjectures, my friend. I thought it was too trivial a topic to research heavily but not trivial enough to remove, and that is still my judgement. Currently I'm revisiting the article, which I think is a very good one, not to mention being well-written and well-researched, to match the main facts with the listed sources, which are really very excellent sources, without over-annotating. The tent is a topic of its own I am sure but I am not ready to do an article on tents. That is where any extensive research on tents belongs. So for the time being if I see an article that covers it (and I may) I will throw a note in there. Meanwhile since the dictionaries do cover it I'm going to leave it in. Did you check the dictionaries? Did you check anything at all? Did you read anything at all? Or is your thing that you just mainly go around throwing in comments about what you think off the top of your head might possibly be original research? If you are going to work on Wikipedia, WORK on it, otherwise leave it alone.Dave 13:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rename to Castrum

The opening line "The Latin word castra,[1] with its singular castrum, was used ...." reads oddly, and in fact "castra" is then treated in much of the text as though it was the singular form. Really the article should be renamed Castrum and the text corrected. Any objections? Johnbod (talk) 14:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The romans called a single camp "castra" so that's why it's like that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.126.212.245 (talk) 17:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC) e.g. Castra_Praetoria, Castra_Vetera, castra aestiva. In fact the wikipedia article for Castra Praetoria, show similar construction in English: the word 'barracks'. This is a plural word, but it is used to describe one single location as well as a several different locations. ie There is a barracks on an army base, not a barrack.