Talk:History of Rome

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[edit] Timeline

Strongly recommend moving the timeline to its own page (i.e. Timeline of Rome) so this article isn't so claustrophobically formatted at the top of the article and to encourage a concise prose summation of the entire article in the intro paragraphs (I rigged up a quick one as a quasi-placeholder, but it barely addresses post-Classical Rome and is deficient in other ways) instead of just a lengthy list. Once this problem is dealt with near the top, I believe the article will be much more accessible, giving the article room to breathe and allowing images near the top to welcome in visitors. -Silence 13:02, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Collaborators

Articles needs also collaborators who could correct my prose and, hopefully, add something after the age of Sixtus V. Also early Middle Ages time must be improved (especially 10th century). I promise as first as possible contribute more. Attilios

Made a one word change to Holy Roman Empire Secion. I changed "conjurers" to "deposers." I don't like that word either, since the antecedents aren't that strong, but I like it better than conjurers which seems to suggest magic. I think the author meant to suggest that the dissenters had conjured up the accusations against the Pope.

I would change the part that says "replaced by peoples of Germanic origins" to something a little less extreme. "Replaced" makes it sound like they killed everyone. Also, the beginning I think is a bit too summarized. I would go into a little more detail perhaps. Datus (talk) 05:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for Rome population

Could someone give the sources for Rome population table? There are inconsistencies with what is written in the main article on Rome, in particulare there is a difference of ~1,200,000 inhabitants in AD 100.--Panairjdde 17:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

There is a great deal of estimates of the population of ancient Rome, its population could be as low as 450,000 or to be in the order of several millions, depending on the sources in with the estimates are based. If its population is estimated based on the amount of wheat annually imported in the time os Augustus, its population would be about 2 million. If it is estimated on the walled area inside the aurelian walls build in the year 273, its population would be in the range of 450,000 to 650,000.--RafaelG 18:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, but the sources for the numbers showed in the table?--Panairjdde 18:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Second to the historian Keith Hopkins, the population of Rome grew from 150,000 in 250 BCE to 1 million in 40 BCE. Then we have a census, dated from around the year 100, with says that Rome had 40,000 insulae, each insulae had an estimated population of 40, plus the 50,000 wealthy people with lived in houses, bring the total population to 1.65 million, with is probably the peak population of the ancient city. By the year 300, the population was reduced to only half million, living in 1400 hectares of walled area. --RafaelG 18:53, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for these references. As regards the other years?--Panairjdde 10:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline again

I am remaining on strike against this article from now until the day the timeline is removed. It makes me soul burn and my eyes bleed. As soon as it is gone and there is room to breathe once more, I will gladly do an in-depth copyedit to the article. -Silence 22:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Or, if complete removal is unacceptable, I might be willing to handle a compromise where the bloated timeline is cut up into three thirds, once placed at the top of the "Ancient Rome" section, one at the top of the "Medieval" section, and one at the top of the "Modern" section, so the timelines are both more immediately relevant to what's being discussed and much easier to read and edit and format with the text since they're a lot smaller. Though I still say simply removing it would be a giant boon to this article. The timeline is directly causing a great degradation in the quality of the text, since users aren't trying to make the text as coherent and concise as the timeline, when it clearly should be (we have plenty of daughter articles for the in-depth text). -Silence 22:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page split

Another issue: this page currently has a major temporal bias towards more recent events. This is in part because we have a whole separate series of articles for the Ancient Rome-section events, including Ancient Rome and Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic and Roman Empire, yet we don't have even one daughter article for anything that came after that! As a result, we currently cover the whole of pre-Medieval Roman history in less than 8 pages, even though it spans almost 1400 years! Meanwhile, we devote almost 10 pages to Medieval Rome, despite this time period covering less than 800 years, much of it on relatively minor or brief events, followed by over 8 pages devoted to the mere 600 years of "modern" Roman history. The first thing we should do, in my view, is create a Medieval Rome (or Rome in the Middle Ages, perhaps?) article and summarize that article here in the same way we've summarized the Ancient Rome series of articles already. We should then consider summarizing (and clarifying) all the sections even more by expanding on and improving their daughter articles; there's a terrible lack of cooperation between this article and many of the other Roman-history articles currently! (For example, there's lots of necessary information presented here that's totally ignored in the Ancient Rome articles, and vice versa.) By creating one or two more daughter articles and being more efficient with our space usage (which removing the timeline(s) would help a lot with, incidentally...), we can very easily trim this overwhelmingly bloated article (it's at 75kb currently) into a trim, sleek, and reader-friendly introduction to the city's history, while providing numerous articles for more in-depth explorations of every time period. As we should, for a topic as important and hugely-spanning as this one. -Silence 23:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... the unbalanced appearance of the article has a good reason. I started to wrote from the Middle Ages, and stopped at that point as I was truly too tired... To define "minor" and "uninteresting" some events derives from what can be typical "Imperial" UK bias. Surely for foreigners, and especially American and British, Rome IS Ancient Rome, plus the usual bunch of things about Renaissance (but Renaissance Rome begins with Avignon Papacy and a medieval pope, Martin V). If you lived in Rome (like me), you'll know that, apart the ancient one, the city has a preeminent medieval and even Baroque appearance. An example: Rome has far more medieval towers than San Gimignano, a city whose entire fame is based on its medieval nature: why we should discard Middle Ages history only because other part of it are more popular? Probably foreigners did not know at all Ferdinand Gregorovius's History of Rome in the Middle Ages, which is probably the BEST history of Rome ever written. --Attilios 23:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why isn't this page a Featured Article?

This page seems pretty good to me, so why not give it a Wikipedia:Peer Review and then nominate it for Featured Article? We need more good quality history articles for FA, and this seems to fit the bill, so why not? Bigdaddy1204 23:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

nominate it if you like Ironplay 15:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section on Counter reformation Rome - Anachronistic style?

Anyone else think that the section on Counter-reformation Rome has an anachronistic style? To me it sounds like it is written by a curmudgeonly 19th century professor (with a unhealthy obsession about "whores"). I tidied up the syntax and replaced some of the anachronistic terms (eg. replaced "bravoes" with "thugs" - nmaybe not the best term either?) but i do not know enough about the subject to do any more.

[edit] Size and missing citations

Aw gee I hate to be a party-pooper when everyone is trying so hard on this article. But, the citations are totally missing. For example, in the etymology section, no scholars or etymological dictionaries are brought into this. I'm familiar with these derivations. The Greek rhome one is not the most likely and was rejected long ago. Why would the Greeks be naming Rome when they weren't even there? We need the authoritave names and assessments and some idea if the theory stated is old, new, rejected, accepted, likely, unlikely. By the time you finish all that the article will be way too long. So, it needs to be split up. If you check out the articles on the Roman military you will see that a portal has been established for them. That is just what we need here, a portal for Roman civilization. Until all those elements are present it is with great regret that I say I could not support this being a featured article. It doesn't look wiki. But all these things are subsidiary considerations that add pzaz and authority to the article. The basic information is there. No, it isn't easy. Making the Roman military articles go from ridiculously substandard to superior was a tough and tedious job undertaken by a genius (not me). Unfortunately that is what good writing is, tough and tedious, except when you get inspired. So take a look at the military portal and form some ideas. Then if you have some time give us some. It's an educational experience. Ciao.Dave 16:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology rewrite needed

The etymology section starts off talking about the history of the word "Rome," but it quickly breaks down into a rant about Etruscan onomastics. Someone needs to move or delete large chunks of that and add some cited scholarship.

Done. I eliminated the rants, non sequiturs, and other junk that didn't belong. --me

As for "Why would the Greeks be naming Rome when they weren't even there," as a user above asked rhetorically, I would ask in return just why the Etruscans would be writing with an alphabet derived from Greek if the Greeks weren't in Italy. Without that writing, we wouldn't have any clue what the Etruscans called Rome; the word "rumach" appears in the Greek-inspired Etruscan alphabet, which in turn raises the possibility that the name itself has Greek roots. As for the u/o vowel difference, consider the Etruscan name Aplu, their version of the Greek Apollo, in which the final o after a liquid has become u.

I'm rather surprised to find no mention of Valerius Soranus, as well: even if the story is questionable, it's pertinent here and mentioned in ancient sources. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.131.16.137 (talk) 16:19:16, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

The Greek-inspiration of the Etruscan alphabet does not raise the possibility of the name Rome having Greek origins. Vietnamese is written with the Latin alphabet but its vocabulary could not be considered Latin-derived because of that. The Etruscans almost certainly had a language before the arrival of the Greeks (if not, then why is Etruscan so different from Greek?) even if they did not have an alphabet for it. The Greeks may have provided the name, but the use of the Greek alphabet in no way suggests that possibility. DMO, 12/19/2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.130.207.214 (talk) 06:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] introduction paragraph

"marking the beginning of the Middle Ages, and that eventually became the seat of the Roman Catholic Church"

[edit] Vandalism

Can someone revert this article to its original state (before the introductory paragraph had "and then they began to mate like crazy!")? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.211.25.167 (talk) 05:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

didn't the pope live in Rome before the Middle Ages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.246.99.186 (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wheres the rest of the page?!

It looks like theres something wrong with the page, it says it doesnt cite sources but if you go into edit mode youll see that more than half the page isnt showing up, i mean its there in the edit page but a good chunk (including the reflist) wont show up on the main page for some reason, i tried to figure it out but cant, this needs attention now. Terrasidius (talk) 19:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

One of the footnotes was incorrectly encoded. Iblardi (talk) 21:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Isnt the last emperor Romulus Augustus?

The page said the last emperor of rome is someone else. To most information, they say Romulus Augustus is the last emperor of rome in 476 AD. I think this should be fixed by someone who will not be thought of has ruiner of the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zedvinerasturi (talk • contribs) 02:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)