Wikipedia:Peer review/Gaius Terentius Varro/archive1

Gaius Terentius Varro

I've listed this article for peer review because I've expanded greatly from the original stub to, I believe, the max extent possible given the information we have on Varro. All sections currently on the article are ones I've added and thus all need review. As this is my first mid-length article and the first I've submitted for review, all comments and contributions would be helpful to find out where this article stands now and whether it can be improved further. Many thanks, LarciusFlavus (talk) 16:14, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi LarciusFlavus. I have looked over Varro, and your three other Romans, and it looks like very good work. I have done some work on Roman consuls and generals myself. There is a lack of consensus on how they should be presented, so the following comments are mostly how I approach these things; others may do things slightly differently.

• There are some statements uncited.
• I use either the politician or officeholder infoboxes, they allow more information. A partially completed template is here.
• Personally I would be wary of over using the primary sources. Ie see Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, where Plutarch, Suetonius, Cicero and Appian are each used once, but most of the article is referenced to secondary sources. (If you feel that the modern sources are all various interpretations of a single, or a limited number of, primary source(s) you might want to think about covering this in a separate section, as in Battle of Cape Ecnomus.)
• A quick scan of a couple of sources I have to hand - Bagnall's The Punic Wars and Goldsworthy's The Fall of Carthage - suggest that there is quite a bit of further information on Varro in modern sources. I would be surprised if modern works dealing specifically with Cannae didn't have yet more.
• Personally, as this is the English Wikipedia, I avoid foreign language expressions without a translation. I suspect that "Varro was a member of the plebeian gens Terentia" or "progressing through the stages of the cursus honorum, holding the quaestorship and both the plebeian and curule aedileships" are going to mean very little to the average reader. (For an example of how I have handled this sort of thing, see Gaius Vettius Sabinianus Julius Hospes#Early career.)

I hope that this is of some help to you.

Gog the Mild (talk) 11:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Cheers Gog the Mild, this is all really useful. I'll get to making those improvements both here and across my other edits. You've given me a lot of help here. LarciusFlavus (talk) 17:24, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Comments by Llywrch

I'm not as up on this period of Roman history as @P Aculeius:, but I have some thoughts.

• Don't worry too much about the primary/secondary source issue. The reason we worry about primary/secondary sources is that too much use of primary sources leads us to interpret the facts & into original research, which we don't want to do. If you are stating facts (e.g., the Romans had 40,000 troops), & the secondary source is clearly citing the primary source, just go ahead & cite the primary source. (And sometimes we are faced with an instance where there just isn't any secondary source to use, & we must simply set forth the facts & hope it is enough.)
• BTW, if you know German, the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft is definitely a source you will want to get to know very well if you work on Classical topics.
• In the first paragraph of the section "Early years", you mention "Servius". We have an article on him, so why not link to it? It will help show he is a reliable source.
• As for Cannae...
  Definitely mine the bibliography of Battle of Cannae for sources. For one thing, Gregory Daly in his Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War raises the theory Varro was made the scapegoat for the loss at Cannae. (Fun fact: there is evidence that Scipio, afterwards hero of Rome, was in the trapped pocket of Romans at Cannae & escaped, yet managed to avoid the punishment extracted on the other survivors of that Battle.) Two other books I found useful were Goldworthy's, but especially Robert O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae. O'Connell is a former instructor at the USN Academy, & he brings the eye of a soldier to the tale of Hannibal's campaign in Italy.
• NB, studies have been done on when the consuls took office under the Roman Republic. Also, there is a date for the battle, which should be mentioned. See Battle of Cannae#Date. And I believe using these dates enrich the article by providing some more or less firm dates in Varro's life.
• You should try to flesh out the detail about Varro's activities after Cannae. IIRC, he played a very important role in rallying Roman morale after that defeat, although Polybius & Livy eclipse his efforts by giving the credit to Scipio.

Hope you find these suggestions useful. -- llywrch (talk) 20:43, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment by Armoracia (as Armoracia-1)

Hi User: LarciusFlavus, I only cursorily looked through the article;

The statement "..by prosecuting those of higher status and progressing through the various magistracies... " is somewhat ambiguous, although as I understand correctly he acted as prosecution is the intended fact. Not wanting to seem personally critical of your obviously thorough explication of the subject, the statement seems to me to be a confusion of by persecuting those of higher status (at the first reading at least, simply by a lack of exacting wording (obviously) with being "the prosecution" (this links to google search criteria return)

Armoracia-1 (talk) 13:49, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Comments by CPA-5

I think there are some major issues here to address it as a B and maybe later a GA-class.

• There are some sentences who have no citations to a source. This is really important to see the reliability of the article.
• Most sources are not correctly formatted. Like we have the sources who're not linked and/or have book codes, there's also ref 4, who's not should have the link of the source in the title and not separated.
• "215 - 207 BC" section has a really oddly header's name, maybe try to use another title?
• populist politician who was elected consul for the year 216 This sentence uses the year 216 but "BC" should be added because people would now think about the year 216 AD instead BC which can cause confusion between the readers.
• Varro escaped to Venusia with around 4500 surviving troops This isn't necessary for getting a B-class but it's easy to standardise it already. We should use a comma between 4 and 5.

These issues are major issues (minus the last one) and should be addressed before it can get a B-class at least and maybe later a GA one too. Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 20:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Comments by Oulfis

Hello, just a quick note as someone who knows only a little about Roman history: I have no idea what is meant by this sentence: When discussing the provenance of his cognomen, Servius suggests that this Varro served in the First Illyrian War. Which name is the cognomen? Why does its provenance need discussion? How does the First Illyrian War illustrate its provenance? I was a little confused by some of the statements that Gog the Mild mentioned above, but I'd draw attention to this one too.