Talk:List of Illyrians

removal of non-rulers

List of Illyrians redirects here, and up to recently we also had various non-monarchs listed here, but then this happened. Revert? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Scope

The scope "list of rulers in Illyria" is confusing. In antiquity, regions didn't have defined borders. Many areas were considered part of a wider region, but transboundary regions often changed hands. The article includes foreign rulers in Illyria, but most of these are rulers of such transboundary regions which wouldn't be considered part of Illyria when controlled by a non-Illyrian. There were also regions which wouldn't be considered part of Illyria unless they were ruled by an Illyrian. So, the rule of Sirras in Lyncestis is described as an "Illyrian kingdom", but it was a transboundary region that was an "Illyrian kingdom" only because an Illyrian ruled it in his era. Thus, a "ruler in Illyria" was in most cases an "Illyrian ruler". The second problem is related to the term "ruler" - what does it mean? Largely egalitarian, kinship based, non-stratified communities which only saw stratification as a result of their contacts with the already stratified, slave societies of the Greco-Anatolian world didn't have "rulers". Only in the last period of Illyrian prehistory do true rulers emerge who use for themselves the title "King". The rest are certainly leaders of tribal communities, but they are not kings of stratified and centralized societies. I think that the article should be renamed to List of Illyrians and reorganized as other articles about ancient people.--Maleschreiber (talk) 21:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I personally agree with the renaming. This article necessarily needs a cleanup and expansion with maybe new bibliography and so on.--Lorik17 (talk) 23:18, 8 December 2020 (UTC)