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"Mistresses of ancient Roman royalty"

There's a category by this name, and yet none of these women seem to have been mistresses of the kings of Rome. Am I being a pedant if I insist that the term "royalty" is inaccurate for Roman emperors of the Principate, at least? If we must have such a category, can it not be "Mistresses (yuck, still) of Roman emperors"? I don't want to go through the procedural rigamarole if even members of this project don't see this as wrong. Nor do I want to get into an argument about whether the imperial family was "really" royalty because we know what royalty is and they fit "our" definition – there are better things to do in life and on WP. Thoughts? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Link it, FFS: Category:Mistresses of ancient Roman royalty. Johnbod (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Apparently there were only 7 of them, which seems remarkably restrained! There's a whole tree leading up to Category:Roman royalty, mostly set up by User:StarTrekker around 2020. Most seem rather incomplete & oddly named. Some actually do restrict themselves to the early monarchy, like Category:Roman princes. I think the whole lot need a good sorting out. If only to avoid confusion with those around the kings of Rome, there should be no difficulty devising proper imperial vocabulary. User:Marcocapelle, what do you think? Johnbod (talk) 17:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I created these categories several years ago and it was mainly done to try to collect articles related to Roman monarchy, as I understand it now there is some (that I don't quite understand) resistence to seeing the Roman emperors and their families as truly monarchical or like royalty. I'm not sure what to do with that honestly.★Trekker (talk) 17:37, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the specific objection might be that "royalty" usually pertains to kings and queens, monarchs in the modern sense, as distinguished from Roman emperors, for whom there's not really a corresponding noun, though we would use "imperial" instead of "royal" as an adjective. We might use "royalty" of modern emperors, but it seems wrong with Romans, who went to such pains to avoid even the trappings of kingship or monarchy, even as the emperors came to resemble them in power and influence. To a lesser extent there's some discomfort with the word "mistresses", which has a rather tawdry connotation as well as potential gender bias (unfortunately, that may be difficult to avoid prior to modern times). "Concubines" would be inaccurate in at least some instances. I definitely agree with the sentiment, though I think we may be stuck with "mistresses", and I'm at a loss for rephrasing to avoid "royalty". P Aculeius (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Even if a case can be made that the Principate was monarchical, therefore royal, using such an unconventional term's not good communication. Also, I think the current members of the category are all paramours of emperors, not of members of imperial families ("royalty") so "of Roman emperors" would be appropriate and precise (as opposed to, say, "Imperial Roman floozies" or Roman imperial floozies", which would also both be very wrong). So "Paramours of Roman emperors" or even "Mistresses of Roman emperors" would be a much more meaningfully named category. NebY (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Ooh, "paramours" might work very well—I don't think it's any more euphemistic than "mistresses", and it's less pejorative and non-gendered. I'm not a crusader against gendered language in principle, but in this instance there's a lack of balance, where the feminine term has negative connotations, and masculine equivalents are not as familiar. I agree that "Imperial Roman floozies" would be wrong—but the thought of finding a category called that did make me laugh! P Aculeius (talk) 23:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

"Mistresses" seem to be the general term used for pretty much all female lovers of monarchs in the category trees.★Trekker (talk) 01:24, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• Suggestions: "Roman imperial mistresses" or "Mistresses of the Roman emperors"? T8612 (talk) 11:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  At this stage, "Mistresses of Roman emperors" (minus "the") seems like the most natural wording. Though probably a certain someone will come along and insist that it be moved to "Mistresses of ancient Roman emperors"... but I think that'd be pedantic. "Concubines" might be technically correct in some cases, but not others. "Paramours" is not a bad alternative. "Lovers" seems both vague and a bit trivializing. I'm still amused by "Floozies of Roman emperors", though!

  As for Johnbod and Cynwolfe's comment about the number—I'm sure there were many, many more than we have articles about. We probably just don't have enough information about them, and of course it's probably not one of the first topics that editors come to and think, "oh, I really want to write about that!" Perhaps during the Clinton administration this would have been a more popular subject... P Aculeius (talk) 13:42, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Ha! You might be surprised. I've been putting off rescuing Caenis from her contubernial squalor. But for now, reason to consider scope carefully in terms of what a "mistress" is. Servilia gets described as a "mistress" of Julius Caesar, right there in the second paragraph of her article and with a long and rather ridiculous section about it. Adding to my horror is the discovery of categories called "Mistresses of Julius Caesar", a subcat of "Lovers of Julius Caesar", and even better "Women of Julius Caesar", which I'm pretty sure is or should be the title of a series of historical romance novels. "Mistress" seems a nonsensical thing to call a Roman woman of the same social status and rank as her lover, especially the formidable Servilia, as he had no control over her and she was in no way dependent on him and had her own family and house which she seems to have had well in hand, thank you very much. I can't help thinking of that line in Young Frankenstein: "He vas my boyfriend!" – a clip that all in all is not a bad description of the way upper-class Roman women worked behind the scene. And is Servilia the same thing as the mistresses (puellae and playfully dominae) of the elegiac poets? And Servilia ≠ freedwomen concubinae who were "mistresses" of the emperors. These are three very different roles. So what is a "mistress", encyclopedically speaking? It seems to be any woman who was not a prostitute but who is presumed to have had sex multiple times with a man she isn't married to. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  It certainly was not my intent to insult or diminish Servilia, or any other womem, by adding the "Mistresses of Julius Caesar" category to their articles, as far as I could tell it is just what they tend to be called in English writing, a female partner who one is cheating on their wife with (as far as I can tell Caesar was indeed married for the majority of the time he spent with the other women in the category).★Trekker (talk) 17:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Yep, I didn't take it that way. Literally the dictionary meaning of "mistress" (in both Merriam-Webster online and Oxford Dictionaries) is a woman who has ongoing sex with a man she isn't married to. So that wasn't meant to be a screed against use of the word. Only that it's less informative than may be ideal as an encyclopedic label for women who may not have all that much in common. The mistresses of the emperors seem to be concubinae. They would've been expected to be monogamous to their guy, and they were financially supported by him. Also, as freedwomen they were under patronage (originally that of the deceased Augusta, it seems). None of that is true of Servilia and upper-class women in the late Republic. That's why I'm trying to find some more specific terminology to distinguish these roles. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

  It feels as if Lovers of ___ might be the kind of generic label we want at the category level. I'm aware this is already the case with the categories Lovers of ___ and Mistresses of ___ already existing. I agree that the implication of dependence is somewhat misleading. Paramours seems reasonable but I don't know if we want to categorise so deeply. Ifly6 (talk) 15:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm so glad I asked this. Lively answers! Like Johnbod, I wondered at how few they were. StarTrekker, the resistance on my part is the blurring of the conventional periodization of Roman history: royalty, the Regal period; republican, the Roman Republic; imperial, the Roman Empire. These are just chronological labels, and I won't go into the rest, but as P Aculeius said, culturally it isn't unimportant that the Romans avoided the word rex. Some minor figure or other got assassinated for fears that's what he was trying to be, from which his successor learned good lessons in how to maintain an extraordinarily long run at the top. There's a technical difference between monarchy (one-person rule) and royalty, which generally implies bloodlines, as with the British monarchy, not just succession, and encompasses hereditary privileges in sprawling offshoots of the impenetrable genealogies. Like NebY and P Aculeius, I'm delighted by "paramour", a word I first learned when I was 15 and read a historical novel about Katherine Swynford, who except for her eventual marriage to John of Gaunt probably has a lot in common with our ladies (a word I choose cautiously, as in ladies of the court) here, especially Caenis, who was a part of Vespasian's life for something like 40 years. Paramour might be a little droll, but on the other hand it's probably the best translation of concubina, which is what these women were. Most if not all of these were freedwomen of the imperial house, some of the Augusta herself. I've been puttering about with concubinatus for a while (still some issues unresolved there), which is how I ended up at that category. "Mistresses of Roman emperors" isn't terrible. I'm just always wary that when we use language that delivers so much connotation, we obscure the particulars. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:00, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

And btw, the Caenis article is wrong in its use of contubernium, as the most cursory glance at the two articles concubinatus and contubernium will show, owing to a misleading reference to contubernalis in regard to Caenis. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:04, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked too. Much scholarship has gone into recovering and almost re-assembling Romans from passing literary mentions, quoted fragments, inscriptions (sometimes literally fragmented), unearthed letters and the like. We now have articles on wonderfully many, categorised by their period, family, defining achievements and so on, rather than how we know of them: Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius is in Category:Latin historians rather than Category:Sources of Livy. That's in keeping with our Categorizing articles about people guidelines and the notion of defining characteristics. Now that does include the characteristics the person is best known for but I'm deeply uncomfortable with defining a woman by who she's rumoured to have slept with (e.g. Junia Tertia, quite possibly libellously), or placing a woman who was never Caesar's slave, child or even wife in Category:Women of Julius Caesar. Wikipedia's categorisation is difficult anyway, but are we perhaps trying to be too precise here? Cleopatra is in Category:Mistresses of Julius Caesar, but Julius Caesar is merely in Category:Cleopatra. NebY (talk) 17:52, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

The absence of Category:Lovers of Cleopatra may be due to the old Wikipedia:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth policy. Even without the SMALLCAT policy, not all potential small categories would help readers navigate to articles. TSventon (talk) 18:51, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

For Caesar, I might suggest Category:Sexual liaisons of Julius Caesar, since let's just be honest about the prurient interest of such a category, and abolish both "mistresses" and "lovers" as categories interpreting forms of emotional and social dependency that may not be accurate (and the absurdity of listing Mamurra as a "lover"). I take your point on Cleopatra, TSventon, but Category:People associated with Cleopatra (on the model of Category:People associated with Julius Caesar) actually could be readily and more neutrally populated by several articles already under Category:Cleopatra.

Category:Women of Julius Caesar puzzled me too, NebY. I thought at first glance that it meant "Women who played a significant role in Julius Caesar's life", but his mother and daughter aren't in it. It seems to mean "women with whom Julius Caesar is known to have had sex, maritally or not", while women of in a Roman context would indicate a dependency (as in familia Caesaris) and not women such as Servilia. I am aware of no idiomatic English usage that would support the statement "Servilia was a woman of Julius Caesar." Might this be be better rendered as Category:Women associated with Julius Caesar so as to include relatives? Cynwolfe (talk) 13:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I personally do not see the appeal of these proposed changes at all. They are not in line with any established category trees.★Trekker (talk) 14:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Category:Women of Julius Caesar is itself an outlier, with Category:Women of Claudius now the only other Women of <mortal man> category I can see (maybe there were more when you created those two, I don't know). Wikipedia does have several Women of <Greek god> categories, but otherwise the Women of categories are largely of place and/or time - simple search result here. I don't know why this cluster's restricted to CGR topics; curiously enough, among the very few Men of categories Category:Men of Poseidon is similarly egregious. NebY (talk) 15:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, both Caesar and Claudius were deified, so technically all such categories belong to deities! As for "men", I suppose there are probably more competing words to describe them in most instances, but I see no reason why there couldn't be more. However, I've always thought that "women of (person)" was annoyingly vague and perhaps evasive, and possibly the same could be said of "men of (person)"... P Aculeius (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

References

P Aculeius (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Questions about Quintus Sertorius

Hi guys, I'm a relatively new editor who recently overhauled the Quintus Sertorius page. I want to take it to good article status, but have ran into a few conundrums. Namely, my being new, I was surprised at how short the 'Sertorian War' section was for the article, and gave it a massive rewrite. I learned belatedly that this was excessive, given the Sertorian War article already exists. I know the article is too long as it is now, and intend to trim it significantly (from the Sertorian War section), and this is where I seek advice.

I ask here what, in terms of the war, should remain on the page as compared to going over to the Sertorian War? Compared to the article as is, what I wrote for the Sertorius page is the war from Sertorius' perspective, his anecdotes during the conflict, his actions and movements etc, along with the general events.

In terms of what I need to move over to the 'Sertorian War' article, the other problem is that I am obviously biased into preferring how I wrote about the war. I still find the Sertorian War article very bare (and it lacks some details, what comes to mind immediately is the Livy fragment of book 91) but should I just delete all that I wrote for a shorter, more concise summary on the main Sertorius page and port over the details of importance to the Sertorian War article? I would obviously prefer not to, given how much work I put in, but Wikipedia's standards are more important than that. The other thing I could do is port over what I wrote in the Sertorian War section of Sertorius' article to the current Sertorian War page, or merge mine and the existing writings. I would appreciate any guidance and clarification. Harren the Red (talk) 18:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

You could certainly move whatever isn't needed for a summary on Sertorius to the article about the war. Technically that would be a partial merge, but I don't think it matters what you call it. It's just a matter of moving material to the best possible place. Some may be redundant, and you'll have to decide which statement to keep, or require rewriting. But you don't have to do it all in one go. It may be that the merged article is based more on your writing than the original version, by the time you're done. Of course, you'll have to use your judgment. Maybe other contributors here will have better ideas. P Aculeius (talk) 18:32, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll start merging slowly with the War article. Harren the Red (talk) 18:48, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Just in case - do be aware of WP:COPYWITHIN if moving/copying material other editors wrote. NebY (talk) 18:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I would merge. The topics are sufficiently different. The article on Sertorius should concentrate on Sertorius; the article on the war should take a broader view. I am not, however, entirely sure about the quality of the sourcing in the article on Sertorius. Matyszak isn't great; Telford is unreliable; there seems to be a bit of a heavy reliance on primary sources as well. I think there are also some issues with dated historiography. Something that jumps immediately just from the info box is "populares": no such faction or political party ever existed; it is a 19th century historiographical fiction. Further on the page itself probably should be on the relevant talk. I am unsure also as to close paraphrasing. Inasmuch as such problems exist, I would fix them and then do rescoping. Ifly6 (talk) 18:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Funny enough, the Telford citations come from citations already present before I worked on it, or those I ported over from the original Sertorian War article! I've heard her work on Sulla leans towards hagiography in any case so I wasn't sure if it was completely reliable, so I'll edit that.

As for Matsyzak, the only reason I relied on him is because I have access to an online copy of his book but only physicals for Konrad and Spann (and don't always have them with me when I'm at my PC). I can certainly look over those citations and change them where appropriate to these two more comprehensive and thorough studies, and do so for the primary sources as well.

Also, when you mean it should concentrate on Sertorius, do you mean aside from his anecdotes the major things he did during the war? Like battles shortened to what he did in them, his actions in general? I would appreciate a bit more detail here! The issue I'm struggling with is figuring out what parts of the war (and in how much detail) are really necessary on his page for an accurate summary. Harren the Red (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The articles should reflect what modern academic sources (WP:ACADEMICBIAS) say of the topic. CAH vol 9 (2nd edn, 1994) for example has some relevant chapters; a search of the more recent scholarly corpus will however be necessary since those chapters, written largely in the late 1980s, are now some 30 years old. As to his anecdotes, in general, anecdotes of the sort that ancient sources were very interested in are generally ignored; but when modern academic sources focus on them, relevant sometimes in terms of contemporary or later narratives (eg the "Scipionic legend"), they should absolutely be discussed. Ifly6 (talk) 19:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

If however you mean anecdotes in terms of what, where, and why Sertorius was doing something, then it should be covered. Of course, it should be covered in the way that the modern academic sources also do so. We should thereto defer rather than make ad hoc subjective decisions of our own. Ifly6 (talk) 19:03, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

• Sources are not good enough for the article to be promoted to GA status. I suggest using CF Konrad's Commentary on Plutarch's Sertorius. It is the best academic source on the subject, alas hard to find. T8612 (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

  I have a copy and have been using it to revamp the citations! Do you happen to know of any other recent treatments of Sertorius and his career that are of similar thoroughness? Harren the Red (talk) 00:29, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Questions about Quintus Sertorius, again

Hello all. It is the same, less new editor who made the previous post checking in again about the Quintus Sertorius article. In the week since the first post, I've been working with others to revamp it up to par (still aiming for GA!), and to that end I would like to thank (but not ping, lest it bother them) Ifly6, T8612, and TheUndercoverClassicist for their help in myriad things. Ifly6 in particular regarding matters of formatting and cleanup, and TheUndercoverClassicist for help regarding the page image.

I would like feedback on the article as it exists now. I believe we have come a long way, but more work remains to be done. Formatting, as always (lots of references to be sfn'fied). I am of the opinion the Sertorian War section can still be shortened, and I am also inclined to say some details might be superfluous. Although the quality of sourcing of the article has greatly increased, I am sure more can be added. My major concern is the prose, which I feel I cannot evaluate in an unbiased manner, may be too obstructive or formal for summary style. But at the same time, any reading about Quintus Sertorius, an otherwise obscure figure in Roman history, are probably quite interested in classics and may be able to bypass said prose.

I appreciate all feedback on this, particularly improvements (both specific and general) to make it reach GA status. Harren the Red (talk) 22:30, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

An explanation of domi nobiles would be helpful, possibly as part of nobiles. TSventon (talk) 15:02, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Requested move - Greek love → Cultural impact of Classical Greek homoeroticism

Comments at Talk:Greek love welcome. Johnbod (talk) 13:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)