Talk:Rise of Rome

Discussion

Under the technological view, I was tempted to add:

Thus also appears to be the view of Microsoft, whose first add-on to its popular Age of Empires strategy game was in fact entitled the rise of Rome, and in which the player (as Rome) must achieve absolute dominance over other peoples and is required by the structure of the game to not only employ, but rely on, such tactics as scorched earth and genocide using ever-escalating technologies. This may be more of a comment on Microsoft than on Rome, however. Interestingly, in the game, trade seems to continue normally in many respects even as great powers war.

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Hmm. Seriously, can anyone make a serious argument that the current text is anything but an extended expression of POL? Sheesh, I wouldn't hold the Roman Empire as an example of an enlightened state (except, perhaps, against some of its contemporaries), but this article is so harsh on that extinct political entity that one would have a vaguely guilty feeling just for knowing how to speak Latin -- even if that knowledge was enforced by the sharp edges of the rulers of countless nuns! -- llywrch 02:01, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've looked at this a couple times, hard to know where to begin. It really looks like amateur revisionism by some student with bad professors. :-) This is a reasonable article topic though; I'd want to raid the university library, find a couple books that treat the subject (I've seen such, but none of them seem to be on my shelf :-( ), and summarize their analysies. Stan 03:12, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The topic is very interesting indeed, but the existing analysis is so flawed and amateurish that, yes, revision is just about impossible -- right now it reads, in factual content and style, like an Adequacy article. The author seems to have woven together a thesis from a few vague impressions about Rome, mainly from secondary or tertiary sources, while ignoring entirely some very important threads of history -- the Germanic migrations, for examples -- and Roman influences on the modern world: the United States government, just for example, was consciously modeled after Roman legal structures. That said, I'd love to work on a serious rewrite of this article. --MIRV 04:49, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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I've added accuracy and NPOV dispute headers, and I'm going to copy this thing to a subpage of mine to see if I can improve it; anyone who wants to should feel free to jump in. But I think that this entire article really needs to be junked and rewritten from scratch; you can polish troll droppings all you want, but they're still troll droppings. --MIRV 10:48, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Unhelpful article, needs to be written from scratch

The author of this article assumes, and pretty much says so in the first couple of paragraphs, that the only people who would want to read this article are politicians and people of power who are concerned about retaining power. The topic is only interesting because it concerns power. Therefore, the article will have a POV to address the retention of power.

I am not a politician. I don't need to retain power. I need a timeline and a quick summary for an article I'm writing. At the risk of making wild assumptions like the author, I'd say 90 percent of the people looking at this article are like me and have similar needs.

Yes, yes, I know the Wiki credo. If you don't like it, roll up your sleeve and write. In fact, I may do that. The last section of the restructured article would explore the fascination with the rise of Rome. But that section would be secondary, even tertiary.

And I won't be offended to hear a vigorous defense from the original author about why the current structure is the most appropriate.

Really unhelpful. Someone searching about the Rise of Rome should know about the wars agaisnt Carthago, the fall of the Republic and the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, etc. This article is good as a kind of essay about the consequences that the Roman Empire brought to the western civilization. --Neigel von Teighen 17:55, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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I'm not sure what to say except the article looks like the musings of a community college sophmore parroting an instructor's comments out of context rather than any analysis of the rise of Rome.

citation needed?

Why is it that other articles are plagued by a thousand "citation needed" superscripts and this article doesn't have a one? Rtdrury (talk) 06:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

The fall of Rome was basically because of the seven deadly sins.

First Seven

This section doesn't have to do with the article, has no sources, and is quite hypothetical. Rome was a world government?

Overhaul needed

The article is completely worthless under its present state. It should be renamed "Roman Imperialism" (or something similar), and focus on the Roman expansion in the Mediterranean Basin, in order to answer the questions why and how the Roman Republic then the Empire managed to defeat and conquer so many other civilisations, then how Rome preserved its Empire for so long (and avoided "national" revolts). All the drivel on the first seven world governments or the Roman influence on later times should be removed. I mean, the article deals with "Celtic scholars" in the Middle Ages and the creation of the Euro...

A good starting point would be to list here books and articles on Roman imperialism. I think moving the section on Roman Imperialism from the current Roman Republic article could be a good start. T8612 (talk) 13:09, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the article is bad. An article on Roman imperialism is a huge undertaking and would tend to duplicate information that we already have on the History of Rome and Roman Empire pages... I was going to say, why don't we just redirect to the narrative of Roman expansion that we have elsewhere, but I realise to my surprise that Roman_Republic#Roman_imperialism is all we have.

Perhaps, then, this article would be most useful as a straightforward narrative of the Roman expansion through the Mediterranean (like Rise of Macedon and Rise of the Ottoman Empire), probably with separate sections on the economic and institutional dimensions of the expansion, and with some discussion at the end on theories about why that expansion was so successful (Badian, Harris, Gruen, Eckstein, etc.). That would serve the useful purpose of acting as a middle-order page to bridge the gap between the article on the Roman Republic and the articles on individual wars, people, and places. The result would already be quite a long article, so I would suggest dealing with questions of how the empire survived for so long elsewhere (in Pax Romana?). In terms of chronological limits, the First Punic War seems an obvious starting point (we have a separate article on Roman expansion in Italy - also in need of work), but the ending point is a bit harder. I would say the death of Augustus at the absolute latest. Furius (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's relevant to make another "narrative of the Roman expansion", as it is already covered in the Roman Republic, History of the Roman Empire, Campaign history of the Roman military, Structural history of the Roman military, Political history of the Roman military, and perhaps other articles. I prefer the text in Roman_Republic#Roman_imperialism that gives the motivations behind the conquests. However, the expansion only ended with Trajan, so the article should go up to this point.

If you think it's not worth it, then this article should be deleted, it's an embarrassment for Wikipedia. I will leave the section on Roman Imperialism in Roman Republic.

Btw, I just found that Roman expansion in Italy is a duplicate of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_history_of_the_Roman_military#Early_(509%E2%80%93275_BC). T8612 (talk) 20:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I hadn't seen all of those!... It is a pity that all those existing narratives are so very heavily focused on the military, rather than things like the development of the provincial system, the publicani, i.e. the development of the empire as a system. At any rate, there is no text in the article as it stands that can be salvaged. So am I right in thinking that the questions are:

1. Should there be an article with the title 'Rise of Rome'? If yes, what should it be about and if no, what should it redirect to?

2. Should there be an article that treats the themes of Roman_Republic#Roman_imperialism in more detail? If yes, what should it be called?

Now that you've pointed me to all the detailed narratives that we already have, I think the answer to the first question is that this article should be turned into a redirect (probably to Roman Republic?). On the second question, I certainly think that that would be a good thing. Roman_Republic#Roman_imperialism relies very heavily on Arthur Eckstein and gives the impression that his is the only opinion on the matter. The debate surrounding the nature and causes of Roman imperialism definitely can't be discussed in anything less than a full article. Furius (talk) 23:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

1. No, Rise of Rome is vague and could mean several things. It should a redirect indeed.

2. Yes, let's call it Roman imperialism. :) T8612 (talk) 14:38, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• Some sources on the subject:

- Erich S. Gruen, "Review: Roman Imperialism and the Greek Resistance".

- __, Imperialism in the Roman Republic.

- Andrew Erskine, Roman Imperialism.

- Mattingly, D. J., Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: Power, Discourse and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire.

- CB Champion, Roman imperialism: Readings and sources. T8612 (talk) 21:46, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

It' been over a year! I'm going to turn this into a redirect tonight. Furius (talk) 13:04, 16 November 2019 (UTC)