Talk:Pompey

39 during his first consulship?

Hello. In the section titled "Quintus Sertorius and Spartacus," the article claims, "So Pompey was allowed to bypass another ancient Roman tradition; at only 39 years of age and while not even a senator, he was elected Consul by an overwhelming majority vote, and served in 70 BC with Crassus as partner."

However, Pompey's date of birth is listed in the opener as being "29 September, 106BC." If so, wouldn't that make him aged 35/36 while serving as consul and 34/35 at the time of his election, not the 39 years that the aforementioned quote claims? Just wondering. Thanks.114.148.238.239 (talk) 11:34, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, that's definately a mistake. I've corrected it to 35 years of age as the consular elections generally took place in the month August in the year before taking office so Pompey was 34-35 when first elected and 35 when taking office. -- fdewaele, 8 August 2012 (16:20)

Circumstances surrounding Achillas death.

In this article it is claimed that

>Caesar, who, according to Plutarch, mourned this insult to the greatness of his former ally and son-in-law, and punished his assassins and their Egyptian co-conspirators, putting both Achillas and Pothinus to death.

In the linked article about Achillas himself it is stated though, that

> Arsinoe had Achillas put to death by Ganymedes, a eunuch to whom she then entrusted the command of the forces.

Sadly I have no knowledge whether this is a conflict of information found in primary sources, or an error of editing, but as stands, the conflict of information is apparent, and in the case of the former not properly addressed in either article.

I lack the resources to verify either way, and as such wanted to draw attention to the matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnthariaJack (talk • contribs) 01:59, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Since this edit last September, the article no longer mentions the death of Achillas and Pothinus. It says only that Theodotus escaped Caesar's revenge, without mentioning those who actually stabbed Pompey. Art LaPella (talk) 14:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Antistia be merged into Pompey, and the same might be suggested for some (or all) of his other wives. Being the spouse of a notable person does not make Antistia pass the notability guidelines for biographies (see Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Family), and I haven't found anything else substantial about her. In addition, Antistia's article is only stub-size, and seems to focus primarily on the power struggles of her male relatives. Thoughts on this? Alanna the Brave (talk) 00:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Contradictory information - date of death + age

The article currently contradicts the citation used by claiming Pompey's date of death as September 29th rather than 28th. I see from the edit history that this has been a source of dispute on several occasions. Also, the infobox states Pompey as having died at age 57 whereas the article text references Plutarch as giving the age as 60. 79.72.143.70 (talk) 20:57, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Theater

Hi, I am new to wikipedia. I did not see any inclusion of Pompey's theater in this article. Is this something that would be good to include? -Sarahh317 (talk) 12:30, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. I had a crack at it. Added a section about the theatre and a link to the main article.-LuciusHistoricus (talk) 13:21, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Infobox

This article, along with several other articles about ancient Romans, was changed to use a different infobox, {{infobox officeholder}}. In consequence, there's discussion about which infobox to use and how at Talk:Julius Caesar#Infobox and then at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome#Infoboxes for Roman office-holders as a more central location. NebY (talk) 19:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Article length (and other) issues

As we seem to have started a discussion of sorts in the edit summaries, I thought it would be useful to open a thread on what this article needs, in terms of cutting and pruning (and whatever else), with a view to making a sort of to-do list.

Tagging in @T8612: and @Robinvp11:, who have been involved in the same 'conversation'.

For my money, the main 'problem' is in the military-history sections: they're both overly-long (especially as most are, in theory, only summaries of main articles) and more or less straightforwardly paraphrase the primary sources. The most obvious contenders for some work would seem to be:

• Sertorian War
• Civil War
• Third Mithriditic War

The big 'missing link' is an article on Pompey's Campaign against the Pirates, but as that section's currently much shorter than the others, I'm not sure it's a hugely urgent priority.

I agree with User:T8612 that the lede is, for now, one of the better parts of the article, and that we'd be much better off focusing our efforts further down. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 17:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

The Lead may be "one of the better parts of the article", but that doesn't invalidate edits made to it. I haven't taken out anything that alters the sense (except for the claim made in the original that Pompey's war with Caesar necessarily led to the Empire).

I will make edits to the Sertorian War as a start;

"BCE" is commonly used by modern historians and I think we should standardise on that throughout the article. Robinvp11 (talk) 19:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

There's a Wikipedia policy on CE/AD (MOS:ERA): essentially, he encyclopaedia doesn't take a view either way, so you can use either one when writing a new article but shouldn't change an existing article from one to the other if it's already established. For what it's worth, I have a fairly strong preference towards BCE as well, and have used it whenever I've written an article.

You're absolutely right that edits to the lead are, in principle, fine (there was a good one a few days ago which corrected the IPA) - I'm not trying to say that they shouldn't be made. My thinking was that you seemed to be looking to do something about the article's length issues: having come in and pointed out an edit that didn't help, it only seemed right to be constructive and suggest some that would. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 08:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Having seen the recent edits to lead, the major issues discussed in my previous edit summary remain. I've restored the factual material cut out, while making some changes to address the problems raised (in particular, the term "student of Sulla" was neither clear nor particularly accurate - I've had a go at supplying something different, and I'm not sure that "ardent supporter of the Optimates" could claim any evidence for Pompey's genuine thoughts and feelings).

In the interests of giving a detailed explanation, here's my edit summary:

Lead reworked (largely reverted), with some of the positive recent changes built back in. Per MOS:LEAD, the lead should be able to stand on its own as a mini-article, so cutting significant material like Pompey's status as nobility and his unorthodox cursus honorum is inappropriate. For an article of this length, MOS:LEAD advises 3-4 paragraphs, so it is already on the short side - cutting out factual material is not the right approach here.

There's a difference between concision and simple brevity: it's certainly good to make sure that the lead says what it needs to in the most concise way possible, but that is not the same as reducing the lead so that it says as little as possible. Most notably, any treatment of Pompey's involvement in the Crisis of the Republic needs to be clear that Caesar's Civil War was only the final step: the Republic was well into crisis by (at least) 81, when Pompey — a teenage general who effectively inherited an army — is going around threatening a barely-constitutional military strongman into giving him an extra-legal triumph. Caesar's civil war was still over three decades away at that point.

We're coming close to the Three-Revert Rule here, so I'd suggest that it would be wise to establish consensus for any major changes to the lead before making them. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 10:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

(a) "Most notably, any treatment of Pompey's involvement in the Crisis of the Republic needs to be clear that Caesar's Civil War was only the final step: the Republic was well into crisis by (at least) 81, when Pompey — a teenage general who effectively inherited an army — is going around threatening a barely-constitutional military strongman into giving him an extra-legal triumph. Caesar's civil war was still over three decades away at that point."

If this is your point (and I'm not disagreeing), then it is not clearly reflected in the current wording. Nor do I get any sense of what distinguishes Pompey from any number of ruthlessly ambitious thugs who sought to take advantage of the general instability of the late Roman Republic.

(b) Leads are also supposed to be accessible for the general reader, a point many editors miss because we tend to edit articles or periods we already know. Listing his triumphs, the wars he fought in etc - so what? The point (presumably) is he was a successful and experienced military strongman - why not simply say that?

(c) This is a problem throughout Wikipedia and it matters because 60% of Wikipedia users only ever look at the Lead. Yes, as someone who designs online and mobile learning for a living, shorter is better. But my main objections to the Lead are not length per se, but lack of clarity (see above), and pointless verbiage.

Why do I need to know as a key fact Pompey was referred to as a "teenage butcher?" Presumably because he was known as ruthless - not unusual for successful Roman politicians - so why not just say so?

Yes, we need to get the body of the article right but unless the Lead is both accessible and clear, its like building a house without a front door.

To summarise; The Lead as currently written both assumes expert knowledge, but also fails to clearly state what made Pompey different, and why he was so significant.Robinvp11 (talk) 15:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

'Popular' references

Bare lists of popular references are no longer welcome on Wikipedia, per the style guideline MOS:CULTURALREFS. In view of this, and the discussion above on article length, I'm challenging the section as without WP:RS and largely off-topic and will delete it next month. Sweetpool50 (talk) 09:09, 19 March 2023 (UTC)