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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Late Roman army

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Late Roman army

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Prior nomination is here. We went through the issues raised during the previous nomination. We could deal with most of them. The images have been checked for complaince with other material and the captions say clearly what they intent to show. However, there are no guidelines on how drawings of ancient warriors or formations should be checked. Instead of bickering here and not in many other articles, guidelines need to be established. The article is focused on the topic, so length shouldn't be a problem. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:23, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support I went through this article and was astonished that this article was still listed at B-Class. This is most definitely not a B-Class article. Aside from some minor typos, I can find no reason why this article should not be at GA, A or FA level. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Support There are 14 references to centuries in the introduction - stylistically, this is not good. I would recommend converting as many of these as possible to recognisable periods. There are still a painful number of qualifiers - a comment / edit of the prior review. For example: "In the comitatus, there is consensus that vexillationes were ca. 500 and legiones ca. 1,000 strong. The greatest uncertainty concerns the size of the crack auxilia palatina infantry regiments, originally formed by Constantine. The evidence is contradictory, suggesting that these units could have been either ca. 500 or ca. 1,000 strong, or somewhere in between. If the higher figure were true, then there would be little to distinguish auxilia from legiones, which is the strongest argument in favour of ca. 500." contains no fewer than five abbreviations of circa - itself not a common abbreviation. This may be A-class copy, but not FA. Dhatfield (talk) 04:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please feel free to list such stylistic issues. We will reword it. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The prior comments apply to the whole of the article. I have a number of problems with using the century as a unit of time measurement:
  1. It's a blunt instrument. History does not fall into convenient chunks of 100 years. As a result, their use here leads to (at least implied) contradictions. The introduction uses 285 as the start point, but shortly thereafter there are references to 'the 3rd and 4th centuries' and the information does not mesh well.
  2. Interspersing numbers into text breaks the flow like nothing else.
  3. I may be slow, but I find centuries, in that they refer to the preceeding century, to be an arcane and inherently confusing method of denoting time.
  4. In summary, please use anything, anything at all, as a proxy for the incessant references to century X throughout the article.
  • I'm having trouble coming up with a more elegant way to express time in the article. Replacing 'the 3nd century' with 'the 200s' not only sounds even more awkward, but also would lead to many more usages of 'circa,' which you objected to earlier. I'm sure the author would welcome suggestions on how to change that, but it is irrelevant now, unless you really feel that the use of centuries disqualifies an article from 'A' status. - Hargrimm | Θ 22:33, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • In line with recent changes to the A criteria, quality of prose and style can, technically, prohibit A-class promotion. I was pushing the issue too hard, see comments below and change of vote. My suggestion would be "Principate period", "Army of the Principate", "Late period"... Dhatfield (talk) 03:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Principate" is even more of a blunt instrument than a century, since it covers 300 years rather than 100. The only viable alternative to using centuries to describe periods of time is to use the names of Roman dynasties i.e. the Julio-Claudian period for the early/mid 1st c. , Flavians for the late 1st c. and Five Good Emperors for the 2nd c. But as I'm sure you'll agree, "the army of the Five Good Emperors" is hardly more elegant than the "2nd century army" and much less intelligible to the average reader. Also there are no durable dynasties to describe the 3rd century. As it happens, centuries coincide well with phases of the Roman imperial army. The period covered in the article, 284-395, is a close fit with the 4th c. The 3rd c. is when most of the changes to the army took place. And the 2nd c. is the period we have the best epigraphic evidence for the army, which is the reason for the frequent comparisons with the army of that period. EraNavigator (talk) 06:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • If I could think of another solution, I would suggest it, but ultimately that's not my role here; my role is to point out a stylistic weakness. Thereafter solutions are more useful than justifications. Dhatfield (talk) 18:47, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it's a good idea to limit the TOC length, maybe by limiting it to the 1st TOC level.
  • "The army of the Principate underwent a significant transformation as a result of the chaotic 3rd century." Chaotic is too little information. Saying that it is covered in a later section is not enough - chaotic is just vague.
  • I don't see much of a problem with this. While it is somewhat vague, it's not relevant. The article is about the organization of the army, not all the aspects of the condition of Rome in the era. - Hargrimm | Θ 19:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is representative of a broader issue: assuming the reader knows more than they can be assumed to know. Another symptom of this is that there is insufficient linking. Firstly, I know that the MoS states that one link per topic/person is sufficient, I believe that if knowledge of a particularly link is important for understanding a given section, it should be linked. Secondly, there are lots of concepts that would benefit from being linked. Cavalry, auxiliary, emperors, buffer zones, ... The list in the introduction alone is long.
  • 'Barbarian' is bandied about a lot without upfront clarification that this translates as 'foreigner'.
  • "The evidence is that comitatenses regiments were considered of higher quality than limitanei. But the difference should not be exaggerated. Suggestions have been made that the limitanei were a part-time militia of local farmers, of poor combat capability. [1] This view is rejected by many modern scholars.[2][3][4] In reality, limitanei were full-time professionals.[5] Indeed, it was forbidden by law for them to work in the fields or herd animals.[6] The limitanei were charged with combating the incessant small-scale barbarian raids that were the empire's enduring security problem.[7] It is therefore likely that their combat readiness and experience were high. This was demonstrated at the siege of Amida (359) where the besieged frontier legions resisted the Persians with great skill and tenacity.[8] Elton suggests that the lack of mention in the sources of barbarian incursions less than 400-strong implies that such were routinely dealt with by the border forces without the need of assistance from the comitatus.[9] Limitanei regiments often joined the comitatus for specific campaigns, sometimes remaining long-term with the title of pseudocomitatenses, implying adequate combat capability.[10]". Sentences should not start with 'But'. More to the point, if you're going to write prose like this - short, unnecessarily disjointed sentences - why not just cut the pretence and make a list of facts. It isn't just that this lacks style: This. Isn't. Prose.
  • Best of luck. Dhatfield (talk) 20:19, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dhatfield, this article in your opinion is good enough for A-Class. That is the purpose of this review. Everything else is moot until FAC. Geoff Plourde (talk) 15:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
True, the A-class vs. FA criteria are a little vague and I normally focus on style, but the technical quality & referencing put this into A despite weaknesses in other areas. Vote changed. Dhatfield (talk) 03:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  1. ^ Luttwak (1976) 173
  2. ^ Jones (1964) 649–51
  3. ^ Elton (1996) 99
  4. ^ Lee (1997) 234
  5. ^ Goldsworthy (2000) 172
  6. ^ Codex Justinianus XII.35.15
  7. ^ Goldsworthy (2003) 203
  8. ^ Tomlin (1988) 112
  9. ^ Elton (1996) 206
  10. ^ Goldsworthy (2000) 172
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