Talk:Papias (admiral)

admiral or general?

The article says Papias was an admiral, but when I added him to that category, it was changed to 'general.' Fair enough, but which was he? His un-Roman name also merits explanation. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:56, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunately that there might be not that much to go on, I'm only aware of Appian mentioning him briefly and some secondary literature essentially relying on Appian. However in such (english) secondary literature usually the term admiral is used, which is probably due to the fact that he is only mentioned in connection with the naval battles over Sicily. That's why i prefer admiral in the article text.
• As far as the categorization (not the article text) goes, I think he can be categorized as both in doubt as in my understanding the term "roman general" is not used exclusively for a commander of land based troops contrary to the use in modern armies. In any case after looking at the category tree for the roman military, I must say it currently looks somewhat messy and might need restructuring. For this article I'm personally fine with either category or both, I just picked the first ones, that looked somewhat appropriate. Btw I didn't intentionally delete your earlier categorization, because I was disagreeing, but that was simply an editing overlap.
• His somewhat less common name might due to greek ancestry (pure speculation by me though). In any case he's not the only Roman subject/citizen with that name (see disambiguaton page) and there are also related forms of the name looking more Roman (like Papianus). In that context it is probably also worth to note, that Appian's original description was in Greek rather than in Latin, so some names may appear in Greek forms simply due to that and later translations might not always have compensated for this fact or simply left the Greek form for minor persons not being well known outside Appian's work.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:19, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I can't begin to tell you what a pleasure it is to get such a well thought-out answer to a question on a talk page. To your points:

• About the other two men named Papias on the disambig page, the one is from the Greek-speaking East, and the lexicographer, though from or associated with Lombardy, seems likely to have chosen his Greek name as a pen name because of its meaning. "Papianus" is an interesting point.
• "Admiral" always bugs me in reference to the Roman navy, but I've never taken time to research the terminology ("prefect of the fleet" is the only naval rank I can ever remember). I too always hesitate to categorize figures as "Roman generals" because, as you indicate, the English term doesn't unambiguously translate a Latin office or rank. At least a few editors have attempted to address organizational problems with the Roman military material, but it's a daunting task. (There's a discussion somewhere on a task force page.)
• Augustus did his best to obliterate or defame Sextus Pompeius, but he's an interesting figure (regrettably this book is not available online even in limited preview, though I've glanced at it in the flesh), and I'll keep my eyes open for his friend Papias. Best wishes, Cynwolfe (talk) 20:14, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

one more source

I understand the difficulty of finding good sources for this type of article. Maybe only one good source exists ... so be it. I tagged this article in a couple of ways with the hopes that another editor might have a 2nd source. Both times the tag was removed saying that the one source was (sufficient). I agree in principle. Two sources might improve the article. Let's work together! --Stormbay (talk) 01:57, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no. Of course other sources can be added and other editors can extend the article, but for that no tag is needed. Such tags should primarily be used, when sources are not sufficient (not reliable enough (on their own), somewhat contested content, don't cover the whole content, etc.), which is not the case here. This guy is just minor figure in history and Appian is afaik the main historical source for him. You could add a few books, where he is mentioned in a few lines concerning the battles he was involved in, but such books rely on Appian anyhow.

The problem with such "formalistic" tagging is, that it it misallocates resources. We've a large mismatch between tagged articles and editotrs to process them, therefore it is particularly important that we somewhat defensively tag only those articles, that actually need improvement/help to be in line with WP standards, but we should not tag articles, because there is some potential room for improvement. The latter is the standard situation for any WP article anyhow and hence normally requires no tagging.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The multitude of articles that are tagged and will not be addressed in the forseeable future should concern us all and makes a good point for judicious tagging. I caught up to this article on the list of unpatrolled articles where I try to spend a few minute a day to move that process along. I feel it was a judicious tag in that it was basically a one editor/one source article at the time.

The source tag also alerts users to the lack of more than one reference. I allocate my resources as the spirit moves me because the enormity of backlogs and misallocation of effort thing will not be solved anytime soon. Therefore, I try to enjoy and be flexible. We can care and disagree. I'm happy that I misallocated some time and had this discussion since it is important to always try to see the other editors point of view. In general, articles will turn out better if more people stop to make an edit, place a tag, remove a tag, etc. We don't own the articles; we collaborate (hopefully). Cheers!--Stormbay (talk) 02:57, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

No, seriously, I write articles often about the Late Republic, and especially about minor figures (list here), but trust me, this Papias is one elusive dude. I've looked. Here's one secondary source, though — he doesn't venture to speculate much about our man, but the historian Guglielmo Ferrero at least mentions him, and finds it notable that Sextus appointed such an unknown as a commander. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

You can actually find him mentioned in some secondary literature (I checked that via Google Books), after afaik they all rely essentially on Appian, so I see little or no value of adding such sources simply retelling Appian. It would be different if there's a secondary authoritative source using something else than Appian or at least adding some educated speculations, but I haven't found anything like that.

That Sextus picked him as a supposingly unknown commander I've read in some other sources as well, one reason for that might be that some of the better known commanders of Sextus were unreliable (one guy switched sides several times).

As far as the tag is concerned possibly contrary to Stormbay I'm a proponent of defensive tagging, i.e. tag only those were you assume that there's a real problem that (ideally) needs to be addressed soon. There's undoubtedly a large backlog anyway, but I don't think it is a good idea to further inflate it needlessly. The larger the backlog becomes the more meaningless the tag becomes. Articles should not be tagged as substitute for discussion or simply to get other editors to read them, for that you can use the discussion page, portals and the "normal" article extension instead.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, citing a secondary source or two even though they're all just summarizing Appian is indeed a defensive maneuver that keeps you from wasting time arguing, for instance, about whether simply reporting what an ancient source says is OR. Though such debates can be illuminating for all kinds of reasons. OR wasn't the issue here, as I understand it (elsewhere, it's been argued that any article based only on primary sources constitutes OR), but merely that the article relied on a single source. With Appian in particular you can encounter problems (this was brought home to me in writing Attidius (senator) and Marcus Marius (quaestor)), so in general it isn't a bad idea to confirm with historians used to dealing with him, even if there are no similar problems with this Papias. The fact that historians haven't ventured any speculation on why S.P. gave an important command to such an obscure person (no one else to turn to? "hired" on the basis of ability rather than family connections?) is interesting, and probably reinforces what the editors of the Sextus Pompeius book noted above said: Augustus did a good job of suppressing him in the historical record and creating the impression that he was trivial. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well interpretation of primary sources would be OR but a mere description is not. Also Appian is not quite a primary source (primary sources would be accounts of contemporary witnesses such as Papias, Agrippa and Sextus themselves or other people being around during the Sicilian revolt), since he is a historian who compiled he events about 180 years later. So in that sense he is actually a secondary source, on the other hand from today's perspective he is a historical source and almost as close as we ever might get to a real witness hence he's used as primary source as well.

There is certainly no problem with adding literature that mentions Appian (and everybody is free to do so). However as I said personally I see no value in adding literature that mentions him only in 1 or 2 lines, which rely completely on Appian anyhow (which is true for the secondary sources I've seen myself), that's why I didn't add any of those.

I'm aware that simply adding another book may have avoided the discussion about the tag, but that is in regard with the literature I've mentioned above just something of a formal trick, which I really dislike. I.e. making it look like the article content is supported by lot of different references, while in reality it is not, but just a variety of books having 1 or 2 lines they've taken from Appian but nothing else. This has nothing to with Stormbay now, but in general I've observed some "formalistic" tagging by quality control editors, which I consider rather misguided and not really helping. For instance tagging things as unsourced, because the is no reference section, but the sources are in external link or in footnotes. In such cases is is much more helpful to actually check the footnotes and external links and possibly move them to a new reference section and only tag the article, if the result of the checking was, that the sourcing is indeed insufficient for the article content, only then it should be tagged. A similar issue I've noted occasionally that people tag a manner of speech ("we" in science articles/textbooks) as a POV violation (="the editor is making a personal point"), such a thing is absolutely nonsensical and such tags are just causing confusion. Yet another is requiring footnotes/citations for short articles with a very few sources at the end (and tagging for it). All you need to do there to check the article's content, is read the 1 to 3 sources at the end. Footnotes are needed for longer articles with a lot of different sources, because you don't want to read a large number of sources just to check whether a particular line or section was properly sourced or not.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)