Talk:Anicia (late Imperial family)

Split this content from Anicia (gens). There's no clear connection between this family and the Anicii of the Roman Republic. As noted in the article, nearly four centuries elapsed between the disappearance of one and the appearance of the other. The late imperial family may have come from Praeneste, but there's no evidence about the origin of the gens.

This article also provides more information and detail than belongs in the article about the gens, in a different format. Since there's enough information for a separate article, and it doesn't easily fit in the article to which it was added, it made sense to split it from Anicia (gens). The split is noted in the edit summaries of both pages, and each page contains a direct link to the other.

Some of the individuals on this page may later be added to the list of members of the gens, perhaps in a new subsection, following the format of other pages in the List of Roman gentes. However, those entries would need to be short and contain links either to this page or to separate articles about the subjects. P Aculeius (talk) 01:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The text of the article has been edited (and left in a bad state) to remove any relationship between this family and the same gens. In future, it would be nice to discuss the matter before taking action. --TakenakaN (talk) 10:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

There is no demonstrable relationship between this family and the gens Anicia. Nor is it apparent that most of the families referred to in this article constituted gentes in the classical sense of that word. The gens itself was largely obsolete by this period of Roman history, and the fact that a particular name was shared by some, but not all members of a family, or other persons to whom they might or might not have been related in some manner or other does not make them a gens. P Aculeius (talk) 14:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

"In future, it would be nice to discuss the matter before taking action."

The historians I cited consider all those persons member of the same family and related to the Republican gens. Before removing them, I would expect a discussion on the sources of this relationship. --TakenakaN (talk) 15:56, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry I acted so hastily. However, I still believe that there are legitimate reasons why the material on this page does not fit on the page to which it was originally added. It is formatted differently and caused you to revise the format of that article substantially, making it different from all of the related articles, and shifting the emphasis to a narrative account of the members of this family in late Imperial times, and their contributions to history. That was not how the original article was designed to work. A discussion of a specific family such as this deserves its own page. P Aculeius (talk) 16:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

"It is formatted differently and caused you to revise the format of that article substantially, making it different from all of the related articles, and shifting the emphasis to a narrative account of the members of this family in late Imperial times, and their contributions to history." Formatting is not a good reason to remove content.

"A discussion of a specific family such as this deserves its own page." Why? Anicia (gens) is an article about a family, why should a discussion about this family be removed only because it develops some aspects that other article don't mention? --TakenakaN (talk) 17:20, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The content was not deleted. It was moved to a page where it could be developed without content being lost due to reformatting. All of the individuals noted here who appear to be Anicii are now included on the page Anicia (gens) in the proper format for that page. The additional content can be safely developed on this page. P Aculeius (talk) 17:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

What I am trying to say is that format should not harm content. If a particular gens has informations that do not fit in the general gens format, the format is to be changed, while you removed the content to another article (which has no reason to exist). --TakenakaN (talk) 19:08, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Factual Issues

There are numerous factual issues with the claims made by this article:

1. I can find no reference to gentes named Amnia, Pincia, Auchenia, or Proba. None of them is so described by the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, or any other source with which I am acquainted. Probus is a cognomen in any event, and does not even look like the name of a gens. There was a gens Petronia which had existed since the time of the Republic, but it is not clear that any of the others constituted gentes.
2. Nothing in the article about Bassianus, either on Wikipedia or in the DGRBM, suggests that he was a member of the Anicia gens. If he was related by marriage, that would not make him a member of the gens. But as he married a sister of Constantine I, who was not a member of the gens, I do not see how he was related to the Anicii by marriage either.
3. The fact that Constantine's sister is traditionally known as Anastasia does not mean that the Anicii were involved with the veneration of Saint Anastasia, or the construction of the Basilica of Saint Anastasia, which, according to that article, may predate the ascendance of the Emperor Constantine. And even if there were such a connection, that fact would not connect the Anicii in any way with Pope Liberius, who became Pope some time after the erection of the basilica and is not said to have had anything to do with it in either his article or the one about the basilica.
4. Nothing in the article about Cassiodorus identifies him as one of the Anicii. The article on Pope Felix III specifically states that, "Nothing certain is known of Felix until he succeeded St. Simplicius." There is nothing about a connection to noble Roman houses of any kind. And if, as tradition suggests, he was the great-great-grandfather of Pope Gregory I, that does not connect Pope Gregory with the Anicii unless Pope Felix III was himself one of them. There is also nothing in the article about Pope Agapetus I to connect him with the Anicii.

The article about the Anicia gens is based on established historical facts, from sources that have long been recognized and available to the general public. At best the claims made by Carmelo Capizzi and Rita Lizzi Testa with respect to the Anicii are speculative and conjectural; and some of them, according to the dating of the Basilica of Saint Anastasia to the late 3rd or early 4th century, not possible.

If the sources are unreliable, the relative information is to be completely removed, not moved to another article. --TakenakaN (talk) 16:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I did not say that the sources were unreliable, although some of their conclusions may well prove to be, and some inferences drawn from their works appear to be unsupported. Without the opportunity to review their work and how they arrived at their conclusions, I can't make a determination as to their reliability. However, the fact that a theory is wrong, improbable, or needs better documentation does not mean it should not be mentioned or discussed in an appropriate article, provided that such issues are also discussed. P Aculeius (talk) 17:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I would feel more comfortable with the Italian sources supporting claims such as "first to convert to Christianity" if (a) an English source could be found referring to or reviewing them; (b) they could be found in my university library, which is rather well-stocked for classical studies; or (c) the sources could be examined online, and in fact they can be: Anicia Giuliana can be found in limited preview here, and Senatori, popolo, papi here. Those whose Italian is better than mine should probably take a look; I haven't checked specific refs, but at first glance these seem to be sober and well-footnoted with scholarly sources. Late antiquity is a scholarly 'growth industry' in part because of new discoveries in epigraphy; the Smith's identification of some lesser historical figures is incorrect because inscriptions or papyri in the meantime have offered new evidence. I also find it conceivable that an Italian researcher 'on the ground', so to speak, would have access to mss. and primary documents not generally available. The question is, what does it matter if the article is one or two? If the interests of the two of you diverge so greatly, and are easily split into Republican/Late Imperial, can't the two articles just refer to each other? Cynwolfe (talk) 17:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

@Aculeius: Again, if you have a problem of any sort with the sources for some facts, you should not move the facts somewhere else because the original article is "well sourced". --TakenakaN (talk) 18:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I assume that by "well sourced" you refer to the four sources you added after the last few posts in this topic, calling into question the "facts" asserted in the original article. But what you really need to do before asserting these things as facts, is explain how these authors arrived at their conclusions. The fact that a recent author asserts that something is true isn't really evidence. You could say that the author claims it, but it's not a fact just because somebody says it's so.

I also note that after I pointed out that the article on Pope Felix III stated that nothing about his ancestry was known, you edited the article to state, "He was born into the Roman senatorial family of the Anicii", without providing any documentation. That statement also contradicts the note you added to Anicia (late Imperial family), which asserts that Felix married a woman named Petronia, and that she was of the Anicia gens. But if her name was Petronia, then the assertion that she was one of the Anicii requires some explanation. Furthermore, even if this is so, Felix would not have become a member of the gens by marrying a woman of the gens.

If Pope Felix became related to the Anicii through marriage, then he was not born into the family, as you assert in his biography. The assertion of the connections with this family are also contradicted by the article on Pope Gregory I, which clearly states that, "No connection to patrician families of the Roman Republic has been demonstrated." What seems to be happening here is that the facts keep changing based on these books, which very few people have seen, and the evidence used to draw the conclusions in those books has not been discussed, which it should be before those assertions are treated as facts.

The article about the gens now contains what could be regarded as established fact, in the level of detail used on other pages of this kind. More detail than this really needs to be discussed on a separate page, like it is now. P Aculeius (talk) 00:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I have asked you many times a good reason for the existence of this article, and all you could answer is that you think some statements need a place where they can be discussed, but that is a talk page. As, evidently, there is no reason the present article should exist, in absence of further reasons, I plan to re-introduce the uncontroversial information in the Anicia (gens), the controversial information in its talk page and redirect this page to the other (see below for "uncontroversial" and "controversial" information)

As regards your comments on the above points, please note that neither you nor I are judges of the "soundness" of the historical statements contained in the sources. Once a source is considered authoritative, its contents requires no acknowledgement by either of us. As regards the difference between this and other Wikipedia article, well, if I remember correctly Wikipedia is not a source; this means that the content of Gregory I's article does not weight against the source here produced on his descent from the Anician family. Finally, the fact that you can't access the sources is regretful but does not modify in any way the value of the sources themselves. --TakenakaN (talk) 00:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

So is there no hope for my Solomonic proposal that you cut the baby in half so that you can each work on your interests independently? (Though I guess that analogy doesn't hold, since I really am urging you to cut the baby in half.) T's sources are good. But T: I don't see why the Anicia (gens) article can't end with a subhead "Late Imperial Anicii", under which appears a Main article:Anicia (late Imperial family) with a short paragraph summing up the uncontroversial info. Then you can develop your Late Imperial article independently. I've seen this often on Wikipedia: there's a major argument over content or approach; there's an attempt to solve it by splitting an article in two; this works if both parties agree to retreat to their separate territories, and doesn't if one party attempts to patrol the other's piece of the encyclopedic turf. Although Wikipedia is supposed to be collaborative, sometimes in practice two approaches can't be reconciled, and it's a loss if we can't find a way for both to flourish. Butting out now … Cynwolfe (talk) 13:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The information about the family in imperial times appears as part of the section Anicia (gens)#Branches and cognomina of the gens, which comes before the list of members. There's also a subsection devoted to them in the list of members, and the article contains not one, but two direct links to this page. P Aculeius (talk) 13:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Reviewing Anicia (gens) as it now stands, I would then suggest only that a link to this article be made explicit, rather than as an embedded blue link alone. I'm going to presume to add such a thing, in a manner that is not as frequently used as the "see also" at the top of a page or a "See also" section, but that as far as I know is not forbidden though uncommon. This is an alternative the paragraph I proposed above. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

There is no reason why this article (Anicia (late Imperial family)) should exist, all the information pertinent to the family should go in Anicia (gens). I think we are mature enough to play on the same turf. --TakenakaN (talk) 15:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with the solution that you've implemented, Cynwolfe. P Aculeius (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Since Takenakan has merged the pages again, I thought I should point out two remaining issues, which require attention. First is the fact that the merger of these pages wasn't noted on the edit summary of either page. This may be a minor issue, but I don't feel competent to determine how important that is. I just know that Wikipedia policy states that it must be done as part of the merger process. Secondly, should parts of the talk page associated with this article be selectively copied and pasted into Anicia (gens) as they were in this instance? It seems as if all of the debate has been left out, and now appears only as discussion on a redirect page. Is this appropriate procedure? P Aculeius (talk) 20:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware of this rule you are talking about, but it seems to me that the only reason why a merge should be indicated is that it is important, for license reasons, to indicate the fact that the authors of the content merged is not the author of the merge but those indicated in the merged page history. In this particular case, however, I put back into Anicia (gens) a content that was removed from that page, so I think this should be not an issue.

As regards the talk pages, I put a link from Talk:Anicia (gens) to here. --TakenakaN (talk) 12:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Uncontroversial information

The Anicia was a prominent family of the Late Roman Empire, descending from the Republican and Early imperial gens Anicia (gens).

Members of this gens married with members of the families of the Amnii, Pincii, Petronii, Auchenii and Probi. Members of the family had possessions in Italy and in Gaul, but also in the East. The gens Anicia was one of the first Roman senatorial families, if not the first at all, to convert to Christianity.

A branch of the family transferred to the Eastern Roman Empire, establishing itself in Constantinople (where Anicia Juliana, daughter of Western Emperor Olybrius, was a patron of the arts) and rising in prestige: the last Roman consul, Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius (521) was an Anicius from his mother's side. In the West, on the other side, the Anicii were supporters of the independence of the Western Empire from the Eastern one; they were, therefore, supporters of the Ostrogothic kings of Italy, and such celebrated by the king Theodahad.

Controversial information

It is probable that this family was particularly devoted to Saint Anastasia and probably cooperated with Pope Liberius in the erection of the Basilica di Sant'Anastasia in Rome. A member of the family, Bassianus, married a sister of Constantine I known in the tradition as Anastasia.

If the Anician descent of Justinian I and Benedict of Nursia is legendary, that of Boethius, Cassiodorus, Pope Felix III, Pope Agapetus I and (by the maternal line) of Pope Gregory I is based on more solid records.