Talk:Constantine II (emperor)

Constantine II (emperor) is currently a Royalty, nobility and heraldry good article nominee. Nominated by Snowsoftime (talk) at 03:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC) An editor has indicated a willingness to review the article in accordance with the good article criteria. Further reviews are welcome from any editor who has not contributed significantly to this article (or nominated it), and can be added to the review page, but the decision whether or not to list the article as a good article should be left to the first reviewer. Short description: Roman emperor from 337 to 340

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Constantine II (emperor)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Snowsoftime (talk · contribs) 03:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 06:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look at this one. First comments to follow soon. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Snowsoftime: Are you still interested in working on this one? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:28, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

- I have now clarified why Barnes disagreed with the PLRE.

- Gibbon was cited in the article before I started editing it, but my work removed all citations of him, I just forgot to remove him from the bibliography. I have done that now.

- “ Why are some books cited in full in the references and others in the Sources?” They were written by different people. The former part was not by me. In fact I had removed it and explained why, but another editor reinstated it anyway.

- “Even after campaigning successfully against the Alamanni in 338, he continued to maintain his position: Constantine or Constans?” I thought it was clear it was referring to Constantine. Was it not? Snowsoftime (talk) 00:44, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One more point:

“Missed capital letter in The successors of Constantine.” The source material did not capitalize the word successors, so I didn’t either. Snowsoftime (talk) 01:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the latter point -- MOS:CONFORMTITLE says not to worry and to capitalise it anyway; we make titles match our own manual of style (so we don't, for example, write newspaper headlines in SHOUTY CAPITALS). In other cases, it's the article that matters, not the writer, so go ahead and make the changes that are needed. I didn't find the Constantine/Constans sentence grammatically clear, no. Even if you don't know why Barnes and the PLRE disagree, if we don't have some means (e.g. a third source) to discriminate between them, we should give each equal weight. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More points I should’ve addressed:

- You said the lead was too short, but I’m kinda struggling with how it should be expanded. Should I mention the Massacre of the Princes, even though the most Constantine II did regarding it was issue coinage? I discussed it in his article merely because there’s so little to say about him that I figured this minor detail might as well be included.

- I don’t see the point in mentioning his consulships or his victory titles. For Roman politicians that aren’t related to the emperor, being consul shows they’re held in high regard by the emperor, but a Caesar and the emperor’s son holding the consulship is normal and expected, and the dates in which he was consul can be seen at the bottom. I did once mention his victory titles, but later edited it out because I figured the military victories spoke for themselves. Snowsoftime (talk) 17:36, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The principle for the lead (MOS:LEAD) is that it should stand alone as a summary of the whole article. In other words, if a reader reads only the lead, they should still get the key information we wish to convey in the body. That is generally taken to mean that, roughly, each paragraph or so of the body is summarised as about a sentence of the lead, and that we ensure that all the key details from the body are also mentioned in the lead.

On the consulships and victory titles, I think you're erring too far on the side of parsimony rather than comprehensiveness -- remember that this is a short article in a website for non-specialists, who won't necessarily think it "obvious" that an imperial son would receive those titles or a military victor gain military titles. The key principle here is WP:DUEWEIGHT: since those facts are widely reported in reliable scholarly sources on Constantine II, they should feature in this article too. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the feedback.

Something you didn’t address but I’m gonna bring up anyway is this part in the article:

”The name "Claudius" was most likely added to his name to further strengthen his connection to Claudius Gothicus, his alleged ancestor.”

This was not added by me. The reasons why I had removed this entire section was:

- The note saying that Constantine I first began claiming descent from Claudius shortly after Constantine II’s birth is not true. He first did it years before Constantine II was born.

- One source cited for the statement, Jill Harries, straight up does not support the claim. All she says is that Constantius II and Constans kept up the fabrication that they were descended from Claudius, with no mention as to Constantine II and his name.

The other source cited does support it, but I thought in order to make such a statement, you would at least need more than one source. So far I haven’t been able to find any.

Do you think this part should be removed or not? Snowsoftime (talk) 18:07, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the key bit here is The other source cited does support it, but I thought in order to make such a statement, you would at least need more than one source. So far I haven’t been able to find any. If one source says it and another simply doesn't include it, it should be there per WP:DUEWEIGHT. If one source says it and another contradicts it, that's a little more complicated -- then, we would need to weigh the sources to decide whether to prefer one to the other, or to present the difference of opinion (and usually go down on the side of the latter, if they're all good sources and there's no clear error). If I've read correctly that we're dealing with an assertion in one source only, it should probably be included if that source is good enough (and Harries is a serious academic, so the strong assumption is yes): you can always hedge with something like "the historian Jill Harries has suggested that..." if you want to be clear that we're not taking it as gospel (and especially if she uses words like probably, might have been and so on. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is true that there is no disagreement to this claim, as far as I know.

What I said is that Harries’ book did not support it. She does not associate Constantine II’s name with Claudius Gothicus anywhere in the book. The source that did support the claim is “The Imperial Families of Ancient Rome” by Maxwell Craven, and I’m not sure if it’s good enough to keep in the statement. This book repeats the PLRE’s view on Constantine II’s birth and parentage, as if the writer did not bother to check any other scholarship. Snowsoftime (talk) 19:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general, we shouldn't be doing too much source analysis ourselves (that's WP:OR), but we do have to judge whether a source meets the bar of being a reliable, independent, secondary source (WP:RS). Note that this is a different standard from being a high-quality or scholarly source (WP:HQRS). If we do not have good reason to declare the source unreliable (which usually means that it is not subject to editorial control, or that it is written by someone with a clear conflict of interest), we should generally report what it says, if the fact itself is clearly relevant to the subject at hand. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:48, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I expanded the lead, although I’m not sure if it’s enough. Snowsoftime (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• The lead is very short. Per MOS:LEAD, it should stand on its own as a summary of the article: in general, each paragraph of the body normally becomes a sentence-length summary in the lead.
• Date ranges that are just years don't have a space on either side of the dash.
• I would suggest clarifying a little about who Constantine the Great and Fausta were.
• Constantine II was born in Arles in 316 and raised as a Christian.: the source puts an important probably before all of this.
• DeMaio and Frakes cite a lot of sources that don't seem to be in the article. Have you made use of them?
• The publisher "Brill" isn't all-capitalised.
• I'm not happy with declaring the PLRE wrong based solely on the fact that another author disagrees with it: scholars disagree all the time. What reason do we have to pick Barnes's side? Can we give any indication of the consensus? Otherwise, we need to write something like "Barnes disagrees with the statement of the PLRE [that...], on the grounds that..."
• On which, PLRE is a work title: it should be italicised and, on first mention at least, spelled out.
• Latin should always be in language templates, and usually italicised. This is true for links as well (put the whole link into the template).
• In titles of works, normalise ALL CAPS to title case (MOS:CONFORM)
• People's initials usually have a space after them (A. H. M. Jones)
• MOS:' prefers e.g. Constantius's to Constantius'
• Gibbon isn't cited in the article (and, frankly, shouldn't be): what's he doing in the bibliography, and at the bottom of it?
• VICTORIA CAESAR N N isn't virtue of our caesar; it's victory of our Caesars (the double N is for a plural, like CONCORDIA AUGG). on second reading, this inscription isn't correctly transcribed here.
• We are inconsistent about whether Caesar and Augustus have a capital letter.
• Journal titles are automatically given double quotes around them, so turn any quote marks within them into single quotes.
• Why are some books cited in full in the references and others in the Sources? We should be consistent.
• Missed capital letter in The successors of Constantine.
• It's true that Constantine II was the eldest son of Constantine and Fausta, but we should be clear that he wasn't Constantine's eldest son.
• Even after campaigning successfully against the Alamanni in 338, he continued to maintain his position: Constantine or Constans?
• Constans then took control of his deceased brother's realm, who seem to have been largely unaffected by their change in ruler: who doesn't really work here; we need a new noun ("whose inhabitants"?)
• After his death, Constantine was subjected to damnatio memoriae, which his other brother Constantius II also followed: the last clause here is ambiguous.
• There are a few technical terms that would benefit from an explanation: damnatio memoriae, Codex Theodosianus, caesar, Augustus.
• I think it might be worth mentioning his three consulships and various victory titles (e.g. Germanicus maximus).
• There's a few useful bits here, especially on religion.