Talk:Julii Caesares

I have a few problems with this series of edits:

• Serious reduction of sources
• Hacking away in other editors' work
• If sources are contentious they can be replaced by other, more reliable ones, e.g. [1]
• NPOV has gone lost: there are opposing views on the early descendance of the Julii Caesares, the article should not present it as if one scheme is the consensus of scholars.
• The "male lineage" scheme is contentious while it contains adoptions that are no way the result of male descendance, so makes the same errors as can be found on unreliable popular modern geneaology sites.

I propose to go back to the earlier version of the article, and implement improvements from there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

As the editor who's spent several hours cleaning up this article over the last few days, I have to object to a blanket reversion. The article was a terrible mess before I started working on it, because it inserted generations that were utterly fictitious, as well as ones resulting from a mistaken identification of one of the people as two separate ones, father and son. Half of the sources cited (and the one linked above as well) should not have been cited in the first place; three of them are completely unreliable for historical purposes, while the fourth was merely quoting another source that would have been better cited instead, although it really just duplicates information already cited to reliable sources in the article. The individuals charted were designated by unhistorical and misleading numbers that aren't found in any historical sources, and in some cases were assigned names that never existed. The same individuals were arranged in slightly different ways to make up four different presentations of the same information, much of which simply duplicated information in at least four other articles about this family. The previous version of this article is in no way preferable to the current version.

1. To begin with, the pedigree chart gave four generations of ancestors of Sextus Julius Caesar, praetor in 208 BC. In fact, the only thing we know for certain about his father is that his name was Lucius, and the only reason that we know that is that his son's filiation is "Sex f. L. n." Griffin, one of the cited sources, conjectures (her word) that this Lucius was the son of Lucius Julius Libo, consul in 267 BC, solely on the assumption that each branch of the gens that history records must have been descended from one of the earlier branches known to history; something that is certainly possible, but by no means certain. But the pedigree chart placed three generations in the span that Griffin supposes was filled by one, because it assumed (without the slightest evidence) that Lucius, the father of Sextus and Lucius, the son of Libo, rather than being the same person, were grandfather and grandson, separated by a Numerius Julius Caesar who is entirely unknown to history.

In the previous version of this article, the existence of this imaginary Numerius is cited in four separate places to the same source: a recently published family history allegedly documenting the descent of a living person from the Caesars, who are numbered (without comment or evidence) among the ancestors of "Arviragus, King of Britain", a figure of doubtful historicity whose biography first appears in the twelfth century History of the Kings of Britain. This is not a reliable source. It may have been derived from William Berry's Genealogia Antiqua, or Mythological and Classical Tables, Compiled from the Best Authors on Fabulous and Ancient History, cited above; published in 1816, this was a collection of genealogical tables which, despite being "compiled from the best authors", lacks any sources or commentary, and inserts a number of fictional persons not found in any known historical sources, but which are plainly contradicted by those sources. And then, the source Magna Charta, by John S. Wurts, is simply a collection of genealogies assigned to the barons who signed the Magna Carta; not a valid source for Roman history.

2. The editor in question is concerned with "alternative versions" of the family tree; but the historical sources do not differ to any significant degree. The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology is based on Wilhelm Drumann's reconstruction of the Julii Caesares, which is also the source used by Napoleon III's Histoire de Jules César. The only differences between these and Griffin is that, the older sources assuming that Sextus Julius Caesar, the military tribune of 181 BC, and Sextus Julius Caesar, the consul of 157, were father and son, the consul's filiation required the insertion of an otherwise unknown Lucius Julius Caesar between the praetor of 208 and the military tribune of 181. This creates a chronological dilemma, since only 27 years separate the supposed grandfather and grandson. But since the military tribune of 181 and the consul of 157 were the same person, the consul's grandfather, Lucius, must be the father of the praetor of 208, and not his son. Since the extra generations were the result of a simple mistake (Broughton verifies the identity of the two Sextus Julius Caesars), rather than an unresolved question, there's no reason to continue including them.

3. There's no good reason to present the same information in four slight variations; in its previous version, there was a dendritic chart of the whole family (with several persons omitted without explanation), and a second chart of the same type containing the same information, but omitting the Julio-Claudian family, which was adopted. Then a pedigree chart with the same names (and no other information), but only the male members of the family; and lastly a sort of index containing all of the members (including the purely fictitious ones) sorted by praenomen. It's unclear what the advantage of this format could be.

4. The designation of the various members of the family using Roman numerals is completely ahistorical; the Romans did not use numerals to distinguish between different people with the same name. Historical sources do not use these numbers. You won't find anyone by searching for "Gaius Julius Caesar VII" or "Sextus Julius Caesar IV". Since the insertion or deletion of additional persons to the table requires re-assigning the numbers, they quickly become confusing and unwieldy. There is a much better way to distinguish them: by offices held or relationships to other members of the family, and so this is the method used in the revised charts.

5. It's true that the Julio-Claudian emperors weren't lineal descendants of the Julii Caesares. But the Romans would have considered them so. And, with the change of templates from {{familytree}} to {{chart}}, it's possible to indicate both uncertain relationships and adoptive descent using different types of lines. This wasn't possible with the old version of the pedigree chart.

Every one of the changes made to this article was necessary and justified by the problems with the previous version. Insisting on reverting to the previous version, simply because it would give equal weight to completely unacceptable sources and continue to perpetuate obvious mistakes, present conjecture as fact, and use arbitrary numbering systems to present the same information in four slightly different variations, makes no sense whatsoever. P Aculeius (talk) 04:18, 12 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

Should the subjects' full names, including cognomens and agnomens be included in the family tree section?

Precisely which names do you want to add or remove? Identifying specific examples would be more helpful than creating a blanket policy to apply in every case, since Roman names can be duplicative and confusing, while economy is important to a clear chart. If the issue is adding full imperial nomenclatures to a diagram that's already quite complex, then the answer is "no", as we've been through this before. P Aculeius (talk) 21:43, 10 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for bringing this up again, but I asked this in regards to inconsistency regarding the sons of Germanicus. Nero and Caligula have the Agnomen Germanicus in their entries, but Drusus does not. Should they all have it or not have it? Not to mention the earlier tree chart had Drusus' named suffixed with Germanicus, so that's another inconsistency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.110.217.186 (talk) 03:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)Reply