body.skin-vector-2022 .mw-parser-output .skiptotalk,body.mw-mf .mw-parser-output .skiptotalk{display:none}.mw-parser-output .skiptotalk a{display:block;text-align:center;font-style:italic;line-height:1.9}.mw-parser-output .skiptotalk a::before,.mw-parser-output .skiptotalk a::after{content:"↓";font-size:larger;line-height:1.6;font-style:normal}.mw-parser-output .skiptotalk a::before{float:left}.mw-parser-output .skiptotalk a::after{float:right}Skip to table of contents
Good articleRoman Empire has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 17, 2012Good article nomineeListed
November 2, 2012Good article reassessmentKept
May 18, 2014Featured article candidateNot promoted
Current status: Good article


Wiki Education assignment: Communication and Culture[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2021 and 14 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Waltersaraceni (article contribs).

Nicene Christianity as official religion[edit]

People usually think that Christianity became the official religion in the 380 AD but is wrong, that edict was just for the city of Constantinople, not for all the Empire, and against other christian heresies, not against pagans. The year when Nicene Christianity became official was 491 AD when Anastasius I became emperor and he had to swear to protect Imperial Orthodoxy, and after him the following emperors. 83.58.27.132 (talk) 19:15, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Actually, I would say it was really when Justinian came to the throne that we saw enforcement of Christianity. From the time of Constantine, it was a gradual process so you are correct 380 is not some watershed moment. But 380 is significant because it set in motion an official state preference for Christianity over paganism, and while theological disputes distracted the Empire (and that Anastasius did his best to resolve), the truth is the basic religious culture had become homegenised by that point.
Anthony Kaldellis in his new history published this year believes 212 is a turning point. In the sense of where the idea of a pan-Roman religion of Empire started developing. He points out how Decius in 249 required all citizens to make a public sacrifice which in itself was not novel but post 212 was unprecedented. The certificate of compliance he required basically mobilised the imperial bureacracy to enforce religious conformity. Biz (talk) 04:45, 9 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I would say that it came towards the end of the time Constantine had enforced laws after he had believed that Jesus Christ was the overall reason that he was victorious, he the mandated religious tolerance throughout the empire. Only believing that tolerance for the faith which came to known as Christianity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alecwarbl3 (talk • contribs) 21:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 8 December 2023[edit]

Change "5,000,000 km2 (1,900,000 sq mi)" to "4,000,000 km2 (1,500,000 sq mi)" as to keep consitancy with the Ancient Rome page. 70.40.81.151 (talk) 22:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 Not done: the 5 million figure is for AD 117, and agrees with the other article RudolfRed (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Military Dictatorship instead of Semi-Elected Absolute Monarchy[edit]

The infobox describes the government of the Roman Empire as being a Semi-Elected Absolute Monarchy, but I don't know if that is an accurate description. There was still a large amount of power in Republican institutions, though these were gradually eroded over time. The 'monarchy' was not absolute. There were also significant periods when the empire was not ruled by a single 'monarch', but multiple officials.

It may be more accurate to describe it as a 'Military Dictatorship', as most power was held by the military. Or maybe something else. PrecariousWorlds (talk) 17:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

GA Reassessment[edit]

Roman Empire

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result pending

Uncited prose, including the entire "Painting" and most of the "Literature" sections. It has a good structure, but it needs a topic-subject expert to go through to cite or remove the uncited sections. Z1720 (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Adding to this, a few scattered thoughts:
  • The "Fall in the West" section is very out of step with a complex and fast-moving scholarly field. It's been decades since one could respectably write a narrative that begins and ends with invasions of nasty foreigners with beards.
  • The same is true of the article as a whole, I'd suggest: it reads like it was written by "fans" of the empire rather than people with a real background in its academic study.
  • The Languages section is also pretty outdated in its treatment of "vulgar Latin" and non-treatment of other Italic languages.
  • The "Society" section is pretty rose-tinted, put mildly. Again, most treatments of Roman society in the last few decades have not shied away from the general brutality and unpleasantness of it.
  • The article seems chronologically confused: it's theoretically about Rome post 27 BCE or so, but occasionally lapses into talking about the mid Republic, centuries earlier.
  • The Freedmen section needs to at least acknowledge the existence of women.
  • The "census rank" section gets bogged down in the idea of the ordines (which included only a minute fraction of the population), and then tries, not very successfully, to talk more broadly about social class and mobility. There's also a lot of chronological confusion and imprecision, where situations that changed over time (such as labels like honestiores or conversion to Christianity) are presented as if always part of Roman life.
  • This thing is a monster! I know it's a big topic, but it definitely needs hacking up and shrinking down.
  • There are a number of points where complex debates are reduced to one side of them, and cited to a single source. The Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of "political capitalism" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues (cited to Potter) sticks out: it's not necessarily wrong, but at the moment the article is far too confident in its conclusions and often badly devoid of nuance, and will give the reader a false impression that ancient history is nicely settled and clear-cut.
  • The "Legacy" section makes some rather odd choices as to what to focus on and leave out.
  • More generally, and related: I don't think this article really knows what sets it apart from Ancient Rome: there's a lot here that's really about "the Romans" in general, rather than the specific material the article claims to cover.
  • Citing Luttwak makes me sad.
UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree with all of these comments, except as to the size of the article. There's no just way to cover everything that is relevant with the Roman empire without it being very long. Ifly6 (talk) 20:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I feel paring it down to focus on the Empire as opposed to Ancient Rome in general will solve the length problem. Generalissima (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
All good observations. This article deserves not just an general update, but for someone to drive it to FA status.
If any one decides to take on this challenge and upgrade this article I'll support you. I intend on spending most of this year reading sources as I work on the FAR of the Byzantine Empire and can offer my (unprofessional) perspective on modern scholarship where it overlaps. Biz (talk) 07:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have long said that the Roman Empire article is impossible to write within the parameters of Wikipedia. Here are some thoughts from a long-time contributor who worked on an overhaul ten years ago (at that time, the key was to get a more comprehensive outline structure) and whose doctoral work is in classical studies.
  • Length. The current article is indeed too long. Most sections that have their own main article, such as "Languages", are far too long and detailed. When some of the sections were sketched in ten years ago, there were no main articles for those topics. It's a harder writing task than you might think to offer both clear broad statements that are useful to the wide range of visitors to this article in combination with some concrete details that bring those to life. Maybe we should just link them to the Jason Momoa SNL video and be done with it.
  • The dangers of recentism. Classical studies is not a field in which older work is discarded. It isn't like either the sciences (where older ideas are actually proven wrong and progress is made) or, say, literary studies (the latter meant to continually renew the vitality of texts for current readers). What you find in classics, because it's inherently multidisciplinary, is that areas of focus within the field change over time, so that research on some topics may be concentrated during certain decades, like republican prosopography in the Ronald Syme era. All that work is still valuable and perceptive; classicists took up other questions and other approaches. I have read some awfully lightweight published articles lately by newborn classicists in which I could immediately spot internal contradictions and research gaps that make me wonder what's happening in the field—support for the humanities in the US is drying up, of course. Still good work in English from the UK but more so from younger multilingual European scholars. Anyway, in classical studies the date of publication is not a measure of the depth or value of research, though archaeology and text retrieval (as of Philodemus from Herculaneum) continually provide new resources to build on.
  • Neutrality. Neither rosy nor brutal should be the aim. If you go in thinking "my job is to show just how nasty the Roman Empire really was," then that's as detrimental a mindset as wanting to wear a toga and lie about on couches eating grapes. Scholarship is about trying to understand what the Romans were about in relation to their own time and to the world as they received, entered, and reshaped it. If anything, scholarship in the last decade has moved away from the "Romans bad" agenda.
  • Audience. This article gets high traffic. What do visitors come for? My occupation IRL is book editing. At least half of all compositional problems in nonfiction can be solved by putting yourself in the shoes of the average reader. What questions are they likely to bring to the article, and how can the article be structured and compiled to best answer those questions?
Cynwolfe (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dates in the infobox[edit]

As seen in other articles like the Byzantine Empire as an example, including important historical dates in the evolution of the empire is notable enough. Welcome to discuss it further PrecariousWorlds (talk) 20:46, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We include many important dates in the infobox already, including some of these. We have dates even above the graphics, an animated dated map, dates of different capitals and religions, and much more; yet another schedule defeats MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. As WP:OTHERCONTENT highlights, on Wikipedia we can't expect to be consistent with all other articles, and the Roman Empire as a subject is sui generis, one which we do not represent well to the reader if we indicate that the most important matters are repeated schedules of dates - contrast the current infobox with the table of contents. NebY (talk) 22:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
All but one of these dates already appear elsewhere in the infobox. I think it's fine to cut them. Furius (talk) 00:52, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Categories