Talk:Honorius (emperor)

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His reign of twenty-eight years was one of the most disastrous in the Roman annals; the weakness and timidity of the emperor combined with the attacks of the Visigoths and Vandals contributed to the rapid disintegration of the empire. His influence on the current of events was purely negative.

This comment, while not entirely inaccurate, is nonetheless an unattributed POV. I've ignored it, thinking that it came from one of the public sources used to create Wikipedia -- the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Catholic Encyclopedia -- but their articles fail to show similar sentences. A quick look through Edward Gibbon's book also did not reveal these sentences. Who is being quoted here? -- llywrch 18:58, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I might add, if he was an incompetent weakling, how did he survive on the throne for 28 years? He must have been a cunning politician, if only for his own interests rather than for those of the empire. Tom Peters 20050906

Nobody has been crazy enough to kill Honorius. His cousin in Constantinople has been to strong for war which will start after coup in Italy. Never forget that in AD 410 soldiers from East has come to protect Honorius in Ravenna.rjecina

In my opinion, he wasn't so much a cunning politician as a good puppet. I believe that the way he was able to survive was by being weak and ineffectual, allowing others to use his legitimacy to their advantage. Ryan 23:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, after over 2 years, no one appears to have found the source of this passage about Honorius' abilities. I've decided it was time to replace it with a citable opinion, & have chosen J.B. Bury's words to replace them. -- llywrch 19:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Next emperor

Before everything else this my comment is protest against myth stupidity which has entered wikipedia. For historian of Roman empire nothing is better of looking who is next emperor after Honorius which has died 15 august 423. If you look today wikipedia ( only english, spanish and portugal. maybe influance of american thinking ? ) next emperor is Valentinian III. Only little historical problem is that he has been crowned emperor on 23 october 424. Now for today wikipedia nobody has been emperor between 15 august 423 and 23 october 424 !!!! This is if nothing else but crazy thinking. In that period there is 2 possibilty who is emperor. This can be Joannes which has de facto ruled or Theodosius II. If we delete Joannes we must delete Romulus Augustus because he is having much poorer claim to crown of him. They both are usurpers, but Joannes has taken crown of dead emperor. In difference of that Romulus Augustus has taken only Italy, not even empire crown because then emperor has still ruled in other loyal province. I am interested now to see if anybody will agree with me that deleting Joannes from empire succession is mistake. If this is not possible I will like to see any real argument why it is not possible to write that next emperor after Honorius is Joannes or Theodosius II. ( this is then short restoration of empire unity ). rjecina 0:53, 13 june 2006 ( CET )

[edit] Google issue

For some reason, this shows up on Google searches with the description "Encyclopedia article which recounts the life of this Roman Emperor in a negative light." (emphasis not mine) Anyone know how to fix this (unless we actually want to appear biased)? Perhaps the phrase "a negative light" is supposed to mean something else, but it ought to be reworded nonetheless... --Lenoxus 02:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

A second check reveals the same thing, but the emphasis has now dropped. Someone really needs to change this page's "Google description" or whatever it's called... --Lenoxus 03:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I just repeated your search, & was surprised at what I saw: in many entries returned by this search, the excerpted text is replaced by a brief comment on the source. I've neve seen this before. All I can assume is that Google is adding new "functinoality". I wrote them a note complaining about this feature bug. -- llywrch 20:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

2 updates: the emperor boldening was for the now-obvious-to-me reason that it was part of my first search, but not my second. (Google emboldens many search terms to help you locate them.) The rest of it is still a mystery, though, and I've raised the question at the Help Desk. Lenoxus " * " 05:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)