Talk:Thebaid (Latin poem)
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Homer, a writer? : P I though he was an aedo.
- attributed by early writers to Homer... does not mean that Homer was a writer but that early writers (others) believed in his authorship, (that is Homer's) --Francisco Valverde 09:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Need to wikify references
The article has been enlarged quite considerably lately, but I believe the references should be wikify acording to the footnoting, see Wikipedia:Footnotes and the external linking, see Wikipedia:External links. In this way we could verify better the sources. Thanks for the great job! --Francisco Valverde 16:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Two Thebaids
I've separated them out, since they are two quite differennt poems. For the other, see Thebaid (Greek poem). This one could still do with improvements to the grammar and punctuation. Andrew Dalby 20:05, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Statius, original research, and Biography Project
I'm considering whether to try to work on Wikipedia a lot, and chose Statius as a test case. In <The Encyclopedia of Fantasy> edited by John Clute and John Grant, I referred to Statius's <Thebaid> as "modern fantasy's first true analogue. ... It is a story of holocaust, and to write it he subjected his entire fictional world to the dictates of a consistent, intentional fantasy. He was the first Western writer to do so." (This is not public-domain text, but Clute, who controls the copyright, is usually pretty willing for stuff to be quoted. That said, I'm not sure what his current e-mail address is.)
Now, it's clear to me that I can't put this into either the main Statius article or the Thebaid article because it's "original research". I can cite no sources for my claim, which is based primarily on my reading of the book itself. Furthermore, essential elements of this claim are controversial; Brian Stableford has more recently written another encyclopaedia of fantasy in which he argues that the approach to defining "fantasy" on which Clute generally, and I here, rely is entirely wrong.
So why do I bring it up?
1. It's not at all clear to me how to proceed in this particular case. Stableford doesn't refer to Statius, after all, so it's not as though I can explicitly cite an opposing POV. So do I just ignore the whole topic?
2. If I do just ignore it, then there are clearly limits to what I can offer Wikipedia. I'm fundamentally a generalist. In those rare cases where I do gather enough knowledge to offer something that's actually new in Wikipedia's current state, I tend to form opinions. So...
3. My main point, which the article already expresses to a considerable extent, is that the 1911 <Encyclopedia Britannica> article used as the source for the Wikipedia entry on Statius himself is violently in conflict with all this. The EB article is, in essence, taking one side in a dispute that has existed for a few decades (in other words, the issue wasn't controversial when the EB was written, but is now). The sides in this dispute run roughly as follows:
A. Statius was a despicable lickspittle of a poet, but he could write some really good Latin, and anyway his <Silvae> preserve a lot of useful info about first-century Rome. The most prominent recent advocate of this view was D. W. T. Vessey, for example in his introduction to A. D. Melville's Oxford World Classics translation of the <Thebaid> (in which he goes on at some length about the poem's flaws), or in his book <Statius and the Thebaid>. I remember A. Hardie's <Statius and the Silvae> as following a similar path, but have not in fact read either "Statius and" book in full. The 1911 EB article is a not quite fully developed version of side A.
B. Statius may have written, in his <Silvae>, some repulsive flattery, but in the <Thebaid> he's got a serious purpose, and he works in serious ways to accomplish it. This is, obviously, my view: "It is a story of holocaust". It's also the view of William J. Dominik in <The Mythic Voice of Statius>, which I must have looked at when doing my relevant research ten years ago but do not now remember, as cited by a <Bryn Mawr Classical Review> article available at <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1995/95.04.06.html> (or as offered by his own BMCR review of Melville's translation, focusing largely on Vessey's introduction and at <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1993/04.03.20.html>), and of Frederick Ahl in his treatment of Statius for <Ancient Writers: Greek and Roman>. Note please (as the first BMCR review cited notes) that this position requires *radical mistrust* of things Statius wrote.
Because the Wikipedia entry on Statius himself is a "Biography Project" entry, I can't comment on it; I can only edit it, or do nothing. Which is why this long comment is here instead. Editing seems fundamentally beside the point with the 1911 article. First of all, it's a unitary work, that article. Do I simply bracket the entire long discussion of Statius's life with something like "We know that Silver Latin poets did not always tell us the truth, but if you choose to take everything Statius wrote literally, here's his biography" ?
Similarly, do I invade the brush-off the 1911 writer gives to the epics with some version of side B ? Which is entirely out of keeping with the rest of the article.
Much confused,
Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com <http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> where I've long meant to put a Statius page, but so far have not.
- Confusion can be reduced! If you have published your ideas in print, they would no longer be (in Wikipedia's terms) original research. You can outline them in the article, and, where appropriate, cite your publication. I do this often. It is not the same thing as putting in links to your own website, which Wikipedia doesn't much like.
- You only come into conflict with possible copyright problems if you quote yourself at great length verbatim, but surely you can work around that.
- If the EB material is not only outdated but also POV, then revise or rewrite boldly. No rule states that the EB is to be respected, it just served as a starting-point.
- You can comment, if you want, whether or not the article belongs to a project. Your reaction supports my personal view that those big banners at the top of talk pages are a bad thing. But just scroll down and comment away. Better still, edit the article.
- Hope this helps! Andrew Dalby 18:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
