Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Megullia Dotata

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus to delete. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Megullia Dotata

Megullia Dotata (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Boccaccio is not an authority on Roman history. There is no reason given to suppose that this is not Boccaccio's fiction, or a Medieval fiction he credulously repeats. A history & practice for which only Boccaccio can be named as an authority belongs in the article on the book in which it appears, if anywhere. This article is only masquerading as a legitimate historical topic. Wareh 01:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• I am also nominating the following related pages because they also have no credible historical sources and should be mentioned in an article on a book by Boccaccio if at all:

Hippo, a Greek woman (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Leaena (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Gaia Cyrilla (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Orithya (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (includes plagiarism from the linked Amazon website as a "second source")

(The articles Lampedo‎ and Marpesia might be worth including here on further examination.)

Wareh 01:47, 1 December 2007 (UT

• Weak Keep. There are two sources in the Megullia Dotata including one purporting to be in Adam, Alexander; Roman antiquities: or An account of the manners and customs of the Romans, p. 406; 1842 New York; New York public library 480576A. This is a minor reference stating that she owned 50,000 asses. However, the Boccaccio book was a collection of famous biographies of women both real and mythical. It has been reprinted as recently as 2003 by Harvard University Press. [1]. I am inclined to keep these pending further research. Capitalistroadster 02:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. If kept, the articles would need to be extensively rewritten to make it a lot clearer that these are legendary rather than historical figures and to base the articles, not on Boccaccio, but on the ancient sources that he drew upon, frequently adding to the stories while bollixing them up in various ways. (I seem to recall that the ultimate source of the Megullia Dotata story is Valerius Maximus, and, if I'm not mistaken, Boccaccio's "Gaia Cyrilla" is a garbling of the "Gaia Caecilia" in his sources.) Megullia Dotata, Hippo, and Leaena are probably not worth stand-alone articles in any case; and because of the uncritical and insufficiently researched nature of the others as they stand—the linking to the Gaia article in Gaia Cyrilla is particularly egregious, since the name has nothing to do with the Greek word, being merely the feminine counterpart of the Roman name Gaius—I think it best to delete them without prejudice to the writing of acceptable articles on the topics in the future. Deor 02:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep as a group: Appear to be notable after a few google searches. Would like to see more sources in all of them to further verify any information that these include, and its obvious that they all need a lot of work. - Rjd0060 03:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but make clear as our article On Famous Women does that some of the women are of, shall we say, unclear historicity. Megullia Dotato's story, for example, derives at least from Valerius Maximus and the time of Tiberius (long after the Second Punic War, her purported flourishing), so is part of Roman urban legend if nothing else. Obviously we shouldn't be listing fictional people as real, but much of our articles about real people B.C.E. are probably barely more verifiable. --Dhartung | Talk 08:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Megullia Dotata - upon further research I have been able to find several more sources pertaining to ancient Roman weddings where the bride was referred to as a "dotata" (dowry girl) or dotata uxor, meaning the bride was well endowed, or magulla dotata (great fortune). These have been added to the article I started as additional references to the originals.--Doug ^talk 19:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep: The sources for Megullia include Valerius Maximus (I've added a note to the article). It's a pity that Boccaccio's biography in De mulieribus claris is so thin. It seems Megullia's name was a by-word for a rich dowry, so perhaps her name may be notable, even if we can't show that Megullia herself was. Xn4 22:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I seem to have laid an unhelpful emphasis in framing it as fictional vs. historical, when I realized that ancient sources do exist for some of the topics. The point was that the articles we have are not on these topics qua topics represented in our ancient sources. For all we know from the articles Boccaccio invented these people, and, clearly, they were only introduced from an inappropriately Boccaccio-centered view. Of course, if someone wants to take the trouble, as Deor rightly suggests, of basing the articles on completely different sources, reducing the Boccaccio mentions to the marginally important curious fact they are, and moving the articles from garbled titles to correct ones as necessary, that'd be great—that's the standard recipe for making a decent encyclopedia article. I'm stupefied that anyone thinks Hippo, a Greek woman is salvageable, though; it's hard to imagine the article's name & contents in its ideal form; I wonder if this discussion would have been different if Hippo, a Greek woman were the lead example. In any event, I am left in grave doubt that all the articles Doug edited on November 30 will be as inoffensive to Wikipedia's purposes by the end of the year as they were on November 29. Wareh 00:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: My response above was only on Megullia. If I'm asked about Hippo, a Greek woman, then I agree with Wareh that she would really be better as part of our article on De mulieribus claris. Simply being puffed by Boccaccio can't in itself make anyone notable - or, come to that, historical. Of course, some flexibility is needed, and we have thousands of articles on fictional characters. Indeed, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, surprisingly, has a long article on Arthur, while treating him as someone who may or may not have existed! Xn4 03:13, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply. This is an AfD for five articles. I'm no expert bureaucrat around here, but I believe the outcome of discussion could be to keep or delete any combination of the five. Anyway, I suppose if someone else feels the need later to nominate Hippo or Leaena for deletion, the answer to "But there was already a vote to keep it" can be, "That's because silly Wareh confusingly bundled it with perfectly good articles." Wareh 04:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep All The articles provide multiple reliable and verifiable sources to establish notability. I also question the basis of the AfD in and of itself. Any history -- ancient, medieval or modern -- is subject to potential inaccuracies and biases. Ancient Roman histories are no freer from potential errors or bias, and we have no assurance that the current-day versions of what are believed to be ancient histories have not gone through edits and emendations that introduce falsehoods. Unless we restrict ourselves to using original copies of ancient Roman newspapers and magazines, we would have to cut out virtually all historical articles more than a few hundred years old. As stated at WP:V, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." As long as the material is verifiable -- and it is -- the material meets the Wikipedia gold standard. Truth is unverifiable. Alansohn 18:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

  Comment. You seem to misunderstand the basis of the nomination. The problem is not any "inaccuracies and biases" in ancient history. The problem is that someone has got hold of a translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris and is creating articles (and modifying existing ones) as if Boccaccio were the last word in classical scholarship. Simply deleting this fellow's uninformed contributions and starting afresh, where necessary, is preferable to allowing information that's about 600 years out of date to infect a variety of Wikipedia articles. Deor 18:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

  Reply This statement pertaining to Boccaccio is not totally correct, as the main article here shows. In Megullia Dotata there are numerious other references, amoung them being Saint Jerome, Seneca, Cicero, Horace, and other historians. There are also various external links for references. Some of the other articles have various references besides Boccaccio and additional ones can and will be found by others as the articles develop. While there are a couple of articles (i.e. Hippo, a Greek woman and Leaena) that have, at this point in time, only Boccaccio as a reference for "verifiability" - there are others (i.e. Gaia Cyrilla and Orithya) that either now have multiple references or soon will. Keep in mind that while I used Boccaccio as a reference for being verifiable information, I never said that Boccaccio was the last word in classical scholarship. Otherwise I would not have provided the additional numerous references from others and had only Boccaccio for all the articles. Where I can find other references for verifiable information (not necessarily the truth, since I don't know for sure) I then provide that information as well (i.e. Megullia Dotata).--Doug ^talk 19:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

• Merge Gaia Cyrilla to Tanaquil - this I have already done, since I was the originator of Gaia Cyrilla, now realizing this is one and the same person upon further research. Tanaquil has already been an article since 2003. All the necessary references have already been provided - showing (if nothing else) that not only is this a legitimate subject, but it is not just from Boccaccio. I wrote Gaia Cyrilla on good faith not realizing it was Tanaquil and have corrected this by merging. Suggest Gaia Cyrilla be a REDIRECT to Tanaquil after the close of AfD.
  • Keep Leaena - because the murder of the tyrant Hipparchus and her involvement is well referenced by Boccaccio, Pliny, Plutarch and others.
  • Keep Orithya - because she is a famous queen of the Amazons which shows in many references available in university libraries or online.
  • Keep Hippo, a Greek woman - because as Boccaccio's Famous Woman # 53 he points out her notability by the Erythraeans worshipping her for a long time as evidenced by a large tomb honoring her deed. --Doug ^talk 22:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
• Merge with Dowry, as Megullia is simply one example of a richly endowed Roman woman. Wikipedia is not a prosopography, and not all 106 women in Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris are going to get individual directory-style entries... one hopes. Boccaccio is a reference for the legendary reputation of Megullia et al. in C14 Italy, not in Rome. --Wetman 22:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment - The article is about an ancient Roman noblewoman. A dowry is about physical assets of value that a woman brings to a marriage. This particular woman is the daughter of Caeso Tuccius, which probably is Cerialis Tuccius (a consul with C. Cornelius Rarus) of the first century. In any case, Boccaccio speaks of her as an "ancient Roman", not of the early Renaissance time, and that the name was used by the ancient Romans. He refers to the sum of 500,000 coins as a "laughable" amount, since it would be such a small amount in his modern time. Boccaccio says that the amount is so small that not even "an artisan, carpenter, street vendor, or peasant" would marry for so small a dowry. This would be like comparing today of $500,000 to $5,000 (or 500,000 pennies). He is definitely speaking of a time many centuries before his. In ancient Roman law, the term used for a large dowry was uxor dotata. This term and associated information would be good additions to the article dowry since it is not talked about now.--Doug ^talk 17:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the article only has a few sentences about "an ancient Roman noblewoman"--and only translations of Boccaccio are cited for that material. The other citations are for material about dowry in ancient Rome. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Boccaccio used Valerius Maximus as his source for Megullia Dotata. Liber IV in Latin here and English translation here.--Doug ^talk 22:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Megullia Dotata; there aren't enough sources to establish notability. (Only one of the sources cited in the article is specifically about her.) Delete Hippo, a Greek woman (she could be mentioned in De mulieribus claris, I suppose). Keep Leaena; she's actually a notable ancient prostitute (the word usually employed is "courtesan"). Merge Gaia Cyrilla to Tanaquil. Keep Orithya (but consider moving to a plausible transliteration of ancient Greek); surprisingly enough, she's mentioned in Marcus Junianus Justinus' Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, and there are some other ancient sources.

I have to say, though, that I am very sympathetic to Wareh and Deor's position; Doug's contributions tend to be of low quality, and in my experience have included significant amounts of plagiarism. It's gotten to the point where if Doug has contributed a paragraph of more than two sentences, I pick bits out of it and run it through Google. Just today, I found this. I haven't checked any of the nominated articles yet, but given my previous experience with this user I wouldn't be at all surprised if passages have been copied verbatim from other sources. In fact, I notice that Wareh has already told us that some of Orithya is plagiarized from the website used as a source; under such circumstances, it really is safer to delete the articles and to start over. --Akhilleus (talk) 05:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment In principle keep all, as either fictional or historical characters. The nominator really should say why he thinks these should be deleted when we have over a thousand articles on Pokemon figures. But I've had experience of Douggery & agree with Akhilleus it might be better to delete those no one is prepared to go over. Johnbod (talk) 04:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Megullia Dotata. This is about as trivial a personage as is mentioned in the Roman record. This person, whether mythical or real, receives only the briefest of mentions in sources that might be considered reliable. Also, the Notability guidelines call for "significant coverage" in reliable sources. Significant coverage addresses the subject directly and in detail. A brief mention or reference does not constitute significant coverage. The available sources tell us nothing about this Megullia other than that she had a large dowry and that her father may have been Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus. I do not think that every name merely mentioned in ancient sources is notable. Apart from that, the article is poorly written and, as others have noted, would need thorough investigation for plagiarism and accuracy. The article as written, is clearly not completely accurate, because it refers to "Dotata" as a surname when it is clearly a nickname or agnomen. Some of this material (e.g. the illustration of the trend toward large dowries in the late empire) might merit inclusion in the Dowry article after thorough investigation, but Megullia Dotata is not notable enough to remain as a separate entry. I don't know enough about the other articles listed by Wareh to comment on them. Marco polo (talk) 19:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
• Keep all The basic documentation isnt from Boccaccio, but Valerius, an acceptable historical source, as ancient historical sources go. The reason for interest in her is the use in Boccaccio's work, and that is a very good reason for it. Historical figures used in a significant way in really notable literary works by famous authors are notable. DGG (talk) 00:38, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Megullia Dotata. Neither a single-sentence mention in Valerius Maximus nor a two-paragraph life by Boccaccio makes her notable. Most of the article is simply about Roman dowries, and I can't see what an on-topic article would include besides a summary of the (already brief) texts. Delete Hippo, a Greek woman for the same reasons. Redirect Gaia Cyrilla to Tanaquil. For now, I'll say keep Leaena and Orithya; there may be cases for deletion or merging, but dependence on Boccaccio is not the major problem of either article, so they should be discussed separately. EALacey (talk) 21:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete all with no prejudice to someone starting over and writing proper articles. Haukur (talk) 22:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

  Well, I guess we could keep Leaena since EALacey has already cleaned it up to an extent. Haukur (talk) 22:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.