Talk:Massacre of the Ninth Legion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

↓    Skip to table of contents    ↓

This article was nominated for deletion on 2008-01-24. The result of the discussion was keep.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject United Kingdom, an attempt to better organise information in articles related to the United Kingdom. For more information, visit the project page.
???	This article has not yet received a quality rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. To participate, improve this article or visit the project page for more information.

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information and associated task forces: This article is not currently associated with a task force. To tag it for one or more task forces, please add the task force codes from the template instructions to the template call.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Massacre of the Ninth Legion article.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

Contents 1 Factual accuracy disputed, proposed for deletion 2 Rewrite, suggested move

[edit] Factual accuracy disputed, proposed for deletion

This article is historically nonsense. The entire historical record of this incident consists of the following:

"The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his troops, and destroyed all his infantry. Cerialis escaped with some cavalry into the camp, and was saved by its fortifications." Tacitus, Annals 14.32.

The stuff about the troops marching for days, being "tired, hungry and on edge", marching through woods, being attacked from both sides by war chariots, and being easy to break up when marching as a column, is fiction, invented for the sake of a bit of action on a sensationalist TV programme. The incident does not merit it's own article, merely a line in the articles on Boudica and Quintus Petilius Cerialis. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but where the hell is your evidence to disprove me? - Trip —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trip Johnson (talk • contribs) 17:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I gave you the ancient source, I quoted from it, I gave you a link to it so you could read it in context. You, apparently, are too lazy even to read what I gave you, and then accuse me of not giving you any evidence? I don't care how many TV documentaries you've seen, if you're not prepared to read the sources, which are nearly all online in reliable translations, you have no business editing articles on ancient history, much less creating them. --Nicknack009 (talk) 21:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Listen to me buddy, all that thing says is "The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his troops, and destroyed all his infantry". What gives you the right to go around placing deletion tags on things when a documentary, all information and the people presenting it were historians is far more accurate and detailed than a website that anybody can edit? YOU, apparently, are too thick to see what I am getting at, you have no solid historical background evidence to disprove what I got from a historian presented program. Nowhere in that source does it say the Romans were met in pitched battle, if they were the rebels would have most likely have been defeated. Let me repeat again, that the source you gave me is on an editable website, and editable websites are not reliable. If you are supposed to be an admin, then start acting like one, instead of bashing every article you come across just because it doesn't suit your reading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trip Johnson (talk • contribs) 16:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Tacitus's Annals contain all the genuine information that exists on this incident. Anything in your TV show that isn't in Tacitus was made up by the writers of the TV show and is not historically accurate. If you cannot grasp this, you have no business editing articles on ancient history. I am not an admin, just an editor who knows what he's talking about and doesn't get everything he knows from the TV. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Im not going to waste my time trying to put fact through to someone blinded by what they believe to be fact. Do you honestly believe a Roman historian would admit that 5,000 of Rome's best troops were faced in pitched battle and beaten by a rabble? I hardly think so, its like trying to get a pro-patriotic American to admit that the War of 1812 was a draw (no offence to any other Americans).

History is based on sources. In this case Tacitus is the only source. Everything else is wishful thinking and fiction. Oh, and sign your comments. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There is more than just one Roman historian. And Battlefield Britain is presented by HISTORIANS, who used Roman military history records. (82.28.237.200 (talk) 20:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC))

There are two ancient historians who wrote of Boudica's revolt, the Roman Tacitus (in his Agricola and Annals) and the Greco-Roman Cassius Dio (in his Roman History). These sources are helpfully linked to from Boudica, so you can read them yourself and see what they say and what they don't say. The defeat of the 9th legion is only covered in Tacitus' Annals. Battlefield Britain is presented by Peter and Dan Snow, who are not historians, but even if they were, they could only use the same sources as the rest of us. The writers of the show used Tacitus and Cassius Dio, plus a hefty dose of dramatic license for the reconstructions. Those reconstructions are not historical sources. Just because it says something on TV, that doesn't make it true. --Nicknack009 (talk) 21:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm really not in the mood to argue with a teenager. Delete the goddamn article if it makes you feel better and powerful. (Trip Johnson (talk) 16:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Rewrite, suggested move

It's been decided to keep the article, so I've rewritten it more factually. It occurs to me that a better article could be made if we move it to "Siege of Camulodunum" or something similar. The defeat of the 9th could then be treated as the final engagement of of a larger event, and more could be made of the archaeology - the temple, the broken tombstones, the destruction layers and so on. Any thoughts? --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)