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There is a request, submitted by DDMS123 (talk), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Misplaced Pages.

The rationale behind the request is: "Important".


Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2022

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Asalamu alaykum I want it to be known that Tiberias actually wasn't adopted. ITalexis (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. MadGuy7023 (talk) 16:27, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

"considered one of the greatest leaders in human history"

I don't find that claim in the cited Britannica source and I believe the rest of the lead fairly summarizes his legacy without appeal to such a vague standard as "greatness," in accordance with MOS:PEACOCK. 67.180.143.89 (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Britannica says "Augustus was one of the great administrative geniuses of history," which seems close. But I'm not wedded to the sentence. Furius (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

cognomen

As a child he was given the cognomen Thurinus, either in memory of the origins of his ancestors or because it was shortly after his birth that his father Octavius won a victory over fugitive slaves in Thurina . . . He is often called Thurinus as an insult in the letters of Mark Antony, to which he merely replied that he was surprised using his old name was thought to be an insult.’ Suetonius, Augustus 7. 1

From: Augustus:First Emperor of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy (pg 17) The king of ori (talk) 20:21, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's in the article. What's your point? Furius (talk) 22:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
An edit on the first line to add it there The king of ori (talk) 06:29, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Even if Suetonius' information is correct, which is questionable, he wasn't "born" Thurinius, so the name does not belong there. Furius (talk) 11:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Greatest or successful?

Was Augustus one of the greatest leaders in human history or one of the most successful leaders in human history? SpicyMemes123 (talk) 12:52, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

FA status

This article was made FA in 2007: standards and expectations have changed a lot since then, and I'm not sure it would pass an FAC today. It's not a bad article by any means, but there's a couple of problems that worry me:

  • A lot of the article is cited directly and uncritically to ancient sources, particularly Suetonius. This isn't good by Misplaced Pages's standards (WP:PRIMARY) but also ignores that these sources are not straightforward recountings of fact, nor are they contemporary with Augustus.
  • The quality of sources is sometimes not particularly high. The article leans heavily on Goldsworthy's pop-history books; he's an excellent scholar, but his academic focus is on the Roman army, and these are not really academic works. Elsewhere it very heavily uses a single biography by Eck. Some web sources (e.g. Live Science, ZME Science, Vox and the AP) seem quite far below the line of what we expect in an article like this.
  • Other sources, particularly Scullard, Starr and Syme, are now getting really quite dated. Given how much has changed on our understanding of the Late Republic and Augustan culture since 1990 or so, this is a concern for comprehensiveness.
  • The "Further Reading" section is massive and includes some very well-known works, but none of these are integrated into the article. Again, a worry for comprehensiveness.
  • Some of the writing, grammar etc isn't great: His father died in 59 BC when he was four years old jumped out at me as sloppy phrasing, for example. See in particular the sections on "Stability and staying power". The formatting of sources is highly inconsistent.
  • There are a few straightforward errors of fact: (Augustus chose Imperator ("victorious commander") to be his first name, for instance. A lot of sections are only very sporadically cited.
  • For comprehensiveness, we need much more on Augustus's legacy and reception in post-classical politics.

There's a few other smaller issues, but these are the big ones for me. I'm thinking of starting an FAR: what would others' views be here? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 15:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

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