Talk:Gens

Additional information on the Gens as a formation studied in early sociology by the likes of Lewis Henry Morgan and Friedrich Engels, for example in Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State (see here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm ) should be included in this article.

The suggestion that the importance of the gens in early sociology be included in this article appears reasonable, but it should be approached with caution not to stray too far from the essential nature of the gens as it related to Roman culture and society. Any detailed discussion should be dealt with under the topic of sociology, or individual studies, or as a separate article. P Aculeius (talk) 00:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

check

please check my edit.100110100 01:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC) estan mal esto no es un GENS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.132.22.186 (talk) 01:01, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The statement labeled dubious in the second paragraph of the section on the social function of the gens was intended to assert that the gentes were far more influential in the development of Roman law and religion than in political areas or the Roman constitution. This is stated in nearly identical terms in the article on the gens in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd Edition. I have revised this paragraph to emphasize the intended meaning, in case a different one was implied. P Aculeius (talk) 00:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Since no additional information has been submitted concerning this topic, and disputing the statement in the source material, can we remove the dubious flag? P Aculeius (talk) 22:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

date of Trojan War

I don't think this is particularly relevant to the article, but if it stays in, the date of the Trojan War needs to have its own citation, as other "traditional" dates are also given: see Dates of the Trojan War on how many there are. The date isn't necessary to the article, as the point is that these genealogies are legendary — maybe only a general sense of the period. My earlier tag was deleted with no correction or explanation. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:11, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I did provide a citation to Eratosthenes (as cited by Michael Wood in The Search for the Trojan War). The DGRBM enabled me to identify the work Wood was citing from as the Chronographia. The edit summary should mention this... did I put it in the wrong place? Obviously, giving a time frame for the period covered by the legendary origins of the gentes was what I had in mind, and why I included the date. I agree, it's a bit awkward, but it seemed like the simplest way to describe the time frame in specific terms. P Aculeius (talk) 03:00, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Do check the link to the Trojan War article, if you haven't had a chance. It lists many dates based on ancient sources; the one from Herodotus is the one that I've heard most often — which doesn't mean I'd go with that one, only that there are many "traditional" dates. Maybe simply a reference by century? — "traditionally dated from the late 13th or early 12th century BC", since as I understand your point it's that these are lost in the mists of time. Thanks for your patience. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the reference to the end of the Trojan War was prompted by Livy's description of Italy at the time Aeneas landed with the Trojan refugees. Book I of Livy's history of Rome mentions a number of gentes which traditionally existed between that time and the foundation of Rome. The idea was to be specific if there was a reasonable basis for doing so, and the prehistory of Rome is pretty much bookended by the fall of Troy. Varro's date for the foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. is well-known, as is Eratosthenes' date for the fall of Troy. In both cases, there are other calculations and estimates, but these were the most widely accepted, and it makes more sense to give two years than one year and one rough estimate of a whole century.

Wood says, "as for the date of the war itself, most calculations varied between around 1250 BC in Herodotus and 1135 BC in Ephorus; the earliest was 1334 BC in Doulis of Samos, the most influential the date arrived at by the librarian of Alexandria, Eratosthenes (1184-1183 BC)." Wood explains that most of these were based on the date of the first Olympiad, using genealogies, which could be quite accurate, although the Parian marble, which Wood describes in detail, and which dates the sack of Troy to June 5, 1209, seems to be based on a misunderstanding of a line in the Little Iliad. Eratosthenes was an expert chronologer, and according to the Trojan War article, the current thinking on the ruins supposed to relate to the Troy of the Iliad places the city's destruction about the 1180's, agreeing with Eratosthenes. So I think it makes sense to use his date.

Of course, the date is really incidental to the article; it's there to place the span of time in context. If anybody wants more information about the date, they can just click the link to Trojan War, and see a longer discussion (although it doesn't really say anything about the various dates suggested by ancient historians; it just says what date each person proposed). P Aculeius (talk) 01:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see: your point is the traditional Roman dating, as in Livy and Varro, and how Romans used genealogy to create their place in history as heirs to the Trojans. On this subject, I'm very fond of T.P. Wiseman's “Legendary Geneaologies in Late-Republican Rome,” Greece & Rome 21 (1974) 153–164, but it would probably not be easy for you to obtain if you don't have access to a university library, as I don't seem to find it online even in limited preview. If I find something on Google Books that encapsulates this in a way that might be useful to you, I'll pass it on. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Since the date does have a source, and is a traditional date for the event (even if other dates, mostly close to the one in Eratosthenes, do exist), can we remove the citation flag? P Aculeius (talk) 22:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Linking Dates

The Wikipedia Manual of Style does not recommend linking to years unless they pertain closely to the subject matter of the article (see Wikipedia:Linking). In this article, the dates are merely being used for illustrative purposes. Additionally, two of the three dates linked in the most recent edit are to articles that don't yet exist. I don't see any compelling reason for linking to these years in this article... if you click on 379 B.C. you might find a mention of the destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera, but you'd find that more easily by clicking on those words instead of the year, and the article on 379 won't talk about gentes in general, so it isn't really relevant to the subject matter of this article. I think that the dates should be delinked. P Aculeius (talk) 22:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Establishment of the gens

"However, the establishment of the gens cannot long predate the adoption of hereditary surnames." Why? There are examples of many cultures where the tribe was divided into clearly defined clans, without establishing a formal name for everybody. --Jidu Boite (talk) 08:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. ("Surnames" here is probably a misleading term anyway, since we're really talking about the gens name.) I'm guessing that the answer to your question would point to some things that were characteristically (which is not to say "uniquely") Roman. If you find anything on what underlies this assumption, please post. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that there could be circumstances in which a clan might exist without a hereditary surname. But if conventional scholarship about the gens is mistaken, there needs to be some documentation for that proposition.

As for the use of the term surname, even though the word cognomen translates as surname and the word nomen is simply name, in form and function it was the nomen gentilicum that most closely approximated the meaning of the word surname in English; that is, a hereditary name indicating membership in a particular family and/or descent from a common ancestor, distinct from and complementary to the personal name chosen by someone's parents. It was an indispensable part of the nomenclature, at least before imperial times.

Cognomina, however, were exceptional in early Roman history, when they were used primarily by the patricians; they could be either personal or hereditary, and could be bestowed or abandoned at any time. That is, the cognomen was not an indispensable part of the nomenclature, and might or might not indicate relationships between individuals. In fact, the word cognomen originally referred to the nomen gentilicum, when the word nomen still referred to the personal name.

Livy uses this meaning in Book I of his history, referring to the adoption of the cognomen Silvius by the royal house of Alba Longa. For that matter, throughout his history, Livy frequently ignores the cognomina of many individuals, which creates some confusion in distinguishing between members of the same gens. Of course, in other cases he uses the cognomen alone without a nomen, but the point is that the cognomen was neither essential to the Roman name, nor did it have the same function as surnames do in modern times, unlike the nomen gentilicum. P Aculeius (talk) 01:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Italics or not

P Aculeius removed most instances of italics from the article, noting, "No longer italicizing 'gens, stirps, praenomen, nomen, cognomen' etc. except when used 'as words.' Fixed some links to individual gentes established in WP since 2009." While I appreciate the desire for internal consistency—which is what I was also after when italicizing some of these items that were still roman—I'm not sure we should default to roman. Looking at the relevant portion of the Manual of Style, I find that "Wikipedia prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialized English" but that "loanwords or phrases that have common use in English, however—praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps, e.g., i.e.—do not require italicization." So there's the nub: we need to figure out which, if any of these terms, are in regular English use among non-specialists. As a preliminary foray, I'll see which words are included in the New Oxford Dictionary (1998), not because it's the authority we necessarily need to refer to, but because it happens to be on my desk and is reassuringly hefty.

Included:

• gens, pl. gentes
• praenomen (no plural listed)
• nomen (no plural listed)
• cognomen (no plural listed)

Not included:

• stirps

So this is interesting: if we were to follow the New Oxford Dictionary, stirps and stirpes should still be italicized passim, but P Aculeius' move is otherwise vindicated. What do others think? Should we see what Merriam-Webster and so on have to say? Or I am off-base in referring to dictionaries to start with? All the best, Q·L·1968 ☿ 00:42, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

This should be a matter of common sense, not finding proof that one way is preferred by the right authority. When I started writing all these articles on gentes, it seemed more important to be technical with style and treat all Latin words that might not be familiar to English-speaking audiences as non-English words. But after a couple of dozen articles I began to sense that the constant repetition of italics for words that aren't really that complex was more of a distraction than it was worth.

Even though stirps isn't a common term in English, it is used on occasion for legal purposes when describing methods of inheritance. Of course, then it's often used as part of a Latin phrase, per stirpes, in which case italics are quite reasonable. But that's not required, and I believe the term is also used a bit in biology, although I don't know what the preference for italics is in that case.

To be honest the word isn't used much in the gens articles, since even the source material rarely mentions the concept by name. But since the language tends to be formulaic to begin with, sometimes the word can be useful in alternation with "branch." At any rate, I stopped italicizing all of these words in the gens articles years ago, and occasionally when I edit one of the older ones that still uses italics, I remove them, except in instances where the words are being referred to as words. That in itself can be a bit of a fuzzy concept at times... but my general feeling is that none of these words is sufficiently "non-English" to justify italicizing it on every occasion that it appears. P Aculeius (talk) 05:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Including

Regarding P Aculeius's reversion of my edit here: 1. I take the point about not using edit summaries to insult other editors. I apologize for that.

2. "Including" does not imply any limitation. "But not limited to" is a lawyers' redundancy. It is unnecessary in everyday writing in that it adds no meaning to the sentence. Merriam-Webster provides this definition:

"Simple Definition of include

to have (someone or something) as part of a group or total : to contain (someone or something) in a group or as a part of something

to make (someone or something) a part of something"

Note that "part of" is used throughout. "Including" by definition implies that a list is incomplete.

3. I also removed "technically" because it isn't doing anything in the sentence. Freedmen were not part of the gentes. The point is made later in the sentence that they became indistinguishable within a few generations. The sentence does not say in what way they were a part of the gentes before this, except to say that they weren't.

4. I also removed "it should be noted that" per Wikipedia:It should be noted. Ground Zero | t 14:32, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

With respect to "including", the word certainly does imply limitation when used with a list. If you say, "participants were asked to choose from a range of colours, including red, yellow, green, blue, and violet," you imply that orange is not part of that range, nor are black, white, grey, pink, brown, or others. While you could choose to interpret "including" as not limiting the class to the following items, that wouldn't be the most natural interpretation. More importantly, whether a group of things is or isn't limited to the ones listed is at best ambiguous, which is precisely why it was phrased the way it was: to make certain that the reader would not erroneously believe that it was limited to the listed reasons.

I take mild exception to the implication that "lawyers" pointlessly use redundant language. As a lawyer myself (although not one who writes contracts including the kind of language you complain of), I can tell you that lawyers in general are little better or worse than the population as a whole when it comes to wasting words. But any good writer (and many good lawyers are trained as writers) should recognize potential ambiguity, and make reasonable attempts to avoid it. In this particular instance, "including" introduces a list of reasons for the assumption of gentile names by the Romans and other peoples of ancient Italy. That list may account for the great majority of names, and might reasonably be interpreted as a comprehensive list, but for language clarifying that it does not include every imaginable reason.

The use of "technically" here is to distinguish between a fine distinction of Roman law and actual practice (both ancient and modern). Particularly in the early period, freedmen were treated much as gentiles, although in fact they were clientes. The fact that their descendants might be indistinguishable from actual gentiles is a different matter, as for historical purposes the freedmen are included with the gentiles in articles about the gentes, and treated as though they belonged to the same family (which they did, to an extent). This is the case even when the two families can be distinguished, although one of several practical reasons for doing so is that historians are often unable to tell whether someone was a freedman or the descendant of a freedman.

I should point out that Wikipedia:It should be noted is an essay, not a policy (as it clearly states). It strongly suggests that sentences including this phrase be reworded, but if you're going to do this, you must be careful not to change the meaning of the sentence in the process. In this instance the sentence would be better reworded; but the edit you made left the word "several" at the beginning, effectively wiping out the purpose of distinguishing the content of that sentence from the preceding paragraph. It would make sense to begin the sentence with "however", but not with "several." I'll go ahead and reword it. P Aculeius (talk) 15:42, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I do not agree with your interpretation of "including": orange could very much be a part of the range of colours because "including" is not limiting - it includes, but does not exclude. If you want to limit the choice, you can write more simply and clearly, "participants were asked to choose a colour: red, yellow, green, blue, or violet". No need for the extra words there. Between your interpretation and Merriam-Webster's definition, I'll stick with M-W.

Lawyers write redundantly for a good reason. For 25 years, as an economist, I have read and helped develop tax law working with lawyers in government. Tax law and contracts use redundancy to squeeze out any possible shadow of ambiguity when being interpreted by a judge, and because of that, they are bloody awful to read. For a general readership, like that of Wikipedia, we should aim for something that is more readable. Ad an aside, I would also say that economists are, in general, not very good at writing for nontechnical audiences, but they also write in a particular style for reasons specific to their profession.

You pack a lot of implied meaning into "technically" there. I didn't get that out of the paragraph as you have written it, and I expect that few readers would. So I don't think you are achieving your intent. It would warrant some explanation for lay readers. Regards, Ground Zero | t 20:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not a matter of which interpretation I prefer, but whether people might reasonably interpret it to mean the opposite of what you intend it to. If that's a real possibility (and it clearly is in this case), then irrespective of how you think people should interpret it, clarifying language is appropriate. When omitting a word or phrase creates ambiguity, it's clearly not redundant. As far as "technically" goes, I was simply explaining why I felt that the word was necessary here. I don't expect people to parse all the possible reasons when reading it; only to note that the distinction is a very fine one, as whether a person was a member of the gens indicated by his nomen cannot always be determined, and could not always be determined even in antiquity. Legal distinctions and practical behaviour often diverge, and always have. P Aculeius (talk) 21:39, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, no, we should assume that people will understand the meaning of ordinary English words, like "including". We do not need to drag the text down through redundancy when the meaning of the word is clear. See again the dictionary definition. Here is a more detailed explanation from Get It Write Online. It says, in part, "We should use the verb include to preface a list that is not exhaustive.... If we read the definitions of include in reputable dictionaries... we see that the verb "include" is in no way synonymous with the verb "are".... We should not add the phrase "but not limited to" when we use either the verb include or the verbal including because to do so will create a redundancy: the idea that what is being spoken about is "not limited to what is actually said" is inherent in the meaning of the word include itself. The only instance in which the phrase "includes but is not limited to" is acceptable is in a legal document* or a piece of writing that seeks to resemble one. Legal documents* are often intentionally and excessively redundant in their attempt to prevent every conceivable misreading of a passage."

Even in the legal profession, there are those who will say that "but not limited to" is a pleonasm in legal writing. See Law Prose. There are, of course, differing views, but we are not aiming for legal writing here in any case.

The issue of whether "including" can be reasonably interpreted to mean something that dictionaries says it doesn't can be avoided by replacing "including" with "such as", which unambiguously introduces a non-exhaustive list of examples, so I will make that change.

As far as "technically" goes, if you feel you must have the code in there for yourself and don't think that readers needs to understand what you mean by it, well, leave it in. As long as you understand what it means, then I guess it's okay. Ground Zero | t 21:47, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

"Such as" is shorter and simpler than "including (but not limited to)" and it means exactly the same thing. It is not my opinion that the latter is redundant, but the opinion of the three reputable sources that I have provided. What possible reason is there to keep longer, more complicated text? And please address this on the talk page instead of reverting. Ground Zero | t 22:40, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

The definition of "include" doesn't tell you how to interpret each phrase using the word in different contexts. In fact, if you read the definition, it's quite clear that it applies to a finite list of things, even if it doesn't necessarily imply one. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary gives: "1. To confine; shut up; enclose. 2. To comprehend or comprise, as the whole comprised a part; contain; embrace." So it seems perfectly natural that people might interpret a statement that a set of things "includes" A, B, C, D, and E to be limited to those things, rather than merely giving them as examples among many other possible things. You're asserting that your interpretation is the only acceptable one, which isn't the case. That said, "such as" is probably simpler and clearer. I'm just going to go with that. Greater precision isn't required for this sentence to mean what I wanted it to. P Aculeius (talk) 01:02, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Is the Indian Jati sufficiently analogous to the gens to be included in the "see also" section?

A "see also" section is generally used to draw readers' attention to closely related articles that may or may not have been mentioned or briefly discussed in the body of an article. The question is whether the Indian concept of the Jati is closely related to that of the gens. Hölderlin2019 says that it is cognate with the word "gens", which is certainly possible (I haven't investigated the etymology), but if so the connection is remote, presumably thousands of years since the words shared a common root.

The main question is whether the two concepts are analogous. A gens was a kinship-based group claiming a common descent and surname, observing private rites and rituals, and in theory, governing the conduct of its members through private laws and disciplines—although there are very few examples of the latter known from Roman history, apart from discipline imposed by a paterfamilias upon his own household, and scholars now seem to doubt whether there was really any kind of practical authoritarian structure, at least in historical times.

According to our article on Jatis, they are described as "sub-castes", closed communities that, unlike Roman gentes, practice endogamous marriage and generally avoid social interaction with other sub-castes. There is nothing in the article to suggest that they claimed descent from a common ancestor; and while their members may have shared common traits, customs, or religious rites, there is nothing about private rites or rituals, or an internal hierarchical structure imposing private laws or discipline across the entire group (either theoretical or practical).

Roman gentes always claimed descent from a single ancestor, although it was possible for the same surname to have arisen in multiple places, and some of the people who bore it might be the descendants of freedmen of the original gens, and not technically a part of it. They were not closed communities; they were not restricted to one or two occupations; there were no taboos against interaction with other gentes; they did not practice endogamous marriage (marriage between two members of the same gens was rare); for most of Roman history they and their individual members could move up or down in social status (the initial distinction between patricians and plebeians does not seem to have been an absolute bar to upward mobility in the early Republic, and to the extent that it was a socio-political barrier between all patrician and plebeian gentes, it had little practical value outside the period from roughly 450 to 350 BC).

So as far as I can see, the only practical similarities between the gens and the Jati is that they were both communities of individuals sharing surnames and some degree of kinship or social status, although each of these also differed significantly between the two. There are many other traits that appear to distinguish them, and Roman gentes seem to have more in common with Scottish or Irish clans—which would not justify the inclusion of those topics in the "see also" section, in my opinion, or that of every other surname-sharing kinship grouping from modern cultures. I fail to see any special reason to include Jatis but exclude the others, and no particular reason why any of these or other similar concepts in cultures around the world should be in the "see also" section. P Aculeius (talk) 14:52, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with P Aculeius's arguments. Addition of "Jati" (to the exclusion of much more similar concepts such as Scottish or Irish clans or Batak margas) in the "see also" section would be an etymological fallacy. –Austronesier (talk) 10:59, 3 December 2019 (UTC)