Halotus was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that Halotus was an Ancient Roman royal servant who, despite being a prime suspect in the poisoning of Claudius in 54 AD, was granted royal stewardship by Galba in 68 AD, even when the public was calling for his death?
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Composed offline, may not be 100% relevant to current state of article, but I've tried to fix that when possible.
Is it possible to get an image of Halotus himself, rather than the guy he killed?
Unfortunately, thats all but impossible: he wouldn't have been sculpted, and he was not important enough to be painted, and those are basically the only forms of images of ancient figures.
I know it's not compulsory, but I would like to see a few more internet sources. If for my convenience if nobody else's, because I'm not (and I'm sure many others are not) able to freely obtain all the books sourced.
I would.... but there is basically nothing reliable to be found on him. I'll look, though.
He was granted royal procuratorship - Why not say he was granted "stewardship", since that's what it links too. Chances are there's a good reason for this, but I just thought I'd raise it :)
I'm quoting Suetonius; procuratorship is basically the same thing, but if its what Suetonius is calling it, then thats what it would have been.
This also comes up in the aftermath section, and then in the quote used, the word "stewardship" (rather then procuratorship is used). So think about this...
Little is known about Halotus' personal life, and few details relating to his family and heritage are known, other than that he was of Roman ancestry. (Life section) - this is a stubby sentence...either say more about it (not really possible in this case) or merge it with another paragraph.
Done
The life section could do with some extra wikilinking.
Done - 3 more links.
Ref 3 - Does it discuss Halotus/Claudius, or food tasting in general. Latter seems more likely...
The latter, but, then again, I suppose it indirectly relates to Halotus in a way.
The last sentence of the life section (dealing with castration and other enjoyable pasttimes) is poorly punctuated, with way too many commas. Example: **During the era that Halotus lived in, prohibited sexual contact among royalty and servants, guards and or slaves was not uncommon, in many parts of the world, and it was thought that male castration would prevent this - 4 commas, where you could use a few less and word it a bit better:
Prohibited sexual contact among royalty, servants, guards and slaves was not uncommon in many parts of the world during Halotus' era, and it was thought that male castration would prevent this from taking place.
Done - replaced with your better-worded sentence.
1st sentence of poisoning section should have the dates wikilinked...although if there's dispute, I'm not how to about it...maybe have 12-13October...
Done
2nd sentence again needs a reword, try something like:
It is possible that Claudius actually died of natural causes[7][I], as the manner of poisoning, and the type of poison used, remains unclear.[6]
Done
Ref 8 should appear after the comma, not after the closed bracket.
Done
2nd paragraph of poisoning sections feels somewhat deja vu ish - I get the feeling the article itself, and particuarly these sections, could be trimmed a bit, though I'm not sure how right now :)
A few of the refs (I'm saying this after clicking ref 15) contain very minimal information. If you own the book, surely you could use more, or if you found it another way, could do try some more research? It would be nice to at least have page references...
I could ref several of the statements like 5 times, its just that some refs, like ref 15, for instance, have that little extra bit of information not found in any of the other refs, so, yeah....
Other, more specific details about the poisoning have always been in dispute, as well. Change to (remove the last bit):
Other, more specific details about the poisoning have always been in dispute.
Done