Talk:Proconsul/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Llywrch (talk · contribs) 16:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have my comments about this nomination up shortly. -- llywrch (talk) 16:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

llywrch's comments

First off, I need to state that I usually only take on a GA review when I believe the article either is worthy of that classification, or is close enough that with some work it could be considered fairly a Good Article. I do this because contributors to Wikipedia suffer enough abuse from other editors, as well as neglect from the PTB, that negative criticism, no matter if it is offered in a constructive manner, can lead to discouraging productive & valuable editors from further contributions. So please keep that in mind as you read my following comments.

Secondly, I am not an expert in Classical History; I'm just an amateur who has read a lot & tried to keep his facts straight. So some of what I may say below may be wrong. But I have read a fair amount in Classical History -- both primary & secondary sources -- so I would say there is some validity in my impression that this article needs a lot more work & research before it truly is GA.

A first pass did show the lead of this article does summarize the topic nicely -- omitting the defects I am about to list below. However, two general defects are clear.

The section "Roman Republic" needs more links. For example, Publilius needs a link in order to identify him: my copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary lists 3 individuals with that name; there are 8 known consuls with that gentilicum; & the comprehensive encyclopedia Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft lists 29. The term "Lex Sempronia" is another that needs linking, or at least a definition in the text. There were more words I noticed that should have been linked, & were I not reviewing this article for a GA I would have done so.
This article appears to depend too heavily on one work: Carnes Lord, Proconsuls: Delegated Political-Military Leadership from Rome to America Today. As good as that book may be, articles that rely heavily on one source tend to be unbalanced & incomplete in how they handle their subject. This imbalance shows in the sections dealing with the modern use of the word "proconsul": nowhere is it made clear that "proconsul" is not an official title in modern society, but an unofficial label applied to people in official positions who have either been granted or assumed extraordinary powers. As it is a word from Roman times it has mental associations with empires, which was a positive connotation in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, but a negative one currently. And as obvious as that last sentence was, there is no equivalent statement in this article.
I feel this reliance on Carnes Lord effects the section "In leadership theory" severely. Lord is cited there as if he is stating objective facts, not explaining a model of leadership theory. There may be some validity in comparing leadership or management styles to the historical image of a Roman proconsul; but I would like to see what Lord's peers have to say on this matter before I make a firm decision.

Now the sections I looked at most closely were those about the historical usage, & I noticed the following omissions:

There is almost no mention of how proconsuls were selected. While Publilius' case illustrates one means that was common during the Republic -- known as prorogation -- the other method which was used under both the Republic & the Empire was to draw lots, or sortition. Richard Talbot, The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984) devotes several pages to this (pp. 347-353), & any article that touches on Roman administration would be stronger using that work.
According to the article in my copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, proconsuls were assigned 5 lictors. This is a very important fact: by using a lictor in an action (e.g., sending a message, executing a command), the proconsul was acting explicitly as an agent of the state. The directed actions of a lictor had serious consequences.
The provinces of the Empire were not divided into "Imperial" & "Senatorial" realms, but "Imperial" & "Public" (Latin: publicae provinciae or provinciae populi Romani), according to F. Millar (Ancient World, 20 (1989), pp. 93ff). While this is somewhat of a technical & esoteric point -- I only learned of it recently -- using those phrases does make the article more accurate.
About proconsular provinces. Senators in the imperial service followed a career path of responsibilities that has been studied very extensively over the last decades. While there is a lot of discussion over whether being assigned certain provinces was an indication whether a given senator had the "inside track" to success, there is a consensus that a senator whose cursus honorum included a public propraetorian province was not as favored as one who governed as a legate over an equivalent imperial province. Further, during the Early Empire (until the mid-3rd century) there were only two proconsular provinces: Asia & Africa. A senator who had risen thru the cursus honorum to govern a proconsular province was a very successful one. At some point in the 3rd or 4th centuries Achaea was promoted to proconsular status; the exact details escape me.

There are probably other omissions or misstatements I could list here; these are based on a couple of hours spent digging thru what books I had at hand. I'll leave it to you whether to spent a lot of intense work addressing these issues, or maybe even rewriting the article, or withdraw the nomination & possibly renominate it at a later time. If you have any questions about improving this article, feel free to contact me. -- llywrch (talk) 23:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just wrote an article for Publilius so we can do the link thing. 10W40 (talk) 05:22, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- That was not necessary for this WP:GA. But I've gone ahead & groomed the article. -- llywrch (talk) 05:32, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update. I'm failing this nomination due to (1) failure to substantially address the points I raised above after almost a month of waiting, & (2) the nominator has been blocked for a week due to misbehavior related to this article. One could argue that either alone is not enough to fail a review, but the combination of both in this instance really tries the principles of an assumption of good faith. -- llywrch (talk) 16:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The case on SPI was opened before you started reviewing. You know all along, or you just checked? I certainly improved the article in response to the review. 10W41 (talk) 13:15, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]