Talk:Roman temple

Vandalism

I have no idea why this page is such a hot target for vandals, but can we apply for semi-protection please? This is insane. Q·L·1968 ☿ 21:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

In the last months there have been exactly two active vandals, both on the same date (January 28), one during a six-minute time span of consecutive edits, the other with just one edit. This is hardly a cause for semi-protection.  --Lambiam 08:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Really? The page is on my watchlist, and every time I look at new changes to it, it's either vandalism or reversion. Perhaps you're right though. Q·L·1968 ☿ 16:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

the most common 12?

There is no source cited for this list of 'the most common' deities to which Roman temples were dedicated. I have seen alayses of dedicatory inscriptions for some provinces, but not for the empire as a whole or for the city of rlol ome by itself. Lacking that, the current list looks suspiciously like "twelve deities off the top of someone's head". --Nantonos (talk) 14:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed split

The efficient but minimal introduction should be expanded into a full article. The List should be separated and moved to a new List of Roman Temples for expansion. I don't know how to perform the split correctly. Responses are invited. Haploidavey (talk) 12:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention the dubiety of the prominence given Arthur's Oven, the only illustration other than the Temple of Hercules. You're right about that list. When the list article is created is should be placed as a link at the top of Glossary of ancient Roman religion, where there's a relevant mention looking ahead to this possibility. Roman temple needs to incorporate both an expanded section on templum from the Glossary (not too abstruse and lengthy, though, since this is potentially a general-interest article) and a lot of heavy-duty architectural discussion. I'd say this is the kind of thing that could be worked into GA status. I'm in a dash at the moment but will have more thoughts later. (As for your real question, I'm technically useless.) Cynwolfe (talk) 13:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Forgot to get back to this. Do you know of any good editors with an interest in ancient architecture? I see this as having three components: the templum (religious), the building of temples by VIPs (politics and society), and the architecture itself. What else? I'm in one of my fits of being distracted by Belgian sculptors, for some reason, but do remind me of this article if you have thoughts. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:58, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Happy to split off the list of Roman temples, unless someone objects. There's already a list of ancient Greek temples. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 19:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Hearing no objections, I split the list off into its own article, called list of Ancient Roman temples, on analogy with the Greek page. That new list now needs some serious formatting work, e.g., using a wiki table. I plan to get a team on that ASAP (seriously). - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 21:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose I was not watching this page 6 months ago, when this thread was last edited. Before that the last edit was nearly six years before; no one except you has edited the section since 2010. You cannot claim that as consensus. In recent days I have greatly expanded and improved the article, including what was a very poor list (a process still ongoing). If you had this page watch-listed, you must have seen this, but have chosen to act without further notification. More than that, you came to my talk page, and when I asked what changes you wanted to make, replied "Modify in the usual sense of "edit"", which can only be called massively disingenuous. There is absolutely no need for this split, which is a move in the wrong direction. The article is not very long, and there are far too many of these stand-alone lists in this area, which have very low views, and should mostly be merged back to the appropriate article. I will launch an RM. Johnbod (talk) 03:10, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about the split when I asked you to edit in sections instead of the entire article. I was talking about making smaller edits. Since you asked me to wait until you were "finished working on it", I've not made any such edits (and have in fact complimented your work). The split was handled with this section on the article's talk page, as appropriate. I'm sorry you're not happy with this, but the "list of" is firmly established, especially in this area of ancient architecture (e.g., the exactly analogous List of Ancient Greek temples, which gets ~200 page views a day, btw), so I didn't think it problematic, esp. since no one replied after 6 months of that comment sitting on the talk page. Putting suggestions on a talk page is the way to get feedback. That's what I did. If no one's going to reply, that can't mean that nothing happens.

As for the practical side of the issue, there are literally hundreds of ancient Roman temples (dozens in Rome alone), as you know. Having even a significant minority of them on this main page would make it impractically long, especially for the more casual reader. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 13:26, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

There were thousands of "Roman temples", but those with significant remains are very few, far fewer than in the case of Greek temples. That is one of the reasons a table format is unsuitable; you would just end up with rows and rows of stone bases and the odd column (try illustrating the Romanian ones). Given the glacial pace of changes to these articles over the last few years, there is little need to worry about excessive size. Johnbod (talk) 15:50, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Honestly I'm in favor of listing attested but not extant (or no longer visible) temples, mostly in Rome, and I'd have a column for "state of preservation" or the like. Works like Ziolkowski's provide excellent information on this and it's useful to map these out, especially, again, in Rome. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 16:03, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose for now, despite being the originator of the proposed split. The article is in much better shape than it was 6 years back, is progressing very nicely, and is well within word-count limits (assuming we need to worry about that - which I don't). I can't remember my reasoning at the time; perhaps that the minimal article content seemed completely outweighed by the length of the list below it? Regarding which, please note that many claimed temples (mostly middle-eastern) were added in great gobbets by user later banned for source misuse and WP:OR. Better a clean-up on this page than elsewhere. I also have to admit that since I made the split proposal, I've changed my mind about lists in general; some may be excellent and informative but the couple on my watchlist (in the Greece/Rome subject area) get very few views and seem to serve as little more than name-dumps. I think we should just let Johnbod get on with it. Haploidavey (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not objecting to User:Johnbod's editing. To the contrary, he's doing a great job. One of the reasons lists get little traffic is that there's more interest in the topic itself, so casual readers don't go off an look at the list. That's part of why they're better left separate - to avoid making the articles overly long. This one, for example, is going to be many times longer than the article, as are others, like List of Roman amphitheatres. This is very clearly a popular reason for making list pages. In any case, I'm having some students do some editing on the list, so it's about to get a lot of TLC. Finally, there are, to be repetitive, a lot of list articles exactly like this. Are we going to merge all of them? (rhetorical) I'm curious to hear from others.- Eponymous-Archon (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

(ec) Thanks - I have made the first of (probably) several proposals at Talk:List of Roman theatres, where I set out my views more fully. The Lebanese etc temples in Temples of the Beqaa Valley and Temples of Mount Hermon seem to be mostly very small and not very Roman in style, but they do seem much better preserved than most and we have lots of photos. Tables added to those articles would be useful. I've added a few of the best North African and Turkish survivals, which were badly under-represented. I have also moved List of Roman walls (8 examples) to Ancient Roman defensive walls, adding a couple of paras of commentary. Johnbod (talk) 15:48, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

@Eponymous-Archon: The "popular reason for making list pages" is that some editors like making tables, which don't need much research, and don't like writing text. The List of Ancient Greek temples, which I don't object to, is a rare exception, with decent commentary on the list, and a very full main article. The List of Roman amphitheatres is not, and really not much use to a reader, failing to highlight and explain the more significant examples. The main Roman amphitheatre is under 10 kbytes, and either a merge, or a partial merge of the more significant/typical examples would be an improvement. In general, lists are an impoverished type of article of WP, and little if any better than galleries for the reader. Johnbod (talk) 16:02, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

List of Roman amphitheatres actually has received a comparable amount of hits to the main page, and there's been some great use of it by User:Sfsheath and his students. It's exactly why these list pages are valuable. We need to think more broadly about lists; they're not just "galleries". Further, if the lists need more info to be more useful, then add that information, don't get rid of the list. Data is valuable. So is text of course, but to belittle tables misses out on how useful they can be, IMO. (And with that, I'm taking a break from this back and forth.) - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 16:10, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Expansion

Using Egyptian temple as an example I will be expanding this article with refernces and academic sources.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:54, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

No adjectives were harmed in the making of this proper sentence...

I made an edit [1] for clarity, which was promptly reverted by user:Johnbod with the edit summary "rv - there are these things called adjectives." As I hadn't removed any adjective but instead clarified meaning for the casual reader, I again made the edit. Again it was promptly reverted by Johnbod, this time with no edit summary or explanation whatsoever. There is no reason the edit couldn't stand or is/was unacceptable, save for Johnbod's glaring and persistent WP:OWNership issues of "his" articles. I'm happy to take this to WP:3O, shall we?--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 12:28, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

My two cents: it's not a big deal; let it lie. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 12:39, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

(ec) The edit summary "let's make a sentence! it's fun!" for the diff above displayed the mixture of ignorance and arrogance that one has come to expect from this editor. It never occurs to him that the reason many of his edits are reverted is that they are not improvements. There is nothing at all 'improper' or unclear about the sentence as it was and is. The replacement "added later" suggests the original building was open to the elements, which was not the case. Johnbod (talk) 12:41, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

temple precinct.

with a crowd gathered in the temple precinct

Does this mean near the temple? If so then say so.

Apparently one is supposed to read down to #Terms first, and also know that precinct means general or perhaps official, area.

Jidanni (talk) 13:11, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Caesareum and Temple of IOM

Between the sections on "architecture" and "influence" this article suddenly has a section on the Caesareum, which ought to have its own article elsewhere. Why? Is it envisioned that the article will have articles on other temples by dedicant? How many? Will there be sections like Capitolium, sacellum.

Between the section on "influence" and "substantial survivals" this article suddenly has a section on the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which has its own article elsewhere. Why? Is it envisioned that the article will have sections on other significant temples? How many?

In both of these sections, the article suddenly zooms into a far greater level of detail than elsewhere and both should be removed; they are not "topics" at the same level as the other main sections of this article ("architecture" "influence" "substantial survivals") and they do not logically fit into the structure of the article (one sign of this is that neither section is mentioned in the lead). Furius (talk) 01:52, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

No, it has a section on all temples of the Imperial cult, plus one on the IOM, as the Roman temple par exellence. The article has changed little since I expanded it 7 years ago. They could certainly be added to the lead, and perhaps should be. One would surely expect "Influence" to be the last text section? That seems very natural to me. Johnbod (talk) 03:43, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

My problem is that neither of these sections explain why they are there and both of them are floating as top-level sections. Why is there a section on temples of the imperial cult but no other sub-type of Roman temple? Then, the appearance of IOM after influence seems very strange to me (we've gone through to the 19th century and suddenly we snap back to 509 BC for a section that discusses [because it's essentially all that we know] the disputed measurements and the dates of a specific temple). I don't think its importance justifies listing all the dates when it burnt down. If the point is that it was particularly influential, which is stated without any specifics, that point can be better made by mentioning it in text at points where its influence has been detected or where it is exemplary, as is done for the Pantheon, for example. Furius (talk) 11:18, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Well I will move IOM to be before influences, which I hope helps. I'm warming to your idea that there should be sections on Capitolium, sacellum. Really the article needs more on the usage, staff, and precincts of temples. I did this before I did Ancient_Greek_religion#Sanctuaries_and_temples and most of Ancient_Greek_religion#Sacrifice, and this needs more like that. Religion in ancient Rome has some of that. Johnbod (talk) 14:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)