Talk:Roman civilization

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Necessity

If you're going to add this, wouldn't a page for Ancient Greece be necessary too? Boofhead185 (talk) 13:36, October 21, 2018 (UTC)

No, because the Greek civilization is already covered under the article Greece just as the Egyptian civilization, whether ancient or modern, is covered under the article Egypt. The only problem here is that while Italy is technically a modern, successor state of ancient Rome, it is not readily identifiable as the same civilization. Even if one might make the argument that ancient Egypt and modern Egypt are two different civilizations, there is still a continuous, national identity between the two. Actually, saying so, I won't mind if every time we discussed the Roman civilization as a whole, we linked to Italy, but this would likely be very confusing for most people.

The one thing I'm not sure about is if this article should just be moved to "Roman civilization" or "Rome (civilization)", in which case, it would encompass the Eastern Roman Empire as well.

For clarification, unlike Wikipedia which merges a hypothetical page on a country's current regime with a page on the country's civilization as a whole (e.g. People's Republic of China and China are the same article), we have decided that we should not emulate this practice. Articles on countries like Greece, Egypt, China, etc. should clearly be about these civilizations throughout all of history, rather than directing to the modern state. The issue here that necessitated this article on the Roman civilization is that there isn't an article covering this civilization as a whole, unlike with Greece, unless we were to give that honor to Italy. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 15:49, October 21, 2018 (UTC)

Move to Roman civilization

This is an ongoing discussion.

I think it would actually be less confusing for everyone if I were to move this to "Roman civilization" instead. That way, instead of the confusing technical definition (Wikipedia and) I have to start off with to exclude the Byzantine Empire, we can simply introduce the subject normally. As well, this would clarify why we don't have articles on ancient Greece or ancient Egypt. Another option is to have all links to Romans be directed to Italy which, considering that the modern Egyptians are also far removed from their ancient Egyptian culture, wouldn't be any more or less wrong. However, that would probably be too confusing for some of the audience. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:12, October 21, 2018 (UTC)

I have a new proposal: I wish to move this to "Rome (nation)". Recall that the purpose for this article is to have a unified article for both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire together because it is awkward when referring to the Roman state or society in general or overall but having to link over-specifically to either. I have encountered multiple cases of this in the past. However, I think that editors haven't come around to the purpose of this article, i.e. people aren't linking to it when they should. I think the word civilization still throws people off, and I think "nation" makes it clearer that the subject is the continuous Roman state and identity that proceeded from the Roman Kingdom down to the end of the Byzantine Empire. Technically, the common name under the Byzantine Empire was "Romania", but I'm nervous that would cause more confusion given the modern country by the same name. So my suggestion is either to rename this "Rome (nation)" or "Romania". It is meant to be the Roman people's counterpart to the articles of "Greece", "Egypt", "China", "Japan", "France", and "Iran". Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 23:13, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the merits of this page but would like to suggest a different name, “Roman culture”, and I think we could make specific culture pages for those other civilizations to keep things standardized. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 06:07, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

The subject of this page is not Roman culture, it is the country of Rome. It is Rome as sociopolitical unit and state, existing across several regimes. Even if we were to create pages for Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese culture, we would still have pages for the countries of Greece, Egypt, and China. And this page is meant to be the Roman counterparts to those. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 20:08, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

I think just calling it Rome (nation) is more confusing that what we already have and the civilization or culture encompasses your idea better than nation. I think we should, where applicable, have culture or civilization pages for certain groups as well separate pages for the regimes that sprung out of them. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 03:22, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I think culture is definitely not the right term for this purpose or subject here because we are referring to a series of states with broad continuity in identity. The state component is absent from the denotation of culture; the closest would be civilization which can still imply the presence of a state or multiple states even though it primarily refers to cultural identity. After thinking hard about all the possible terminology, I came to the conclusion that nation is the closest fitting word to use in this particular case, followed by civilization. Our established organization for countries has already been set that there are "country"/"civilization" pages with "regime"/"sovereign state" pages falling under them. This can be confusing because the boundaries of a "civilization" are not solidly delineated and are sometimes subject to political disputes. In fact, civilizations should be seen as overlapping and permeable zones of culture which do not necessarily correspond to one single state.

As for the word country, I am using it very loosely. I think in political science, country is an ambiguous word anyways even though most people colloquially use it to mean sovereign state. Some people who privilege states too much reject all continuity between different regimes (e.g. that there is no continuity between the Tang and Song dynasties) while others who privilege "civilization" too much forcibly emphasize too much continuity (e.g. that all "Chinese" dynasties cleanly transitioned between one another as one continuous nation rather than being competing states in the region). Both extremes are wrong in my opinion. There is some continuity between the people of some regimes in terms of what we can call national identity, and there are also interruptions, dissolutions under conquest, and competitions in sovereignty and claims to succession. This illustrates the challenge in organizing articles pertaining to countries. But it is also convenient to be able to speak of Greece and Egypt broadly throughout history even if not every regime that ever ruled those regions and peoples cleanly flowed from one another. For my part, I like to give weight to the principle of self-identity, and it is well-documented that the Byzantines conceptualized themselves as Romans in a national sense in continuity with the earlier Roman Empire and Roman Republic. That's why I think nation is appropriate if we don't want to create confusion by using the contemporaneous common name for their country of "Romania". But civilization I think could still be okay, just possibly a bit more imprecise in this case since we are referring more to the political identity than the cultural one.

Also as an aside, I would argue that articles on certain regimes/sovereign states can fall under more than one "civilization". For example, if we ever had an article on the Yuan dynasty, we could consider putting it under both Mongolia and China. I'm not sure if I am explaining myself and the conundrum well enough here. Feel free to add extra thoughts about why you think civilization is preferable to nation. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:31, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Do we wanna revisit this? I still prefer Roman civilization over Rome (nation) but you are the history and polisci guy. Conversely we could just keep this page but also create a separate page for either Ancient Rome or Roman Kingdom/Republic/Empire. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 09:34, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The reason why I made this page is because there is no Roman analogue to pages like China, India, Greece, and Egypt. Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, and Roman Empire describe different regimes, and it has been really awkward whenever we come across a case where we have to link to either "Roman Republic" or "Roman Empire" but actually mean the Romans in general across both periods. Since opening this topic, I have done more scholarly research on nationhood, and I am even more confident now that the awkwardness people feel about calling the Romans a nation is due to heavily ingrained liberal and presentist bias that only modern countries modelled after European nation-states can be called nations. A less Eurocentric definition of nation, such as the one used by indigenous, Asian, and third world scholars, only require that the people socially, culturally, and politically identify themselves as such. We should also bear in mind too that nation is different from ethnic group in that while the two can be the same in some cases (e.g. the Navajo), a nation can be a political identity and unit a tier above an ethnicity, comprising multiple ethnic groups having agreed upon that shared political identity.

Scientifically then, Rome was a nation, and Roman was a national identity which spanned the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. I also think that objectively, it makes the most sense to also include the Byzantines under this page. I like the approach too of being faithful to the one the people in the society thought of themselves in their time, as opposed to how we like to classify their history today. The issue with using the word civilization instead is that civilization is even less well-defined. I don't think there is a more appropriate word to use here but nation. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)