Talk:Augustus

Note on the introductory paragraphs

Introduction / Names & Titles / Early life: These paragraphs (incl. the footnotes) are a translation of the Augustus-article in the German Wikipedia. It's material that I wrote myself, so as per this policy page the article in its current state doesn't need to be flagged with "Content from Wikipedia". —Arne Eickenberg 12:59, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Images

Hi. I see some black-and-white images have been added to the article. I'm sure we could also find colour pictures in places like Flikcr (take a look at this [[1]] or Wikimedia Commons. --José Leonardo Andrade 06:08, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm actually more a fan of black&white photos, because all of these statues are themselves without color, even if it's a modern color photo. The only thing you have is the rather undistinguished color of the sandstone, the marble etc.. Often it simply looks plain ugly, e.g. here with the red background color. Rather no image than a bad one! ;-) In addition the Romans painted their houses and statues quite colorful, draped the busts, attached jewelry like earrings, painted the eyes etc., so what we see today as "ancient statues" is actually only the rudimentary and rather vacant basis. Therefore a black&white image would not give any wrong impression. But the image that you showed on Flickr for instance, with the corona civica, is much better than e.g. this one, especially since the typical Augustan "hair pincer" above the forehead is more pronounced and accurate. —Arne Eickenberg 07:00, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

Anyway, I don't think images are the most important issue right now, it's more important to develop the article. You're right about the statues (the same thing goes for Greek ones), but I just think that black-and-white images end up giving a bit of an old fashion feel to the article.--José Leonardo Andrade 09:02, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Use of BC/BCE and †

I have a doubt here. Should we use "before Christ" (BC) or "before Common Era" (BCE)? I see some articles are using BCE, like Socrates, while others use BC. I don't know if this has been discussed somewhere or if there is a page that points to the form we should use. Another thing that caught my attention was the use of the sign †. I notice that this is used on the German Wikipedia, however it raises some questions because of its conotations as a Christian symbol. Not that there is anything wrong with Christian symbols, but is it fair to use on the biography of a muslim, jewish or atheist person? --José Leonardo Andrade 09:13, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

I found something on the forums...[2] not much though.--José Leonardo Andrade 09:32, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

The terms CE and BCE are simply make-up, because they don't alter the christocentricity of the calendar. The "common era" still begins with the purported date of the Christ's birth, so using CE and BCE is actually a fake kind of political correctness, false obscurantism. "Common Era" is still only a different name for "Christian era". Besides, it is after all the calendar of the western world, which is mainly influenced by Christianity, and it is a Christian calendar. Therefore AD & BC are totally acceptable. In terms of Roman persons, the birthdate and date of death could additionally be given ab urbe condita, since this was the prevalent calendar at the time, as pre-Julian and Julian. We should also keep in mind that in all of mankind's history, people in the diaspora have always used and adhered to the calendars that were valid in their respective places of residence. If someone doesn't like BC & AD, he can always define them as abbreviations of "Before the Common era" and of "After the Dawn of the common era". It's of course arbitrary, but so is the replacement of AD/BC with BCE/CE. In essence they will have to change the calendar first.

Concerning the sign †, it's not much different. Of course the cross is also a Christian symbol, but here it simply stands for "date of death". Besides it's originally and in the majority not a cross but a dagger, an obelos, a general punctuation symbol. In early Christian writings it was also used as a dagger, not as a cross. The same applies for the Chi-Rho ☧. Of course it means Christus, but in antiquity it was used (also by early Christian writers) to mark "useful" passages in texts, meaning chrestus ("useful", "good"), similar to the ✓, the checkmark, which was originally the letter v, because it stood for "seen" (Latin: visum). So if someone misinterprets the dagger as a Christian cross or alleges that we are christocentric when we use the †-symbol, it's really his problem, not ours. ;-) —Arne Eickenberg 10:07, 24 May 2007 (CDT)