Wikipedia:Peer review/Otium/archive1

Otium

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to bring to Good Article status.

Thanks, Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:53, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments by llywrch

Some thoughts & reactions as I read this article. I don't bother much with minutae like grammar, word-choice & punctuation, since the most important thing at this point is to get the contents right; once that's in order, one can focus on the polishing.

• The lead sentence doesn't give the proper weight to the connotations of the word otium. IIRC, its primary meaning is "leisure" -- I'm away from home so I can't consult my Latin-English dictionary -- & the "variety of meanings" should be "variety of meanings of leisure". Which is the theme of this article.
• I'm puzzled by how this starts by discussing the Greek meaning of the word, when it is clearly a Latin word. While it may be that it is the Latin word for a Greek concept which the Romans adopted, that seems to me to be an opinion, not a fact. (An informed opinion supported by fact & held by experts, nonetheless still an opinion.) I would be more comfortable if this section began with the Latin word, then explained how experts (or the ancient Romans) trace its origins to ancient Greek culture.
• The "Historical use" section would work quite well if this were a publication that encouraged a "stream-of-conscious" presentation of material, for this section is really a list of how otium appears in the context of well-known writers, bordering uncomfortably on a collection of dictionary definitions. What you need to do here is to recast this section into more of a "History of the idea of otium".

  That said, I would like to complement you for including Cicero in a discussion of otium; because of his voluminous surviving writings, he is often used as an example of the "tupical Roman". And the section about Christian reactions to otium is a pleasant surprise: I never considered otium might conflict with one of the seven deadly sins. However, I am surprised that there is no discussion of this concept during the Late Antique: the correspondence of both Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and Sidonius Apollinaris are often used to provide examples of aristocratic otium spent in cultivating networks of friendships -- some of which were generations old -- with other aristocrats. (And useful lesser folks.) For more information on this, have a look at Samuel Dill's Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire for more information on this aspect.

• Further about the "Historical use" section -- you included post-ancient examples. I was confused by the inclusion of statements from Petrarch & Marvell. Is your intent to discuss what otium meant to the ancients, or what it meant down the ages? If the latter, then you need to find a way to include a discussion of the "man of leisure" of the 17th-early 20th century, the gentleman/aristocrat who was careful never to appear to work, who spent his days preparing to lounge at the club, visiting friends (sometimes for weeks), and his evenings either attending or giving dinner parties & dances. (With the outlier examples of those who indulged in gambling & whoring at one end, & those living obnoxiously ascetically & religious lives at the other.) Even if you trim away the post-ancient material, it would be a good thing if you could figure out how to coordinate this article with gentleman, & its related subjects.

Hope my comments help. Ignore them if they don't. -- llywrch (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Comment

This entire article is an instance of some Wikipedia's worst writing; what we get when an editor, having found a source, does not understand it, and cannot convey what it says:

Let us compare this passage from Vickers:

The first recorded use of the term is in a fragment from a soldiers' chorus in Ennius' Iphigenia (c. 190 BC), whose preservation we owe to that philologian's ragbag, the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (c. 150 AD) - he cites it as an example of the usage of the word praeterpropter (19.10.12). The soldiers are unoccupied, resting and bored, wanting to return home. They distinguish between otium negotiosum, leisure with a satisfying occupation, which takes place in the city, around the hearth, and otium otiosum, unoccupied and pointless leisure, such as their prolonged stay in the countryside, which they find disorientating. Andre argues that otium originally had military, not pastoral associations, referring to the enforced inactivity that coincided each year with the dead months of winter (especially January and February), unsuitable for war, farming or fishing

with what the article made of it:

The earliest extant appearance of the word in Latin literature occurs in a fragment from the soldiers' chorus in the Iphigenia of Ennius, where it is contrasted to negotium.[B] Researches have determined the etymological and semantic use of otium was never a direct translation of the Greek word "schole", but derived from specifically Roman contexts. Otium is an example of the usage of the term "praeter propter", meaning more or less of leisure. It was first used in military terms related to inactivity of war.

Vickers' text is grammatical, coherent, and accurate; it is only from reading him that I have any idea what "military terms related to inactivity of war" was supposed to mean: it referrred to the cessation of military activity in winter; Ennius, however, used it for the boredom of inactive service.

This foggy writing has introduced a positive error: Otium is not an "example of the usage of the term praeterpropter"; that would be meaningless; the whole extract which Gellius quotes is such an example. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)