Template:Did you know nominations/First Catilinarian conspiracy

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

First Catilinarian conspiracy

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• ... that modern sources believe that the first Catilinarian conspiracy was fake? Source: Wilson, Mark (2021). Dictator: the Evolution of the Roman dictatorship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-12920-1. OCLC 1243162549. Page 303 , https://www.jstor.org/stable/4435521#metadata_info_tab_contents. page 441, and others.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Terbium compounds

Improved to Good Article status by Ifly6 (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 22:03, 21 December 2022 (UTC).

• — Article is long enough and promoted to GA, making it eligible for a DYK nomination. Hook is interesting, within prescribed limits, and is well sourced. Image has Creative Commons license. Earwig's Copyvio Detector shows only one similarity -- a quote.  Suggestion: you might want to change the term "fake" to 'fictitious', which comes across more academic and is consistent with the language in the article. In any case, the article is good to go. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:28, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
  • @Onegreatjoke and Gwillhickers: I can't access all of the sources, but given the number of citations on this claim, I gotta ask – do any of the sources directly claim a consensus of modern scholars, or is the article editorially assessing consensus of the sources on its own? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 10:53, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Well I would have to ask Ifly6 for that answer. Onegreatjoke (talk) 16:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

It is the consensus of modern scholars that the First Catilinarian conspiracy did not happen: Seager 1964, p. 338 n. 1. "It is now widely held that the conspiracy is wholly fictitious"; Berry, DH (2020). Cicero's Catilinarians. New York. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-19-751081-0. OCLC 1126348418. "The 'first Catilinarian conspiracy' was accepted at face value by ancient and modern historians alike until the myth was exploded by Robin Seager and Ronald Syme (independently) in 1964".

Also, to be entirely clear about the scholarship and what I mean with "consensus", I don't mean "literally everyone". There was a paper published rather recently in 2021 which argued it did happen. This is not the consensus. That paper even says so: First Catilinarian Conspiracy of 66-65 BC, described by Sallust at BC 18-19, is not ‘fiction’ (as is almost universally assumed) (my emphasis). Woodman, Anthony J (2021). "Sallust and Catiline: conspiracy theories". Historia. 70 (1): 55–68. doi:10.25162/historia-2021-0003. ISSN 0018-2311. Ifly6 (talk) 18:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps change to "did not happen" rather than "fake"? Ifly6 (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I think that's my concerns resolved! feel free to mess around with the semantics of the wording on that one. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 02:14, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

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