Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of New Carthage/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 20 June 2023 [1].

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Battle of New Carthage

Nominator(s): Gog the Mild (talk) 20:20, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Another in the seemingly endless series of Second Punic War articles I have been nominating. This one sees a young Publius Cornelius Scipio demonstrating tactical innovation in his first full command – in Iberia. (Readers of my last FAC will recognise him as the man who was to eventually defeat Hannibal and win the war for the Romans.) A brief but hopefully interesting account. I heavily reworked it earlier in the year and took it through a thorough GAN last month. Comments and thoughts are all welcomed. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:20, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments from ChrisThe Dude

• "Roman ships attempted to escalade the wall" - surely it was men from the ships, not the ships themselves?

Let me just check the sources ... Yep, you're right. Changed.

• "Scipio was extremely young by Roman standards for such a command, he was in his mid-twenties" - I would make that comma a semi-colon

I wouldn't.

• "Romans would have had to retreat; which would have demoralised their Iberian allies and probably have led to defections among them." - conversely I think that semi-colon should be a comma

Ok.

• "Or one of the other Carthaginian armies would have come to Hasdrubal's assistance, raising the possibility of the Romans suffering a defeat similar to that of 211 BC." - this is not a complete sentence. Maybe change the "or" to "alternatively".....?

Rephrased.

• "was founded by in about 217 BC" - don't think the word "by" is needed there

Sorry. Silly typo.

• "To the Carthaginians surprise" => "To the Carthaginians' surprise"

Oops.

• "The near-contemporary[47][48] and usually reliable[49][50][51][52] Greek[53][54] historian[54][55] Polybius" - is there a way to avoid having this so broken up by refs.....?

Sure. It got hammered in the GAN. (Despite the originally minimally-cited text being identical to that which has gone unchallenged through several FACs.) So I felt a need to nail all aspects of hte description down. And I frown on making changes in a review then reverting them once promoted. However, if a FAC reviewer were to insist ...

• "one of the men attacking from this direction shared the award for being the first onto the walls" - shared it with whom?

With another awardee. The point is that the naval escalade had at least some degree of success, does a reader care how many it was shared with or who they were?

• "including 600 talents of silver.[note 7] [70]" - there's a gap between the two refs there

Eagle eyed. Thank you.

• That's what I got :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks ChrisTheDude, you have picked up some real bloopers. All addressed. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:53, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• Support - while I think it looks a bit silly having four separate blocks of refs totalling ten different citations within the first eight words of a sentence, I suppose when all's said and done there's no rule against it so I won't push that point...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:18, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments Support from Tim riley

No reservations about the content: clear, balanced, evidently well sourced, and properly illustrated. I shall look in again with the expectation of adding my support for elevation to FA. For now, a few very minor quibbles about the prose:

• "its capital New Carthage" – here and in the main text, in accordance with the usual punctuation rules for restrictive/non-restrictive constructions, you need a comma after "capital".

Et tu?

• "he commenced his attack" – curiously refained word in connexion with "attack"; a stronger, shorter word like "started" or "began" would, I think, be more in keeping.

I think we have t differ on this. (In military history variants of "commence" are common in this context, which I realise butters no parsnips on Wikipedia.)

• "Scipio was extremely young by Roman standards for such a command, he was in his mid-twenties..." – comma splice; either a colon or semicolon (equally suitable here) is needed.

Colon inserted.

• "unprecedentedly inexperienced, in terms of not having held any prior senior positions" – a touch wordy: we could lose "in terms of" without damage to grammar or meaning. (Still more concise to say "unprecedentedly inexperienced, having previously held no senior positions", possibly.)

I see that I need to add a little context. So now even wordier. Does "He unprecedentedly inexperienced to hold such a position by Roman standards of the time, having not held any prior senior positions." work?

Well enough, as long as you add the missing "was" before "unprecedentedly". Tim riley talk 16:31, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• "each as large or larger than the Roman force" – this would be fine in speech, but in formal English we ought to follow grammatical rules, and you need another "as", before "or" (or you could dodge the grammatical point by writing "each at least as large as ...").

Additional 'as' inserted.

• "difficult for them to mutually support each other" – can you unmutually support each other?

One can indeed - in military parlance. "Mutually supporting" is a military term for which there is no link, but which is I think broadly understood; see [2] - although the 734,000,000 results is astonishing.

• "If either commander felt at a disadvantage, they might march off ... or decline to leave their fortified camp" – there were no female commanders and the conspicuous use of gender-neutral "they" and "their" looks a bit daft: "he" and "his" would be more natural.

Hmm. You dinosaur. Reluctantly changed. The ghosts of Boudica, Zenobia and the Trung sisters shall surely haunt your dreams.

• "known to the Romans as Carthago Nova" – in the interests of balance, if you're telling us what the Romans called the place, I think you should also tell us what the Carthaginians called it.

Sadly, this is not known, other than that it translated as "New Carthage". After the 3PW the Romans weren't big on preserving Punic culture.

• "The Romans hung back, so the initial fighting developed" – I do not think "so" should be pressed into service as a conjunction in formal English.

No? Tweaked.

• "The near-contemporary[47][48] and usually reliable[49][50][51][52] Greek[53][54] historian[54][55] Polybius" – this avalanche of bracketed blue numbers rather flattens one. Is there no means of bundling two or more citations together in the algebraic cuneiform sfn system you use, so that e.g. for "usually reliable" we could have a single reference: "Curry 2012, p. 3; Champion 2015, p. 102; Goldsworthy 2006, p. 20–21; and Lazenby 1996, p. x–xi and 82–84"?

Sorted. Thank you.

I say! That's tons better. Now very neat, and still completely clear. Tim riley talk 16:31, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• "J H Richardson" – I'm entirely with you about the omission of full stops, but alas the Manual of Procedure has yet to catch up with the later 20th century, let alone the 21st, and insists on Olde Worlde full stops in people's initials.

Bleh. Inserted.

• "The martial booty has been described by modern historians as "colossal".[28]" – if it's "modern historians" (plural) we could do with a citation to more than just one historian who uses the word.

Good point. Slightly rephrased.

• "control over almost all of the Mediterranean coast" – do we need the "of" here?

Expurged.

• "between Carthage and their armies" – singular noun with plural pronoun.

Whoopsie.

That's all from me. – Tim riley talk 10:06, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Tim, all dealt with. I suspect a growing fondness for sandal and elephant drama? Gog the Mild (talk) 15:13, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

All shipshape now, in my view. Happy to support. Meets all the FA criteria in my view. Give me the Hundred Years' War any time, but I nevertheless look forward to more instalments of the Sandal and Elephant Show in due course. Tim riley talk 16:31, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Support by Unlimitedlead

Coming soon. Unlimitedlead (talk) 19:26, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• How fascinating: "its capital, New Carthage". I think you are evolving, Gog.

Cough! Mr riley, above, made me do it.

If I may make it plain, the comma is needed here because this is gramatically a non-restrictive (i.e. a describing) phrase. Without a comma New Carthage could be one of any number of capitals, just as "my brother George" is one of an unspecified number of brothers, but "my brother, George", is telling you that George is my only brother. The insertion of non-restrictive commas can turn a truism into an unwarranted slur: there is a world of difference between "Wikipedia editors who are pedantic are a pain" – which few would deny – and "Wikipedia editors, who are pedantic, are a pain", which is an unjustified and untrue generalisation. This has nothing to do with transatlantic superstitions about commas, e.g. those after dates: "In 1923 comma he invaded France", where the comma is not required in the King's English but is evidently compulsory in Amerenglish. There is also an AmE "rule": "when a subordinate clause follows an independent clause, do not use a comma before or after the subordinating conjunction", with which Fowler and Gowers and their successors very sensibly have no truck, and is to be ignored in BrE. – Tim riley talk 07:12, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

• What strikes me as unsual is that there is not a section to discuss sources. If I assume correctly, I believe Polybius is a major source of all things Punic Wars, and I think mentioning his potential shortcomings as a historian would be valuable here.

This is a source of much contention, with many editorsand reviewers objecting to sections on sources at all. I try these days to limit them to longer articles: wars, campaigns and those battles considered more important/on which there is most material. Interestingly, not a single source I accessed had any negative comments about Polybius's coverage of New Carthage, apart from his nonsense about the tide.

Ah, I see a brief mention to Polybius in the Second assault section. However, I still think a sources section would still be useful.

• Maybe mention that Gaius Claudius Nero was a general? Or a Roman consul?

They are the same thing. Not sure why a reader might think that a non-military person might be in charge of military reinforcements and stabilising a military situation, but fair enough - I have added a brief introduction, how does it read?

Perfectly. With some commas too, I see :) Unlimitedlead (talk) 21:34, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• "excellent harbour": What made the harbour excellent? Its strategic location which allowed for optimal conditions for trade?

That would be an 'excellently situated harbour'. This one was "bigger and better provided than any other in Spain", it "possessed deep and protected [from the elements] harbours perfect for large naval forces". It was, as it happens, alsp "perfectly placed ... as a transit point [to and from Carthage]". I could bang on in this vein a fair bit if you think a reader might care.

Perhaps just briefly. I was slightly confused while reading this bit. Unlimitedlead (talk) 21:34, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Expanded a little.

• Introduce Dexter Hoyos in note 5?

Ah, yes, done.

• "It was usual...": a bit minor, but I find "usual" a strange word to use here. Would something like "commonplace" work?

Ugh! I would rather not. I would change to 'normal', but that is the word the source uses. What is the problem with "usual"?

• "This sealed the fate of the Carthaginians in Iberia[5][71] and the last Carthaginian-held city in the peninsula, Gades, defected to the Romans": When did they defect? Also in 206 BC?

It is not actually known for certain. Mago left Iberia with the last Carthaginian troops in autumn 206 and Gades defected "a little later/after this". So probably (almost certainly) late 206 - but not cited clearly enough (because Polybius didn't definitively date it) to put in the text. Which must be why I've fudged it, I had forgotten that.

Oh goodness. This was quite violent. Unlimitedlead (talk) 19:47, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Polybius goes into some detail explaining just what was involved in a Roman sack, and some of the sources give edited highlights. I tried to skip lightly over some of the gorier bits.

Cheers Unlimitedlead. Sorry to disappoint you with the superfluity of commas. Thanks for the review. Some queries among my other comebacks above. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:32, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Ok - a bit on the harbour added. Anything else? Gog the Mild (talk) 21:32, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Nope: support. Unlimitedlead (talk) 21:53, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Source and image review

All images seem to be properly placed and licenced. ALT text is inconsistently capitalized. Curry, Andrew and this are apparently not used? Book sources appear to inconsistently have page numbers. I can't access to many sources so only did a cursory spot-check of Lowe which seems to check out and of Richardson where the page number seems to be wrong. Otherwise, source formatting seems consistent and the sources seem to be reliable. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

• ALT text capitalisation standardised.
• Curry and Spanish tosh removed. Sorry about them.
• I don't understand your comment about books and page numbers. These are not given, except for anthologies, when the page range of an individual contributor's work is given, as is standard. Am I missing something?
• Richardson: I am not sure where I got page 474 from, as it is patently wrong. As the version I can access is electronic and does not give page numbers I suspect I was attempting to give the full page range, which is what I have now done. 17 pages is a bit long for a cite, but it does all bear to the text being supported, so hopefully you can accept it.

A source and an image review. That is very good of you Jo-Jo Eumerus. Responses above. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:53, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The page numbers things was precisely the anthology thing, so I guess we are good to go there as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:14, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 09:22, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.