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The article says:
In 77 BC Brutus was placed in command of the forces in Cisalpine Gaul following the death of Lucius Cornelius Sulla who had been dictator.
Sulla had resigned the dictatorship before his death in 78, so this is somewhat unclear. Cynwolfe ( talk) 14:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
For its entire existence until today, this article has been at "Marcus Junius Brutus the Elder", a slightly clunky, but fairly clear description of the subject. Today it was moved to "Marcus Junius Brutus (father of Brutus)", which in my opinion is somewhat tautological, since any son of any Roman surnamed Brutus would necessarily be named Brutus. This undiscussed move was carried out by an editor currently involved in a dispute over the title of the article about the younger Brutus, and who has vigorously insisted that Brutus unambiguously means Marcus Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide, although there were several other Romans named Brutus whom other editors feel to be of equal or greater historical significance—as well as at least one familiar pop culture figure of the name—whom they believe make "Brutus" somewhat ambiguous as an article title.
In support of this move, the editor in question cited (on another article's talk page) the existence of articles titled "Servilia (mother of Brutus)" and "Porcia (wife of Brutus)", which I think is fairly read as an argument for consistency; however, I think those are plainly distinguishable from this article for two reasons. First, the tyrannicide is the only Brutus we know of whose mother was named Servilia or whose wife was named Porcia, and that makes "(... of Brutus)" sufficient disambiguation. Secondly, since neither of those articles is about one of the Junii Bruti, neither one repeats the name Brutus or is ambiguous in the way that the present title is: the subject of this article was called Brutus. His son was called Brutus. His father was called Brutus. His grandfather was called Brutus. Every paternal ancestor he had going back five hundred years was Brutus, including Lucius Junius Brutus, probably the most historically significant of all the family—whose father was named Marcus Junius Brutus. Neither father was particularly distinguished, and one might reasonably wonder which of them this article refers to—which was not the case at the former title.
So I strongly doubt that this title is an improvement over the old one; I think that the old title was clearer and that the move was motivated entirely by a discussion occurring on another article's talk page. I propose returning this article to its former title, unless someone can come up with a better alternative. P Aculeius ( talk) 16:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
The article says:
In 77 BC Brutus was placed in command of the forces in Cisalpine Gaul following the death of Lucius Cornelius Sulla who had been dictator.
Sulla had resigned the dictatorship before his death in 78, so this is somewhat unclear. Cynwolfe ( talk) 14:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
For its entire existence until today, this article has been at "Marcus Junius Brutus the Elder", a slightly clunky, but fairly clear description of the subject. Today it was moved to "Marcus Junius Brutus (father of Brutus)", which in my opinion is somewhat tautological, since any son of any Roman surnamed Brutus would necessarily be named Brutus. This undiscussed move was carried out by an editor currently involved in a dispute over the title of the article about the younger Brutus, and who has vigorously insisted that Brutus unambiguously means Marcus Junius Brutus, the tyrannicide, although there were several other Romans named Brutus whom other editors feel to be of equal or greater historical significance—as well as at least one familiar pop culture figure of the name—whom they believe make "Brutus" somewhat ambiguous as an article title.
In support of this move, the editor in question cited (on another article's talk page) the existence of articles titled "Servilia (mother of Brutus)" and "Porcia (wife of Brutus)", which I think is fairly read as an argument for consistency; however, I think those are plainly distinguishable from this article for two reasons. First, the tyrannicide is the only Brutus we know of whose mother was named Servilia or whose wife was named Porcia, and that makes "(... of Brutus)" sufficient disambiguation. Secondly, since neither of those articles is about one of the Junii Bruti, neither one repeats the name Brutus or is ambiguous in the way that the present title is: the subject of this article was called Brutus. His son was called Brutus. His father was called Brutus. His grandfather was called Brutus. Every paternal ancestor he had going back five hundred years was Brutus, including Lucius Junius Brutus, probably the most historically significant of all the family—whose father was named Marcus Junius Brutus. Neither father was particularly distinguished, and one might reasonably wonder which of them this article refers to—which was not the case at the former title.
So I strongly doubt that this title is an improvement over the old one; I think that the old title was clearer and that the move was motivated entirely by a discussion occurring on another article's talk page. I propose returning this article to its former title, unless someone can come up with a better alternative. P Aculeius ( talk) 16:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)