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I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of May 9, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:
If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Climie.ca ( talk • contribs)
The change from "Eastern Roman Emperor" to "Byzantine Emperor" by the alphabetically challenged 74.72.11.32 (yes, that is his/her WP name :-) in the very first sentence seems gratuitous.
The primary readers of this WP article are, I suspect, not professional historians. Justinian accomplished several notable projects and he represents an important evolutionary figure in his empire's history.
So one might sensibly first regard him as an emperor of the RE, or perhaps more precisely of the ERE.
But how does identifying him as "Byzantine" help such readers? To me, this change illuminates very little, and it obscures the most important connection of the time: Justinian thought of himself and his empire as Roman, as did virtually everyone else in both his empire and the reconquered lands. 24.63.96.35 ( talk) 03:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Someone changed this again recently, from ERE to BE (July 2020). I changed it back. My change is justified since both Justinian's predecessor Justin I and his successor Justin II are identified as ERE, not BE. It would, indeed, be better to have a consistent policy regarding this. If we name all post-476 Emperors as Byzantine, that is debatable but would be better than the alternating titles we have now. A better cut-off might be the rule of Emperor Heraclius, after whom the Empire was largely restricted to its medieval territories in Anatolia and the Balkans, as opposed to a Mediterranean-wide empire. Diegojosesalva ( talk) 20:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence of the "legacy" section in the article says Justinian's conquests were probably responsible for the subsequent decline. What subsequent decline? The later emperor Maurice solved the two major issues that Justinian faced: Persia and the Balkans. By the end of Maurice's reign, tribute to Persia was no more, and soldiers could be transferred to the Balkans, where the Avars were thrust back across the Danube, only to be attacked by the Romans in their own homeland. I don't think aggressive trans-danubian campaigning could be part of a "subsequent decline". The territories in north Africa that were reconquered during Justinian's time were no doubt of value. The empire by 602 was undoubtedly poised to resume campaigns in Italy - regardless of the destruction of the peninsula during Justinian's time. The "subsequent decline" could only mean the Muslim invasions, which could hardly be attributed to Justinian's policies a century earlier.
any thoughts?
-- Tataryn77 ( talk) 01:55, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget the bubonic plague. While the author of Justinian's Flea takes forever to get around to it, the plague, which hit Justinian's empire near the end of his reign, wiped out many of the bureaucrats who were responsible for keeping the Empire running. It also hit his armies hard too, not even considering the trade unions, merchants, farmers, etc. One importance consequence was that the Roman and Persian empires lost so many soldiers to the plague that they hired some of the people they were fighting to serve as mercenaries. For example, the Persians hired Arab warriors from the desert, which meant that these warriors learned military tactics which they taught to their sons and grandsons who used that knowledge when Islam erupted from the desert and into the weakened Persian and Roman empires. See my post under "Corn" above. Thomas R. Fasulo ( talk) 20:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
It can be proved easily that Jutinian was an illyrian by looking at the way he behaved and the way the Illyrian Emperors of Rome behaved. In the time of Diocletian all emperors were Illyrian and would only choose one of their own because they simply wanted to keep the reigns of empire in Illyrian hands. The illyrian emperor Anastasius would not have choose a non-Illyrian as his successor. This would be well understood by any albanian of today.
Justinian and fifteen other Roman emperors were Illyrian, including Diocletian and Constantine the Great, yet mention of this and explicit statements which can clarify that they were all born in ILLYRIA (Illyricum) are strictly prohibited here. Dardania: does this ring a bell? The Dardanii were an Illyrian tribe who inhabited much of present-day Kosovo. We mustn’t offend the Serbians and the Greeks, I suppose. Need I remind anyone that there were no Slavs in the Balkans at the time? And the Greeks desire to claim all Byzantine rulers as theirs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.243.34.108 ( talk) 05:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
The current results section does quite a bit of speculative history. Specifically: "The greater part of Italy would be lost to the invading Lombards three years after Justinian's death (568), the newly founded province of Spania was completely recovered by the Hispanian Visigoths in 624 under the leadership of Suintila, and within a century and a half Africa would be forever lost for the empire to the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates during the Muslim conquests.
Events of the later years of the reign showed that Constantinople itself was not safe from barbarian incursions from the north, and even the relatively benevolent historian Menander Protector felt the need to attribute the Emperor's failure to protect the capital to the weakness of his body in his old age.[59] In his efforts to renew the Roman Empire, Justinian dangerously stretched its resources while failing to take into account the changed realities of 6th-century Europe.[60] Paradoxically, the grand scale of Justinian's military successes probably contributed in part to the Empire's subsequent decline.[61]"
There are plenty of issues to critique Justinian, or to show the multifaceted dimensions of his foreign wars. Antioch was sacked because of a weakened frontier army owing to their redeployment to the west. We also see economic stagnation because of heavy tax rates. Furthermore there is the fact that the coffers were empty after Justinian's reign leaving Justin the Younger with a number of Barbarian invasions; these are all real results. However currently, these paragraphs we really begin going down the timeline. The conquests of the caliphates for instance, the article seemingly infers that Justinian's western conquests were at least partially for this, but the Battle of Yarmouk wasn't for 71 years after Justinian's death. To give a modern parallel to this timeline, this is like saying Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies were partially responsible for, I don't know, Obamacare, or Justinian thus the Loss of Africa is like saying Abe Lincoln's policies were partially responsible for the Iraq war; sounds absurd doesn't it? This section makes some pretty tenuous propositions with little to back them up. If there were some ironclad sources, then maybe we could talk but the last quote: "Paradoxically, the grand scale of Justinian's military successes probably contributed in part to the Empire's subsequent decline." Uses pohl, never bothers with a first name, a year, or a name of a paper so I'm left searching to try and figure out who this guy is, and the best I can find is an expert in Carolingian history. So my request is to clean. I have access to an academic library so I can go back over the articles cited by Haldon et alii and give more contemporary results. Or if there is iron clad consensus against this, then why not also credit Justinian with Maurice's and Tiberius' successes? ( Alcibiades979 ( talk) 13:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC))
I agree with you. There are actually several things in the current narrative that go beyond my suspension of disbelief.:
Okay, so it is settled that Greek was the dominant language of the Eastern Empire. I am wondering about the transliteration of Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος as Flávios Pétros Sabbátios, which implies a fricative /v/ pronunciation of β ('v' as in victor) for flavius but a stop consonant /b/ pronunciation ('b' as in boy) for Σαββάτιος. Although maybe not everyone here comes from a historical linguistic background, is it being claimed that the Latin-derived word was pronounced /v/ (having changed from /w/) but the Greek β remained /b/ when it is probable that β had become /v/ by the Early Byzantine period, see Koine Greek phonology? Iotacist ( talk) 05:30, 19 March 2017 (UTC)Iotacist
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"Religious relations with Rome" "However, the condemnation was received unfavourably in the west, where it led to new (albeit temporal) schism" Should this say "temporary" rather than "temporal"?-- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 18:58, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
Ian Hughes claims in his book on Belisarius that the motivation for the reconquest was the internal chaos in the victim nations not some kind of grand plan Justinian made beforehand. Peter Heather in his book on the empire’s recovery under Justinian states that Justinian was probably partly responsible for causing Byzantine-Persian relation to sour. It seems illogical for someone to provoke their most powerful neighbour with the intention of soon moving their resources to the other end of his empire. The hasty peace with Khosrow can be explained by saying he wanted to focus on freeing Hilderic but the rest seems still seems illogical. In the article the claim that Justinian considered it his duty as a Christian emperor to restore the empire to its ancient borders is unsourced. Dorromikhal ( talk) 01:24, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
In the section titled "War in Italy, first phase, 535–540", the map titled "Justinian's conquests" is not in English. Neither the small descriptive texts under some of the territory names, nor the map key, is written in English. I don't know enough about the language to translate it, and I'm not confident about my knowledge in Copyright law, so I cannot (Or should not) correct it.
Section of the article: /info/en/?search=Justinian_I#War_in_Italy,_first_phase,_535%E2%80%93540
The map: /info/en/?search=File:Emp%C3%A8ri_Bizantin_-_R%C3%A8ine_de_Justinian.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.142.233.38 ( talk) 09:06, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Justinian I article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 365 days |
Justinian I has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on April 1, 2004, April 1, 2005, April 7, 2006, April 7, 2007, August 1, 2012, August 1, 2015, August 1, 2017, and August 1, 2020. | |||||||||||||
Current status: Good article |
This
level-4 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of May 9, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:
If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Climie.ca ( talk • contribs)
The change from "Eastern Roman Emperor" to "Byzantine Emperor" by the alphabetically challenged 74.72.11.32 (yes, that is his/her WP name :-) in the very first sentence seems gratuitous.
The primary readers of this WP article are, I suspect, not professional historians. Justinian accomplished several notable projects and he represents an important evolutionary figure in his empire's history.
So one might sensibly first regard him as an emperor of the RE, or perhaps more precisely of the ERE.
But how does identifying him as "Byzantine" help such readers? To me, this change illuminates very little, and it obscures the most important connection of the time: Justinian thought of himself and his empire as Roman, as did virtually everyone else in both his empire and the reconquered lands. 24.63.96.35 ( talk) 03:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Someone changed this again recently, from ERE to BE (July 2020). I changed it back. My change is justified since both Justinian's predecessor Justin I and his successor Justin II are identified as ERE, not BE. It would, indeed, be better to have a consistent policy regarding this. If we name all post-476 Emperors as Byzantine, that is debatable but would be better than the alternating titles we have now. A better cut-off might be the rule of Emperor Heraclius, after whom the Empire was largely restricted to its medieval territories in Anatolia and the Balkans, as opposed to a Mediterranean-wide empire. Diegojosesalva ( talk) 20:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
The last sentence of the "legacy" section in the article says Justinian's conquests were probably responsible for the subsequent decline. What subsequent decline? The later emperor Maurice solved the two major issues that Justinian faced: Persia and the Balkans. By the end of Maurice's reign, tribute to Persia was no more, and soldiers could be transferred to the Balkans, where the Avars were thrust back across the Danube, only to be attacked by the Romans in their own homeland. I don't think aggressive trans-danubian campaigning could be part of a "subsequent decline". The territories in north Africa that were reconquered during Justinian's time were no doubt of value. The empire by 602 was undoubtedly poised to resume campaigns in Italy - regardless of the destruction of the peninsula during Justinian's time. The "subsequent decline" could only mean the Muslim invasions, which could hardly be attributed to Justinian's policies a century earlier.
any thoughts?
-- Tataryn77 ( talk) 01:55, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget the bubonic plague. While the author of Justinian's Flea takes forever to get around to it, the plague, which hit Justinian's empire near the end of his reign, wiped out many of the bureaucrats who were responsible for keeping the Empire running. It also hit his armies hard too, not even considering the trade unions, merchants, farmers, etc. One importance consequence was that the Roman and Persian empires lost so many soldiers to the plague that they hired some of the people they were fighting to serve as mercenaries. For example, the Persians hired Arab warriors from the desert, which meant that these warriors learned military tactics which they taught to their sons and grandsons who used that knowledge when Islam erupted from the desert and into the weakened Persian and Roman empires. See my post under "Corn" above. Thomas R. Fasulo ( talk) 20:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
It can be proved easily that Jutinian was an illyrian by looking at the way he behaved and the way the Illyrian Emperors of Rome behaved. In the time of Diocletian all emperors were Illyrian and would only choose one of their own because they simply wanted to keep the reigns of empire in Illyrian hands. The illyrian emperor Anastasius would not have choose a non-Illyrian as his successor. This would be well understood by any albanian of today.
Justinian and fifteen other Roman emperors were Illyrian, including Diocletian and Constantine the Great, yet mention of this and explicit statements which can clarify that they were all born in ILLYRIA (Illyricum) are strictly prohibited here. Dardania: does this ring a bell? The Dardanii were an Illyrian tribe who inhabited much of present-day Kosovo. We mustn’t offend the Serbians and the Greeks, I suppose. Need I remind anyone that there were no Slavs in the Balkans at the time? And the Greeks desire to claim all Byzantine rulers as theirs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.243.34.108 ( talk) 05:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
The current results section does quite a bit of speculative history. Specifically: "The greater part of Italy would be lost to the invading Lombards three years after Justinian's death (568), the newly founded province of Spania was completely recovered by the Hispanian Visigoths in 624 under the leadership of Suintila, and within a century and a half Africa would be forever lost for the empire to the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates during the Muslim conquests.
Events of the later years of the reign showed that Constantinople itself was not safe from barbarian incursions from the north, and even the relatively benevolent historian Menander Protector felt the need to attribute the Emperor's failure to protect the capital to the weakness of his body in his old age.[59] In his efforts to renew the Roman Empire, Justinian dangerously stretched its resources while failing to take into account the changed realities of 6th-century Europe.[60] Paradoxically, the grand scale of Justinian's military successes probably contributed in part to the Empire's subsequent decline.[61]"
There are plenty of issues to critique Justinian, or to show the multifaceted dimensions of his foreign wars. Antioch was sacked because of a weakened frontier army owing to their redeployment to the west. We also see economic stagnation because of heavy tax rates. Furthermore there is the fact that the coffers were empty after Justinian's reign leaving Justin the Younger with a number of Barbarian invasions; these are all real results. However currently, these paragraphs we really begin going down the timeline. The conquests of the caliphates for instance, the article seemingly infers that Justinian's western conquests were at least partially for this, but the Battle of Yarmouk wasn't for 71 years after Justinian's death. To give a modern parallel to this timeline, this is like saying Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies were partially responsible for, I don't know, Obamacare, or Justinian thus the Loss of Africa is like saying Abe Lincoln's policies were partially responsible for the Iraq war; sounds absurd doesn't it? This section makes some pretty tenuous propositions with little to back them up. If there were some ironclad sources, then maybe we could talk but the last quote: "Paradoxically, the grand scale of Justinian's military successes probably contributed in part to the Empire's subsequent decline." Uses pohl, never bothers with a first name, a year, or a name of a paper so I'm left searching to try and figure out who this guy is, and the best I can find is an expert in Carolingian history. So my request is to clean. I have access to an academic library so I can go back over the articles cited by Haldon et alii and give more contemporary results. Or if there is iron clad consensus against this, then why not also credit Justinian with Maurice's and Tiberius' successes? ( Alcibiades979 ( talk) 13:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC))
I agree with you. There are actually several things in the current narrative that go beyond my suspension of disbelief.:
Okay, so it is settled that Greek was the dominant language of the Eastern Empire. I am wondering about the transliteration of Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος as Flávios Pétros Sabbátios, which implies a fricative /v/ pronunciation of β ('v' as in victor) for flavius but a stop consonant /b/ pronunciation ('b' as in boy) for Σαββάτιος. Although maybe not everyone here comes from a historical linguistic background, is it being claimed that the Latin-derived word was pronounced /v/ (having changed from /w/) but the Greek β remained /b/ when it is probable that β had become /v/ by the Early Byzantine period, see Koine Greek phonology? Iotacist ( talk) 05:30, 19 March 2017 (UTC)Iotacist
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Justinian I. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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This message was posted before February 2018.
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 13:27, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
"Religious relations with Rome" "However, the condemnation was received unfavourably in the west, where it led to new (albeit temporal) schism" Should this say "temporary" rather than "temporal"?-- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 18:58, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
Ian Hughes claims in his book on Belisarius that the motivation for the reconquest was the internal chaos in the victim nations not some kind of grand plan Justinian made beforehand. Peter Heather in his book on the empire’s recovery under Justinian states that Justinian was probably partly responsible for causing Byzantine-Persian relation to sour. It seems illogical for someone to provoke their most powerful neighbour with the intention of soon moving their resources to the other end of his empire. The hasty peace with Khosrow can be explained by saying he wanted to focus on freeing Hilderic but the rest seems still seems illogical. In the article the claim that Justinian considered it his duty as a Christian emperor to restore the empire to its ancient borders is unsourced. Dorromikhal ( talk) 01:24, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
In the section titled "War in Italy, first phase, 535–540", the map titled "Justinian's conquests" is not in English. Neither the small descriptive texts under some of the territory names, nor the map key, is written in English. I don't know enough about the language to translate it, and I'm not confident about my knowledge in Copyright law, so I cannot (Or should not) correct it.
Section of the article: /info/en/?search=Justinian_I#War_in_Italy,_first_phase,_535%E2%80%93540
The map: /info/en/?search=File:Emp%C3%A8ri_Bizantin_-_R%C3%A8ine_de_Justinian.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.142.233.38 ( talk) 09:06, 6 May 2022 (UTC)