Talk:Third Punic War

Did you know nomination

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 Vincent60030 (talk) 18:02, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that the Third Punic War between Rome and Carthage ended in the complete destruction of Carthage and the death or enslavement of all of its citizens? Source: Miles, Richard (2011). Carthage Must be Destroyed. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-101809-6, pp. 3–5.

• Reviewed: Genocide justification

Improved to Good Article status by Gog the Mild (talk). Self-nominated at 23:39, 12 September 2020 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Actually, I did know that Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:47, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Casualties

Is there a source for Carthaginian casualties? Not just for the siege of Carthage, but for the entirety of the Third Punic War? That would be a more suitable fit for this article than an unsourced number. 2601:85:C101:C9D0:B4AD:B3A5:3F74:41FD (talk) 16:20, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

conflict with another article

The article on Hasdrubal - "He was taken to Rome and displayed during Scipio's triumph, but later allowed to live in peace in Italy.[2]" - quoting Mommsen - whereas this article states his fate is/was unknown. 104.169.18.5 (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Numidian participation.

It's pretty obvious that Numidia participated in this war. I mean the whole war started because of Numidia's attacks and the battle of Oroscopa. During the first year of the war, Numidia participated through limited combat, but by mid 148 BC a large Numidian army was sent to participate in the Siege of Carthage, and to relieve the Roman army which was harassed by Himilco Phameas's raids, after which Gulussa fought along the Roman army. In fact, the peace process itself was started after Himilco Phameas contacted Gulussa at the Roman camp to deliver his messages to the Romans. The direct participation of Numidia itself began after Scipio sent envoys into Numidia to ask for military assistance to counter Himilco's cavalry, although the first envoy had to return as Massinissa was dying. After the return of the first envoy, another was sent and were able to convince Gulussa to participate in the war by sending light cavarly commanded by himself. In fact, the captain of Carthage, Hasdrubal (not Hasdrubal the Boetharch, but another one) who was a grandson of Massinissa was executed by the Carthaginians because of his kinship ties to Gulussa, who was besieging Carthage. Whatever748 (talk) 22:22, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Hi Whatever748 and thanks for bringing this up on the talk page. I am, of course, aware of most of this. As you say, the Numidians crop up several times during the war. And so are mentioned several times in the article. Do you have any specific suggestions for additions/deletions/changes to the information given about their role? (In passing, you might also like to look over Battle of Oroscopa, which I took to FA a year ago.) Gog the Mild (talk) 09:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello Gog the Mild, and sorry for the late reply, i had a busy week. The article has some issues, and not just regarding the Numidians. First and foremost though, there is no mention of the core Numidian army's participation in the war (the article only mention the defection of some of the Numidian mercenary cavalry in the battle), nor Gulussa's intervention in the war, which led to the defeat of Himilco's cavalry. The article also doesn't make a distinction between Hasdrubal the Boetharch, and Hasdrubal the grandson of Massinissa (captain of Carthage, who was executed by the populace after Gulussa's arrival for his kinship ties to the Numidian kingdom). There is also no mention of the very important general Himilco Phameas, commander of the Carthaginian cavalry who was the main commander during the Battle of Lake Tunis, and of his important capitulation which happened through Gulussa's mediation. Instead, the article says that one of the Numidian commanders and his 2,200 cavalry defected to the Romans, which is false on several points, as Phameas was in no way a Numidian. While the article is well written it lacks some details and is inaccurate in some points. I'd suggest minor infobox improvements (addition of Numidia as a participant, Gulussa of Numidia in the commanders list along with Himilco Phameas), and the addition of the lacking or inaccurate details which i have mentioned above.

Whatever748 (talk) 19:09, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

My turn to apologise for my delayed response. The consensus for this article was nailed down in an unusually gruelling FAC. Which is not, of course, not to say that there is not room for improvement. You bring up a lot of points above, so I am going to pick and choose a handful to address first and we can work through the rest; possibly laying down some ground rules as we go.

• Firstly, sources for FAs need to be high quality as well as reliable. So can I point that Smith definitely does not meet this criterion, Venning IMO doesn't (other than the introduction), Grainger is borderline - I would be loath to include something on his sole authority, Hoyos - as a professor of classics and ancient history - definitely does meet the criteria.
• Secondly, this article is written in summary style. Just because we have a source for something is not a sufficient reason for including it. This is the reason for the exclusion of several of the issues you raise above. While this is subject to discussion, and in some cases may be a subjective judgement, the FAC consensus establishes a high bar for this being the established version.
• Thirdly, this article is the summary of a lot of activity over several years and currently has six sub-articles. Frequently the appropriate place for detail is one of these. Or, possibly, a new sub-article - I created Battle of Oroscopa two years ago to avoid overloading this article on how and why the war started.
• Fourthly, I am - honestly - entirely open to additions or clarifications; bearing in mind the points above.
• To business. Which specific mention of Hasdrubal the Boetharch in this article.should actually refer to Hasdrubal the grandson of Massinissa and what is your source for each of these.
• What is your source for "the core Numidian army's participation in the war"?

If you are ok with it, can we thrash out these two points before moving on to your others? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:34, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Regarding a revert to commas I recently added

Can we please return commas to these 6 places?

Background

“Hostages were taken and Carthage was prohibited from waging war outside Africa—and could wage war in Africa only with Rome's express permission.” (compound sentence, add comma after “taken”)

“The campaign ended in disaster at the Battle of Oroscopa and the army surrendered; many Carthaginians were subsequently massacred by the Numidians.” (Run-on/contains 3 independent clauses. Add comma after “Oroscopa” and split sentence into 2 at semicolon)

Course of the War

149 BC

“Censorinus's had the primary role of protecting the beached Roman ships and Manilius's housed the Roman legions.” (compound sentence, add comma after “ships”)

147 BC

“They had built a new fleet and once the channel was complete, the Carthaginians sailed out, taking the Romans by surprise.” (compound sentence, add comma after “fleet”)

“Fleeing Carthaginians were pursued by Rome's mounted Numidian allies and few escaped.” (compound sentence, add comma after “allies”)

Aftermath

“The Senate despatched a ten-man commission and Scipio was ordered to carry out further demolitions.” (compound sentence, add comma after “commission”) Amthisguy (talk) 16:54, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi there. It seems to me that you are trying to insert serial commas. This article doesn't use them. I appreciate that this may make it look odd to those who are used to them, but vice versa and the MoS gives a free choice. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild They aren't technically serial commas, but you're still right. Can I break up the run-on though? Amthisguy (talk) 19:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm unsure what/where the run on is, but feel free to go for it. If I really don't like it I can revert it and we can discuss it here. Usually I am fairly relaxed about phraseology and try not to be precious just because a form of words was the one I wrote.

Just as an aside, last month I had the following exchange at a FAC:

Reviewer: My English professors have always been insistent on comma usage, so it actually was shocking to me when I found out that not all introductory prepositional phrases needed commas!

Me: That sounds like my feelings when I discovered commas apparently scattered at random across an article. (My school had corporal punishment, and I would probably have received at least a smart swipe with a ruler for "Today, I ate breakfast" or "In 58 BC, Caesar invaded Gaul." Shudder! "Speech defect Gog? Pay attention!") Gog the Mild (talk) 19:48, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Genocide characterization

This article is currently in the category "Genocides in Africa". Presumably, this characterization stems from this article which I've found from the List of genocides (where this war is listed). What should be done here? We can't have this category sitting around if its not sourced in the article—is there something more to include here? Aza24 (talk) 03:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Writing as the author of 87% of the article and the editor who took it through FAC, there was no genocide during the Third Punic War. Either as we understand it now nor as it was understood then. There was a protracted military operation, at the end of which the survivors of the assault on a single city were enslaved; this had happened thousands of times before and has happened thousands of times since. Then, to quote from the article: "Surviving cities were permitted to retain at least elements of their traditional system of government and culture. The Romans did not interfere in the locals' private lives and Punic culture, language and religion survived, and is known to modern scholars as "Neo-Punic civilization". The Punic language continued to be spoken in north Africa until the 7th century AD." This is all well cited to scholarly sources. Even the article "The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC" states "It was not a war of racial extermination. The Romans did not massacre the survivors, nor the adult males. Nor was Carthage victim of a Kulturkrieg." I consider the category entirely inappropriate, but have little energy for possible edit wars over the minutiae around every FA I write. If you have, then please feel free to remove it and watchlist the article against reinstatement. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I've now removed it, as entirely unsourced. Will keep an eye on this article and have removed it from the list (we'll see if I get reverted...) – Aza24 (talk) 20:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)