Talk:Honorius (emperor)

Untitled

His reign of twenty-eight years was one of the most disastrous in the Roman annals; the weakness and timidity of the emperor combined with the attacks of the Visigoths and Vandals contributed to the rapid disintegration of the empire. His influence on the current of events was purely negative.

This comment, while not entirely inaccurate, is nonetheless an unattributed POV. I've ignored it, thinking that it came from one of the public sources used to create Wikipedia -- the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Catholic Encyclopedia -- but their articles fail to show similar sentences. A quick look through Edward Gibbon's book also did not reveal these sentences. Who is being quoted here? -- llywrch 18:58, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I might add, if he was an incompetent weakling, how did he survive on the throne for 28 years? He must have been a cunning politician, if only for his own interests rather than for those of the empire. Tom Peters 20050906

Nobody has been crazy enough to kill Honorius. His cousin in Constantinople has been to strong for war which will start after coup in Italy. Never forget that in AD 410 soldiers from East has come to protect Honorius in Ravenna.rjecina

In my opinion, he wasn't so much a cunning politician as a good puppet. I believe that the way he was able to survive was by being weak and ineffectual, allowing others to use his legitimacy to their advantage. Ryan 23:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, after over 2 years, no one appears to have found the source of this passage about Honorius' abilities. I've decided it was time to replace it with a citable opinion, & have chosen J.B. Bury's words to replace them. -- llywrch 19:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Next emperor

Before everything else this my comment is protest against myth stupidity which has entered wikipedia. For historian of Roman empire nothing is better of looking who is next emperor after Honorius which has died 15 august 423. If you look today wikipedia ( only english, spanish and portugal. maybe influance of american thinking ? ) next emperor is Valentinian III. Only little historical problem is that he has been crowned emperor on 23 october 424. Now for today wikipedia nobody has been emperor between 15 august 423 and 23 october 424 !!!! This is if nothing else but crazy thinking. In that period there is 2 possibilty who is emperor. This can be Joannes which has de facto ruled or Theodosius II. If we delete Joannes we must delete Romulus Augustus because he is having much poorer claim to crown of him. They both are usurpers, but Joannes has taken crown of dead emperor. In difference of that Romulus Augustus has taken only Italy, not even empire crown because then emperor has still ruled in other loyal province. I am interested now to see if anybody will agree with me that deleting Joannes from empire succession is mistake. If this is not possible I will like to see any real argument why it is not possible to write that next emperor after Honorius is Joannes or Theodosius II. ( this is then short restoration of empire unity ). rjecina 0:53, 13 june 2006 ( CET )

This user is banned from editing the English Wikipedia.

Google issue

For some reason, this shows up on Google searches with the description "Encyclopedia article which recounts the life of this Roman Emperor in a negative light." (emphasis not mine) Anyone know how to fix this (unless we actually want to appear biased)? Perhaps the phrase "a negative light" is supposed to mean something else, but it ought to be reworded nonetheless... --Lenoxus 02:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

A second check reveals the same thing, but the emphasis has now dropped. Someone really needs to change this page's "Google description" or whatever it's called... --Lenoxus 03:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I just repeated your search, & was surprised at what I saw: in many entries returned by this search, the excerpted text is replaced by a brief comment on the source. I've neve seen this before. All I can assume is that Google is adding new "functinoality". I wrote them a note complaining about this feature bug. -- llywrch 20:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

2 updates: the emperor boldening was for the now-obvious-to-me reason that it was part of my first search, but not my second. (Google emboldens many search terms to help you locate them.) The rest of it is still a mystery, though, and I've raised the question at the Help Desk. $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 05:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Possible portrait bust of Emperor

See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emperor_Maxentius_Louvre_Ma3522bis_n2.jpg (portrait of Emperor Maxentius) and compare with the portait of Honorius on the diptych of Anicius Petronius Probus http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Consular_diptych_Probus_406.jpg

Pendant

The caption with the photo of the pendant gives on of the names as "SERINA," but as "H" = the greek "eta," should the caption say "SERENA"? The name is actually a hyperlink to another article where it is indeed spelled "Serena," but I didn't change the caption... just in case.... PurpleChez (talk) 13:35, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Article class

I just noticed @ÄDA - DÄP: rated this article as B class, which is far too generous. As the article currently stands, there are problems in two areas: coverage, & up-to-date sources.

• Coverage There are two plot lines -- so to speak -- in this article: the events of Honorius' life, & the politics around being the power behind the throne. About the events of Honorius' life, there is very little: we are told where he resided at various times, & about his marriages, but absolutely nothing of his personality comes thru in this article. Yes, the scholarly consensus is that Honorius was a non-entity, & his value to the Western Empire was more for being a symbol to hold the crumbling bits together with than any action he took, but there is nothing about the man himself. (The anecdote from Procopius about Honorius & his chickens is important, but more as a contemporary statement of his incompetence than about the man himself.) As for the politics around Honorius, this article does a fair job up to the death of Stilicho; after that point, that plot line is abandoned. In fact, how the article recounts Honorius' life becomes little more than a record of selected events up to his death.
• Sources It appears that this article is heavily based on the work of J.B. Bury. While Bury is an excellent historian, & many of his judgments likely have stood the test of time, much scholarship has been done since his time. A glance at Stilicho shows several secondary sources that should be used here. (For example, Meaghan McEvoy's. Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367-455, published in 2013, appears to be an excellent candidate to be heavily used in this article.) I'd also mention S.T. Oost's Galla Placidia Augusta (Chicago: University Press, 1968) as another useful secondary source. As for primary sources, there are countless omissions, the Codex Theodosianus being foremost; C.D. Gordon, The Age of Attila: Fifth Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966) is a useful, if out-of-print, collection of all the fragments of the 5th century historians in English translation.

In short, this article has a long way to go to reach B class, despite its length. That is why I'm demoting it to C. -- llywrch (talk) 17:35, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to improve the article, @Llywrch:. However, I still think the article meets the criteria for B1 and B2 for MILHIST, as it is suitably referenced, with appropriate inline citations (B1) and "reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies" (B"). "Il meglio l'inimico del bene", as they say in Rome. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 17:57, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd be more than happy to if I had the time. However, I've taken on too much at the moment as it is. Nevertheless, there is a lot of important content missing from this article, & anyone who wants to improve it needs some hints where to start. -- llywrch (talk) 16:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

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