Talk:Fasti Capitolini

Table format

The current table takes up too much vertical and not enough horizontal space, and the navigation requires too much scrolling up and down. I don't see how a separate column which is used almost exclusively for the notice 'coss.' (should be kind of obvious that 'consul' is the office meant) improves the list. Even with that, there's still plenty of horizontal space to display consuls and military tribunes in two columns rather than one. Surely there's some way to optimize this ?--half of the screen space is blank at any given spot of the table. Avilich (talk) 23:45, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

There's always going to be a trade-off between table width and height; you see the danger of the table as being too tall; I see it as making the text too wide for easy legibility—along with a few other concerns. But since no matter how you stretch it horizontally, you're never going to get more than a small part of any section to fit on the screen at once, I don't see a significant benefit to prioritizing width over height—it's still going to be pretty tall no matter what you do to squeeze more text in fewer lines.

How much blank space there is depends on how wide your browser window is, and what your text display size (or zoom setting) is. A very wide window would leave a lot of blank space, but the column widths are much more reasonable for a narrower one. It's harder to read very wide lines than narrower ones, and so limiting the maximum width for the text by placing each name on a separate line should make the table more legible, and more understandable, than placing the names side-by-side.

Placing them side-by-side also risks giving the impression that the order in which they're listed is particularly significant; for instance, in the List of Roman Consuls, which overlaps the scope of this table, we had designated the left-hand column as the consul prior and the right-hand column as the consul posterior. It's possible that someone could still interpret the order given in a single column that way, but at least marginally less probable; nothing in the fasti actually indicates that the names were intentionally recorded in a particular order.

And perhaps just as importantly, for about 75 years of this table, we have consular tribunes, for whom we have no information about the order. Would we read six consular tribunes in order from left to right, then the next line left to right, and the third line left to right, or would we read all of the left-hand names first and then the right-hand names? And while the offices of dictator and magister equitum are clearly ranked, you can't logically place them side-by-side and then give the labels; they have to be vertical in order to align with the names of the magistracies. Meanwhile, there's no evidence that either of the censors held any kind of seniority over the other.

But again, the table is much more easily understood if the magistracies precede, rather than follow the names of the officeholders. It's only necessary to give the name of the magistracy once per year, no matter how many people filled it; it goes at the beginning of the list. This would be confusing coming at the end; people won't expect it there, and you don't normally see a label coming at the top of a list following the contents. To say nothing of confusing magistracies—a column with a single, fixed purpose—with multi-purpose notes that could refer to anything and occur in a seemingly random selection of years. Also, since the notes column consists of notes found in the original text, while the magistracies indicated aren't usually included (nor are the years, except at occasional intervals, not corresponding with either modern or traditional Varronian dating), they shouldn't appear in the "notes" column.

Now, it's true that there's usually a little more space in the columns than they absolutely need. That's intentional—both to prevent the columns from crowding one another, and to limit the number of instances in which the text has to wrap from one line to the next, even when readers have narrower browser windows. In a few cases, wrapping is unavoidable; you can't fit tribuni militum consulari potestate on one line, even abbreviated. But because this only shows up in years where there were three or more consular tribunes, even this doesn't force the addition of blank lines at the bottom of any year. The final column widths were decided when the table was finished, based on how wide the widest entries in each column were, and how likely long lines were to wrap. I tried to avoid any that would stretch the vertical dimensions by adding extra lines, but that's harder to achieve when there's more text per line, which necessarily becomes more crowded and harder to read with narrower windows.

In the end, I decided that the table would be clearer, more legible, and more scaleable, if I placed the magistracies first, limited the main column to one name per line, and allowed adequate space for notes of variable length. I don't think that placing them side-by-side in order to reduce the number of lines makes the text more legible; I don't think that placing the magistracies in the notes column makes much sense or aids comprehension; and because the notes column is only supposed to include text from the original tables (including interpolations of missing text), mixing things that do and don't appear in the original text becomes an additional source of confusion. That's why I don't think the table format should be changed as proposed. P Aculeius (talk) 00:50, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

(also, the order of magistrates currently in display does not correspond to the actual order in the actual fasti) Avilich (talk) 00:07, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

The order listed follows the source text as given in the Clauss-Slaby Databank, with interpolations for missing text, as of the date the table was made. Obviously if both names are missing for a year, there's no way to know for sure what order they came in, even if we know who was probably listed. So it's possible that other reconstructions, or earlier or later versions, give different orders; but this follows the epigraphic source used as closely as possible, with regard to the names of the magistrates and any additional text (the notes column). P Aculeius (talk) 00:50, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

All magistracy names (tr. mil, dict, etc.) except the consulship ('coss.') are included in the original text--this is something I did take into consideration. All I did here was remove 'coss.' (b/c it's default) and place the others in the last column, so the year and names would be close to each other as possible. Also, the FC probably did have an order of tribunes it regarded as correct, since about half of the entries are in unanimous agreement with other sources.

Degrassi's edition of the FC, which I used and which the Databank appears to copy, displays the entries in two columns, which is the same arrangement as the stone itself. I don't think readability is in any way impaired by my arrangement even in small screens. In the end, the issue of the columns themselves is secondary for me--but scrolling through this page takes some time, and I wish it took less. Moreover, years like 380 take up an obscene amount of space on the screen, and much of it is left blank. The names easily fit into two columns, and even then there's a lot of space remaining.

For now, I consider that it would be a reasonable compromise to use two columns for tribunes only--I won't remove the 'magistracy' column anymore, nor do any significant changes to the 'notes'. There's easily enough space even for that. Avilich (talk) 02:16, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, you're right about the original tablets: I thought the text was continuous, but looking at the large example they're columnar as you said. Even so, I think it's preferable to keep one name per line. However, I agree that your compromise with respect to the consular tribunes sounds fair; try columnizing them and we can at least see how it looks alongside the rest. You can probably shrink the notes column slightly to add space to the center column. I just reviewed the entire page, and I only saw one case where a shorter notes column would force the creation of a new line due to wrapping on the bottom line. There are a few other lines that might wrap, but they wouldn't cause confusion or unnecessary blank lines.

I'm not saying that there's uncertainty about the order in which the consular tribunes appear—I'm saying that there's no known significance to the order. It's possible that they rotated some of their duties like the consuls are thought to have, beginning with whoever received the most votes; but it could also be that they were named according to the prestige that some early annalist assigned to them individually, or to their families (obviously this is the same motive proposed by those who argue that the fasti were heavily edited to reflect Augustan-era views of Roman history). We just don't have enough evidence to say why they were listed in a particular order, or whether it has any significance, and if about half of the entries are the same from one source to the next, that means about half of them vary—further reason not to argue about the significance of the order here (although if we can find a reliable source that discusses it, we could mention it in the body of the text, above the tables). P Aculeius (talk) 02:47, 25 September 2021 (UTC)