This is an impressive and substantial article, and unless I run across unexpected obstacles I fully expect to promote it to GA (and perhaps see it at FAC in due course) but there are some drafting points I should like you to look at first. It will take me two or three goes to get through them. Here is the first batch:
General
The article is mostly written with English spelling, but a few American spellings ("traveled", "honor" etc) have crept in, and need to be amended. (I have a techie shortcut that makes this easy, and I'll gladly do it if you would like me to. Please let me know.)
Sources
The second sentence is 69 words long, and really could do with breaking into two.
("a mish mash of actual fact, Cloak and dagger, Sword and Sandal, with a sprinkling of Ubu Roi") – this calls for an an inline citation in addition to the reference. And "Cloak and lower case dagger but Sword and upper case Sandal: is this right? I see it's from a French book. If the translation is yours it would be as well to give the original French text in a footnote.
"absolutely necessary" – otiose adverb: something is either necessary or it isn't.
"However, this may be a ruse" – the word "however" appears 34 times in this article, mostly (as here) quite needlessly. "Howevers", as I well know, creep into one's prose unbidden, but they usually weaken the prose, and should be weeded severely.
"can be partially linked" – partially as in partly, no doubt, rather than in a biased way. The ambiguity is somewhat theoretical – who's going to misunderstand it? – but it's as well to make things completely unambiguous, nonetheless.
Public service
"His first…" – there seems to be a WP convention, with which I don't entirely agree, that at first mention in each paragraph "he" (or "she") won't do, and the name must be used. Here et passim.
"Later, he was to be transferred to the Legio I Minervia" – the "was to be" really is ambiguous: does it mean that he was sent to be tribune of the Legio II Adiutrix with the intention that he would go on to be Legio I Minervia or is it merely a succession of events, in which case the "to be" should be removed?
"governor of said province" – the "said" grates somewhat: how about just "the" or "that"?
"as was customary to the regular senator" – not sure about the preposition here: would "for" be more natural?
Before resuming my review of the individual sections of the text, I pause here to mention the quite remarkable excess of
WP:OVERLINKs. In Early life alone Italica is linked four times. Rome does not need one link, let alone the five it has at present. I spotted other duplicate links (and there may be more) to:
Antinopolis
Antinous
Athens
Attianus
Augustan Histories
Baiae
Bar Kokhba
Barcelona
Bithynia
Cassius Dio
Danube
Ephesus
Eusebius
Fifth Macedonian Legion
Fronto
Hadrian's Wall
Hellenist
Hispania Baetica
Historia Augusta
Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus
Marcus Aurelius
Mauretania
Nero
Pannonia Inferior
Pantheon
Parthia
Pausanias
Roman Senate
Scipio Africanus
Second Temple
Sparta
Syria
Torah
Trajan
Vallum
Vespasian
XXII Deiotariana
Resuming the section-by-section review:
Securing power
"relieve him from his post" – unexpected phrasing instead of the more usual relieve him of his post
"Or better, the reason" – who says it's better?
"It's probable" – conversational contractions of this kind are inappropriate for an encyclopaedia article. See
MOS:N'T.
"conjectural and speculative" – how is conjecture distinguished from speculation?
"a Greek intellectual that had been" – unexpected choice of pronoun: surely "who" would be normal here?
"It's more probable" – chatty contraction, as above.
"proof to it" – two points here: first, "proof of it" would be more usual phrasing, surely? And how can it be "proof" of something you have just decribed as merely "probable"?
"Great Britain" –
WP:OVERLINK – we do not link the names of "major geographic features and locations, languages, and religions".
"built on stone" – typo for "of stone"?
"Hadrian established intensive drill routines" – I was amused to see what this links to.
Cultural pursuits and patronage
"an Ancient anonymous source" – is the capital letter intentional?
"When Trajan, predecessor to Hadrian" – we have already been told that Trajan was predecessor to Hadrian.
"He also wrote an autobiography …" – citation for this sentence, please.
First para, last sentence: lacks a main verb. Indeed, as I read this section I get the strong impression that it is written by someone whose first language is not English, and whether or not I am correct in that surmise I really think the section needs a good copy-edit. Some minor hiccups of English usage earlier in the article didn't seem to me serious enough to fail GA criterion 1a, but I think this section is another matter. I am perfectly happy to give the text a swift once-over – there is no reason why a GAN reviewer should not do so. Please let me know what you think best.
Africa, Parthia and Anatolia
Third para: this is a rehash of earlier material about the Hadrian-Antinous affair, and doesn't need serving up again here.
Please consider the above point about copy-editing before I go any further. I fear I am inclined to fail the candidacy if it is not addressed. – Tim riley talk14:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)reply
Cerme (
talk) 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC) I will revise the article, mainly by adding some materials from the German version, which is a FA. Then I shall ask for copy edit.
Cerme (
talk)
13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)reply
Fair enough. I'll obviously have to fail the GAN on this occasion, but it is fundamentally a fine piece of work and I look forward to its future progress. Regards, Tim riley talk20:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)reply