Talk:Marcus Antonius (orator)

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Is "Orator" really part of his name? Ardric47 23:22, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Kind of a weird situation - 1911EB apparently treated it as a cognomen, but today's OCD doesn't. A better alternative might be Marcus Antonious (consul 99 BC), using standard WP disambig rules. Stan 07:12, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd treat it as part of his name & leave the article as is. What we're really deciding here is whether or not we should treat Orator as a true addition to his name, like we do any other cognomina/agnomina (like Africanus or Strabo), or just a nickname, but it's a distinction the Romans weren't really capable of making (at least partly because of the lack of a definite article in Latin). It only looks odd to us in this instance because his cognomen carries the same meaning in English as it does in Latin. As far as the Romans were concerned, Marcus Antonius spoke extraordinarily well so they started calling him Orator, and at that point his name became Marcus Antonius Orator. It's the same as Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo ("Cross-Eyed Gnaeus Pompey") or Marcus Antonius Creticus ("Chalky Marcus Antonius"), neither of which we have a problem accepting as perfectly legitimate cognomina. Binabik80 00:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Orator was a cognome commonly given to good rethoricians. That was his case. The article should stay as it is. muriel@pt 19:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As a much later addendum, I would point out that the Romans tended to name their sons after themselves and so these additions served as a real life 'disambiguation' Marcus Antonius Orator, Marcus Antonius Creticus ('in this case meaning something like Cretan-fighter', not 'chalky'), and Marcus Antonius Triumvir are sometimes difficult to tell apart in the epigraphic record because their official name doesn't include the third part (even though ancient authors often included it in the literary records). 134.84.238.179 (talk) 19:09, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

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Merger update

The 2012 merger was apparently undone in February 2016. I have restored the Antonia redirect. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:08, 16 June 2025 (UTC)