Disputatio:Fora Imperatorum

Latest comment: abhinc 12 annos by Andrew Dalby in topic Lemma

Lemma recensere

Habemus lemmatis fontem ex tempore Imperii Romani? Secundum White's et Cassell's, imperialis, -e non est verbum Latinum, sed adiectivum imperatorius Anglice = 'imperial'. Hic est consilium quod apud Cassell's legimus, sub voce Anglica imperial : "render by a genit., e.g. imperatoris, principis, Caesaris, imperii ; adjectives occur in late authors, such as principalis and imperatorius in Suet." IacobusAmor 20:31, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply

Dunno. The page was begun by Iustinus 7 years ago. He has been the best of all of us at sourcing names, but what he'll say about this I don't know ... Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:56, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
It was a very good question, Iacobe. Google looks negative on "Fora Imperialia". "Fora Imperatorum" has been used occasionally in modern writings by classicists: we may perhaps have to move to that. I'm not sure that ancient authors grouped these structures under any single name at all, unless, just conceivably, "Forum [Romanum] Magnum" (see "regio viii" in this list). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:23, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
"Imperialis", according to Du Cange, is used in medieval Latin but specifically of the Holy Roman Empire. Yes, it looks to me as if we'll have to move this, but better wait in case someone has a really good name to suggest. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:31, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
I don't have anything definitive, but I looked in Hofmann's Lexicon Universale in Camena -- the entry starts here -- and noticed that he never refers to the "imperial forums" as a group. But whenever he names a particular forum, it's always "so-and-so's forum," with a genitive (except for Forum Romanum and Forum Transitorium), which would seem to support Fora imperatorum. A quick-and-dirty search through Camena and through Google Books turns up only one use of forum imperalis, but it's a legal term referring to the imperial law court. I also searched the PHI, where I can do a lemmatized-word search rather than just a string search, and don't find either phrase, not entirely surprising since so many of the authors in the PHI corpus lived before there were enough forums to need collective names for them. This is an interesting question; surely there must be some humanist somewhere talking about all the Fora? A. Mahoney 22:35, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for commenting. As to the names of the individual ones, my impression with the first two is that the adjectival form (Forum Iulium, Forum Augustum) was initially the official one (both are so named in the Res gestae Divi Augusti) and the genitival form (Forum Caesaris, Forum Augusti) was colloquial and took the field later. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:40, 10 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
I think the move was good (because the current name is directly supported by a published book title) but Iacobus has now found support beyond Cassell's for the adjective "imperialis". See Disputatio:Aedificium Civitatis Imperialis. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:51, 16 Februarii 2012 (UTC)Reply
Revertere ad "Fora Imperatorum".