December 12, 2025 by NevilleMorley

Have we not learnt to double-check all references? Especially in this new era of bullshitting machines?

This afternoon, Naomi Scott (@drnaomiscott.bsky.social) posted on Bluesky that she’d just been reading the really wild Wikipedia page for Euripides’ lost tragedy Thyestes. And, yes, this is pretty remarkable…

How could one resist following the link to the Grauniad article that is provided as a reference for this statement? Which does indeed describe Ernetti’s claims, including the idea that he was merely one of a whole group of eminent scientists (including Werner von Braun) who had developed this time viewer but mostly preferred to remain anonymous. The problem: Ernetti never claimed to have seen Euripides’ Thyestes, but rather Ennius’ equally lost Latin version, performed (so Cicero tells us) in 169 rather than some time in the fifth century.

That remains hilarious, as does the deadpan “this claim is unsubstantiated” comment from whoever provided this information. But why is it attached to the wrong play? One possible answer is that there isn’t a Wikipedia entry for Ennius’ version, so either the unknown writer didn’t care about the difference between Ennius and Euripides, presumably thinking that this was too good an anecdote not to be included somewhere, or didn’t notice the difference (at least it’s not Seneca), or was making an elaborate but unstated point about the likelihood that Ennius’ play was closely based on Euripides’ version.

The sensible thing to do was of course to delete the claim from the Euripides article (or rather, not add it in the first place) and create a new page for Ennius’ Thyestes so that this wacky anecdote can be included. I have of course spent an hour this afternoon doing this, but I’m not sure how long it will take for it to get approved.

As I’ve commented recently, I was once one of those people who onceadvised students not to touch Wikipedia with a bargepole, who have now come fully round to the idea that it’s very good at what it’s good for, especially compared with the GenAI alternatives. But that does depend on the system working as it’s supposed to, with factual claims being properly supported and checked by others. In this case, it does seem as if the inclusion of a live link to a media article was sufficient for everything to get ticked off, without anyone checking that the article actually supported the point being referenced.

So, I can feel that I have today made at least a minor contribution to the sum of human knowledge, by correcting error. Obviously what I should have done, if I were a true academic, is write a deranged 200-page diatribe on the subject…

The real question, however, is why Ernetti chose to view Ennius’ play in the first place. Does it hold some sort of mythic status in the history of Latin/Italian Literature – a bit like the lost book of Aristotle’s Poetics in The Name of the Rose? Was the chronovisor hard to calibrate, so he didn’t have total control over what he ended up seeing? Or was this carefully calibrated with the right balance of verifiability and obscurity, where a more mainstream lost work might be scrutinised more throughly – just as a more mainstream Wikipedia entry might get properly checked?

Update: It occurs to me that, since I edited the Thtestes (Euripides) page to remove the erroneous point about Ernetti, there won’t be a handy link to information about him until my new Thyestes (Ennius) page gets approved. So, in the meantime…

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jun/09/farout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_claims_and_urban_legends

Posted in Musings | Tagged Ennius, Wikipedia | Leave a Comment