Talk:Ancient Greece

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bae rowshay11. Peer reviewers: Geisinsj7254, Ztluce.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Intro Summary

"they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable ("divine") knowledge." This seems to use someone's term paper for an intro level history course as a source. The source also fails to make any mention of the claim. While the claim seems plausible I believe this needs a better source.Mcoirad (talk) 23:08, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Hellenic Greece

Can this article be redirected here? Gbawden (talk) 07:26, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Hellas

The article should say "Ancient Greece or Ancient Hellas" in the beginning, not just "Ancient Greece". Christina Neofotistou (talk) 18:57, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree Dourvakis (talk) 21:30, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

You are right Scienceandhistorygreat1 (talk) 09:57, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

"unique proper historiography"

Not a big deal, but "proper" Chinese_historiography developped pretty much at the same time in China (and actually reaches further back in time).80.215.178.177 (talk) 08:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

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Ages are a headache!

This mentions the "middle ages" but it doesn't seem to relate to this. There is no good timeline available for those learning about history and the humanities. So confusing for beginners like myself. Would be nice if someone could create a simple timeline. 203.131.210.82 (talk) 05:14, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

BC/AD vs. BCE/CE

KylieTastic. I was wondering why you reverted the changes made by 130.208.78.70. To me they seem quit reasonable. Wouldn't have been the case to start a discussion about it, before using your sharp stroke? Carlotm (talk) 19:49, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Carlotm as per my edit comment see WP:ERAS namely "Do not change the established era style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. Seek consensus on the talk page before making the change". Also this type of change without seeking the consensus first tends to lead to pages being swapped back and forth endlessly often introducing errors thus steadily degrading the article. In this particular case they only broke 1 image (that I saw) but I've seen other such changes breaking dozens of links, refs and images. My personal preference for era notation goes with BCE/CE however I believe the integrity of article information and following policy (generally) is more important. So if you, 130.208.78.70, or someone else want to recommend the change here on the talk page and get a reasoned consensus please do. As I said earlier I prefer BCE/CE (unless the article is Christian in nature in which case BC/AD being more appropriate seams reasonable) however as per policy "A personal or categorical preference for one era style over the other is not justification for making a change". Also if the change is made it needs to be done without causing errors (links, images, quotations etc), and also as per WP:ERAS it should be "consistently within the same article". I hope that answers your question. Regards KylieTastic (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• I agree that we should keep the original date format per WP:ERA. Dr. K. 21:01, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• I don't, but that's almost irrelevant. If there are many others who like to make this reasonable and well due change, than.... But I doubt it. Carlotm (talk) 23:48, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how to reply here but lets give it a try; to quote your quote "A personal or categorical preference for one era style over the other is not justification for making a change", so every change a person makes is personal? Well in that case, it is your personal opinion to use christian calendar? It is by far time to start using BCE/CE, especillay on a historical article concerning ancient greece and that isn't just my personal taste. However, I did not seek this consensus on talk page beforehand and I apologize for that, guess I'm still learning new stuff. Good that you were able to fix that broken image quickly, my intention was not to do any harm! But you go on and say "I've seen other such changes breaking dozens of links, refs and images." What is the meaning of this? Doesn't this go against what wikipedia is about? So we shouldn't update any solid article because they might break links? I'm sure it can be fixed, without reverting the changes. It is at least time we start talking about if we are going to use a christian calendar or not, the article would gain a more scholarly feeling without the christian calendar and wikipedia is exactly the place where you read about so many different historical subjects, concerning so many different cultures and religions around the world, making the christian calendar inappropriate and out of date. Thanks for your input in the discussion! (I edited to fix my poor grammar)130.208.78.70 (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

The difference between BC/AD and BCE/CE is trivial. Both systems pivot around the same year and are equally "Christian". Published scholarship uses both systems. Much better to concentrate on improving the content of the article. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:41, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

• Hi 130.208.78.70 to answer some of your points:

"so every change a person makes is personal?" - Firstly as per the policy quote this is about era style not "every change"; secondly as per the policy if you have "reasons specific to its content" then please do say what it is. However in your original edits and from your later comments I believe this is a view on the general policy and not content specific.

"Well in that case, it is your personal opinion to use christian calendar?" no, as stated above mine is BCE/CE - but I have no content specific reason to assert here.

"So we shouldn't update any solid article because they might break links" yes you should update and I encourage you to do so, but care should be taken thats all. However I would say its generally considered that changes should have a net gain to the article, in this case a style change effectively removed content. Note that if this happens to images used under Non-free content criteria they are deleted after a few days so errors can become permanent.

"I'm sure it can be fixed, without reverting the changes." it could, and I fix up several most days. However in this case I didn't because of WP:ERAS.

"It is at least time we start talking about if we are going to use a christian calendar or not" - I would support a policy change to WP:ERAS to support use of BCE/CE as more academic unless a specific case for BC/AD can be made. There is a discussion on the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers talk page here - unfortunately getting consensus for such changes if often very difficult.

Lastly and most importantly I would hate for this first editing experience to put you off and would encourage you to sign up for an account and help improve things - both articles and polices. All the best KylieTastic (talk) 10:26, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

My point is that ubi maior minor cessat. Thus we have here duty and right to change the Era system currently in use, whatever WP:ERAS says. If, of course, there is an understanding about this un-trivial change. Carlotm (talk) 20:32, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

If it wasn't that clear, the major side is our obligation to build Wikipedia in the most comprehensive way. Carlotm (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

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BC/AD vs. BCE/CE - 2

After more than one year from last confrontation on this topic, I was wondering at the current state of the local mind. Changes? Carlotm (talk) 02:58, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see discussion above. Dr. K. 03:02, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment on Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

There is a RfC here, if you are interested in the subject please feel free to participate. Macedonian (talk) 18:56, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Are you talking about Alexanders The Great Macedonian Empire or F.Y.R.O.M? Yeepas69 (talk) 18:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 February 2017

underwear were great at that time

It's not clear what edits are being requested to the article. Please see WP:Edit requests#Planning a request for more information on how to make productive edit requests. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 May 2017

i want to edit to make it easiers to understand just a little because lots of people are complaining it hard to understand it Nobodybsb2a (talk) 13:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. General Ization ^Talk 13:03, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

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Infobox

What about a small infobox? Dourvakis (talk) 21:32, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I've removed it. The {{Infobox former country}} is for defunct states. "Ancient Greece" was never a state, so the box is patently out of place here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:58, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Greece was not a state but was united under Phillip II and Alexander the Great. It there any point to make an infobox about this time of Greece? Argyross (talk) 01:44, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Greece was (mostly) united under Philip and Alexander for a scant few decades, which is discussed in the article. Having an infobox for this period, in an article which covers over 1000 years of the history of Greece, would be a textbook example of undue weight Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 11:14, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Approximately in what years (or century) did formal Greek theater begin?

Approximately in what years (or century) did formal Greek theater begin?

You are in the wrong article. See Theatre of ancient Greece. By most estimates it emerged in the 6th century BC, but the earliest surviving play is probably The Persians (472 BC) by Aeschylus. Dimadick (talk) 17:58, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 September 2019

I would change (only the first word of second paragraph, but I send the whole thing so you can compare the difference this makes in context):

Boys from wealthy families attending the private school lessons were taken care of by a paidagogos, a household slave selected for this task who accompanied the boy during the day. Classes were held in teachers' private houses and included reading, writing, mathematics, singing, and playing the lyre and flute. When the boy became 12 years old the schooling started to include sports such as wrestling, running, and throwing discus and javelin. In Athens some older youths attended academy for the finer disciplines such as culture, sciences, music, and the arts. The schooling ended at age 18, followed by military training in the army usually for one or two years.[59]

A small number of boys continued their education after childhood, as in the Spartan agoge. A crucial part of a wealthy teenager's education was a mentorship with an elder, which in a few places and times may have included pederastic love. The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him. The richest students continued their education by studying with famous teachers. Some of Athens' greatest such schools included the Lyceum (the so-called Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle of Stageira) and the Platonic Academy (founded by Plato of Athens). The education system of the wealthy ancient Greeks is also called Paideia.

To (for the sake of clarity):

Boys from wealthy families attending the private school lessons were taken care of by a paidagogos, a household slave selected for this task who accompanied the boy during the day. Classes were held in teachers' private houses and included reading, writing, mathematics, singing, and playing the lyre and flute. When the boy became 12 years old the schooling started to include sports such as wrestling, running, and throwing discus and javelin. In Athens some older youths attended academy for the finer disciplines such as culture, sciences, music, and the arts. The schooling ended at age 18, followed by military training in the army usually for one or two years.[59]

Only a small number of boys continued their education after childhood, as in the Spartan agoge. A crucial part of a wealthy teenager's education was a mentorship with an elder, which in a few places and times may have included pederastic love. The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him. The richest students continued their education by studying with famous teachers. Some of Athens' greatest such schools included the Lyceum (the so-called Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle of Stageira) and the Platonic Academy (founded by Plato of Athens). The education system of the wealthy ancient Greeks is also called Paideia. Kjell De Mars (talk) 12:51, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

 Done NiciVampireHeart 08:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 July 2020

Add the "citation needed" tag to the sentence in the summary "In this context, they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable ("divine") knowledge" and remove the current citation that is listed there. A quick glance at the citation should confirm it isn't a proper source, and also that the source doesn't mention the claim at all. The claim seems reasonable, but needs a real source. Mcoirad (talk) 02:56, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I have removed the paragraph, seems to have been a bit of an overstatement. – Thjarkur (talk) 08:19, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good. I couldn't find a source saying anything like that from some general academic sources I consulted. Mcoirad (talk) 16:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Population and economy

I've corrected Hansen's cited C5 population estimate to the one arrived at by the author himself (7½-10 million, not 10-13m). Hansen's own upper bound was itself a rounding-up (from an original raw but incomplete 6.8m): it didn't need a further unexplained 30% added to it.

The Economy section was hopelessly one-sided & misleading and needed a full rewrite, noting ongoing controversy about Greece's development level. Scheidel (again, the previously-cited source) himself put the wage of an Athenian urban labourer at 7-12 kg in terms of wheat, a very different thing to an "average daily wage of the Greek worker" of "about 12 kg": not only was 12 kg the upper bound with 7 kg possibly more common, but wages in urban Athens may be assumed to be higher than those of Greek workers generally, which would include rural labourers and those in less affluent poleis. The cited author similarly never said that this was "more than 3 times the average daily wage of an Egyptian worker during the Roman period", explicitly putting the ratio at 2-3 to 1 and specifying that the lower wage was for an unskilled rural labourer, not an average for Egyptian workers, again a different matter.

Of prosperity (by the standards of the age) among the Athenian citizenry there can be no doubt, but that doesn't equate to claims for the whole of ancient Greece as "the most advanced economy in the world". Economic development is about more than the crude income level even of a majority, otherwise the slaveowning US south was more "advanced" than the industrialising north, a proposition that few would subscribe to.

Precisian (talk) 19:34, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Dayuan Kingdom (329–160 BC)?

What is the native Greek name of that kingdom? Dayuan (Chinese: 大宛) is just a Chinese exonym/xenonym of that kingdom. Shouldn't there be a native Greek name for that kingdom? Is this kingdom documented in Greek/Hellenic/Macedonian history? --Yejianfei (talk) 16:42, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

§Empires, kingdoms and regions

Every time I look at this article, I question what the section on §Empires, kingdoms and regions adds to this article. It's a pretty random collection of polities (despite the name, there are no "regions" included) with no clear inclusion criteria, listing some very minor kingdoms which have no place in a wikipedia article on a topic as broad as ancient Greece (Dayuan, seriously?); including some weird overlaps (the kingdom of Macedon is listed as lasting until 146 BC, but the Antigonid dynasty, who ruled Macedon for the last part of that, is listed separately); and having strange omissions (why is the Delian League listed but the Peloponnesian League not?

Really, the major players should be (and in many cases already are!) discussed in §History, §Geography, and §Politics and society. Given that this entire section is completely uncited, I would suggest getting rid of the entire §Empires, kingdoms and regions section and its 14 variably helpful maps. This frees up 1500 words which would be much better spent on virtually anything else – we currently have fewer than 150 words on the legacy of ancient Greece(!), even less on the economy, barely a mention of Greek pottery or vase-painting, and only a single mention of women in the entire text. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:07, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto-public:, WP:BEBOLD. I agree, and I have done so.~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:53, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

"... led by three hundred Spartans..." links to the movie...?

Does that link really need to be there? It honestly seems comedic. 12.175.28.210 (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No, it doesn't need to be there, and I have removed it as unhelpful. Thanks for pointing it out Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)