Wikipedia:Peer review/Ancient Greek literature/archive1

Ancient Greek literature

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I would like to request this article to be given a peer review because I have been working on it for quite a while now and I would like an external assessment of the article's quality. Ultimately, I hope to eventually have this article promoted to good article status, but first I think it is necessary for it to undergo peer review so that I will know if it is ready or not for a good article nomination. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:12, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments by User:Caeciliusinhorto

Lead

• "These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and Theogony and Works and Days by the poet Hesiod": this should probably be rewritten – as it is, it could be read as saying that the Homeric Hymns were composed by Hesiod!
• "The other highly esteemed writers of the Classical Era included the poets Sappho of Lesbos, Alcaeus of Mytilene": neither Alcaeus or Sappho were probably active in what is generally considered the classical era – nor, indeed, were Homer or Hesiod.
• I am not sure why most of the authors mentioned in the lead are given in the form "$name of $place". Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar, Aristotle, Archimedes, and Plutarch are all generally known by simply those names.

Classical and Pre-Classical antiquity

• "The Iliad is the famous story about the Trojan War": the Iliad is at best part of the famous story about the Trojan war: ask the average person about the Trojan war and they'll tell you (if they know anything about the Trojan war) about the Trojan Horse, which makes no appearance in the Iliad. Nor do the stories of Achilles at Skyros, Odysseus' attempts to avoid serving in the Greek force, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or the rape of Cassandra, to name but four famous episodes from the war.
• "Lyric poetry in the narrowest sense was written in the Aeolic dialect using heavily varied poetic meters": really? Alcman wrote choral lyric in a Doric dialect; Anacreon, monody in an Ionic dialect. This paragraph goes on to cite Pindar, who was Boeotian and whose poetry is essentially in a Doric dialect, at least according to our article on him.
• "One of these plays, (Prometheus Bound), however, may actually be the work of Aeschylus's son Euphorion": why is Prometheus Bound in parentheses?
• "Although Socrates did not write any books, many of his ideas, or at least a vague approximation of them, are expressed in Plato's early socratic dialogues": as far as I know, this is still controversial. If there's disagreement between reputable scholars on a point, wikipedia should cover all of the mainstream positions, rather than giving one.

Roman period

• "The poet Quintus of Smyrna, who probably lived during the late fourth century A.D.,[52][53] wrote Posthomerica, an epic poem narrating the story of the fall of Troy, beginning where The Iliad left off": surely there must be poetry in Greek written between the 3rd century BC and the 4th century AD, but this article mentions none of it.

General

• Make sure the orthography is consistent. I have spotted both "Herodotus" and "Herodotos", for instance: pick one and stick with it.
• Paragraph and section length varies significantly. The final paragraph of "Roman Period" is only one – short! – sentence, "Legacy" is only one paragraph long...

Thank you very much for the comments and feedback. They were extremely useful. Now I think I have a much better idea of what is wrong with this article. I have already corrected most of the problems you pointed out and I will be working on correcting the other ones you found in the coming days. Several of the problems you noted were here before I came and I simply forgot to correct them. Before I came, this article was overflowing with a lot of strong opinions and read more like a persuasion essay about the greatness of Greek literature rather than an encyclopedia article. I have not yet expanded the "Legacy" section at the end or the "Poetry" section for the Roman period, but I will be working on these. They will probably take some time. Once again, thank you very much for your help and feedback. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:57, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Good job for taking on such a big subject! Having just looked at the state of the article before you started on it, you've clearly made big improvements. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:31, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments by User:PsychoticSpartan123

The article has definitely come a long way. Just a few thoughts.

Classical and pre-classical antiquity

• Second paragraph in this section needs a reference. Criteria for referencing is one inline citation every paragraph, though some reviewers in GAN expect more like one every sentence.

Philosophy

• "Diogenes Laertius, who lived in the 3rd century, wrote Lives, Teachings, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers, a useful, though often unreliable, sourcebook." The part "a useful, though often unreliable, sourcebook" needs to specify who thinks it's useful despite being often unreliable.

Hellenistic period

• First paragraph in this section needs a reference.

References

• I recommend applying 30em to the references section, which will place them in two columns, reducing length.
• Consider a bibliography section following references, with a subsection for ancient sources and another for modern sources.
• Should implement template:harvnb, or template:sfn, for references that direct to the bibliography section. I can help you with this, if you'd like.

I think the article is GA material. I recommend nominating for A-class, and after some work with references, it will be close to FA. This article is important and you've put a lot of work into it. Good luck! Psychotic Spartan 123 15:11, 22 March 2017 (UTC)