Talk:Greco-Persian Wars

Title?

"Greco-Persian Wars" as the title of this page is blatantly eurocentric and incorrectly implies that these were the first or most significant wars fought between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greeks. The page should be renamed "Greek Reconquest of Macedon, Thrace and Ionia." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.249.25.143 (talk) 19:20, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

This is further strengthened by the statement that appears at the beginning of the article (and Google search results which include this page): "Greeks are awesome." Someone has included a template or some such that includes this text automatically since it is not part of the editable text of this article. Pfrowe (talk) 17:46, 14 April 2014 (UTC) what a nice history

Alexander the Great

The Greco-Persian wars have continued at the time of the Alexander the Great. Since it was Macedon and the rest of the Greek states vs the Persians again and at the same era, it is appropriate to expand the current article to that and inappropriate not to do so, since that was a major part of it and its conclusion. If others agree as well, you can state it here, in order to start adding that in the article as well Jazz1972 (talk) 14:48, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jazz1972: The Greco-Persian Wars are generally considered to have ended in around 450 BC. The wars of Alexander the Great are considered a separate topic. We base our articles on reliable sources and the reliable sources in this case do not consider the later wars of Alexander the Great as part of the Greco-Persian Wars. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:19, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Updating a bibliographic source

Hi,
I would like to update the bibliographic source by Encyclopedia Britannica (it has no author) so that it now can have the name of the editor (Michael Ray, as stated in the website), archive URL, and authors ("The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica" as recommended in Encyclopedia Britannica itself):

|author=The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica |date=8 May 2020 |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Greco-Persian-Wars |access-date=19 July 2021 |editor1-first=Michael |editor1-last=Ray |title=Greco-Persian Wars |work=Encyclopedia Britannica |archive-date=15 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615022450/https://www.britannica.com/event/Greco-Persian-Wars

--177.227.43.209 (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tom Holland

As written, this current version seems to promote the work of a popularizing writer for no particular reason other than to promote that author's work. He has not published with a scholarly press. He offers nothing new. His name and content can be left in the bibliography, but the content promoting his views, including a redundant footnote, #5, should otherwise be removed. My concern is Wikipedia becoming a place where writers use these pages to promote their own work when they are not leading authorities, but have, in fact, rather used leading authorities whose work becomes subsumed under their own for no good reason. 96.246.22.244 (talk) 03:58, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 28 February 2024

Greco-Persian Wars → Persian Wars – Not only is "Persian Wars" the overwhelmingly COMMONNAME of the conflict [1], but it is also more WP:CONCISE. Persian Wars (disambiguation) lists three other conflicts, all of which are WP:PARTIAL title matches that cannot be primary topics since they are never referred to as simply "Persian Wars". There is also Persian Wars (video game), which is obviously of negligible notability. Greco-Persian Wars dwarfs every other article listed on the DAB page in terms of pageviews, and Persian Wars already redirects here. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome lists "Persian Wars" as the common name and "Greco-Persian Wars" the extended form, as does The Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World, the World History Encyclopedia, ThoughtCo, history textbooks [2] [3], English translation of Herodotus [4] [5], etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 08:10, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Military history has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 09:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject European history has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 09:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 09:10, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. All your sources are written from the perspective of Greek history. From the perspective of Persian history, they are not the "Persian wars". Walrasiad (talk) 09:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Is there a significant body of English-language scholarship about these wars written from the Persian perspective? Quite early on, the article says, "[a]ll the surviving primary sources for the Greco-Persian Wars are Greek; no contemporary accounts survive in other languages." And given the number of different successor states and the fact that these wars might not be regarded as a major episode in the viewpoint of modern Iran, it may simply be that, as descriptive as the current title is, it isn't widely employed in English-language sources. I think that there is a better objection to this proposal. P Aculeius (talk) 13:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: you may well be correct in that the proposed title is the one typically used in English. However, taken out of the context of Greek history, readers may not know which wars they refer to from the title alone; the current title is more descriptive. I know that Persia existed in various forms over many centuries, and fought many wars. While the only ones I'm at all familiar with are the ones with Greece, I wouldn't know from the title whether those are the wars in question, or whether the article concerned wars with Rome, or Indian states, or some other powers, or a combination of all of them. Perhaps it would be better to keep the current title, noting in the lead that in Greek history, they are simply the Persian Wars, and subsequent mentions can simply call them that. P Aculeius (talk) 13:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose While "Persian Wars" is a thing, many secondary sources that I see, as well as Britannica, use "Greco-Persian Wars". Also, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome cited by nominator says "[...] more accurately called the Greco-Persian Wars". Brandmeister^talk 10:07, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposed title "Persian Wars" embodies a point of view (the ancient Greek and "classical" point of view). This no doubt occurred to the Britannica editors too. The decision of the editors of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome is different, because that whole encyclopedia adopts a Greek and Roman point of view, but they also confirm that the name we've been using is "more accurate". We, like Britannica, have to take a whole world point of view, so no change is needed. (I'm using the examples already cited by @Brandmeister: here.) Andrew Dalby 11:34, 29 February 2024 (UTC)