Talk:Ancient Greece/Archive 3

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)

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)