Talk:History of Athens

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Talk:History of Athens/Archive1

Contents 1 Civilisation/Civilization? 2 Image of the Byzantine Church in this article 3 Image of the Roman Agora 4 Typos 5 Artists and Philosophers section 6 Athens the oldest? 7 Population Problems 8 Mistakes 9 Early History Section 10 Fair use rationale for Image:Ac.athens44.jpg 11 Some minor points 12 Cratylos

[edit] Civilisation/Civilization?

In the introduction, should the article refer to "Western Civilisation" or "Western Civilization"? Bigdaddy1204 14:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image of the Byzantine Church in this article

I have inserted a photograph I took when I was in Athens during April 2004. Bigdaddy1204 15:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image of the Roman Agora

Changed "The ruins of the Agora, the commercial centre of ancient Athens" to "The ruins of the Roman Agora, the second commercial centre of ancient Athens.". The image shows the Roman Agora, not the Ancient Agora commonly refered to as "Agora". The latters was the first commercial centre of Athens. --Evzone 03:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typos

Seem to be a lot of spurious characters and whatnot.

I'll skim through it a little, i'm not the best at spelling however. Cleotheo (talk) 21:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't have time to go through it all, but I found 6-7 typos that I fixed. Otherwise I don't know if it matters but center was spelled centre a few times. I didn't fix that because I was unsure if I was changing the meaning of the word or not. Cleotheo (talk) 21:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Artists and Philosophers section

As far as I know, Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon did not write during the 5th century (Aristotle wasn't even alive then), as the beginning of this section implies. Iridius 05:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Athens the oldest?

The History of Athens is the longest of any city in Europe:

I'm prepped to be shot down here, but Argos is still a city, and isn't it MUCH older? You could rejoinder that it's not on the same site as ancient Argos (its citadel) but neither, really, is Athens. Maybe the wording might be "the longest of any major city in Europe"? Skookum1 18:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Population Problems

"At its peak, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens and its suburbs probably had approximately 1,527,327.23 inhabitants. " According to that Athens and the surrounding areas had .23 people. Now how does that even happen????? I can understand 1,577,327 people, but not .23. El Greco 16:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

According to my Classics professor, Athens had a population of about 20,000 in the 4th and 5th centuries, BCE. The political structure could not have accommodated anything over 100,000- let alone 1.5 million. Anyone care to sort this out? 76.81.218.167 07:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

A few months ago, the sentence used to read: "At its peak, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens and its suburbs probably had approximately 300,000 inhabitants." It was changed without explanation, so 1.5 million is almost certainly wrong, but the 300,000 didn't have a citation either. Does anyone have access to a source that would give us something to cite? --Delirium 14:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The Encyclopedia Of Ancient Greece by Nigel Guy Wilson, pages 214, 215, gives some statistics on this. I edited them in the article. Odysses (☜) 12:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mistakes

Jizzers? Thats a Greek word? And Alexander in the 5th century? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cpom (talk • contribs) 13:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Early History Section

This section cites the "Doric invasion", but as far as I've heard the theory of a Doric invasion causing the Greek decline around this time period has pretty much been abandoned. Might this be in need of revision? Pandacantante 03:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Ac.athens44.jpg

Image:Ac.athens44.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some minor points

In the section dealing with the name of the city it is correctly stated that Αθήναι is actually a plural form. I believe that it would be worth noting that the name is considered prehellenic and that the plural is probably the outcome of the συνοικισμός, the unification of prehistoric hamlets scattered around the Acropolis (see the introduction in John Travlos, A Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens and the first chapter in Τραυλός Ιωάννης, Η Πολεοδομική Εξέλιξις των Αθηνών). The section on Roman Athens reads Various Roman emperors would construct a concert hall, a law court, a library, a gymnasium, a small temple on the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and an aqueduct which is still in use today. This is not accurate. The Odeion (concert hall) was built by Agrippa who was indeed a Roman but not an emperor, whereas the small temple (alluding to the round monopteros temple of Rome and Augustus in front of the Parthenon) was -strictly speaking- built by the Demos with a view to honoring Augustus. I believe that the Roman Forum -the major commercial market during the Roman period and one of the best preserved building complexes still standing- would deserve some mention in this context as it is indeed related with Augustus himself. I know of no Law Court built in Athens by a Roman Emperor and I find it highly improbable. I should add that so far I haven't been able to find any relevant reference to such a court (the Delpinion maybe?). As for the rest (the aqueduct, the Temple of Olympian Zeus [in its latest form], the Gymnasium and the Library) they are all attributed to Hadrian. Most notably the emperor was responsible for the planning and construction of a whole new suburb. The inscription on the east facade of Hadrian's Arch is quite telling in this respect (Αίδε εις Αδριανού κ'ουχί Θησέως πόλις, This is the city of Hadrian and not Theseus). Old 19th century and recent excavations have unearthed a significant portion of this 2nd century addition, which roughly coincides with the National Gardens (see Paul Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien; Walter Judeich, Topographie von Athen; Thompson-Whycherly, The Athenian Agora, Vol. 14, The Agora of Athens The History, Shape and Uses of an Ancient City Center and Parlama - Stampolidis (ed.), Athens: The City Beneath the City. Antiquities from the Metropolitan Railway Excavations ). In an earlier comment user Pandacantante has made a good point about the Dorian invasion. Modern scholarship has largely discredited the Dorian invasion theory and this should somehow be stated in the text. Athenians maintained that their city had escaped the onslaught, as it is correctly mentioned in the article, but it should be made clear that this was only an Athenian belief of later periods. I am not yet familiar with the WP editing habits, therefore I am going to live the article as it is for the time being. I would very much welcome any piece of information, especially on this elusive Roman law court. --Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 21:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cratylos

Although the passage from Cratylos incorporated in the etymology section is quite interesting, it is actually referring to the theonym of the godess Athena and not to the city name per se. It is not at all sure that this was a widely held Athenian view. It has probably more to do with the subtleties of platonic "linguistic" argumentation. This whole quotation is in my view redundant--Giorgos Tzimas (talk) 02:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)