Talk:Classical Greece

-Concerned Reader-

Untitled
A section is missing from the article. The rise of Athens. I have reason to believe someone deleted it.

Proofreader's notes
Some suggestions/observations that arose during my proofread: The Hellenistic period is different from the classical period. It goes archaic, classical, late classical, then hellenistic -Eric (talk) 21:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be good to make a note somewhere in the article--at least for a while--that it's a translation. I believe I've seen that done elsewhere, but not sure where.
 * The corresponding article on FR WP has since been broken up into separate articles. Someone familiar with the related EN articles may want to consider following suit here, or at least adding/redoing some interwiki links.
 * The original FR WP article was apparently fr:Époque classique; by the time the English translation process was complete, the FR WP article had been made into a stub and its body moved into two articles (5th c. and 4th c.): fr:Grèce classique au Ve siècle and fr:Grèce classique au IVe siècle.
 * I suggest all dates drop the "BC" and the article have a note at the top explaining that all dates are BC unless otherwise indicated. This is common practice in books and articles dealing primarily with BC dates.
 * The title of the first sub-section under Theban hegemony..., 5th-century Boeotion confederacy (447-386), doesn't seem to jive with the 4th-century events described in it.
 * Please note that I am not an expert on this topic and may have misinterpreted some French expressions as a result.

Too centered on Athens?
This article seems slightly too focused on Athens to me. I understand that they were the most significant state during that time period, but they were far from the only one, and other events happening at that time like what was happening in the Greek Colonies at the time seems to be understated. Thanks. Lemming42 (talk) 19:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

"Too centered on Athens" is basically what the term "Classical Greece" means. It is also extremely easy to find tons of references that place the "classical period" at around 480-323 BC so I really don't know what the "citation needed" tag is doing here. This is a case of where the statement under question is so commonplace and part of general education that it is difficult to pick one specific "reference". This is different from a statement that is unreferenced because not a single reference has been found, to the point where I wonder if the tag was placed in good faith to begin with. One brief google books search would have been enough to convince anyone. --46.245.145.186 (talk) 06:18, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Poor Quality
This article needs to be severely overhauled. Between the misspellings, the confusing backtracking text, and lack of citations makes for a very poor and unintelligable article. I will try to catch and fix all of the typos, but someone more familiar with the origins of content needs to varify things and reorganize.JanderVK (talk) 15:33, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed for someone familiar with Greek history this article is very elementary and poor. It is bad. Beickus (talk) 14:20, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

European Civilization or Western Civilization
The opening sentence says "Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavily influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and still has an enduring effect on European civilization". I am going to change European civilization to Western civilization since it seems obvious to me that classical greece has a broader influence on the entire Western world and not just Europe. Any objections, thoughts, ect.? 99.241.90.42 (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, "Western civilization" grew out of European civilization during colonialism, so indirectly, yes, anything that gave rise to European civilization also gave rise to "Western civilization", a fortiori. --46.245.145.186 (talk) 06:20, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Pelop. War section too long
This section seems overly long. I know that it is a pivotal era of Classical Greece, but there is a lot of repetition (especially in the early paragraphs, where it repeats almost verbatim aspects of the section preceding it), and it has its own article. It really needs to be pared down. I am not enough of an expert to determine what's the detail, and what's the major points, so I'm asking please for an experienced editor of this article to take a look at this. I think the length is and level of detail is far too much. It would help the flow of the article to summarize. Jbower47 (talk) 13:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. There's no need for this much information to be here instead of the sub-articles on this history. -- Khazar (talk) 04:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Persian era?
Overemphasizing the events of the Second Persian Invasion (here as well as in other articles such as Greece, Greek History) by labelling the correspondent section as 'Persian era' is clearly wp:undo weight. This was nothing more than a failed invasion which lasted 2-3 years in total, generally described in history as "Persian Wars" and of course the expressions "incorporation of Thessaly into the Persian Empire" is misleading. Moreover the addition of the Achaemenid Empire map is the epitomy of wp:undue here, while even the correspondent map of the Greek-Persian Wars is absent in this article.Alexikoua (talk) 07:30, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

"This Classical period saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persian Empire"
The lede mentions this, the article does not. Can someone please point out exactly what parts of modern-day Greece were annexed and in during which time?79.223.29.226 (talk) 22:16, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I searched a few other articles for information, but found nothing, so I went ahead and changed it. If you disagree, please state which specific incident at what time you are talking about.79.223.27.190 (talk) 17:07, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * It happened during the First Persian invasion of Greece. Though it was altogether for a short period, at the height of their military successes they briefly had occupied, Macedon, Thrace, Euboea, and Thessaly (amongst the ones just mentioned from the back of my head) As the article specifically mentions the time period before the rise of Alexander and the subsequent overthrow of Persia, it remained one of the most important facts of the period.
 * I agree it should include some inline citations in the body of the article as well. I will do that in the near future most likely.


 * - LouisAragon (talk) 12:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This territory was held by an occupation army for a short time during the war - it wasn't formally "annexed" - the Greek colonies in Ionia WERE a part of the Persian Empire, for a considerable time.50.111.19.178 (talk) 16:04, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

unreferenced and possibly not a qualified source
I removed the following unreferenced statement: " Noted commentator Marianna de Marzi has also observed the extent to which Classical Greek thought has influenced the progression of Western civilization, writing: "The profundity of the knowledge gained through this period in history; in art, mathematics, music and more, is incomparable to almost any other chapter in human inquiry. " - I've never heard of de Marzi, and doing a few searches turned up nothing involving her name and any scholarly tracts on Classical Greece. Particularly troubling is the statement about music - nothing survives of music from the ancient world except a few restored instruments and depictions in artwork. We have no idea of how it sounded. Ancient Greece had no known impact on the development of European classical music, which developed from the Renaissance. 50.111.19.178 (talk) 15:47, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Legacy Section Needs Expansion
The article alludes to the influence of this period on later Western Civilization multiple times, but all we get is an unsatisfying couple of sentences invoking Will Durant. I think the article would be much improved by more details/examples about the works and culture from this period and their influence going forward. The entire article could do for more cultural information, really. Compare this article with Ancient Greece and see how much it's lacking. Lionparty (talk) 15:14, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the article as a whole needs a hell of a lot of work. Classical Greek philosophy, drama, and art are all mentioned in the lead but get no treatment in the body at all; there isn't a single mention of Greek religion; there's minimal discussion of the economic situation, including not a single mention of slavery...  The blow-by-blow account of the various wars between states could be significantly compressed – an encyclopedia article on Classical Greece has no need of two paragraphs on the Siege of Melos!  (And Archaic Greece covers Cleisthenes, so that could be cut too...)
 * It would be a big project, but if there is change you would like to see on this page, I would strongly recommend you get stuck in, be bold and start making them – the page has been substantially unchanged at least since the beginning of 2017 so it's not like there's anyone else particularly going to jump in. I'm not on Wikipedia with any great frequency recently (and when I am I have other projects to work on), but I am substantially to blame for the current state of our article on Archaic Greece, and wrote several thousand bytes of the current Ancient Greece article, so if you want any advice or help getting sources, do get in contact with me. Or write something on the Classical Greece & Rome wikiproject talkpage, which still seems to get some activity. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:33, 16 May 2019 (UTC)