User:LieutenantKennedy17/Philip II of Macedon/JumpOffsides Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

LieutenantKennedy17


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:LieutenantKennedy17/Philip_II_of_Macedon&oldid=1024411412
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Philip II of Macedon

Evaluate the drafted changes
(Compose a detailed peer review here, considering each of the key aspects listed above if it is relevant. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what feedback looks like.)

Lead: Your lead seems to be much more concise than the original version so that's an improvement. If you add in other accomplishments besides military, a sentence or two could be added here to reference. Plus, Alexander the Great was such an outsized historical figure that you could expound on the last sentence a little more to give the reader the knowledge that Philip had a direct hand in Alex's initial start and path to notoriety. I'm not sure how many brothers that Philip II had, but you could include that in the lead or maybe in the Youth section, if you think that the additional info is relevant. Hard to know how many of the brothers were relevant and involved or not, as a casual reader.

Content: I read your changes on the Third Sacred War in the first couple of paragraphs and that was a better read than the original version. It's hard for me to follow all the names and battles since I'm sure you are more familiar with those details. For clarity, the names Lycophron and Onomarchus were added, I think, and you could mention where they are from or their connection to the situation to help with readability. If you are searching for additional topics/info to add to your article, you could introduce details about Pella, Macedon, being a cultural draw with a beautiful Greek buildings and a Macedonian court with writers and artists attracted to it as per Dr. Johnston's video. Maybe, not all the artists and buildings were around during Philip II's time, but if not, you could include in brief background on the Argeads monarchial line about previous heads of state/kings of Macedon and some of their accomplishments, positioning Philip to make this sizeable grab for power in Greece and elsewhere. Also, as an interesting back story to the battles between Macedon and other Greek city-states, you could reference how he was considered to be a barbarian and so were the Macedonians, but is countered by their grand buildings and culture/arts offerings/accomplishments. To bolster his military resume, you could build on the facts that he developed the phalanx and the sarissa as already mentioned but also the torsion catapult and he was greatly admired for leading at the front. I'm not sure if he was up front as much as his son Alexander, but he lost an eye and broke a leg too if I'm reading the details right.

Organization: I like the movement of the Marriages section to before the Assassination. The introductory sentence in the Marriages section states that both the dates and wives' names are contested. Did you happen to find out why they are contested or any background? Also, there are no dates listed at all for any of the marriages and you could add dates for any of them to bolster that section. If the different sources conflict, you could reference those in the citations. Of course, if some dates are unknown, you could state that as well. As for Peisistratos' article, you had a good suggestion to either cut down some of the background or break up into smaller sub sections to improve readability. In the same vein, under the Biography section, you could have a sub section on Philip II's Military Achievements,, with the Early career and Third Sacred War under that military sub section. If you decide to add another section(s) on his building programs/arts/culture, you could include those sub sections under Biography in addition to the Military Achievements. In the Early Military Career section, some dates are in parenthesis and don't have BCE while others are not in parenthesis (if you want to remedy and achieve consistency).

Tone and Balance: Article has no inherent biases that I can see. The controversy over the assassination is addressed in ancient times and with a modern source reference as well. Perhaps you could find another one or two secondary sources to bolster the Modern Analysis section since many historians are referenced in the explanation, but only one 'present-day' source is cited.

Sources: I saw the citation additions for the Cleitarchus and Modern analysis sections and that looked great being added. If you'd like, you could add a brief reference to Cleitarchus being Alex's personal historian and whatever Diodorus is too. I certainly had never heard of either person. Also, in the lead section, citation #2 is inserted very early in the paragraph. Does all that info in the paragraph refer back to citation #2? If so, would it be better to insert the citation at the end of the paragraph since it would apply to all statements?

Images: The original article has a variety of images already and there doesn't appear to be a whole lot to add. If you could find a picture of wife Olympias, that might be worth adding since she was the mother of Alexander, had a large role in the future success of Alexander, and perhaps was involved in the assassination. I like your observation that you plan to update the information panel and the image descriptions for more clarity. I agree. His two reigns that are shown as 337 BCE could be changed to 337-336 BCE to match his time of death?

Thanks and I hope these suggestions were helpful and not too wordy or confusing. I enjoyed looking at your article and examining your new additions to the content.