Wikipedia:Peer review/Beulé Gate/archive1

Beulé Gate


. I've listed this article for peer review in the hope of eventually taking it to FAC. Ancient buildings are rather sparsely represented among FAs and I believe that we have none for the city of Athens; this would also be my first attempt at a Four Award. All comments gratefully received.

Thanks, UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:50, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Comments from TR
Not a lot from me. I enjoyed this article and learned much. The sourcing looks fine and the text reads beautifully. The few minor cavils I can come up with are: A pleasure to read and review. Pray ping me when you take the article to FAC. –  Tim riley  talk   17:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The i-box caption has unhyphenated "southwest" but the gallery has hyphenated "north-west". The OED favours the latter form.
 * Some readers might be glad of an IPA guide to the pronunciation of Beulé.
 * "a late Roman fortification which reinforced the Acropolis" – not an iron rule, but in such constructions I think it smoother to have a commaless that or else a comma and then which. But if you disagree there are many great authors who have concurred with your view.
 * "and represents one of the latest such inscriptions" – not sure why "represents". Wouldn't "is" do?
 * "The Beulé Gate is constructed, almost in its entirety, from marble spolia" – not sure the commas add value here
 * "a foundation found" – perhaps discovered or some such to avoid the jingle?
 * "the sacred athletic contests open to all Greeks" – all Greeks? Of both sexes?
 * "built around the Acropolis around two decades after the sack" – perhaps "about" instead of the second "around"?
 * "Beulé left Athens for France at the beginning of June, returning in December to direct renewed excavations" – are his travelling arrangements relevant here?
 * "Baelan has written that his work turned Beulé into "the standard-bearer for national honour in the field of archaeology"" – not that anyone will really be in doubt, but for the watertight avoidance of ambiguity it might be as well to rejig the sentence as 'Baelan has written that Beulé's work turned him..."
 * Many thanks, Tim. Almost all straightforwardly done: I'm not sure I quite have the IPA skills to do the transcription, but may give it a go. Particularly grateful for the spot on "open to all Greeks": it's a blind spot shared by the overwhelming majority of our sources (in fact, I couldn't find one that translated panhellenic and then problematised or nuanced it), but I've tried to do something a bit better. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The new explanatory footnote is crackingly good! As to the name, failing IPA you could perhaps do an English transcription.  Tim riley  talk   19:55, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Not much from me. Very nicely written and enjoyable. Just a few points:
 * SC


 * Lead
 * "leading to the Propylaia of the Acropolis of Athens": "leading from x to the Propylaia..."? (You can guarantee someone will raise this at FAC!
 * I've added a lang template for spolia – you should probably do the same for the other non-English words throughout


 * Description
 * "The Beulé Gate ... led to the": again, I think a 'from' would help people – from a city, countryside, etc... gates have two sides and I still don't know what was on one of them
 * Date
 * "An inscription found on a stone later reused in the Ottoman fortifications of the Acropolis preserves an inscription commemorating Flavius Septimius Marcellinus for having constructed "the gateway to the Acropolis from his own resources".": I 've read this one a couple of times and I'm still a bit confused by it: an inscription preserves an inscription is what I'm reading. It may be that his is trying to hold too much information in one sentence, or that a comma would clarify what I'm not getting.

I hope these help! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Very helpful, as ever -- thank you. As far as I can see, it doesn't lead from anywhere particularly interesting (in modern times, the ticket office): I don't want to say "from Athens" or similar because the Acropolis, Propylaia etc are themselves in Athens. The inscription confusion was nothing so clever as you suggest: simply shoddy editing, now fixed. Lang templates also done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:17, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Comments by Choliamb
Sorry it's taken me so long, but better late than never.

Stuff UC thinks is sorted

 * Speaking of the blasting, you write in the lead that Beulé used dynamite, but that cannot be true. Dynamite is a specific kind of explosive made from nitroglycerin, and according to the WP article (which is helpfully linked in the lead), it was invented in 1866. It was certainly not available to Beulé in 1853, and the sources (Beulé himself, as well as Baelen 1958, which you cite in regard to the blasting later in the article) all say that he used "poudre", i.e. black powder or gunpowder.
 * Fixed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The caption of the photo of the entablature of the Nikias monument reads "Detail of the central part of the monument, showing the dedicatory inscription from the Choragic Monument of Nikias." A more accurate caption might be "Detail of the wall over the gateway, showing blocks reused from the Choragic Monument of Nikias and part of the dedicatory inscription." The whole inscription is not visible in this photo, and even the part that does fall within the frame is very difficult to make out.
 * Changed as suggested. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The inscription honoring Flavius Septimius Marcellinus. I recommend citing this inscription as IG II2 5206 = IG II2 13291.
 * Explanation: (1) First, take care not to confuse CIG (= Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum) with IG (= Inscriptiones Graecae); these are two entirely different corpora, and you want the latter here. (2) On the variation between IG II/III2 (the older form) and IG II2 (the more recent and more common form), see my note on the Nikias inscription above; these are just two different ways of referring to the same publication. (3) For most of the 20th century the standard reference for this particular inscription was IG II2 5206, but like the 4th-century choregic inscriptions, the Late Roman inscriptions from Athens have recently been republished in a new volume of the IG series, this one edited by Sironen and published in 2009. Unfortunately for scholars and editors everywhere, instead of publishing this work as part of the new third edition (i.e., as part of IG II/III3) the Berlin Academy inexplicably issued it as an additional fascicule of the second edition, IG II2. This was madness, but it's too late to fix it now, and the result is that the Marcellinus inscription has two valid IG II2 numbers, 5206 and 13291, the first reflecting the text of the 1920s, the second Sironen's new and improved text of 2009. (The latter is also sometimes cited as IG II/III2.5 13291, because reasons.) As above, the most helpful thing you can do for readers here is give both numbers, since the old number is the one used in most earlier publications, but the new one is a much superior text, and it will eventually displace the old one in future scholarship. So that's what I've suggested. (4) If you want to provide links to the Greek texts, here they are, both at the PHI inscription site: IG II2 5206 and IG II2 13291.


 * Citation changed as suggested, with the links. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Translation of the inscription. The controversial "new poet" and avant-garde composer Timotheos of Miletos, who likened his revolution against the old poetic tradition to Zeus's vanquishing of Kronos, certainly deserves a wikilink. (He also deserves a better article; the current stub is a disgrace.)
 * Linked. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In the gallery, the photo of the back of the gate is mistakenly captioned "looking east"; it should say "looking southwest" or "from the northeast". (Feel free to insert unnecessary fussy hyphens between the compass points if your national pride demands it.)
 * Amended, complete with fussy hyphens. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also in the gallery, I'm going to be a nitpicker and point out that the year 1893 is the terminus ante quem for the photo from the Tupper scrapbook in the Boston Public Library, not the precise date. Tupper visited Athens in March of 1893, and that was when he acquired this photograph, which must have been taken before that date, but after 1875 (when the Frankish tower was demolished). Where exactly within that 18-year span it should be placed I can't say, but careful comparison with more precisely dated photographs might be able to narrow it down. (When, for example, was the iron railing between the Beulé Gate and the Nike bastion constructed?). That the photo in the Tupper album was bought from a commercial photographer rather than taken by Tupper himself is indicated by the catalogue number (21) in the lower right corner, the high quality of the image, and the fact that the same photograph is also preserved in other collections (here is one in the Rijksmuseum). The Tupper albums do contain some amateur photographs that were presumably taken by Tupper or someone in his party, but these are easily distinguishable by their smaller size and poorer quality. Whatever the precise date, this is a very informative photograph, and I'd like to see room made for it in the body of the article, rather than tacking it on at the end as part of a gallery of miscellanea. (I've uploaded a higher resolution version of the copy in the Tupper album, and also a cropped version without the surrounding scrapbook page and Tupper's annnotations. But the Rijksmuseum version linked above may be better.)
 * (2) You write that the architrave blocks were "topped with marble triglyphs and metopes made from a variety of limestone known as tufa," and cite the Guide Joanne as the source. This is indeed what the French WP article says, but it is not what the Guide Joanne says, and it is exactly backward: in fact, the metopes are of marble and the triglyphs are of limestone (cf. Dinsmoor 1910, pp. 465–466). And while the French may call this ubiquitous soft yellowish limestone tuf, the standard term in English scholarship is not "tufa" but "poros" (Greek πώρινος λίθος or πωρόλιθος). When English-speaking archaeologists use the word tufa, they are usually referring to the Italian volcanic stones used in Etruscan and Roman architecture, which are not limestones at all. To make matters worse, the Italian volcanic "tufas" of the archaeological literature are technically not tufas but tuffs, an entirely different kind of stone, as exasperated geologists keep reminding us. It's a mess, admittedly, but conventional archaeological terminology doesn't always line up with geological fact. In this context, it's fine to simply say limestone, but if you want to be more specific, you should follow many generations of British and American archaeologists and call it poros.
 * Fixed (incidentally, I found tufa for it in a Greek archaeological publication from the 1950s earlier this week ... just to make it even more confusing!) <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 13:40, 17 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The choregic inscription of Nikias. I recommend that you cite this inscription as IG II2 3055 = IG II3.4 467. (There is no need to preface the citation with the phrase "This inscription can be found at"; just cite the publications, as you would any other sources.) You can stop reading now if you trust me, but if you to know want to know why, a tedious explanation follows.
 * (1) First, be sure to superscript the number 2 and remove the space between it and the volume number: this is the second edition of IG II, not the second part of IG II. By convention, when you place a full-size arabic numeral on the same line as the roman volume number (rather than above the line) and separate it from the volume number by a space, it is understood to refer to a part or fascicule number, which is not the case here. So, for example, IG II2 101 = IG II, second edition, inscription 101, but IG XII 2 101 = IG XII, first edition, part 2, inscription 101. Some volumes of IG have both an edition number and a part number, so it's important to distinguish them properly in the formatting. (2) IG II2 3055 is the number by which this inscription has been known for most of the 20th century (before that it was IG II 1246, which is how Dinsmoor refers to it), but it is no longer the best number, because the long-awaited third edition of IG II has begun to appear, and that edition has a different numeration. The new numbers are already being used in recent scholarship, and although it will take some time, they will eventually replace the old ones, just as the second edition numbers replaced those of the first edition. Part 4 of the new edition, the part that contains the 4th-century choregic inscriptions, was published in 2015, and the new number of the Nikias inscription is IG II3 4 467 (= third edition, part 4, inscription 467). (3) For reasons that have to do with the complicated bibliographic history of IG, some epigraphers prefer to cite this as IG II/III3 rather than IG II3; if you want me to explain, I will, but it's not particularly important, and the main point to remember is that these are just two different ways of referring to the same publication. (4) To avoid confusion, many editors put a period between the volume and the part number (IG II3.4 467), or a comma between the part number and the inscription number (IG II/III3 4, 467); these are purely cosmetic decisions that depend on the house style of a given journal or press; they do no harm, and may do some good. I've put a period between the volume and part number in the citation suggested above, because in my experience readers sometimes misinterpret the fully open form IG II3 4 467 as third edition, inscription 4, line 467. (5) Because the third edition of IG II/III is still quite new, and there is already a century of scholarship using the old numbers, during this period of overlap and transition some authors and editors give both numbers. This is a practice I approve of, since it takes little additional space and provides the greatest amount of assistance to readers, so that's what I've recommended above. (6) Finally, you might consider providing links to the online Greek texts of the inscriptions, since readers who know Greek may not be numerous, but they do exist. For IG II2, the best source is the Packard Humanities Institute Greek Inscriptions site; for the latest fascicules of IG II/III3, which are not (yet) included in the PHI collection, the best source is the official IG site in Berlin. The specific links for the Nikias inscription, if you want to include them, are here: IG II2 3055 and IG II3.4 467. OK, wake up now, we're moving on.


 * The modern inscription by Beulé. Your transcription leaves out the last two words, ΒΕΥΛΕ ΕΥΡΕΝ, in which Beulé makes sure that everyone who reads it knows that he was the man responsible for the discovery. These words are clearly visible in the photo in the article, at the lower right, in letters smaller than those of rest of the inscription, but still legible, and I am sad to see them omitted from your text and translation, because they tell us something about Beulé's character. (As Baelen puts it, "l'ivresse du succès était montée à la tête du jeune archéologue".) If you want to cite a printed source for the Greek text of the inscription, may I recommend Thomas Dyer, Ancient Athens: Its History, Topography, and Remains (London 1873), p. 361? Dyer disapproved of Beulé's "little outburst of national and personal vanity", and wrote that "It would have been as well if M. Beulé had not thought fit to record his achievement, and that of France, however valuable, by a somewhat vainglorious inscription inserted at the side of the new entrance. The Germans have done more than the French for the restoration of the Acropolis, and their doings will not be the less remembered because they have not inscribed their names among those of the ancient Greeks." Zing! If you prefer to present it from Beulé's point of view, the Greek text is also reproduced in the preface of the 1853 edition of L'Acropole d'Athènes.
 * Thanks for all this: all done, and I've added Dyer's remark to balance the so-far all-positive view of B.'s work. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 21:55, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm probably too sensitive, but it really bugs me that the photo of Beulé's inscription currently in the article (this one) cuts off the edges of the letters at the right side. There's another photo (this one) which shows the whole stone, and for that reason I prefer it, even though the lighting is less satisfactory and text not as clear.
 * Mason's marks on the geison blocks. Better to cite Dinsmoor 1910 for this (pp. 463–465), since he gives more detail, as well as illustrations, and Rous is just reporting his observations. Incidentally, these geison blocks are called cornice blocks in the "Description" section above. Either term is fine, but if you use two different words for the same architectural element in the same article, you are likely to confuse some readers (by which I mean those readers whose eyes haven't already glazed over from the triglyphs, metopes, and mutules).
 * First paragraph. The battle of Pydna notwithstanding, I don't know of anyone who would call 167 BCE the "Roman period" in Athens. The date at which most scholars stop talking about Hellenistic Athens and start talking about Roman Athens varies, but it's always in the 1st century BCE, most commonly after the sack of Sulla in 86, but sometimes later. In any case, this is all irrelevant here, because the big marble staircase that replaced the original ramp leading up to the Propylaea has been dated to the mid-1st century CE, probably during the reign of Claudius: see Graindor, "L'entrée de l'Acropole sous l'Empire", BCH 38 (1914) pp. 272–295; Shear, "Athens: From City-State to Provincial Town", Hesperia 50 (1981), pp. 356–377, at 367. Graindor's article, although now out of date in many respects, has some observations regarding the relationship of the towers of the Beulé Gate to the staircase, as well as a detailed discussion of the inscription honoring Flavius Septimius Marcellinus (on which see below). Shear's article is a helpful overview of Athens from Augustus to Hadrian, accessible and well worth reading (although of course it has nothing to say about the Beulé Gate itself).
 * (1) It seems bizarre to me to cite Lalonde's monograph on an Archaic sanctuary on the Hill of the Nymphs as your source for the date of the post-Herulian wall. Much better sources are easily available: for the archaeological evidence, see Alison Franz's volume on the Late Antique Agora (Agora 24, pp. 5–6, available via JSTOR or the ASCSA); and for the epigraphical evidence, see Sironen 1994, pp. 19–22 (on inscriptions 3 and 4). Since you already cite this article by Sironen elsewhere, I assume you have access to it, but if that's no longer true, let me know and I'll email you a copy.


 * Final paragraph. "The gate situated beneath the Temple of Athena Nike." I know what you mean by this, but that's because I already know where this gate was located. Readers who don't already know may have a hard time figuring out that this means "the gate situated at the western foot of the large Classical bastion on which the Temple of Athena Nike was built."
 * I have rather lazily, at least for now, simply gone with your wording. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 12:54, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * (2) It's misleading to imply, as I think your current wording does, that Sarah Rous was the first person to suggest that the demolition of the Nikias monument and the construction of the post-Herulian wall and the Beulé Gate were contemporaneous. The dismantling of the Nikias monument has always been tied to the construction of the gate, and the view that the gate and the wall are part of the same post-Herulian fortification is what I would call the scholarly consensus, and has been for decades: it is the view held by, for example, Camp, Hurwit, and Tanoulas, to name only three well-known scholars whose works are already cited in the article. Even John Travlos, whom Rous singles out as an influential supporter of a pre-Herulian date for the gate, did not always think so; in his first book, Πολεοδομική ἐξέλιχις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, published in 1960, he treated the gate as part of the post-Herulian fortification and dated them both to the end of the 3rd century, just as Camp et al. do today. So in arguing that the Beulé Gate was contemporaneous with the wall, Rous is reaffirming a widely held view, not breaking new ground. I understand your desire to avoid putting anything even faintly controversial into Wikivoice, but there is an opposing risk of misattribution and misrepresentation if you spotlight a source simply because it is convenient, or it happens to be where you first encountered a piece of information or a particular interpretation. When you give the name of a specific author a prominent position in the text of the article, accompanied by a phrase like "so-and-so suggests" or "so-and-so has argued", you imply, whether intentionally or not, that the named author is the person who first made the observation or formulated the hypothesis, which is not the case here. I have no objection at all to citing Sarah's book -- she provides a good discussion of the evidence and a vigorous defense of a common view -- but she should not be treated as if she saw and argued for something that everyone else had missed. It would be more accurate to write something like this: "Although the date of the Beulé Gate itself is not entirely certain, it is commonly assumed that the dismantling of the Nikias monument and the construction of the gate and the wall formed part of the same post-Herulian fortification project"; then, in the footnote, you could cite Hurwit 1999, Camp 2001, and Rous 2019 as representative examples of this widely held view. (There are plenty of others as well, but these three sources are already cited in the article.)


 * First paragraph. If Rous implies, as you do here, that Tanoulas was the first to suggest a connection between the construction of the Beulé Gate and the protection of the Klepsydra spring on the northwest slope of the Acropolis, she was mistaken. Tanoulas discusses the fortification of the spring in detail, but the connection was made as early as 1960 by Travlos (Πολεοδομική ἐξέλιχις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, p. 128 of the 1993 edition), and probably a good deal earlier by others. (Incidentally, "Klepsydra" here is a proper name and should be capitalized; cf., e.g., Camp 2001, p. 241, and Parsons in Hesperia 12 (1943) 191–267. If you leave it lower case, it means "water clock".)
 * The caption of the photograph currently placed in the "Excavation" section of the article should specify that this is the north side of the gate, and perhaps say something about the buttress walls, since these are the most conspicuous feature of the photo. But I'm not sure it's a great photograph to include in any case: it's likely to be confusing to readers who don't know exactly what they're looking at, and who don't understand how it relates to the part of the gate that looks, well, more like a gate. Maybe consider replacing it with something else?
 * Swapped in Beulé's plan, which is an excellent addition to the article. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 22:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Third paragraph. The final sentence in this paragraph reads "Later in the Roman period, an arch was constructed out from the eastern tower of the gate." This statement baffled me when I read it, because I had no idea what it could possibly be referring to, and there were several obvious problems in the way it was expressed: (1) "Later in the Roman period" makes little sense chronologically, since the Beulé Gate as we have it was constructed near the end of the 3rd century (if not later), at which point the "Roman period", as that phrase is normally used in the context of Athenian archaeology, was over. Everything after that (roughly the 4th through the 6th or 7th century) is conventionally known as "Late Roman" (or sometimes "Early Christian" or "Early Byzantine"), and your own use of the term "Late Roman" in the first paragraph of the "Date" section acknowledges this. (2) What is meant by "the eastern tower of the gate"? The Beulé Gate faces west; it consists of a entrance flanked by two towers, one on the north and one on the south. Which of these is "the eastern tower"? (3) How and why was this arch "constructed out" from the tower? Was it an ornamental arch, spanning an entrance? Or a purely utilitarian structure designed to buttress the tower or support some kind of superstructure? Or something else entirely? The sentence as it stands gives readers (at least this reader) nothing that enables them to understand the date, location, or function of the arch.


 * The citation provided for this statement is a page in Tasos Tanoulas's big book on the Propylaea in the Middle Ages, and a look at vol. 1, p. 240, of that work makes it clear that the sentence is based on a complete misunderstanding of what Tanoulas actually wrote. What he's talking about there is not an arch, it's a longitudinal (north–south) barrel vault that was constructed against the inner (east) side of the towers and the gate wall as part of a remodeling that he assigns to the Byzantine period. The remains of this vault are clearly visible in the wall today, especially in the east wall of the north tower. If you look at any photo of the back of the gate, like this one or this one, you can see the beginning of the spring of the brick vault built into the wall above the door leading into the north tower. An English description of the remains can be found in vol. 2, p. 303 of Tanoulas's book (note that volume numbers are necessary in references to this work, since the two volumes are paginated separately). So it is a vault, not an arch; it is medieval, not Roman; and it was constructed against the east side of the towers, not "out from the eastern tower." Oy.


 * This appears to be the only reference in the Wikipedia article to Tanoulas's work, which I would have expected you to cite several times, since he has published more than any other scholar about the western entrance to the Acropolis after the end of antiquity. Given your usual thoroughness and your tendency to milk productive sources for more than just a single piece of information, this leads me to suspect that you didn't actually consult his book yourself, but instead got this reference at second or third hand, which might explain how the description became so badly garbled. In any case, it's a source that you should certainly look at more closely, not just to correct the problems in this sentence, but to fill out your discussion of the later history of the gate. It is freely available at the web site of the Athenian Archaeological Society, in two giant PDF files, one for each volume. It's not an easy read unless your modern Greek is very good, but happily it includes a detailed 30-page English summary (in the second volume, pp. 283–313, following the illustrations). That summary will give you a good overview of his conclusions, and it's probably be the best thing to cite in the English Wikipedia, even if you sometimes find yourself checking the full Greek text for further detail. There's some interesting information in there about the later history of the Beulé Gate: for example, according to Tanoulas, the large masonry buttresses against the outer north wall of the gate (which are prominent in the photograph currently placed in the "Excavation" section of the WP article) date to the 6th century, along with the reduction in the height of the doorway by the addition of a second, lower lintel (now removed, although the cuttings for it in the doorjambs are still very conspicuous); and in the Middle Byzantine period a second story was added to the gate, the back of which was supported by the barrel vault mentioned above, constructed along the eastern side. (For these dates, see vol. 2, pp. 307–309; and note that Tanoulas keeps his suggested chronology separate from his discussion of the physical remains, so to get the whole picture you need to look in two different places.)
 * I think I've got all I can out of Tanoulas; please prod me if I've missed something striking. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 21:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Agonothetes. I see from the comments before mine that some of the explanation of this term was added in response to suggestions from another editor, but result is unsatisfactory, because most of what you say in the text and the two explanatory notes is irrelevant to the institution of the agonothesia in Roman Athens. Athenian agonothetai never had anything to do with the panhellenic festivals at Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea, and even if they had, is this really the right place to explain who was eligible to compete in the ancient Olympic games? There are plenty of places where Wikipedia readers can go to learn about such things, but an article about a Late Roman fortification on the Athenian acropolis is surely not one of them. The term athlothetai is also irrelevant here; this was the name given to the organizers of the Panathenaia in the Classical period, but by the time of Marcellinus these organizers had been known as agonothetai for centuries, so the athlothetai really have no business popping up in a discussion of agonothesia in the Roman and Late Roman periods. The problem with conflating evidence from different Greek states and different periods, as your footnotes do, is that the role of an agonothetes in city A during the 4th century BCE may tell you little about the role of an agonothetes in city B during the 2nd century CE. In Athens, happily, there is quite a bit of evidence, both literary and epigraphical, from the origins of agonothesia in the late 4th century BCE right down through the end of the Roman period, so there's no need to drag a bunch of festivals in other parts of Greece, administered by other cities, into the discussion. When agonothetai first appeared in Athens, it was as organizers of the Dionysian dramatic festivals, but by the Roman period the title was also given to those who organized the Panathenaia, the Eleusinia, the games associated with the Imperial cult, and just about every other festival in the Athenian calendar. How many of these were still going on in the mid-4th century CE is a different question, and the Marcellinus inscription, if correctly read and correctly dated, is one of the latest attestations of the term in Athens, so it's hard to be sure exactly what it implies. Under these circumstances, it would be better to keep things simple and write something like this in the text: "It also identifies him as a former agonothetes, an official whose duties in the Roman period included organizing the Panathenaia and other Athenian religious festivals." That much is undeniably true, easily sourced, and I think more than enough for the purposes of this article, especially since Marcellinus's role as an agonothetes is unconnected with his (still very hypothetical) involvement in the construction of the Beulé Gate. If you think something more is necessary here, and you want to put together a different explanatory note that more accurately reflects meaning of the term agonothetes in Roman Athens, a good place to start is the discussion in the chapter on liturgies in Geagan's The Athenian Constitution under Sulla, pp. 132–135, which is available on JSTOR or via the ASCSA web site (the latter open access). (That's also what I would recommend as a citation to support the sentence I propose above.)


 * Dörpfeld's hypothesis. The article as it stands reports the differing opinions of Dörpfeld and Dinsmoor about the original location of the Nikias monument as if they were two equally viable alternatives. They are not. Dörpfeld made a lot of excellent observations about the building, many of which were confirmed by Dinsmoor, but there's a reason why Dinsmoor's 1910 article is so famous among students of Athenian archaeology: it's a master class in architectural detective work and it established beyond any reasonable doubt the form of the monument reused in the Beulé gate and the fact that it stood on the foundations at the eastern end of the Stoa of Eumenes. Dinsmoor's presentation of the evidence and the conclusions he drew from it are solid enough that they have survived more than a century of close scrutiny in a field where many other old assumptions have been modified or overturned by more recent scholarship. You will not find a single Athenian archaeologist who disagrees with him. Giving Dörpfeld's obsolete hypothesis equal weight with Dinsmoor's is like saying that some people think Wuthering Heights was written by a man named Ellis Bell, while others think it was written by a woman named Emily Bronte. We know who wrote it, and the fact that once upon a time some people didn't know is now just a historical curiosity.
 * I have no dispute with this, but am struggling to find it in print. I have Ida Thallon Hill in 1953 saying that Dörpfeld's ideas about the location of Nikias' monument were then considered out of date, but she is silent on the date, and I can't find a source which goes as far as saying Dörpfeld was wrong and Dinsmoor was right. Do you know of anyone who does? <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 16:57, 17 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The reason why I (and Hill, and everyone else) focus on the location is because any chronological implications follow directly from, and are dependent upon, that location. You're unlikely to find anyone specifically addressing Dörpfeld's date separate from the location, because when the location fell, the date fell with it. (The only reason I listed this under the heading "Date" was because that's the section of the article in which you reported his hypothesis.) The reasoning that led Dörpfeld to propose a mid-2nd century date for the Beulé Gate was his belief that the Nikias Monument stood on the site of the future Odeion of Herodes, and must therefore have been dismantled ca. 160 to make way for the theater; under other circumstances few people, probably Dörpfeld least of all, would have suggested such an improbably early date for the gate as we see it today, which is impossible to reconcile with what we know of Athens and Athenian building in the Antonine period. His date for the demolition of the monument, if not for the construction of the gate, was a logical necessity if you accepted his hypothesis about its location. But once that hypothesis was shown to be wrong, the date of the Odeion became irrelevant, and we were left with the situation that we have today, in which the gate itself is pretty much the only evidence we have for the dismantling, and therefore the dismantling must be dated by the gate, rather than the other way around. It's not impossible, of course, that the monument was taken apart some years or even decades before the construction of the gate, and the pieces stored somewhere for future use, but if that was the case, there's no way to demonstrate it, so most scholars assume that the two events were closely linked in time. When Hill (in The Ancient of City of Athens, p. 110, which I assume is the passage you are referring to) states very clearly that (in your words) "Dörpfeld was wrong and Dinsmoor was right" about the location, she doesn't need to say "and also about the date," because the location was the only prop holding that date up. This may be unsatisfactory, but I'm afraid it's probably the best you can hope for. Whatever the correct date of the gate, it has nothing to do with the date of the Odeion, which was always a red herring, and was exposed as one as soon the true location of the monument was revealed. Choliamb (talk) 22:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. I'll see what I can do: I suspect there's enough in Hill to say something like "by the 1950s, Dörpfeld's interpretation of the monument was no longer considered current". Wary of WP:SYNTH but also of the more pressing desire to not write stuff that's clearly wrong...! <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 07:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wary of WP:SYNTH but also of the more pressing desire to not write stuff that's clearly wrong. I understand the problem, but I have to push back and say that even your hedged version is little misleading, since Dörpfeld's hypothesis was "no longer considered current" as soon as Dinsmoor's article was published. It didn't take 40 years to be gradually discarded. But is it necessary to pin the change to a precise year or decade? Or can you just write something like "Dörpfeld's hypothesis was directly challenged by Dinsmoor, who identified foundations at the eastern end of the Stoa of Eumenes as the original site of the monument, and Dinsmoor's view has since been unanimously accepted." And then cite, e.g., Hill 1953, Wycherley 1978, and Camp 2004 as examples of the modern scholarly consensus. That's a nice spread of three good secondary sources, each a synthetic work by a respected scholar aimed at general audiences and summarizing the existing specialist literature (i.e., platinum WP:RS), spread out over half a century. Would any of that violate WP policy? Choliamb (talk) 15:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC) (Editing to add that Wycherley 1978 = The Stones of Athens, which was the successor of Hill and the predecessor of Camp as the go-to general account of the topography and monuments of Athens; for the Nikias monument, see p. 184.) Choliamb (talk) 15:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I knew you were going to ask me for a source to prove that Dörpfeld's hypothesis became obsolete as soon as Dinsmoor published his article, so I didn't wait around, I just went out and rounded up a couple for you. Here's one: G. H. Chase, "Archaeology in 1910: Part II", CJ 7 (1911) 114–125, at 115. And here's another: Athens and Its Monuments (New York 1913), pp. 215–216. That should give you cover for anything you want to write. It really did happen overnight. Choliamb (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised not to find Beulé himself among the references, especially since a good chunk of the article is about him and his exciting adventures in the world of high explosives. Consider the following?
 * L'Acropole d'Athènes (Paris 1862), pp. 50–61. (This is the second edition, which is the one you will probably want to use.)
 * L'Acropole d'Athènes (Paris 1853), vol. 1, pp. 99–122. (The first edition, if you want to compare.)
 * Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires 3 (1853), pp. 289–307. (Preliminary reports with nuggets of interesting information not available elsewhere, such as that the blasting required 150 pounds of gunpowder.)


 * And speaking of Baelen 1958, what a marvelous article! I hadn't encountered it before, and knew nothing of the poetry contest. It was a very entertaining read. So thank you for that.

Stuff UC hasn't got to yet
General


 * It may be worth rethinking the overall structure of the article. The Nikias monument, in particular, is described in several different places: the second half of the "Description" section, the second paragraph of the "Date" section, and the second paragraph of the "Construction" section. This fragments the discussion and leads to some repetition (the reader is twice told that the frieze course included both marble and limestone elements, for example). And the title of the subsection "Entablature inscription" (within the "Description" section) seems poorly chosen, since what follows is a description of the Nikias monument as a whole, not just of the dedicatory inscription. I wonder if it might be easier for readers if the entire discussion of the Nikias monument, both its original form and the way in which it was reused in the Beulé Gate, were presented together in a single section of its own? The structure of an article reorganized along those lines might look like this: (1) Description (a description of the gate qua gate and its relationship to the post-Herulian wall, incorporating information now in the "Description", "Date", and "Construction" sections); (2) the Nikias monument (a description of the original choregic monument and its reuse in the gate, incorporating information currently in the "Description" and "Construction" sections); (3) Date (incorporating information currently in the "Date" section); (4) Later history (Late Roman and mediaeval remodelings, incorporating information now in the "Construction" section, and new material from Tanoulas, on which see below); (5) Excavation (more or less as it stands). Rearranging things like this might lead to other problems, of course, but it seems to me that a more logical arrangement than the current one could probably be devised.
 * I'll think on this one. I think there's value in the first section being, as simply as possible, a description of the thing that the article is about. Point taken that the "Entablature" section talks about the whole Nikias monument, but I see that really as providing the necessary context to the inscription, rather than describing the monument gratia sua. The Date section really needs to precede any detailed narrative of the gate's history -- we need to know when that story starts. With that said, I do think the Construction section has now morphed into a much bigger "History" section -- I've changed that title, which also avoids the ambiguity as to whether "Construction" means "how the thing is put together". Not entirely happy here. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 22:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Second paragraph.


 * (1) I understand that you have carried over the Guide Joanne references from the French WP article, but as far as I can see the dimensions and description of the gate in the first half of this paragraph are copied directly from Beulé's L'Acropole d'Athènes (cf. p. 53 of the 2nd edition: "La porte a trois mètres quatre-vingt-sept centimètres de hauteur. Sa largeur est d'un mètre quatre-vingt-neuf centimètres à la base, d'un mètre soixante-treize centimètres au sommet."). If that's the case, why not just cite Beulé instead? It's not as if the Guide Joanne provides an independent review of the evidence or any of the other added value that WP is hoping for when it privileges secondary over primary sources. It's just a guidebook (albeit a good one) repeating Beulé's numbers. And when it comes to the description of the architectural members taken from the Nikias monument in the second half of the paragraph, Dinsmoor 1910 is a much better guide than either the Guide Joanne or the French WP (see the next point).


 * Done on the first part. At the moment, I've added Dinsmoor as a supporting cite to the second, but must admit I found his text very difficult to get my head around on this point. Is there anything I've missed or that would be much better rephrased? <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 12:59, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Images


 * Additional images: I have also uploaded to the Commons Beulé's state plan (drawn by Denis Lebouteux) of the western approach to the Acropolis, including the Beulé gate and the Propylaea (= L'Acropole d'Athènes, 1853 edition, plate II). Lebouteux's view of the entrance from the west (= plate I in the same publication) had already been uploaded by someone else, but their version is a blurry second-generation copy taken from St. Clair's book on the Parthenon marbles, so I have uploaded a new version from a scan of the 1853 edition at the University of Heidelberg library; the resolution is a little lower but the image itself seems crisper and clearer to me. Feel free to use either or neither, as you see fit. All of the illustrations in the article could probably use a little rethinking: personally, I think the view of the east side of the gate, currently consigned to the gallery, is more useful than the photo of the buttresses on the north wall, currently in the "Construction" section. And what is the value of the detail of the block with the upside-down inscription naming Aristomenes son of Aristokles? The point about spolia has already been made more effectively in the discussion of the Nikias monument. Speaking of which, one could make a case for including Dinsmoor's reconstruction of the facade of the Nikias monument itself. (I was going to upload that drawing earlier today, but I found that someone had already done so a year ago, and when I checked I saw to my surprise that the someone was me! Getting old is a terrible thing.)
 * I think the only thing outstanding in this comment is the spolia image: personally, my view is that space in the gallery is pretty cheap (especially as we only have five images there at the moment), and it doesn't do much harm to restate the point (plus I quite like that the inscription is upside down, which demonstrates nicely how the membra were used as building blocks, rather than with any consideration for what might have been written on them). Personally, I'd stick the Nikias reconstruction in the Nikias article, but probably not here (it would be reasonable where the photo of the same monument is now, but I think the photo is more useful, and more relevant given that it's actually from the B.G.) Any thoughts/objections? <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 22:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the length of this, and for the critical tone of some of it. It is, as always, meant to be constructive, and the only reason I've gone into such detail is because I know you actually care about getting things right. Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 22:59, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This is exactly what I wanted: thank you, as ever. It will probably take me a little while to work through, but I'll certainly do so and ping you if any queries come up. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 23:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it would be right to say that took longer than expected, but it was certainly a major (albeit much deserved and needed) operation. I think I've got everything to the point where my expertise runs out -- would value your input on the points above, and on anything I've mistaken or any errors introduced by the attempts to fix things. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 22:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't see the earlier questions, since I haven't been following this page, but only replying when pinged. I'll consolidate my answers here:
 * By all means use your own judgment about the structure of the article. The fact that I might arrange it differently doesn't mean that my way is necessarily better, and I see your point about the problems that reorganization might create. The only thing I feel strongly about is making sure the information is correct.
 * No objection to retaining the Guide Joanne. It's not as if the description given there is wrong (unlike that in the French WP, where the authors of the article misunderstood their own language). I'm happy with Dinsmoor as a supporting ref. He has the advantage (for enWP readers) of writing in English, but it's certainly true that if you're not a trained architect (and I am not) Dinsmoor's technical discussion of the blocks and the reconstruction can be heavy going.
 * You should use the illustrations you prefer. I questioned some of them, but they were only questions, and apart from correcting the captions I have no wish to substitute my judgment for yours. You've already been more than collegial in replacing the photo of Beulé's inscription.
 * Tanoulas. Your sentence regarding the changes that Tanoulas assigns to the Middle Byzantine period reads in part "during this time, a wooden roof was added to the whole structure, and a barrel vault, running from north to south, was constructed against the inner (eastern) side of the towers and the gate wall." Yes, but you're omitting the most important change: the addition of a second storey, which significantly raised the height of the gate. See Tanoulas vol. 2, p. 309, and compare the reconstruction drawing in Σχ. 51 (ca. AD 700) with that in Σχ. 56 (ca. AD 1204). I wonder if you accidentally repeated the words "wooden roof" from the previous sentence when you meant to write "second storey" here? (Given the almost complete absence of evidence for dating, apart from the structures themselves, I wonder sometimes how closely T.'s detailed building history of the Propylaea and the other buildings at the entrance to the Acropolis actually reflects reality. But that's an entirely different conversation. He's the best source we have for the period between the end of antiquity and the 19th century, so all you can do is cite him and leave readers to draw their own conclusions.)
 * One other note: I see you've added a sentence stating that "The towers flanking the gate ... date to the middle of the 1st century CE, and are contemporary with the staircase beyond the gate". This is impossible. You cite Graindor as your source, but you have misread him; in fact, he argues against such an early date for the towers. After reviewing the mason's marks on the blocks reused in the north tower, some of which are dated no earlier than the 2nd century, he concludes "il résulte clairement que les tours, construites avec des blocs réemployés, tirés d'un édifice d'époque impériale, ne peuvent avoir été édifiées en même temps que l'escalier" (p. 284). And in his general conclusions (pp. 285–286) he makes it clear that he considers Dörpfeld's 2nd-century date equally impossible. He believes that the date of the towers should be lowered still further, and by a lot (de beaucoup). This makes Graindor, if not the first, certainly one of the first, to insist on a Late Roman or early mediaeval date for the Beulé Gate. Beulé would not have been pleased.
 * Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Choliamb -- two good catches for which I can offer no good explanation (I was sure I'd mentioned the second storey!) All handled now, I think. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 20:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you tremendously for all your comments, time and expertise here. I'm closing the peer review and moving to FAC: please do continue to have at it over there. <b style="color:#7F007F">UndercoverClassicist</b> T·C 18:00, 29 January 2024 (UTC)