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Talk:Battle of Cynoscephalae (364 BCE)/GA1

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GA review

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Nominator: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 17:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 12:42, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Comments

[edit]

This is plainly of GA standard and I could with clear conscience promote it at once, but you'll expect a carp or quibble or two from me and I have managed to gather a handful. You must feel free to ignore any or all of them.

  • "assembling what John Romm calls ..." – you know my view that if you name-check a source you should briefly explain who he is (as you do for Ray, later in your text).
    • Added "the classicist" -- and fixed his name (it's James). As you know, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this whole thing, especially when we're talking about classicists vs historians vs ancient historians. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "They assembled in Pharsalos, then advanced to meet Alexander's forces ... then eastward along its valley" – I am so antiquated that I do not recognise "then" as a conjunction in formal English prose; I'd prefer an "and" before the first "then", at least.
  • "Plutarch ... claims that Alexander's infantry outnumbered Pelopidas's" – I'd be wary about "claims": it has overtones to the effect that the assertion is a bit dodgy.
    • It is! There are two concerns here, one more OR than the other -- firstly and securely, nobody really has any good idea about the number of troops involved in this battle, so everything's a more-or-less dodgy guess. Secondly and more shakily, Plutarch's biography is (fairly self-confessedly) a morality tale, which makes me highly cautious about leaning too hard on it for points of fact. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "John Romm estimates" – surname alone will suffice at this reappearance.
  • "light infantry (peltasts)" – I wondered when this lot would be showing up after the hoplites earlier. Took me back sixty years to wading through the Anabasis at school. But I digress – ignore me.
  • "generally outmatched Pelopidas's, probably due to their greater experience" – In AmE "due to" is accepted as a compound preposition on a par with "owing to", but in BrE it is not universally so regarded. "Owing to" or, better, "because of" is safer.
  • "The Thebans and Thessalians won the cavalry duel, while Alexander's forces dislodged them" – "while" seems a bit odd here. I interpret the sentence as meaning "but then..." rather than "at the same time"
    • The two things were pretty much simultaneous (admittedly, different modern accounts put the emphasis in different places, because the ancient sources aren't massively clear) -- both sides sent their cavalry one way and their infantry the other; the allies' victory in the cavalry battle allowed them to use those cavalry to remedy the disaster that was beginning to look imminent in the infantry one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "it is unclear how or how far Pelopidas would have been able to orchestrate this rally" – strange verb: does one orchestrate rallies rather than organise them?
    • I think so: we mean "bring about" more than "do the admin work for", since there wouldn't have been much organising per se involved -- more (in theory) standing and shouting -- but, as Konijnendijk notices, it's overwhelmingly likely that Pelopidas wouldn't have been able to do very much, because this whole scene probably wasn't possible anyway. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's my lot. Over to you. I'm certainly not bothering to put the review on hold over such minor points. Tim riley talk 12:42, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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