Talk:Neaira (hetaera)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 16:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Seems like a very interesting topic. I'm happy to offer a review, but it may not be for a few days. Others are of course welcome to chip in before that- it's a collaborative project after all! Josh Milburn (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• "who seems to have worked on many of the speeches concerning Apollodorus" Do you mean "concerning", or just "by"?

I mean 'concerning': the point is that (many of) the speeches which Apollodorus made in court, whether or not they were written by him, were written by (the same) Pseudo-Demosthenes

So "given by", presumably? The fact that he's giving the speech certainly doesn't mean that it concerns him. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:34, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Changed to "given by" Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• "The speech provides more details than about any other prostitute of antiquity, and consequently a great deal of information about sex trade in the ancient Greek city-states (poleis)." Do you mean "The speech provides more details than any other about prostitutes of antiquity, and consequently a great deal of information about sex trade in the ancient Greek city-states (poleis)."

Good spot. Fixed.

• "The Pseudo-Demosthenic" Do you mean that it's reminiscent of Pseudo-Demosthene or that it's by him? If the latter, this seems to offer more certainty than the lead implies it should be.

I mean that it's definitely not by Demosthenes, though it is in the Demosthenic corpus, and that it's probably by the same author as many of the other Apollodorus speeches (exactly which are all by the same author is still debated, and at least one is probably genuinely Demosthenes). If you have a suggestion for a better way of wording this, I'd be happy to incorporate it.

Ok- I'm happy with all of this. The issue is the slight inconsistency between "though the speech is often attributed to Pseudo-Demosthenes" and "The Pseudo-Demosthenic[4] speech"; so which is it? Is it definitely by Pseudo-Demosthenes, or is it merely often attributed to him? Josh Milburn (talk) 18:34, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the problem here is the ambiguity in descriptions of authors of pseudepigraphic works. "Pseudo-Demosthenes" has two meanings: firstly, the author of any work attributed to Demosthenes but not by him, and secondly, the specific author of Ps-Dem. 59 (and the other Apollodoran speeches).

I'm not sure that the distinction in really relevant here. Perhaps if this was an article on the speech itself (which doesn't currently exist, but I'm working on...) we should go into detail on the question of authorship, but it doesn't really matter to Neaira's biography who exactly it was who wrote about her. What I'm going to do, then, is simply remove 'Pseudo-Demosthenic' from the section "speech against Neaira", and when I finish off the article on the speech itself, link that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caeciliusinhorto (talk • contribs) 10:56, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• "though apart from a brief introduction of the case" Who gave this part?

Theomnestus. I've added a bit which clarifies this.

• "know of is her purchase when she was a young girl" Could we perhaps have a link to an article on slavery to help provide some context?

Wikilinked 'purchase' to the article on slavery in ancient Greece

• "It is during this time that her first known visit to Athens occurred." Picky, but could we have a reference for this?

I'll try to dig up something for this.

• " initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries" Is this grammatically correct? Our article suggests that the Mysteries were a ceremony? (Apologies if I am displaying ignorance here.)

The article on the Mysteries twice uses the phrase 'initiation into the mysteries' and once 'initiating people into the Eleusinian rites'. I think we're okay here.

Ok, great! Josh Milburn (talk) 18:34, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

• Greek Orators VI: Apollodorus against Neaira [Demosthenes] 59 is, I think, edited by Carey. Is that correct? It could be clarified in the reference.

I don't have a copy on hand, so I can't see what the frontispiece of the book says. Amazon.com credits Carey as the editor; AbeBooks, Carey as the author. Googling leads me to OpenISBN (I have never used the site before, I have no idea how reliable it is) which also has Carey as the author, and various other places online list him as either author or editor. I shall try to find a copy of the book itself to see if that clears things up (I'll definitely be able to get hold of one on the 4th of November, if not before).

• "we cannot say for certain that the suit failed." Reference, please?

I should be able to dig one up for this, too.

I'll offer some more comments another time, but this gives you something to have a look at for now! Really interesting article; I commend you for taking it on. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

And please double-check my edits! Josh Milburn (talk) 18:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I've added various responses directly underneath your comments, and had a quick look at your edits; I'll try to go through them properly now and then dig up some of the citations you want...

Right, I've added a source for the fact that we don't know the outcome of the suit. I can't find any secondary sources which explicitly say that we don't know of any prior visits to Athens, and that's not really crucial to the article, so I've removed that and concatenated that paragraph with the following one. I looked through your changes to the article and they all look like improvements, so thanks for that. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:08, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I've done some more light copyediting and played around with the references a little. I'm now happy to promote to GA- I had a worry about the scope of the article (the strong focus on Neaira herself rather than the speech), but now that I know that you're working on a separate article on the speech, I'm not worried about this. A very worthy topic- I commend you for taking it on and look forward to seeing more of your articles in the future. Josh Milburn (talk) 11:21, 8 November 2015 (UTC)