Talk:Panagiotis Kavvadias

Change of birth date

@NikosKavv: I saw you changed the birthdate in several places in the article. I have undone your alterations because you didn't provide a published source for them. Or is there a published source you have not yet shared that proves the alternative birth date? Modussiccandi (talk) 18:23, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello . As his great grandson I think i know his birthdate better than anyone. If you need verification the date of his passing is the one mentioned at the obituary published in the sources. NikosKavv (talk) 18:27, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

To add to this: I had an email correspondence with Nikos while writing the article about this issue (see the talk page of Nikos' old account). He emailed me an unpublished document issued in 2010, which seems to be a certificate of citizenship, giving Kavvadias' birth date as 1848, and mentioned that the mayor of Kothreas had confirmed the same date to him. Unfortunately, we can't use this as a source in the article, as it isn't published and vetted by academic authorities: we have to go with what has appeared in print, even if we have other information that may cast doubt on it. I did however wonder whether the Archaeological Society of Athens might be able to shed some light on the matter, or be interested in publishing some research into it? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:46, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I recently visited the municipality of Kefalonia to try and verify the date 1848 and unfortunately it cannot be verified. The date 1 May 1851 mentioned at his obituary was first published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in January 1929 vol.9 issue 1 and later from Cambridge press in 2012. We've come to the conclusion that he as an honorary Dr. at Cambridge Univ., was the one who gave them this date and also to his colleagues before he died so we as a family we conclude that that is the real date. 2A02:214A:8435:CB00:9419:D26:2AF1:6A3B (talk) 19:09, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I've had a look back at the sources here: as the article previously noted, Bosanquet in the Antiquaries Journal does give 1851, but he's an outlier; he's also the only one that gives 1 May rather than 2 May. Reinach went for 1850, as do practically all modern published works. However, I had missed that the BMJ gave his age at death as 80, which puts his year of birth at either 1848 or 1847, almost certainly the former (they don't give his birthday), so I've expanded the footnote a bit so that interested readers can see the disagreements in the primary sources. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:00, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Bosanquet mentions in the first lines "at the age of 77" and that's the correct age , 1851-1928. 2A02:214A:8435:CB00:9419:D26:2AF1:6A3B (talk) 20:14, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

He does, but he's out of line with every other source, and we have to take the consensus of published sources, such as it exists. If there's some reason to go against that consensus, we need something published in a very strong, vetted source before we can do so. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:21, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for your input. I don't have anything to add to what UndercoverClassicist has said: with the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia being what they are, we should only change the birth date in the presence of a high-quality published source. Modussiccandi (talk) 12:19, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

The modern names of the Archaic temples on the Acropolis

I have changed the sentence that included the words the area between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion (which contained the remains of the Hekatompedon, or "Old Parthenon") to the area between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion (which contained the remains of the Archaios Naos, or "Old Temple of Athena"). Apologies in advance for the length of the following explanation.

Three large stone temples were built on the Athenian Acropolis in the Archaic period. These buildings have generated an enormous bibliography, and the modern nicknames given to them are confusing, so it's easy to mix them up. It's important to be precise in the use of these modern names: the "Hekatompedon" is not the same thing as the "Old Parthenon", and neither of them is the same thing as the "Old Athena Temple" or Archaios Naos. The three temples, in order of construction, are

(1) The so-called "Hekatompedon", constructed in the 2nd quarter of the 6th century. Also known as "Temple H", the "H-fragments", or the "H-architecture", because the association of the surviving architectural and sculptural fragments with the structure called the Hekatompedon in epigraphical sources remains uncertain. This is the temple to which the large poros pedimental sculpture (lions and bulls, Herakles and Triton, the triple-bodied creature nicknamed "Bluebeard") belong. The location of the building has been a subject of debate, but most scholars today follow Dinsmoor and Korres and place it on the south side of the Acropolis summit, on the spot occupied by the existing Parthenon. See further below.

(2) The so-called "Old Temple of Athena" or "Old Athena Temple", constructed in the final quarter of the 6th century. Also known as the "Dörpfeld temple", because Dörpfeld published the first description of it ("Der alte Athenatempel auf der Akropolis", AthMitt 11 (1886), pp. 337–351), and also as the Archaios Naos, a name that appears in ancient epigraphical and literary sources. This is the temple to which the marble lion and Gigantomachy pediments belong. It stood on the "Dörpfeld foundations" between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion, and is labeled "ΑΡΧΑΙΟΣ ΝΑΟΣ" in Kavvadias and Kawerau 1906, plate Α and plate Γ.

(3) The so-called "Old Parthenon" or "Older Parthenon", construction of which began after Marathon in 490, and which remained unfinished when the Persians arrived ten years later. This was the direct predecessor of the existing Parthenon, and is the building for which the massive foundation platform was originally intended. It is drawn in red on the plan of the Parthenon in Kawerau and Kavvadias 1906, plate Α. It has been known as the "Older Parthenon" since the publication of an article with that name by B. H. Hill in AJA for 1912 (JSTOR 497427).

The only real uncertainty here is the original location of no. 1. There are two schools of thought: one (represented by, e.g., W. B. Dinsmoor, "The Hekatompedon on the Athenian Acropolis", AJA 51 (1947), pp. 109–151; JSTOR 500750) places it on the site of the existing Parthenon; the other (represented by, e.g., H. Plommer, "The Archaic Acropolis: Some Problems", JHS 80 (1960), pp. 127–159; JSTOR 628383) that places it on part or all of the "Dörpfeld foundations" between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. The second view is the older one, and it is reflected in the earliest sources, so it's understandable why you might have encountered an old reference or two in which the temple on the "Dörpfeld foundations" is referred to as the Hekatompedon. But the other view, which puts the Hekatompedon on the site of the Classical Parthenon, is now more widely accepted, both because recent studies of the fragments have given us a better understanding of the size and architectural form of temple H, and because new evidence collected by Manolis Korres during the restoration work on the Acropolis seems to support it. The fullest discussion of the evidence is by Korres, "Die Athena-Tempel auf der Akropolis," in W. Hoepfner, ed., Kult und Kultbauten auf der Akropolis (Berlin 1997), pp. 218–243, which can be hard to get hold of, but Korres's view is conveniently summarized in Hans Goette's archaeological guide, Athens, Attica, and the Megarid (2004), pp. 25, 29–31, which is available via the Internet Archive (in a copy of dubious legality), and which also contains (p. 30, fig. 11) a reproduction of Korres's plan showing the locations of the various Archaic temples. Goette dismisses the older hypothesis out of hand, and I think this accurately represents the current views of most Athenian archaeologists. It's pretty hard to come up with a compelling reason to favor the northern site any longer.

The upshot of all this is that when the WP article on Kavvadias mentions the area between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion (which contained the remains of the Hekatompedon, or "Old Parthenon"), it is doubly wrong: the foundations in this area belong neither to the "Hekatompedon" (no. 1 above) nor the "Old Parthenon" (no. 3 above), which are two different buildings, but rather to the "Old Temple of Athena" or Archaios Naos (no. 2 above). If you look again at the source cited for this description (Mallouchou-Tufano in the English edition of Acropolis Restorations: The CCAM Interventions), you will see that she says nothing about the Hekatompedon or the Old Parthenon; what she says is "between the Erechtheion and the Parthenon (in the area of the Archaic Temple)", where the words "Archaic Temple" represent a translation (by the editor, Richard Economakis) of the Greek Αρχαίος Ναός -- i.e., the building most commonly referred to in English-language scholarship as the Old Temple of Athena. So I have changed that sentence in the article, and over on the Commons I have also made an identical change in the label for number 8 in your (very useful!) plan of the progress of the 19th-century excavations (File:Acropolis - Kavvadias Excavations.svg).

Sorry again for such a long explanation for such a small change, but since this was your FA, I figured you would examine any edits closely and want to know exactly what I think the problem is, and it's hard to explain without getting into the weeds. In this particular article it doesn't make much difference, of course, since the building is only mentioned in passing as a topographical marker. But I know you would prefer to get it right, and if you continue to expand your successful series of archaeological biographies, it may come up again. Ping me if you have questions about any of the above. Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 22:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

This is very useful -- as you may have gathered, I hadn't quite figured out that these were in fact three different temples! I'll give the article another check, but do I read correctly that you've already performed the necessary surgery? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:21, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, my edit and your correction of the sentence about the Hydra pediment fixed the two problematic references to the Hekatompedon in the discussion of the excavations, and I don't see any mention of these temples elsewhere in the article. So nothing more is needed. Choliamb (talk) 11:43, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Empolion cutting

I have changed the caption of the photograph that previously read A capital of the Parthenon lying on its side in 1899, with a hole cut into it to receive iron reinforcements. The block in the foreground with the hole in it is not actually the capital, it is the very battered and broken column drum immediately beneath the capital, but that's not the real problem here. The problem is that the square hole in the middle of the circular band of anathyrosis on the underside of the drum is not a modern cutting intended to receive an iron reinforcement; it is an ancient empolion cutting, intended to receive a wooden block with a centering pin. This is a regular feature of Classical Greek architecture, and all of the column drums of the Parthenon (and the other Periklean buildings on the Acropolis) have them (cf. this photo of other Parthenon drums). Here's another example, in a column drum reused in the post-Herulian wall in the Athenian Agora. The purpose of these cuttings was to assist in the centering of the drums one on top of another during construction: see the explanations in, e.g., Disnmoor's Architecture of Ancient Greece, pp. 171-172, with fig. 61, and John Camp's Ancient Athenian Building Methods, pp. 18-19, with figs. 25 and 30. I have removed the false information from the caption, but I haven't removed the photo itself, although if its purpose was to illustrate some aspect of Balanos's restorations, it no longer fits the bill, and you may want to look for a more appropriate image. (Same problem in the article on Nikolaos Balanos, which uses the same photo and caption, and where I have made the same edit.) Choliamb (talk) 00:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)