Wikipedia:Featured article review/Attalus I/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 3:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC) [1].

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Attalus I

Notified: Sj, Paul August, WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, WikiProject Greece, WikiProject Politics, WikiProject Olympics, 2022-03-01

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because, as pointed out by editors on the talk page, the article over-relies upon ancient sources instead of scholarly, secondary sources. Z1720 (talk) 13:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I largely agree that the reliance on the primary sources is too much. It doesn't seem to meet criterion 1(c)'s thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature. Ifly6 (talk) 14:45, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My concerns on the talk page were certainly accurate, but I don't have the sources I had access to a year ago and I'm busy with Genghis in any case. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

This article primarily relies on Hansen 1971, although many other secondary sources are also used. While one might argue that there is an over reliance on Hansen, I don't see an over reliance on primary sources, since most cites to primary sources, are supported by secondary sources. To make this more clear, one improvement might be to move the cites to primary sources after the cites to the secondary ones. As for whether the article reflects a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature", one wouldn't know unless one has done such a survey. I did attempt to do such a survey when I first wrote this article, but I haven't attempted such a survey recently and don't have the time (or inclination) to do so now. However, although I would be very surprised if additional sources could not be found which would improve the article, I would also be surprised if any very significant improvements to the article would result from a new literature search. Paul August ☎ 13:28, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

After a quick look at the article, I'm not seeing any inappropriate use of primary sources where a claim doesn't also have a secondary source backing it up. As for more modern literature, it's not exactly my area but a quick search turns up Noah Kaye (2023), The Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia and Peter Thonemann (2013), Attalid Asia Minor on the Attalids in general, and Tomasz Grabowski (2018), "Diplomacy of Attalus I in Asia Minor", all of which may be of use. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:33, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Consulting such sources as these would undoubtedly improve the article. Paul August ☎ 01:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Alas, after a brief look at these three sources, I don't think they are going to be particularly useful. The first two are books that do not seem to say anything particularly important with respect to Attalus I himself, having much more to do with the Attalids which came after him. And the third, while exclusively focused on Attalus I (although it doesn't inspire confidence that the abstract mistakenly starts out "Attalus III ..."), is a paper on a topic too narrow and specialized to have much (if any) place in this article. Paul August ☎ 02:08, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Buidhe, Z1720, and AirshipJungleman29: could you provide specific examples of what sources you believe are missing or what text is problematic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not involved in this FAR at all... (t · c) buidhe 14:29, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Although you did say in March 2022 that "The article has overreliance on ancient sources". Do you still think that? And if so could you give some examples? Thanks. Paul August ☎ 13:20, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I do not see any reference to Attalid propaganda in the article at all. I do not believe I am misremembering that a corpus on the topic exists, nor that it takes a central role in modern analyses. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:48, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Haven't commented in a FAR for quite a while so please inform me if there's some sort of established practice that I've missed out. I don't see the point of specifying contemporary primary sources over and over in the same refs as secondary sources. In any quality article on history, primary sources should never used exclusively for anything other than maybe direct quotes, historiographical details or perhaps to jazz up the prose with some "flavor".

Primary sources already stated in the referenced secondary sources should be removed from the refs. Otherwise, it implies that we as Wikipedia editors are equally qualified to interpret the primary sources as the secondary sources. It's a bit too close to WP:OR for comfort.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:30, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

• Move to FARC No edits have been made to update the sources to more recent and scholarly ones, and it seems like the "Sources" section has duplicates of older sources listed. Z1720 (talk) 02:05, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see what the issue with this article is. Expert research on ancient history topics very often proceeds slowly: it is not unusual for the latest work on a given topic to be 30, 50 or even 100 years old. (Work might go faster were Classical History -- as well as other topics in the Liberal Arts -- considered a priority & funded adequately. In my research, I've noticed a clear drop-off on publications in Classics since the 1980s.) Moreover, the latest trends in research in this area are to emphasize either social topics (e.g. "Class relations as reflected in Antonine Coinage") or the implementation of technology in this field (e.g. "Computer reconstruction of Latin inscriptions"). Biographies on notable figures -- either in book or article form -- have been scarce, & have been growing more so as time goes on.

As for use of primary sources, I'm concerned about this repeated objection to them. They need to be included so that our readers can find the information more easily: Wikipedia articles ought to be starting places for research, not the end of it. By

So unless the nominator can point to some important publication that has been overlooked in this article, this review ought to be closed. -- llywrch (talk) 16:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

• Delist. Over reliant on Hansen and primary sources. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:50, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

  Gog the Mild FAR is a two-step process; keep or delist are not declared in the FAR (Featured article review) phase. The options at this stage are Move to FARC (Featured article removal candidate) or Close w/o FARC or Hold in FAR for ongoing work. We try to allow every opportunity for article improvement before we delist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:02, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

• I'm still unconvinced by the case against this article. Maybe there are more modern sources that need using, but nobody has been able to point to any specifically. I suggested what looked like the most relevant ones and Paul August assessed them and apparently did not find that they added anything to the article. Does anyone who thinks this article is still not up to FA standards either 1. think that there is relevant content in the sources I suggested that should be added to the article, or 2. have any further suggestions of sources which haven't been used which should have been? I'm with Llywrch here: it's all very well to say "no improvements; move to FARC" but I am not seeing any actionable suggestions for things which actually need to be done to bring the article up to standard. The closest to that is AirshipJungleman29's suggestion that there ought to be scholarship on Attalus I's propaganda. This isn't my field, but it looks as though AB Bosworth's The legacy of Alexander: politics, warfare, and propaganda under the successors may have something relevant, though I don't have access. And on the other side of the coin, does Paul August agree that there's anything to be said about Attalus I and propaganda which is missing from the article as it stands? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

• I forgot to mention that I had a look a the sources and found—well, not as much as I initially recollected, but still a significant amount on propaganda in esp. Kosmetatou. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that there is much worth adding to our article regarding Attalus' state/dynastic propaganda, but then the hardest thing for a non-expert to judge is completeness, and I'm no expert in this field. However Kosmetatou's article (unavailble when I made my contributions here) would be well worth looking at, if for nothing else than to provide more modern sourcing. And yes her article does touch on Attalid state/dynastic propaganda, but I don't know how much of it would apply to Attalus I. Paul August ☎ 18:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Comment: File:Mediterranean at 218 BC-en.svg doesn't seem to be based on a high quality RS. It cites File:218BCMAPMEDITERRANEAN.jpg as its source but this file only cites this image now unavailable on the personal website of a PhD student at UMich. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 06:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Regardless of the source it's based on, it looks like an accurate depiction of Asia Minor to me.

Yes it may be accurate but it needs to be sourced for FA. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:43, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. Quite coincidentally, I've been looking at the Kingdom of Pergamon article and associated articles, and had no idea this was at FAR. I'm not a Classicist, but for what it's worth, Pergamon is not a topic that is all that closely covered just because the sources are pretty patchy. Having read it at the library just recently... Hansen's book is a bit dated, yes, but it's still to my knowledge the only full-length book treatment of Pergamon and the Attalids as a whole, and still the starting place of research and a detailed discussion of every little scrap we know about the period. It's in need of an update for the latest archaeological discoveries and some more modern skepticism of the ancient sources (Hansen is very nodding along with "yes, barbarians are super evil, Attalus is super noble, except he worked with the evil evil Gauls briefly toward the end of his reign despite them all being evil wretches"... which is the slant of the sources, yes, but we don't need to echo Roman prejudice.), but that update has not been published yet. Kosmetatou is very good and should probably be preferred over Hansen whenever they differ, but it's also much shorter and more of an overview than Hansen's in-depth treatment. Basically, heavy reliance on Hansen isn't really a problem here IMO.
  • On propaganda: I think a treatment of Attalid propaganda is good and have added some of it to the Kingdom of Pergamon article and stuff like Pergamus, buuuuut I'm not 100% sure how related it is to an Attalus I article. It's hard to know how much of later propaganda was him personally. The one thing we do know is that he hyped his alleged victory over the Galatians to the moon, but that's already in the article. Other stuff, like the Attalids as protectors of Greek city state freedoms, is harder to attribute to any specific ruler and probably better for the overarching article on the dynasty. And the family stuff - this is sourced, Kosmetatou agrees that the Attalids building a drama-free reputation of boring, good people who didn't fight each other was good for their reputation.
  • My main complaint about the article is one of tone. The idea that Attalus was a capable general and whatnot are just wild conjecture. The sad fact is we don't know for sure, although he certainly portrayed himself as one, and to be clear Hansen 1971 herself buys into this so it's more "dated" than "wrong." But if we're judging people on just breadth of kingdom, it's worth mentioning that Attalid authority outside Pergamum had basically collapsed by the end of Attalus's rule, which is a weird omission. All of those loose "conquests" (really more like "closest influence") in Asia Minor from the Seleucids were busy going into reverse at max speed in 198-197 BCE. I'll try and take a look at the article later, but this seems like it is still solidly FA-material, just needs some minor tone adjustments. SnowFire (talk) 21:43, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• I think that assessment is probably accurate. Kosmetatou should be preferred in-text when possible, and when not possible the tone should be corrected to something less hagiographical. Aside from that, if SnowFire is correct about the lack of in-depth updates, I think that the article would just about meet FA criteria. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and currency. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:10, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. I'll look into this tomorrow - I already had Hansen on hold at the library before I noticed this FAR, and will try to update with any conflicts with Kosmetatou (and possibly R. E. Allen's "The Attalid Kingdom" as well). SnowFire (talk) 14:57, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
  • Okay, I'm a little less impressed with the article now, when diving in. It's... mostly fine... but this isn't Hansen's fault, it's the article writer, as a lot of "may have beens" upgraded into pure fact somehow. Hansen writes that the idea of Antiochis being a Seleucid noble sent over as a marriage is a "may have been", but somehow that became a statement. Kosmetatu outright says that Attalid support in the First Macedonian War was "ineffective" but somehow this became "a capable and courageous general" playing a "significant role" in the war. Hansen outright writes that the whole oracle story is surely bogus, but nary a hint of that before. Anyway the point is that I still think Hansen is a good source, just stuff sourced to Hansen doesn't always actually reflect her 100%, but that was on the WP editor not Hansen. (Not, like, made up, but there's definitely a pro-Attalus slant here.) SnowFire (talk) 21:16, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
  • I've gone over the whole article. It is indeed very dependent on Hansen, but as noted above, I don't think that's a total disqualifier. If I was trying to pass this from scratch at FAC, then reading 10 books on other topics for the passing mentions of Attalus in them would be nice, but meh. Hansen is really the best we have for a deep dive on the Attalid rulers specifically (although, per other biographies of other ancient rulers, sometimes it ends up really being a history of the state & wars the person was involved in, rather than the person directly). Anyway, I was largely using the sources Hansen, Kosmetatou, Allen, Green, & Gruen for reference, along with some of the passing mentions. (Which could probably be removed, honestly, I'm not sure passing one-page mentions in general topic encyclopedias are THAT relevant.) I think the article should largely check out with those sources now and some citation drift has been removed. SnowFire (talk) 21:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
  • @Z1720: Are your concerns met? I've left the ancient sources in the citations since they were already there, but they are there strictly as an "FYI", and I've pushed them to the end of the cite to emphasize that the real source is the secondary source. The only things left exclusively sourced to primary sources are when the article quotes said sources. SnowFire (talk) 07:08, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• I'm concerned about the overreliance of Hansen, but when other sources are not available we have to use what we have. WP:LIBRARY didn't seem to have anything that could be added, and if no one can find additional sources then I'm content with a keep. Z1720 (talk) 20:36, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep if Z1720 is satisfied. I'll keep an eye out if I can find more non-Hansen sources in the long term to add to this article and the larger Kingdom of Pergamon article - although do note that lots of the citations merely include Hansen as one of many. SnowFire (talk) 04:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delist Keep (after corrections done below). I think the article is too short and not complete enough for FA. In addition to the lack of several works in the bibliography already mentioned, several important points are missing, such as sections about his coinage or building program. If possible, I think the article can be downgraded to GA. T8612 (talk) 08:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Can you please be more specific? What works exactly are lacking? Do you know that there are any sources which cover his coinage or building program? Thanks. Paul August ☎ 13:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  If by "lack of several works in the bibliography", you mean the suggestions above, Paul August looked into them and they don't appear to be helpful. Attalus is mentioned in passing in various sources, but honestly, the article probably needs to have the bibliography trimmed to not rely on single-page short blurbs more. Attalus's coinage is discussed in the article, although I consider its importance very low - it's in the image caption in "Early life." He used Philetaerus on his coins, not himself. (Not a great spot for it, but there's no real place in the narrative to discuss it since we don't know when, why, or anything besides some archaeology - it's not like Polybius had a contact at the Pergamon Mint.) The building program was mostly associated with Eumenes II; see Kingdom_of_Pergamon#Art,_religion,_and_culture. (For sure, Attalus I did build stuff too, but it's in the article already - statues & art donations & asking for money to rebuild the countryside after the Macedonians burned it, although who knows if anything came of that.) SnowFire (talk) 14:24, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  @T8612: I've added some on coinage in Attalus I's era and another monument he built (diff); take a look. Personally, I think this is getting a tad off-topic from Attalus himself - we're basically taking guesses based on coins found at different times, and don't really have a way to know how much, if at all, Attalus himself was micromanaging coinage. Maybe they just got a new artist in 223 BC, and there wasn't any deeper intended meaning by Attalus. (Although who knows, the sources Hansen is citing are from 1910 and in German, so maybe there is stronger evidence in those.) That said, since I see from your user page you're into ancient numismatics, if you want to make an article like Pergamene coinage to add to Template:Hellenistic coinage, pages 216-224 of Hansen 1971 covers the topic in some detail to make a decent article with. SnowFire (talk) 23:36, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Paul August and SnowFire: There is a book published last year: Noah Kaye, The Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia, Money, Culture, and State Power, Cambridge University Press, 2022. It ought to be cited. It is said that Attalus built a stoa in Delphi (p. 20), which is not mentioned in the article, a good example of something important missing.

  I don't like the big quote from Polybius accepted uncritically. The Commentary on Polybius by FW Walbank should be cited in complement.

  More generally, I think a featured article should tell more than the just the chronology of his reign. Attalus tried to become the equal of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, by calling himself king, sponsoring arts, building monuments, etc. There should be a distinct section on this royal propaganda. To show you what I have in mind, I tried to do something similar with the Spartan king Areus I. Other thematical sections are possible. T8612 (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  On Kaye's book: Thanks for the link. It's a good source, and one I plan on using in other articles. I don't find this particular stoa as "something important" and Kaye doesn't appear to discuss it in any great detail either. More generally, I disagree that the maximal, longest possible version of the article is always the "best" version of the article. Mentioning that FDR started the WPA is a valid thing to bring up; mentioning every single WPA project in FDR's article is overkill (or even an article like Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, first and second terms, which has a section on the WPA and that's it). The article already says Attalus "commissioned much artwork and sculptures". Maybe, perhaps, there should be something like an Archaeology of the Pergamene Kingdom spinoff article made with every known surviving sculpture and relic with its provenance, but if so, that's its own article, and would just be too in the weeds for this article. Despite the above comments, I've added the stoa against my better judgment (diff), but think that continuing to add every little detail would likely make the article worse, not better, because it would lose focus.

On the quote from Polybius: To be clear, I'm not the person who added that originally. That said, it's not accepted uncritically; the reference for the quote itself merely goes to Polybius, sure, verifying that's what Polybius said, but look at the previous citation for the substance (marked #52 in the current article, #51 in the older version: Hansen, pp. 58–59; Errington, p. 258; Hurwit, pp. 269–271. Those secondary sources are what's really being referenced for the event itself described by the quote. (And indeed, p. 21 of Kaye above you've brought up also references the event, seemingly without questioning its historicity.) If you look in the edit history of the article, I did actually change the stance of this passage somewhat. The old version of the article led the reader to the assumption that Athens was just recognizing Attalus's special genius as a Very Awesome Person, but I've included the more pragmatic rationale: Athens badly needed allies, any allies, to stand against the Antigonid Macedonians. So Polybius describing a big-wow show of ceremonial honors is very plausible. More generally, I'd argue that the best sources on this would be sources written by historians who are experts on Hellenistic history, not necessarily a source that is an expert on Polybius. There are parts of Polybius's story where his personal biases are important to talk about (e.g. with his buddy Demetrius I Soter) but this part isn't really it. I'll give a look at your suggested source when I get a chance, but my expectation is that it's unlikely it's the kind of source that even should be cited over the view of historians.

On thematic organization: There are many valid ways to write an article. What you're describing is a stylistic preference, not a mandate of the FA process. I think all of what you describe is already in the article, and don't believe that reorganizing it "thematically" is necessarily an improvement. "Trying to be the equal of the Ptolemies and Seleucids" is just describing garden-variety Hellenistic kingship in the era (which bordered on megalomania); we just have slightly better surviving sources on Attalus than, say, the King of Pontus or Bithynia whom I'm sure also thought they were Very Important Kings. And some of Attalus's philanthropy was just because Pergamon seems to have been unusually wealthy for its size - that's less him being specially generous, and more the state he ruled being better off. As I've already linked above, I have indeed written about Attalid royal propaganda, and it's in the article Kingdom of Pergamon. The parts that are particularly unique to Attalus are indeed currently mentioned in this article. If we spun it off to its own section, then I regret to say that the well is already tapped here - I want to stress again that this article is already including a very high amount of what the sources already discuss compared to most topics on Wikipedia, where there's substantially more cutting. (And a lot of what is known is still in the realm of wild guessing - like the whole war with Bithynia that we have 0 sources on, but might have happened because a peace treaty stopped hostilities, if there were any?) At some point it stops being an encyclopedic summary and starts being a journal article, or a straight paraphrasing of the chapter of Hansen on Attalus's era. SnowFire (talk) 07:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@T8612: I have looked at Walbank's Commentary on Polybius (didn't realize it was on archive.org , and ended up taking out a different book called "Polybius" by Walbank...). Volume II, p. 533-535 doesn't say anything of particular interest on the Athens welcoming. The closest to being relevant is that Athens had recently abolished two of the tribes named for Macedonians, hence there being some "naming rights" being open, which reduces the impressiveness of the honor even more. I've added it with the same proviso as mentioned before, that too many side details dulls the focus on the main story, but it's interesting enough I suppose. See diff. I looked at some of the other cites of Polybius in the article and the corresponding section in Walbank, and didn't find much interesting to add. I also looked in Walbank's book "Polybius" (which I checked out by mistake, thinking it was the book you recommended) and it doesn't say much interesting about Polybius & Attalus either. SnowFire (talk) 19:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok, good.

There is also a problem with "Attalus was a young child when his father died, sometime before 241 BC, after which he was adopted by Eumenes I," in the first section. I think the dates have been mixed here.

Why is the "Peace of Phoenice" between quotes? in the Introduction of the cult of the Magna Mater to Rome section. T8612 (talk) 15:50, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

(de-indent) @T8612: The "Peace of Phoenice" doesn't need quotes, I agree - not my contribution, on a reread I was already rephrasing it.

On the Attalus being adopted part - I was going to go back to the library to re-check out Hansen 2nd edition again to which that's sourced, but it's somehow listed as "unavailable" now. Either someone else checked it out or they didn't put it back properly. I'd prefer to reply after re-reading the passage in case I messed something up, but from memory... I do agree he wasn't really a young child if Attalus Sr. in fact died in 241 BC (he'd have been about ~28) but 241 is just a later bound here, and I presume there was some reason to guess that the death was probably earlier. I think the date seems fine to me - at some point prior to 241 BC, Attalus Sr. dies and Attalus Jr. is adopted by Eumenes, but we don't really know when exactly. See diff - does this read better? SnowFire (talk) 18:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I've made small changes. Now I think the article could be a (weak) keep. T8612 (talk) 09:33, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

T8612 you have two declarations bolded in the FARC phase. If you've changed your mind about the delist, please go back and unbold it and strike it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Done. T8612 (talk) 13:21, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

T8612 and now you have two Keep declarations on the page; can you please have mercy on the Coord who has to close the discussion, and include only one bolded declaration? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia Done, sorry. T8612 (talk) 00:55, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• As with Z1720, I'm not that satisfied with the reliance on Hansen, but until another biographer comes along, I guess they'll have to do. Keep, with thanks to SnowFire for doing the due diligence. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
• Closing note: This removal candidate has been kept, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.