Talk:Epikleros

Good article nominee

I think this article qualifies for GA, and the only reason I haven't passed it myself is that I'm unfamiliar with the GA process.

There are a couple of issues that I think need to be addressed (none of these prevent the article from passing GA):

• the reference style is a bit weird--either the notes need to have a full citation, with the specific volume of Classical Quarterly et al. the cited article comes from, or a short form of "Lacey, p. 24" w/a full cite in the references section.
  • Hey, I'm a medievalist. We are a bit weird ourselves....Ealdgyth - Talk 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• there should be more sources. Epikleroi are one of the most covered topics in Athenian family law, for whatever reason, and there are more articles about this term than are cited in the article. A quick look at the Oxford Classical Dictionary might help. (Anything that results in less reliance on Michael Grant can only be an improvement.)
  • I'm a medievalist, not a classicist (the Greek alphabet tripped me up, I'll admit, I never could get the hang of it.) I'm more than happy for someone else to add more stuff. I just sorta took this article under my wing a long time ago, and have just steadily kept chipping away at it. Ealdgyth - Talk 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• the prose style needs some tightening up. (Please don't take this as an insult--it's just that some sentences are somewhat unclear, and less incisive than they could be.)
  • No offense taken. I know I write "academically" with lots of wordiness and with less than brilliance (grins). I'm hoping that getting this up at GAN and (maybe) FAC will spur others to improve my prose. And add sources. Ealdgyth - Talk 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Overall, though, this is a nice article, and in my opinion deserves the GA classification. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and the copyedit, it's appreciated! Ealdgyth - Talk 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

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GA review

Another interesting and informative article from the Ealdgyth factory. :-) Just a few small points:

• "Athenian law on eplikleros was linked to Solon" What does "linked to Solon" mean?

Changed to "associated with Solon" Is that clearer? It was attributed to him but there is not absolute security that Solon originated everything attributed to him. there was definitely a tendency in later Athenian history to say "Solon legislated this" to make a law more ancient and respected. Kinda like "The Founding Fathers made a law..." Ealdgyth - Talk 03:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• "It denoted a daughter of a man who had no male heirs". I wanted to change that to "... the daughter of a man ...", but then I started to wonder about the case where there was more than one daughter. What happened then?

Good question, and the practice of female infanticide by Athenians probably meant that multiple daughters in a family was unlikely. To say that in the article, I'd need to go into OR territory though, because none of my sources ever address the possibility that there WAS more than one heiress, honestly. Ealdgyth - Talk 03:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• "Solon, however, discouraged the practice of some men being adopted into families with epikleroi in hopes of securing a rich heiress." I'm not sure I follow that. For the woman to be an epikleros she must have been the daughter of a man who died having left no male heirs. So does this mean a family in the stage between the father's death and the authorities deciding who the epikleros should marry? Or does it mean a family with a potential epikleros, in other words a family without a male heir? Whatever it means, why was Solon against it?

It means that say a rich man has only a daughter. Solon legislated against an unrelated man being adopted by the rich man's brothers/uncles/cousins so that the unrelated man would qualify as the "nearest relative" and thus get the heiress. Does that make sense? Now, suggestions on how best to word that are very welcome. I changed it to "Solon, however, discouraged the practice of some men being adopted by relatives of epikleroi in hopes of securing a rich heiress." but I"m not sure this is the best wording. Ealdgyth - Talk 03:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• "As a consequence of these rules, epikleroi were the only women enrolled into the phratry." A brief explanation of the phratry would be helpful.

Clarifieid. Ealdgyth - Talk 03:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• "A young Athenian male serving his military service requirement was allowed to claim epikleroi, the only action at law a young male doing that service was permitted to perform in Aristotle's day." As many as he liked? Were there old Athenian males serving military service (serving a service is kind of awkward anyway)? How does that fit in with the desire to keep property in the male line, if any Tom, Dick, or Harry unrelated conscript can claim any epikleroi they take a fancy to?

He would have had to have been the relative that was allowed to claim the heiress, basically this means that the only legal action a young man under the age of majority was allowed to do was to claim an epikleros. This is akin to a modern man being able to vote before he can legally drink in the United States. A young man serving his military service (i.e. an ephebe) could not serve on juries, could not attend legislative meetings or serve as a political office, but he was allowed to claim an epikleros, assuming he was legally the nearest male relative allowed. I attempted to clarify this somewhat in the article. Let me know if it makes sense now? Ealdgyth - Talk 03:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

All small points that I'm certain will be quickly and easily dealt with during the few hours that this article is on hold. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 01:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

My brain is fried after the FAC commentary. I'll look at these in the morning and make sure that I can answer these on the road. Ealdgyth - Talk 05:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll try to get back to this during the week, but it may be as much as a week or so before I have reliable broadband again. Hopefully I will be able to at least check on things, but I can't promise anything. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing the points I raised. I think this is an excellent article. The only obvious improvement I could suggest would be another image or two, if anything suitable could be found. GA passed! --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 17:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Chances of becoming an epikleros

• Using the figures from this section;

1 in 7 fathers died without biological sons (14% of families?)

1 in 5 families had no sons at all (20%)

Another 1 in 5 families had no sons or daughters (20%)

Therefore;

In 6% of families the father had sons, but they predeceased him.

80% of families had daughters, of which 20% had only daughters.

The chance of a woman being a member of a family requiring epikleros is 1 in 4.

However the chance of any particular woman within one of these families becoming epikleros is probably undeterminable, as it depends on the size of the family and the probabilities of one or more daughters predeceasing the father. Ning-ning (talk) 19:45, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Sparta section

I had a wee question about the Sparta section. Aristotle: was he then referring only to Sparta? Since we might expect him to be talking about Athens, maybe Aristotle records that there were no restrictions on whom an Spartan heiress might marry. But since we've already been told that Spartan women had no restrictions placed on whom they might marry, I was slightly confused by the appearance of this little paragraph.

Under the Gortyn section, we switch back and forth between patroiokos and patroiouchoi (pl.)/patroiouchos (sg.), without explanation of the difference. The plural also seems to be used as if it were singular at a few points.

One other point: anchisteia is introduced (correctly) as a collective/concept (an abstract noun of feminine gender), but later is used as if it were a noun denoting an individual member of the anchisteia, along the lines of "if she married the anchisteia." I don't know whether there's a single word that could replace the cumbersome "a member of the anchisteia," and don't find one immediately in sources, but that needs to be fixed in multiple places. Otherwise, it reads in the same way that "if she married the family" would in English, or more precisely "if she married the kinship group". One spot where this is concentrated is Epikleros#Already married epikleroi.

Was asked to take a look, so that's all to leap out at me on first reading. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:43, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

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