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

The article was promoted 18:13, 25 August 2007.

Orion (mythology)

[edit]

Self nomination. I took this article in hand, after several complaints on the talk page that previous versions were pushing one interpretation of Greek mythology; but the result seems to be largely stable. I have avoided sythesizing a narrative out of the several different tellings of this myth in antiquity. It would be WP:SYNTH to assert that all the somewhat inconsistent authors are incomplete versions of some ur-story. I have also tried to avoid giving any undue weight to any of the modern interpretations of Greek mythology.

This has been to Peer Review, and the chief comment was "What influence has this myth had, aside from being a source for mythographers?" The answer seems to be: Not much. I have included such references to Orion, the myth as opposed to the constellation, in modern culture as I can find. Project Orion is not one; Ted Taylor took the name out of the sky at random.

I believe this complies with WP:MOS on such points of detail as the placement of footnotes. Please feel free to correct any oversights in such matters yourselves. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Fixes needed - I'm a bit busy but just on a quick look there are some preliminary housekeeping issues - refs need ISBNs and some other info such as publisher an location where available - putting in cite format would be really helpful. I'd also make that a subsection of footnotes above. Also, many paragraphs are short and the prose a bit choppy. I'll be back in a day or two but there's plenty to get started on. These things need addressing before a closer look. If not done in 2-3 days I'll be happy to chip in. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
PS: The lead should summarise the article - as is it meanders a bit and could do with reorganizing
Doubtless I am too familiar with it; it seems to me to fit the article well. Could you do a draft of what you have in mind? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
An excellent, well-referenced article. This should certainly be the template for other entries on figures from classical mythology. The complete referencing of the multipe and conflicting ancient accounts is certainly a great improvement on the usual attempt by encyclopedia to streamline these stories. To completely round off the article a brief section on the appearance of Orion in classical art would be perfect -- his appearance or lack thereof. The LIMC should have some information on this topic (a site/book linked to on the [Greek mythology] page. --Theranos 10:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
An excellent suggestion, which I have now followed; unfortunately LIMC does not return anything; neither does Perseus Project, here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think that there is any better encyclopedic article on Orion; thus I have no other choice but to support this well-researched and well-worked article, despite my reservations. And my reservations - proposals for improvement at the same time - are mainly concentrated on the following issues:
  • Prose: sometimes I get the impression it gets choppy and a bit seamless. Especially the last paragraphs in "Variants", the whole "Relationships", and the first half of "Modern Interpretations" are IMO a bit problematic: too short sentences not well inter-connected. See also paragraphs like this one: "An inscription cataloged by epigraphist Louis Robert shows that the veneration of Orion at Tanagra extended well into Roman times.[6] Hyria (Orion's purported birthplace) lay in the territory of Tanagra.[7] Orion could be a considered "national hero" to the region, and he may have been the divine champion of the Boeotians to which an Athenian epigram attributed their defeat at the Battle of Coronea. [8]" The sentence "Hyria (Orion's purported birthplace) lay in the territory of Tanagra." is in the middle of nowhere. In general I agree with the "dry" comment of Anomie in the peer-review, and I think you should make the flow of the prose a bit "smoother".
  • "There are, as often, numerous variants in other authors; most of these are incidental mentions in poems and scholiasts. Vergil, for instance, shows[30] Orion, as a giant, not walking on the Aegean, but wading through it." In cases like this one I feel that the citation would be better placed at the end of the sentence.
  • Something I may not have got correctly. We have two versions of his death: 1) Artemis hit and killed him. 2) Earth created the Scorpion; and then what? I may imagine what happened but ... And it is Scorpio or Scorpion?
  • Since Orion (constellation) is linked within the text (in the lead), do you really need the "See also" section?
  • I did not go in detail through the "Notes" and "References", and, therefore, I cannot comment on any possible inconsistencies with MoS.--Yannismarou 14:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The article needs a copyedit by a third-party. These are some examples of prose problems:
  • "It also has different death story" - missing "a"?
  • "Several sources tell different stories of how Artemis killed Orion, either with her arrows, or by producing the Scorpion." I think "several" should be replaced by "other"
  • "Ancient poets differed greatly on who it was that Aesculapius brought back from the dead; for which Zeus killed him with a lightning bolt." - the semi-colon should be a comma. Who did Zeus kill: Aesculapius or the person brought back from the dead?
  • "In the Odyssey, Ulysses sees him hunting in the Underworld, a great slayer of animals, with a bronze club; but he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn - slain by Artemis; and as the most handsome of the earthborn." - was the Underworld a great slayer of animals? The semi-colon before "but" should be a comma. The comma after "constellation" should be a semi-colon. The hyphen should either be a spaced en dash or an unspaced em dash.
    • This is the same delusion as below that equal main clauses, in the presence of semicolons, can be separated by commas. There should be a comma after Artemis; anyone who wishes to play with hyphens is free to do so. and i've changed the punctuating nyphen. 02:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:03, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Hyginus also connects him with several constellations"– the "also" is redundant
  • "until Zeus intervened and raised the whole lot to the stars" - "the whole lot" isn't encyclopedic
  • "the story that he chases the Pleiades themselves goes back to the Works and Days." - "that" should be replaced by "in which". Who is "he"? "Goes back to" isn't encyclopedic. "Themselves" is redundant.
  • "sources vary in what they include; but the major incidents" - the semi-colon should be a comma
    • This is a compound sentence; the second half includes not only commas, but semicolons; dividing with a comma would be a hierarchy error. Compare Fowler's Modern English Usage "Stops", §Semi-colons. But it may be that the sentence should be divided. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • PDF sources need to be labelled.
  • Page ranges in the footnotes need en dashes rather than hyphens. Epbr123 10:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some of these are valuable; and the article does need a copyedit. I disagree on others; in general, schoolmarm English is a bug, not a feature. On still others, Epbr123 would cut information in his copy edit; in particular, there are multiple sources which say that Artemis killed Orion, more numerous than those which say, like Hesiod, that Gaea did. "Other sources tell different stories of how Artemis killed Orion" would lose this implication. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • As often above, Epbr123 has found points where the prose genuinely needs consideration. It would be more helpful if he had identified the problems correctly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just letting you know that you should never strike through other users' comments. Thanks. Epbr123 11:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. Feel free to unstrike; this was only a way of marking which comments are now moot, since they deal with particular pieces of the text which have been changed. Other comments are welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—Support. 1a and MOS. Here are a few of the many issues. Please don't just fix these. Someone new should run through the whole text (it's worth it—the article has merit, but fails thus far).
    • "fairly obscure"—Like "quite" and "very", "fairly" is unencyclopedically vague.
    • "the margins of ancient poets"—what, around their waists?
    • Why the blue background for Note 2? I hope that "dubious" really is authoritatively justified in this source.
    • Notes: "572-7" and many other instances—Read MOS on number ranges (en dash and double closing digit. required). Same for References.
    • "most of the stories of him are only recorded in incidental allusions"—No, position "only" as far to the right as possible: this is ambiguous.
    • "Corinna sang of Orion conquering and naming all the land of the dawn.[29]"—Is this a whole paragraph? There are other similarly stubby paras.
    • MOS breach concerning quotation italics.
  • MOS breach concerning ranges (en dash).
  • Support -- Excellent and enlightening. Nothing that would improve the article is immediately obvious to me. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: This article has 82 footnotes, in small font. Anyone who can see the difference between a hyphen and an ndash, at that scale, and feels the labor of changing them the most effective contribution they can make to WP, or to this article, should feel free to do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In other news, I've asked several places for a copyeditor. If they agree with Epbr123 in wanting a comma splice, or Tony1 in his desire to call a source 40% obscure, and to separate "only" from the word it modifies, so be it; English is established by consensus. For my part, I am relieved that it is such details we are discussing, instead of Yannismarou's substantive qualms, which I hope I have answered. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Please check the Footnotes for appropriateness, completeness and format. Example: "Another mythographer, Liberalis, tells of Menippe and Metioche, daughters of Orion, who sacrificed themselves for their country's good and were transformed into comets." The footnote to this sentence leads to a wikilink of an article on Antoninus Liberalis plus a page number. I do not see a work by Antoninus Liberalis under References. Thank you. Mattisse 14:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    This is the quite standard method of citing poems and classical texts, by book and chapter, paragraph, or line; one example of it is cited in WP:ATTFAQ. I have added the (redundant) information that the title of Liberalis' work is the Metamorphoses and that 25 is a section number; Liberalis' work is the only thing he wrote, and is a single book. When, as usual, the division is standard across editions, it is both customary and preferable to citing the page of a specific edition, which is useless to anyone who does not have access to that edition.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:ATTFAQ is not a current standard and the page is being retained for historical reasons only. Please read WP:CITE, WP:V, WP:RS. Mattisse 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I watched the implosion of WP:ATT and WP:ATTFAQ at close hand. Large parts of them were controversial and widely deprecated; large parts of them were never disputed. This is one of the latter; it should be salvaged. If WP:CITE doesn't say anything about using the methods of citing usual in a given field of scholarship, it really ought to. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I'm supporting in terms of readability and this being an informative article. I learnt a fair amount reading it, and nothing really jumped out except one thing: is it possibly to have something on the name? I'll explain in more detail below. Carcharoth 23:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Etymology. Is Orion the English translation of the Greek name? Would it be possible to have (a) the original Greek name given somewhere (in the Greek alphabet); and (b) the point at which the name Orion entered the English language - was it it, for example, a recent translation from a Greek or Latin text, or does the name enter the English language much earlier? I realise this is an article about the mythical person, not the etymology of the name, but I wondered if a paragraph or two on this would be possible? I brief look at this etymology suggests that a brief discourse on this could touch on Orion in other cultures as well, though that may veer too far towards the constellation material. Essentially, what I am asking is how much does Orion, the Greek myth, influence the words and myth of Orion that spread to other cultures? I see there has been discussion on the talk page of the Greek etymology (did this get dropped?), and some of the possible precursor concepts (was this also dropped?), but not much on the transmission of the name and myth after Greek times. The etymology I linked to above says: "1398, from Gk. Oarion, of unknown origin, though some speculate on Akkadian Uru-anna "the Light of Heaven." Another Gk. name for it was Kandaon, a title of Ares, god of war, and it is represented in most cultures as a giant (e.g. O.Ir. Caomai "the Armed King," O.N. Orwandil, O.S. Ebuðrung)." (Orwandil = Orvandil, the other links mostly don't work; Gk. is Ancient Greek, O.Ir is Old Irish, O.N is Old Norse, O.S. is Old Saxon). Most of this, may, of course, be to do with the constellation, not the Greek mythical figure, and the 'Modern' section does touch on this. It might be helpful to ferret out approximately when the English began to refer to the constellation as Orion, and what they called it before that, and how this relates to the Greek myth. Carcharoth 23:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Orion is the transliteration of the Greek. I'm not sure when the Anglo-Saxons began to use the Greek constellations; presumably before Solomon and Saturn. For Candaon, see that article; what sources I can find on that obscure name regard the identification with the hero Orion as doubtful; the constellation is another question. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK, is it possible to say in the article that the name Orion is a transliteration from the original Greek, and to give the Greek it is transliterated from? And to say when it was first transliterated (in modern times, and earlier times, back to A-S times)? Just some sort of idea when people would have first been using the English word 'Orion' and whether they would have meant the constellation or the hero or both. The transliteration bit should be easy - the rest might be harder, so don't worry if there are no definite answers in the sources. Carcharoth 09:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Update: the article now has the original Greek as well, that's wonderful. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dates. Could the historical context be made clearer by scattering a few "2nd century BC" and similar references through the text? eg. Hesiod ~ 700BC, Homer 7-8 century BC. There are vague phrases like "as late as the Roman Empire" (relies on the reader knowing the dates of the Roman Empire - better to give a date range). Natalis Comes - say that this is now 16th century. Phrases like "There was a movement a century ago" will date - in 20 years times, people will be unclear what you are referring to. Give the dates of the movement, as well as saying "a century ago". Also, many of cultural references are missing dates, eg. in the last sentence. And the last sentence is a bit of a poor ending. I think the ending of an article is as important as the start. Bring the narrative to a close in some way. Carcharoth 23:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Dates are a useful idea. I'll see what I can do; one problem is that the dates of most of the sources are doubtful; for example, the Astronomy may not even be by Hesiod, and Hesiod's date (and identity) are disputed.
      • I will see if I can think of a way to end the whole article with a bang; I am accustomed to newspaper style, which encourages articles to trail off with the least important elements. The modern cultural uses are last because they depend on the explanation of the myth in the rest of the article, and I don't see any slambang finish there; but I've put Eliot last, as the best available. Suggestions are welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The best I can see is the passage
        The other, which Diodorus ascribes to Hesiod, relates that there was once a broad sea between Sicily and the mainland. Orion built the whole Peloris, the Punta del Faro, and the temple to Poseidon at the tip, after which he settled in Euboea. He was then "numbered among the stars of heaven and thus won for himself immortal remembrance".
      But this is the logical end to the myth, not the article - it used to be the end of that section. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Why does this bit "The margin of the Empress Eudocia's copy", link Eudocia (presumably a woman) with the man Euphorion of Chalcis? Needs more explanation. Carcharoth 10:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The footnote was misplaced in the copy-edit. In general, I have tried to keep obscure names (Euphorion, Apollodorus, Liberalis) in footnotes, and restrict the text to writers the general reader may have heard of before, like Homer, Ovid and Lucian. The link appears to be some effort at disambiguation; unfortunately, my source simply said Eudocia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "One modern critic suggests this is the original version." - the footnote says "Fontenrose" - some readers will know to then look at the Bibliography, and see you mean the book by Fontenrose published in 1981. Others will find this too obscure and not understand what you've said here. Can you not set things up so people can click Fontenrose in the reference, and be taken to the bibliography? Carcharoth 10:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Now, in the twentieth century..." - we are now in the 21st century. Pre-ceding sentence needs changing as well (the "a century ago" bit). Carcharoth 10:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Philip Glass has also written a shorter work on Orion, as have Tōru Takemitsu,[78] Kaija Saariaho,[79] and John Casken.[80] David Bedford's late-twentieth-century works are about the constellation rather than the mythical figure as he is an amateur astronomer.[81]" - the date details here are shoved down to footnotes, and the other details (Japanese, Finnish, English) are only available if people click on the links. It feels like you've shortened a trivia list here. I'd suggest either including them properly, or leaving out. Carcharoth 11:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment for now. I didn't have the time to read the whole article yet, but I will do so within the next couple of days. It looks good so far. Except:
    • "He is described as a great hunter in the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey, when Odysseus meets him in the underworld." Are "great hunter" the words used by Homer? In that case, quotation marks would be appropriate.
    • "In the Odyssey, Ulysses sees him hunting in the underworld, a great slayer of animals with a bronze club, and he is also mentioned as a constellation as the lover of the Goddess Dawn—slain by Artemis—and as the most handsome of the earthborn." Though I don't feel very strongly about this and definately wouldn't insist on it, it might be better to either use Ulysses or Odysseus, to make the article easier to follow for people who don't know much about the Odyssey.
    • "In several cases, although the work that has come down to us bears the name of a famous scholar, such as Apollodorus of Athens, Eratosthenes, or Gaius Julius Hyginus, what survives is often an ancient forgery or an abridgment of the original compilation by a later writer of dubious competence." Again, I don't feel very strongly about this either, but I think using first person pronouns just sounds really unprofessional.
      • Standard English idiom, especially in this field; but we can use "surviving", I suppose. I have changed; "surviving" is shorter, but I think less vivid. If anyone else misses the idiom, do change back. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've had quite a few English teachers discourage any use of first person pronouns in formal writing, so I guess I'm kind of allergic to it. Anyway, according to WP:MOS: "it is sometimes appropriate to use we or one when referring to an experience that anyone, any reader, would be expected to have, such as general perceptual experiences". So using "us" is without question within the bounds of Wikipedia policy, I personally really dislike it though.--Carabinieri 20:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "When they offered him a favor, he asked for the birth of sons. The gods took the bull's hide and ejaculated, or urinated, into it[11] and buried it in the earth, then told him to dig it up ten lunations later." Evem if it's not exactly the same thing, I think months will do in place of "lunations".
    • "A second full telling (even shorter than the summary of Hesiod) is in a Roman-era collection of myths based largely on the mythologist and poet Pherecydes of Leros." Neither webster.com, nor askoxford.com list "telling" as a noun. Are you sure this is correct usage?--Carabinieri 16:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I've now finished reading the article. I think it's close to FA, but there are still a few issues. Especially the third in this list bothers me and keeps me from supporting:
    • "One modern critic suggests this is the original version." I think the critic deserves to be called by his name. Though this isn't a case of WP:AWW, because the source of the statement is given in the footnote, I think it would be better to make this more obvious or explicit. Why not "Joseph Fontenrose, classical scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests ..."?
      • Because it would be verbose. Fontenrose is fully credited with his interpretation below; this is a side issue. Given the necessary emphasis on the three gods below, it seems useful to have the disagreement here in the text; anyone who cares which scholar has a footnote. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Peck, p.200; giving Hyginus's etymology for Urion, but describing it as "fantastic". Oeneus from Kerenyi Gods, citing Servius's note to Aeneid 10.763; which actually reads Oenopion; but this may be corruption." Peck isn't in the list of references. Is this supposed to be Pack?
    • "Other ancient scholia say, as does Hesiod, that Orion was the son of Poseidon and his mother was a daughter of Minos; but they call the daughter Brylle or Hyeles." Now that is a bit weasly. There are more cases of this: "Latin sources", "Other mythographers", "One source", "Later mythographers, etc. Wouldn't it be easier to just name these sources/mythographers?
      • I doubt it would be easier. There are three classes of ancient sources here:
        1. The general reader may be expected to have heard of Hesiod, Ovid, Lucian, and so forth; or at least to recognize that they are someone literate people have heard of. These are named in the text.
        2. Names like Apollodorus, Hyginus, Servius, and Euphorion are likely to be more intimidating than useful. It is useful to identify Servius as Latin; it may be useful to identify him as third century AD, or the annotator of Vergil; but his name will help only a small minority, and they won't need the other identifications. These names are in the notes, as far as practicable, which further include (for Eratosthenes, Apollodorus, and Hyginus) the consensus assertion that the work that has come down to us bearing the name X is almost certainly not by X. Explaining this in the text would be digressive.
        3. Several of the sources are anonymous scholia, only citable with such forms as "scholiast to Nicander's Theriaca, l. 15." These are not in the text; sometimes, they are not in the notes, because no Wikipedian has consulted them. These cannot be named; in some cases, the scholiast does not cite any source. There are footnotes citing Frazer's notes to Apollodorus, and Kerenyi; these are where I found them.
      This is in part a reaction to the form I found, which repeatedly wrote of Pseudo-Eratosthenes. I found this confusing and unnecessary, and I'm a classicist. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I doubt repeating the words "source" and "mythographer" over and over is particularly useful. Who's going to be intimidated by Latin and Greek names? Even if most people won't know who these people are, they'll figure they are sources or mythographers and in some cases would even be helped by links to the articles about the sources/mythographers. What I'm saying is there's no harm in naming the people.--Carabinieri 23:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'll do a read-through, and see if there is avoidable repetition. All I can say about intimidation is that I was. These are the most obscure authors imaginable; having their names thrown at me as though I might be expected to know them was daunting. Furthermore, I had at least heard of some of them; and there were fewer of them then than now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Orion is used by Horace, who tells of his death at the hands of Diana/Artemis" WP:MOS discourages the use of slashes, "as it suggests that the two are related, but does not specify how".
  • Support --Vonones 00:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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