Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Greco–Persian Wars

Greco–Persian Wars

This is perhaps the best of the articles of the Persian Wars. It shows (at least in the Persian invasion of Greece part) arguments on the size of Xerxes' army on why it was large or small. Short of a larger lead section and copy-editing what else is necessary before this is to become an FA?Ikokki 12:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Cla68

Article looks really good to me, but a few things I noticed:

• Are the total "strength" and "casualty" numbers known for the infobox?
• Check Wikipedia:Citing sources to ensure your references are formatted correctly and consistently.
• The way some of the pictures are arranged appears to be creating some big white spaces in the article.
• Use the
  Further information: [[:(Battle)]]
  template in the sections that refer to a specific battle that already has its own entry and label each section after the major battle that was involved in that part of the campaign.
• Perhaps the lists of forces and numbers of each force could be reserved for the individual battle articles and summarized more briefly in this article since it's an overview of the entire campaign.
• Any subjective assertion made, like, "This state of affairs was going to cause trouble sooner or later" ("Origins," 1st paragraph) should probably have a citation attached directly to it so that it doesn't look like the assertion is coming from an editor of the article instead of a referenced source.

Cla68 14:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I would have thought {{details}} would make more sense there than {{further}}, but that might just be personal preference. Kirill Lokshin 14:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

We are talking about several different campaigns if we are to calculate numbers:

• Darius in Scythia: Marginally part of this article, numbers of the Persians given by Herodotus or Ctesias (800,000) considered bloated bloated, of the Scythians completely unknown, casualties mysterious
• Ionian Revolt: Somewhat better known than the previous campaign, numbers are still a guess
• Mardonius' first campaign of 492 BC: The numbers of his troops are debated but at least by a magnitude of 2.
• Datis and Artaphernes' campaign: It is agreed Athens and Plataea had between 8,000-11,000 troops, for the Persian army it is believed between 25,000-60,000. It is believed that among the troops were survivors of the previous campaign.
• Xerxes' campaign: MAJOR disagreement to the point that at battle of Thermopylae it has caused edit wars. Most historians today in the West (but not all, see article) believe Xerxes begun with 250,000 at the most. Most modern Greek historians find hard to accept that the 110,000 Greeks at Plataea faced less than the 300,000 mentioned by Herodotus and thus Xerxes could not have come with less than 500,000. Fleet numbers are also in disagreement: Either Herodotus' 1200 is true or it is a reference to the Iliad so it could not be more than 600 ships.
• Pausanias' last campaign: Perhaps the only campaign about which there is agreement on numbers. About 30,000 Greeks (including fleet crew) and somewhat more Persians
• Kimon's campaigns in Thrace: No source gives numbers for the Persians
• Battle of Euremedon: The Persian numbers are again subject to debate.
• Campaign of Egypt: Sources disagree on Athenian numbers. For the Persian numbers historians disagree even more
• Battle of Salamis in Cyprus: Again there is disagreement on Persian numbers

If we were to add Greek numbers we would get something like 200,000+. For the Persians the total number is debated because in the West since 1850 there is a popular theory that noone could have possibly fielded more than 100,000 troops before the Napoleonic Wars. Ikokki 17:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

(I was interrupted earlier) All ancient Greek and Roman sources, some of which are actually considered biased in favor of the Persians like Ctesias always give numbers of over 100,000 for the vast majority of the campaigns. In the end the numbers debated boils down to how reliable ancient sources are and how dogmatic each historian is. Thus numbers in the infobox qre not advised

I am aware that references to modern sources are lacking. I will try to remedy this but it will be difficult because there are different editions of modern historians depending on the language: Page 23 of the German edition of Bengtson says different things from page 23 of the English edition of Bengtson. I will try to more references for subjective arguments

The gaps only appear in Explorer and seem to be cause by a bug in that programm. They do not appear on Firefox. I will try to add templates referring to the battles. As for the tables the overview article is IMO a better discussion forum than say battle of Thermopylae which does not deal with how the army gathered.

Thanks for the commentsIkokki 19:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin

The article is quite good, overall. Three things that stand out, though:

• More citations are definitely needed. As it is, there are significant portions of the article completely devoid of citation, which will get you hammered at FAC.
• The section names are too long and convoluted. I would try to shorten them considerably, and perhaps add years in parentheses to them in order to aid the reader in finding periods in the narrative.
• The lists of troops should be formatted as floating tables, as they create large visual gaps in the article otherwise.

Obviously, the lead section will need to be expanded as well, but you're already aware of that. Kirill Lokshin 14:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

How can I do floating tables?Ikokki 19:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The full syntax is at Help:Table; basically, you need to set style="float: right;" on the table elements. Kirill Lokshin 19:32, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Gaius Cornelius

Great read, thanks! You have a couple of in-line external links: I don't know what the concensus is, but I prefer to make all references as footnotes (see British anti-invasion preparations of World War II for an example). By-the-way, I cannot recommend Tom Holland's Persian Fire too highly.