Talk:Ludwig Ross

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Ludwig Ross/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 14:35, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:35, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Earwig finds no issues.

• File:Ludwig Ross - Imagines philologorum.jpg has a source link that isn't very clear, but it appears the image is taken from Gudeman's 1911 Imagine Philologorum. The license given is fine but you might add a US tag as well to show it's PD in the US. Not required for GA.
  • Done. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• eastofjordan.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/l-ross-at-petra-in-1854/ is a blog; what makes it a reliable source?
  • The author is David L. Kennedy, who is a very respectable academic: he's a professor emeritus of archaeology at the University of Western Australia. In this particular case, we're only verifying that Kennedy has correctly read the name 'L. Ross', and that he believes that it could have been Ludwig. I don't have access to Blau's article Inschriften aus Petra, but in the event of any dispute, that would clear it up immediately. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• The link to Pyrgos goes to a disambiguation page.
  • Fixed. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• Per MOS:PLURALNOUN, it should be "Ross's", not "Ross'". The MoS page says "pronounced s", but I think they mean "voiced s".
  • I'm quite a fan of the classicising possessive, but you're right that the MOS doesn't like it; changed under mild protest. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• In the long sentence starting "In January 1834 ...", when we get to "afterwards, he confirmed", it's not syntactically clear that "he" refers to Falbe rather than Ross. I would suggest splitting the sentence in two and reworking a little.
  • Split and very mildly reworked: I'm not happy with how often "the state" props up there, but can't immediately think of a good alternative. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• "... and tensions between Pittakis and Ross. Tension existed between ...": can we avoid the repetition?
  • Now "animosity". UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• "Klenze's proposals advocated for the removal of ...": any reason not to simplify this to "Klenze advocated for the removal of ..."?
  • Very minor accuracy; what we're really saying is that Klenze wrote this down in January, and Ross/Pittakis were acting on that written document in March/May; the alternative might imply that the advocacy and the construction took place at the same time. At least in theory, Klenze could have changed his mind. But it's a pretty minor distinction. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• "which was inaugurated on 15 May [O.S. 3 May] ... Ross' first lecture took place on 10 May [O.S. 22 May]": one of these is surely backwards as the date difference of 12 days is in opposite directions.
  • The second; fixed. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• "this criticism has been posited to have been part of the reason why he delayed the publication of the second volume": suggest simplifying to "this criticism may have been partly why he delayed the publication of the second volume".
  • Done. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• "The project was financed by the Prussian Ministry of Culture and the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, to whom Ross' friend Alexander von Humboldt had introduced and recommended the project." Should the object of "introduced" be "Ross"? If not the sentence is correct, but I would suggest cutting "introduced and" as unnecessary and slightly distracting.
  • It's the project; cut as you suggest. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• Do we know why he committed suicide?
  • The source implies, in a slightly nineteenth-century way, a combination of his increasingly painful physical condition, general Weltschmertz, and a slightly odd bit where it praises him for emulating the great Roman philosophers. Frankly, I don't think they were doing anything more than guessing; we've got the juxtaposition of his health and his suicide, but I don't feel that the source has any claim to be reliable on Ross's motives. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• Not a GA issue, but check the bibliography for alphabetical order -- Baumeister is after Brandl.
  • Now in the right place. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Spotchecks:

• FN 80 cites "Ross' views were, however, supported by the historian Julius Braun in Germany and by the archaeologist Desiré–Raoul Rochette in Paris." Verified.
• FN 9 cites "He remained closely connected with the Ottonian court": can you quote the supporting text?
  • Er verkehrte viel in Hofkreisen UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
• FN 32 cites "which he spoke sufficiently fluently that Greeks often mistook him for a native": verified.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:20, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Fixes and spotcheck look good. I fixed another O.S. date; passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Illustrations

(1) I've replaced the small cropped PNG file of Hansen's view of the Temple of Athena Nike with a larger, uncropped JPG version. But consider using File:Christian Hansen, Temple of Athena Nike in 1836 (Ross, Schaubert, and Hansen, Der Tempel der Nike Apteros, pl. I).jpg, scanned from the original publication in 1839, instead? The University of Heidelberg did a good job with the scan, and the resolution is much, much higher, although it lacks the coloring, which you may think is better for a WP illustration.

(2) The dour, lumpy photo of Ross that currently appears in the infobox (and therefore in the Google search results) is very depressing, and the wrinkled reproduction of this particular copy makes it even less attractive. Consider replacing it with File:Ludwig Ross by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin.jpg, a high-quality lithograph of the dashing young archaeologist in his prime?

– Choliamb (talk) 15:11, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

On the portraits, I quite agree -- though I've moved the original lead image further down, as the vision of a dour and depressed man is unfortunately rather appropriate to his last years. On the Nike temple, I think your assessment about colour is correct; given the purpose of the image here, I'm not sure trading for a higher resolution is a good thing to do, especially as you have now added a much better coloured image than we had previously. Others may take a different view, of course. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's much better! There is clearly some sort of relationship between the Maurin lithograph and the Varouchas painting, although I'm not sure what it is. If the date of the painting (1870) is correct, then Maurin could not have copied Varouchas, since he died in 1850. But the head and the dress in the painting are precisely the same in the lithograph, so either Varouchas copied Maurin (and transformed the head-and-shoulders vignette into a full half-portrait), or they were both derived from an earlier work. I wonder if this image might be the earlier work in question, but it's impossible to tell without getting hold of a copy of the Πανόραμα Νεώτερης Ελληνικής Ιστορίας (and hoping that they list the sources of their illustrations). I'd really like to know, partly to satisfy my curiosity, and partly because it would be nice to have the option of using that clear, bright color image in place of the dark, orangey photo of the Varouchas painting now in the article. But without knowing exactly what the source is, I am reluctant to upload it to the Commons, and without a good pedigree it presumably would not be usable in a FA. Choliamb (talk) 19:09, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice the similarity -- agreed that we need fairly impeccable pedigree for use in this particular article, though Commons seems to have somewhat less stringent standards (which I admit I don't fully understand) to actually have the image hosted there. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:15, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Commons standards are pretty clear: the image must be either (1) assigned a free license by the creator, or (2) in the public domain in both the US and the country of origin, for any one of a host of ridiculously complicated legal reasons. But of course there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of images at the Commons that do not meet those standards, and should not be there, but have not yet been nominated for deletion, in the same way that there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of articles on Wikipedia that do not meet current standards for notability or sourcing, but have not yet been nominated for deletion. In both projects, the current requirements are quite stringent, and yet there's still a huge amount of stuff that doesn't meet those requirements. Most people active at the Commons don't want to spend all their time looking through the images uploaded in 2004 in order to identify the ones that ought to be deleted, just as most people active on Wikipedia don't want to spend all their time looking through stubs written in 2004 to identify the ones that should go to AFD. Since they're both volunteer projects, the problems only get addressed when a volunteer comes across a problem and decides to act on it. Choliamb (talk) 21:19, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Date of Ross's appointment as Ephor

I corrected a small typo in the Greek in footnote 40, but when I clicked through to the source cited in the note (Stillwell 1960) I found that the citation does not support the date given in the text for Ross's appointment to the position of Ephor. The WP article states that Ross was appointed on 10 September (29 Aug O.S.), but what Stillwell writes is "He [Klenze] demolished the mediaeval or Turkisish vaults in the Propylaea so as to clear a passage for the state entry of King Otto which took place on September 10, 1834, amid great pomp and ceremony. Five days later von Klenze left Athens for good and his work on the Acropolis was taken over by Ludwig Ross." This is not very helpful, because it implies that Ross replaced Klenze, when in fact he replaced Weissenberg, and it refers only to the work on the Acropolis, rather than to his appointment as Ephor. According to Petrakos in Η ελληνική αυταπάτη του Λουδοβίκου Ross (= BAE 262, 2009), the decision was made in two royal decrees of September 21 (19 O.S.) and 27 (15 O.S.), and reported in ΦΕΚ 36 on 10 October (28 Sep O.S.); see pp. 307–308, no. 61. On p. 63 of the same work Petrakos uses 28 September (O.S.), the date of the ΦΕΚ announcement, as the date of the beginning of Ross's tenure: "Μὲ τὴν ἀπόλυση τοῦ Weissenburg καὶ τὸν διορισμὸ στὴ θέση του του Ross, στὶς 28 Σεπτεμβρίου 1834, ἄλλαξε πλήρως ἡ διάρθρωση τῆς Ὑπηρεσίας." This work does not appear in the list of sources, but in the work listed as Petrakos 2004 (Η απαρχή της ελληνικής αρχαιολογίας και η ίδρυση της Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας), p. 148, the same two royal decrees are cited, although the first one is misdated with a typo of 12 for 21. (This Mentor article was reprinted as a volume in the BAE series: BAE 234, 2004, where the passage appears on p. 40, with the same typo.) Whether you choose to use the dates of the royal decrees or that of the ΦΕΚ announcement is up to you; I would probably follow Petrakos and use the ΦΕΚ date (28 Sep/10 Oct) , since that represents the official ratification of the decrees and the first publication of the appointment. In any case, it was not 10 September, and Stillwell is not a good source here. Choliamb (talk) 13:38, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this -- I'm not sure what went wrong there, but that was quite a big "oops". I think I've managed to square the various circles involved here, but let me know if there's still something wonky. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:36, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Oops, not quite there yet. The Greek title Γενικὸς Ἔφορος τῶν Ἀρχαιοτήτων now appears twice, in notes 39 and 43, but neither of those is where you want it. Note 40 would be the best place for it, but does Mallouchou-Tufano give the Greek name? If not, you could put it in note 41, since Petrakos certainly uses it, if not on pp. 307–308, then elsewhere. Choliamb (talk) 21:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to add PDF links to Petrakos 1998 and Petrakos 2011, they're both available at the Hetaireia web site. (The latter is BAE 270.) Choliamb (talk) 21:47, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Well spotted -- fixed now. Strictly, Mallouchou-Tufano isn't the citation for the Greek title: we're simply telling the reader that title at the same time as giving the English one: I've added a footnote to a bit where Petrakos uses it to cite the (back-)translation. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)