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Anactoria

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Anactoria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 16 October 2024, 20:51 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.
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Nominator(s): UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a figure mentioned in the poetry of Sappho -- though it isn't clear exactly how often, who she was, and even if she existed at all. Anactoria emerges from the fragmentary pages of Sappho with almost no biographical detail, which of course has not prevented scholars, from antiquity to the present, engaging in bold conjecture and outrageous speculation as to who she might have been. She then has an interesting (honest) Nachleben in Roman poetry and in English, where she provided a springboard for Swinburne's "frankly pornographic" "Anactoria", and for Robert Lowell to fill in many of the gaps left by Sappho's account of her. The article underwent a Good Article Review from Simongraham in April, and has recently received extremely helpful pre-FAC comments from Caeciliusinhorto. The inevitable errors and infelicities remain my own. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Author died 1918 (per Wikipedia and a few others) or 1903 (per Sotheby's and a few others); first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (which is free and public) in 1896, per Sotheby's UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:37, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

support from caeciliusinhorto

Nice to see another Sappho-related article at FAC (I'll finish up Sappho herself one day, I swear)! A few remaining textual comments from me, though you've cleared up my Sappho-related nitpicking already...

  • "Ancient Greek poet" – is "Ancient Greek" a proper noun here or should it be "ancient Greek"?
  • The lead says that Anactoria has been suggested as a pseudonym for Anagora of Miletus; the body says that Page suggested that Anagora was the pseudonym. Which? (Or has it been suggested both ways?)
  • "The digamma (Ϝ) written at the start of Anactoria's name, with a sound value similar to the English w, is unlikely to have been pronounced in Sappho's dialect." The Greek spelling given for Anactoria in the lead is without an initial digamma, and Neri's edition of Sappho 16 doesn't say anything about a digamma; it may be worth noting where the digamma comes from. (I'm not a linguist, but I presume because Anactoria is related to anax? Did Aeolic retain the digamma there after it was dropped from Ionic dialects?)

Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:29, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's not much more for me to say except to offer my support. I spot-checked a couple of sources I had on hand and everything looked fine; the ancient literature part of this article is certainly pretty comprehensive and while I'm less confident on proclaiming with certainty on the post-classical receptions there's nothing missing that I would expect to see. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 11:15, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you -- for this and your advice beforehand. Looking forward to seeing Sappho (surely an FA-in-waiting if there ever was one) here in due course! UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Tim riley

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Not much from me. My few comments are all on the prose rather than the content (adolescent boys in the 1960s were not exposed to Sappho's verse in their Greek lessons).

  • "It has also been speculated…" – I am not one of those absolutists who think using the passive voice is the sin against the Holy Ghost, but the passive leaves us a bit short-changed here, I think. "X, Y and Z speculate …" or some such would have more impact.
  • "written to another of Sappho's female companions" – "companions" seems to me rather a woolly, even evasive, term. Does it mean lover? Good friend? Colleague?
  • "the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia known as the Suda" – it's mentioned in the previous para, where the link and probably the description oughter be.
  • "Glenn Most points out that …" – rather a loaded term, perhaps implying Wikipedia's endorsement rather than a neutral report of his comments.
    • I think we do want to endorse this -- it's self-evidently true from looking at the poem. I'd agree if we were saying e.g. "Glen Most believes [this statement of opinion], but Most hasn't actually come up with this -- he's just read the text. However, I think it would be SYNTHy to just come in and say, in Wikivoice without giving a name, that all the aforementioned scholars are speculating wildly (on which see the article's Talk page). UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Socrates and his male acolytes such as Alcibiades" – Order, order! I think "acolyte" is much too condescending a term for Alcibiades. The OED defines the word in this non-Christian context as "an attendant or assistant in some ceremony, operation, or the like; (also) a devoted follower or admirer; a novice or neophyte". A devoted admirer, I grant you (I know, or rather used to know, my Symposium) and I think "admirer" rather than "acolyte" would be the right word here.
    • Hm -- here I dissent slightly: the point is that these weren't just detached admirers, but actually his students, followers, entourage and intellectual descendants -- these are the people that the court were talking about when they executed Socrates for "corrupting the youth of Athens". I think "admirer" is a little weak for that, and implies far greater distance than we're talking about with a very close-knit (in various senses) group. Conversely, I think a devoted follower or admirer; a novice or neophyte is right on the money. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • I still think "acolytes" is generally a pejorative word when used in this sense (as opposed to its original meaning of "altar boys", from the Greek ἀκόλουθος). If anyone referred to me as an acolyte of anyone I should feel I had been slighted. If you're talking about "students, followers, entourage and intellectual descendants" why not say so? But I shan't press the point. Tim riley talk 09:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        Ah, I see -- I'm not sure I'd share that pejorative reading; you certainly hear people describe themselves as "acolytes" of distinguished professors, particularly in obituaries of the latter. But I'll keep thinking on it -- there may well be a better phrasing that gets the point across more effectively. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's all I can find to quibble about. It would be a work of supererogation to praise the pithy and readable prose or the admirably wide-ranging sourcing (no book cited more than three times). We expect no less from this editor. Tim riley talk 15:05, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Shall look again tomorrow. I'm not going to oppose or withhold support on any of the above points, but meanwhile I don't rule out a spirited brawl before I sign on the dotted line. Tim riley talk 17:58, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My concluding comments, above, are not of such gravity as to prevent my supporting the elevation of this article to FA. The sources look admirable to my layman's eye, the text is clear and a pleasure to read, and I'm sure you have had no alternative to the ghastly Victorian paintings, which are undeniably relevant. Meets all the FA criteria in my view. Tim riley talk 09:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Tim -- as ever, wise and thought-provoking. I'll keep thinking on the points you've raised above: hopefully, better solutions will present themselves. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jens

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  • I wonder why a complete translation of Sappho 31 is provided but no quote of Sappho 16, even though much of the discussion is about the latter, and it was described as "the finest lines in all Sappho's poetry"? Having the original as reference could help with appreciating the article.
    • It's a length issue -- the problem is that she only refers to Anactoria halfway through, but you need the first half to make sense of it, and quoting the whole poem would, I thought, be a bit long. A version is here -- what do you think? I worry that it would make the infobox/illustration outsizedly big. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:12, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • As a reader, I personally would much prefer the Sappho 16 quote, which is the one that actually mentions Anactoria. It is slightly longer, but I don't think that is a big problem. Without it, the article feels a bit like the discussion of a painting that you can't see. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        Yes, I agree. There's another issue here, however, which is finding a good PD translation -- Storer didn't do 16. The one I linked isn't PD, so we can't include it here: so far, the only ones I can find are here and here (search "Anactoria" in either case). Honestly, I don't think either of them are great, and if the translation we offer can't do at least most of the job of showing why people like Robinson admire it so much, it's not going to do a whole lot of good. Pinging @Caeciliusinhorto: do you know of a good translation of Sappho 16 that will be usable (ie, published before 1929, probably by an author died before 1954?) UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:22, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        Most of the pre-1929 translations of Sappho 16 which I am aware of are based on John Maxwell Edmonds' edition, which I don't love. It both differs in a few key places from modern readings (in the second stanza Edmonds' Loeb, for instance, has "Helen surveyed much mortal beauty" whereas the modern Loeb has "she who far surpassed mankind in beauty, Helen,") and has some of Edmonds' characteristic reconstructions, including e.g. adding "for woman is very easy to be bent" at the beginning of the fourth stanza (not translated in the modern Loeb; Rayor 2014 has "... [un]bending ... mind".
        The papyrus was initially published in vol.X of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and I think Grenfell and Hunt were still doing exempli gratia translations at that point so you might try checking that, but I don't have access while archive.org is still down until the next time I drag myself to a library which has it so I can't comment on that for certain. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:35, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        Thanks -- I'll see if I can dig anything out when Archive.org comes back. I did wonder if there was some suitable equivalent of Template:External media that would work here, but I don't think there is for a purely text source. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:21, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why is "In other classical literature" a subsection of "In Sappho"? It does not seem to fit there; in the section "In Sappho", I would expect content about Sapphos literature only.
    • Another one where I felt between a rock and a hard place: we could change the L2 heading to "In classical literature", but that would seem not to give Sappho her due weight: it would elide that writing about Anactoria in classical literature is, fundamentally, writing about Sappho. On the other hand, those other mentions in classical literature are direct derivatives of Sappho's portrayal, whereas the modern ones have at least a tenuous claim to be adapting (e.g.) Ovid. I had a bit of an idea here -- brought the classical subsection down into an expanded "Reception". How does that look? UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:17, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • A reference in the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia known as the Suda to "Anagora" – I found this a bit difficult to read, and it is not entirely clear if "known as the Suda" refers to the encyclopaedia or the reference. Maybe "A reference in the Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia, to Anagora"? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:07, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks as ever, Jens. Replies above. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:12, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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