h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Officials in Ancient Athens - A5228615
Author: Elentari - U202814

Hopefully this will compliment the entry on Athenian democracy quite well.

Aside: I plan to update the "Athens" entry that you link to in the near future.

There's not a lot wrong with this, except for the following sentence which has three spelling mistakes:

Oringianlly, aonly the two richest classes could be archons, but this wa later extended to include the zeugites or hoplite class, the third of Solon's four classes.

But the subject matter of the entry is a little dry, so I don't expect you'll get much in the line of comments. We'll have to wait and see whether a scout will be interested enough to pick it.

On the other hand, you could try and spice it up a bit. Rather than just being a list of officials, could you put in stuff about what it was like living in Ancient Athens?

Trust me, 3 typos in one sentence!

I know its a bit dry - since I have some time on my hands, I'll see what I can come up with in the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

I put in some more info on the importance of the positions of archons, strategoi (and how it could lead to a political career a la Pericles) and hellenotamiai, and the Athenian love of litigation, but I'm not sure what else to include. Any ideas gratefully received!

I don't know how much you know about this field, but do you have any idea what a "proedroi" is? It's mentioned in the demokratia entry as a group of Chairmen of the Ecclesia of which Pericles was a member, from which he derived his power. However, I studied him and have never heard of it! Oh well.

The word "proedroi" is not in my Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Thanks for checking anyway!

I've tried to jazz it up a bit more, make it a bit more entertaining and relevant.

It looks good! I don't think there is much more you can do to improve this, other than a tiny bit of tidying of mispellings and punctuation.


great number of officals --> great number of officials


Third footnote: Archons, listed below.3 -- Move the full stop to after the . You should have:

listed belowLater,

and

than the Archons..


were entitled to attend -- put a space before 'were'


Pericles was a strategoi for may years --> Pericles was a strategoi for many years


You use the word strategoi as if it were singular. Is it in fact plural?

Once you've got those sorted, it will be ready for picking in my opinion. Then we'll have to persuade a passing scout to pick it.

Thanks for that, I should have known there would be more mistakes to sort out.

Note to self: Proofread more closely in future.

You're quite right, strategoi is plural, srategos is singular.

I'll sort these now, cheers!

Done.

You missed:

may years --> many years

and I've spotted another minor problem. You have Hellenotamiai in the header but Hellenotamiae in footnote 6.

I've sorted Hellenotamiae but I can't find "many years". Where is it?

The last sentence of the Strategoi section has 'may years'. This should be 'many years'.

Done, thank you.

One other thing occurs to me.

" many would be of noble backgrounds"

What does "noble" mean in a democracy?

Interesting point.

Well, it wasn't always a democracy, there had been Kings and tyrants before, and the aristocracy still existed. They were the rich, leading men.

Anyway, it's perfectly possible to have aristocrats in democratic countries.

I've never understood it.

It depends on what you call 'noble', and what you call a 'democracy'. Do you have to hold a title to be noble? I know that according to the UK's rules it doesn't work that way, but you might consider the Boston Brahmins of the US a sort of nobility. And some democracies (like the US) made a conscious decision to not grant titles, but as long as the definition of a democracy is adhered to (a system of government whereby everyone is given representation in government and is able to vote to decide issues) there's no reason why you can't have nobles in that sort of government.

I meant that I don't understand the concept of nobility at all. But if you mean that these high-ranking officials were descended from the former kings of Athens, then that makes sense.

All in all, I think this entry is good enough to be picked now.