Talk:Alexis (poet)

message: This article should be rated stub class, and should have a stub notice. I cannot do this because I am currently not an estabilished user. Downgrader (talk) 16:53, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short article 

message: I found the "Intro" text far too long, and the follow-on "Contents" far too short (being just a section on Surviving Titles, followed by References times two [!]). The article's initial sentence was also too complicated, having too many clauses ("...and taken early to Athens, where he became a citizen, of the deme Oion (Οἶον), and the tribe Leontides"). No good, what's the point if one has to click through to other pages on "deme" stuff just to understand the first sentence? One shouldn't have to be a university professor to get through the first 30 words. By comparison the 1911 Encycopedia Britannica "Alexis" entry (hyperlinked at base of article page) is a shining example of brevity and clarity. Budding comtributors please note!
Dates are odd too (394BC – c.275BC is stated, which equals 119 years [!] while Wiki's Middle Comedy article states he was ~375BC - 275BC .... ). Maybe someone amended the birth date after reading William Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology' (1898? - hyperlinked in article refs) where it says Alexis "...was living at least as late as BC 288 ... perhaps therefore we may assign about BC 394 as the date of the birth of Alexis". Do that without altering the death date and you get 119 years - doh! Alternative dates would have been better handled by leaving c375-c275 alone and adding a c394-c288 rider (if needed - not sure about that..) separately after. Or on reflection, maybe someone amended death from c.288 to c.275, although why seems unknown. I find no source or reason (here) for c.275 at all, so I'll amend his death to c.288BC.
According to the article, "It was said he had a son, called Stephanus, who also wrote thrillers". Thrillers??? It quotes the source as the Suda (Suidas), which states "he had a son, Stephanos, a comic playwright himself.". Amended accordingly.
Also, after a brief mention of some notable plays (with reasons), five more are mentioned [non-italicised - added later?] without much reason but with dates (ie. The Hippos (316BC), Pyraunos (312BC), Pharmakopole (306BC), Hyobolimaios [-misspelt-] (306 BC), Analion [should be Ankylion?]). OF these, two were misquoted [now corrected] and two others (The Hippos and Pharmakopole) are NOT in the later list of comedy "titles preserved" at all. So are they correct? What was their source? Who knows... 
Other confusions: The article states "According to the Suda, he wrote 245 comedies, of which some 130 titles are preserved.". Yet lower down, it lists "The following titles of Alexis's plays have been preserved" - a list of 139 titles. [I've now inserted "139" into the list-sentence for clarity]. Where are the other 9 titles from? And which are they? Or is the earlier "some 130" wrong? What's correct and what's not? Who knows!
Finally, the last sentence in the article was "Alexis is also the forename of Alexis Beach, all round good girl and party animal on the club circuits of the UK circa 2000-present day." I gusss that comes from the New Comedy age (joke)! I've removed the sentence, as 1) thoroughly inappropriate here, 2) uncited, and 3) finding no Alexis Beach from a quick Internet search, I've NOT added it to the Alexis disambiguation page (although I'm almost kinda sad to find no physical evidence of this "party animal"...).
One more thing: the article states "The Suda also calls him Zoe's uncle, but an anonymous tractate on comedy more plausibly states that he was the teacher and uncle of Menander (however this statement may be spurious)." Not right - the Suda (online) states he was Menander's paternal uncle and makes no mention of Zoe (who he??). And what/where is the anonymous tractate? At this point I almost gave up! I was going to simply put "citation needed" after the noted "spurious", but I've since added into the (now split) Intro the Suda ref to being Menander's paternal uncle, enabling deletion of the whole bit about Zoe's uncle and the anonymous tract oddity - now expunged. All in all, an improvement overall, and I leave the rest for better scholars than I to improve further upon. Pete Hobbs (talk) 15:39, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Various corrections/improvements