Commons:Categories for discussion/2007/10/Category:Ancient Greek coins
‘Ancient Greek coins’ is ambiguous. This, and the term ‘pre-Roman coins’ are overlapping to such an extent that they might be construed as covering exactly the same groups of coins, depending on definition. I suggest renaming the category ‘Ancient Greek and pre-Roman coins’. This would prevent confusion (arising from the present ambiguous name) as to what belongs in the category and what doesn’t. ‘Ancient Greek coins’ is a term usually applied to pre-Roman coins of the Mediterranean region. The present name of the category is ethnocentric, which - if rigorously applied - will be rather unworkable. Many coin issuing ancient peoples of the Mediterranean region weren't Greeks. The Greeks even considered the Macedonians to be non-Greeks. Accordingly, "Ancient Greek coins" is often used interchangeably with "pre-Roman coins", and catalogues generally include Judaean, Carthaginian, Celt-Iberian coins etc. along with the Greek. To avoid any confusion about which coins are supposedly "Greek" and which aren't, I think the category should be labelled Ancient Greek and pre-Roman coins. Alfons Åberg 18:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Oppose The proposal is far worse. The standard form is “Coins of Ancient Greece”, and this category would be moved to Category:Coins of Ancient Greece. If you want to classify coins according to any criterion, “period” for example, create suitable subcategories. --Juiced lemon 14:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)- Oppose Oppose to both. The result would be a huge monster-category needing in a very short time to be split in two, "Ancient Greek", and something else. Which is what already is. So why bother?
- Åberg, what you do is noticing that in Commons there is not a meaningful categorization for coins for non -Greek ancient cultures. This is because we who are at work on the period rather concentrated on Greeks and Romans first, and this shortcoming regards all artifacts of any kind. Therefore it would be most appropriate if it were you to fill the gap.
- To do so, I suggest that you might rather create appropriate categories for all the people you mention: Carthaginians, Phoenicians and so on.
- By the way, I never heard before that these coins were "Greek". They may have been "hellenistic", but I don't know how Carthaginians could be considered "Greek". So, if you think you need them, you could rather create categories for "Hellenistic Phoenician coins", which is the correct way to name them, versus "Phoenician coins" proper (inscribed in punic) and "Greek coins" proper.
- As for juiced Lemon, again we have to repeat what we had to underlined here: Category talk:Ancient Greek jewelry. There was never such a thing as "Ancient Greece" covering the whole territory inhabited by the Greeks (no more than a Category "Ancient Lebanon" could cover the whole area inhabited by Phoenicians...). This is why the national categorization scheme cannot work here. "Ancient Greece" is better left to be used to mean the territory of today's Greece in Ancient times, whatever the population (e.g. Thracians, Eteocretenses & re.) inhabiting it was. However, most of the coins we are dealing with were in no way "from" Greece: they come from all over the Mediterranean sea. The "nation" category system is therefore unfit for a reality which was a people, a culture, even an empire (and the Romans made the Roman empire, the Greeks made the Byzantine empire, which they called "Roman empire"... hardly "Ancient Greece", then!), but not a nation, prior to 19th century. --User:G.dallorto 02:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Kept, by consensus. --rimshottalk 18:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)