Template talk:Greek mythology sidebar

Child pages:

Template:Greek myth (Titan)
Template:Greek myth (Olympian)
Template:Greek myth (Pan) - for matters rustic and ithyphallic
Template:Greek myth (nymph)
Template:Greek myth (Apollo) - Apolline stuff here
Template:Greek myth (Dionysus) - Dionysiac here
Template:Greek myth (sea) - everything aquatic
Template:Greek myth (earth) - everything chthonic
Template:Greek myth (abstract) - personified abstractions
Template:Greek myth (Hades) - underworld and occupants

Planned:

Template:Greek myth (Troy) - war etc.
Template:Greek myth (Oedipus) - incest and war
Template:Greek myth (Minotaur) - Theseus, Minos, etc.
Template:Greek myth (Argo) - Argonautica

I dunno about Heracles and Perseus. Maybe. Bacchiad 15:40, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Are these necessary considering how we have categories now? They seem like unnecessary clutter. Postdlf 23:10, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think you're mostly right. It was practicable and (I think) helpful with Roman myth. It's clearly breaking down with Greek myth, where things are much more open-ended and complex. Where something like nymphs or the figures associated with a god are loosely defined and wide-ranging and potentially hierarchical, categories are much better.

So I'm mostly dissatisfied with the experiment. I decided not to press forward any more when I got to heroes and it became clear that even a Theseus/Minotaur box would be impossible to do well, let alone Trojan War.

The ones that I think might be worth keeping, in stripped-down form, are Template:Greek myth (Titan) and Template:Greek myth (Olympian) - maybe or maybe not (sea) and (Hades). The first two sets, at least, are small, heterogeneous and closely-interrelated enough where it could still work.

I'll continue to tinker. One way or another, the clutter will be alleviated. Bacchiad 00:10, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Image

I'd like to propose a change of image for the following reasons.

1. Image quality. There are many, many images to illustrate Greek mythology of superior technical quality.

2. Provenance. The image for Greek mythology should actually be from Greece, preferably created before the Roman Imperial era. Why use one from the 3rd century of the Christian era from Roman Spain? Cynwolfe (talk) 19:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Cynwolfe, thank you for taking time to provide images, explain your thought, and ask for people's opinion. I really appreciate this. Mostly because at some point I also wanted to change the image of this template, but I couldn't find something that I really liked and I very soon just quit trying. I like the aesthetic you went for, which is much more characteristically ancient Greek, than the previous Roman mosaic.

Now as for my opinion, I think almost anything from the given options is definitelly an improvement. Personally, I kinda liked the second option (but perhaps in this version which has clearer colors and quality) because (besides having a male and female figure) Hercules happens to be the best-known Greek mythological hero and the lion head depiction is generally a well-known one. Initially, I also liked the Minotaur image, because it is a very simple depiction without too much detail, which makes it easy to look at when it is in a small sidebar template, even if we reduced the size of the image. The Theseus image is also not bad at all; IMO its only "downside" is the fact that it is a bit detailed and at first sight you might not really understand what's going on in the scene (for example the Minotaur is not very distinguishable); I still like how it currently looks though. These were my opinions, but I don't insist on anything. Perhaps if we looked more, there could be even a few more options, but I'm not sure. Piccco (talk) 21:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I was also torn between the first two. My choice came down to the killing of the Minotaur being an action scene, so therefore representing myth as a narrative. Agree about the detail of the Minotaur being elusive at first glance, but my feeling was that graphically the diagonal lines give an impression of movement and directs the gaze to the Minotaur (and that's also why I did a caption) The seated Herakles is a static scene and also a bit unusual, to my mind — I don't think he's often depicted seated. I didn't do any research, but it made me think of funerary images where the deceased is seated, so the scene struck me as more cultic than mythic. Either the Minotaur or the Amazon might read more readily at a glance, but they're presented more emblematically. Maybe that's OK. It was much harder than I thought to ferret out potential images! Appropriately, I did it while watching the marathon during the Olympics last weekend. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:46, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I now understand your thought regarding the action scenes. It makes sense, although I wouldn't mind a static scene either, if it happened to look really good in the template. Yesterday I was also trying to think whether there exists a symbol that could be used for Greek mythology, like the laurel wreath in the template of ancient greek religion, but I couldn't think of anything good. It's funny because the more I try to think about it, the more torn I become. We could also wait in case another user passes by and wants to leave an opinion. After all, I'm satisfied with the current version too; as I said, it is definitelly an improvement compared to the old image. Piccco (talk) 11:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a gallery of some images I think would be more characteristically Greek and are also of better quality. The first two are my finalists because they portray a scene with a male and female figure. I prefer the first because it depicts a more dynamic scene with the killing of the Minotaur, but it has some coloration issues. THe second one has Heracles in the skin of the Nemean lion, so also good. The rest are in no particular order (the lone Amazon would work well), and some would need cropping.