Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Antigoneia (Syria)/archive1

Image review by JacobTheRox

• Feel free to disagree with my comments as always
• File:Diadoch.png
  • Public domain by author's release.
  • The caption should have some kind of punctuation regarding the {{circa}}, probably either A map of the territories of the Diadochi, c. 303 BC or A map of the territories of the Diadochi (c. 303 BC)
    • Added
• Is there no other image you could include? The fact there's only a map leaves an interesting article otherwise a bit... bland. I can't see any on commons; are there no diagrams of city layouts or contemporaneous maps or depictions of leaders that are in the public domain?
  • Unfortunately (because we don't know where the city is) I can't put any pictures of ruins or layouts. We don't have any definite images of Antigonus I either. I suppose it could have an image of Seleucus, or Seleucia Pieria where its inhabitants were deported to. What do you think? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:35, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

  How about a multiple image of Lysimachus and Seleucus I Nicator either at the start of "Fall" or the paragraph before? Putting some faces to people is always nice in a history article. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 14:51, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

  Done with pleasure. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:03, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

  Brilliant. Image review is a  Pass then; I eagerly await the source review. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 16:42, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Drive-by comments from Noleander

• Wording: "Seleucus ensured Antigoneia's erasure by transferring its population to his own foundations at Seleucia Pieria and Antioch..." The word "foundations" caught me off guard. To my USA ears, foundation as a noun means a building support or a charity. I suppose here it means "a city that Seleucus founded"? Consider re-wording so more readers get the gist.

• I see that the word is also used here: "... through settlement foundation. It was natural that occupying Antigoneia would not fully suit his purposes—founding a new city and destroying the previous foundation would be far more prestigious. Seleucus may have considered his defeated enemy's choice of location to his own at Antioch, which had a superior water supply, was situated in more fertile lands, and was closer to the sea. Legends of Antioch's foundation record that ..." The 1st and 3rd usages here are sorta verb-ish, and make sense. The middle usage is a concrete or rock structure that a building rests upon (to my ears :-) Noleander (talk) 23:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  Hi Noleander! The term "foundation" is, as you note, somewhat antiquated, with the study of the foundations of Alexander the Great dating almost as far back to the time of the American Founding Fathers. The meaning is the same for both cities and America—it is the first establishment that is being referred to. Unfortunately, the term is now so intimately associated with the topic area (besides having a meaning, relating to the very initial decision and acts to establish a city, which is not quite replicated by any other word) that I think removing it in the first instance would be a mistake, but I have rephrased the second. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:48, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

MSincccc

• Placeholder. MSincccc (talk) 11:41, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
• As an initial comment, I would suggest adding the relevant language template ("Use... English"). MSincccc (talk) 12:09, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Done MSincccc. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:14, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Description

• We could link to administrative centre on first mention.
• A series of wars soon broke out among them Do we need "soon"?
• His authority over the region was however not recognised How about His authority over the region, however, was not recognised ? MSincccc (talk) 12:14, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Done the first; I think the others are better unchanged. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:14, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
    • Hi MSincccc, do you have any further comments? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:25, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
      • AirshipJungleman29 My apologies, I forgot about this one in the midst of school examinations. I will try to conclude my review by tomorrow. MSincccc (talk) 03:55, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Description

• Are there any alternatives for this section heading or is this the best one?
  • Altered.
• "preferring to only state" → "preferring only to state"
  • Split infinitive
• who, Billows deduced, must have come from Antigoneia
  • Do we need the commas here?
    • I like them.
• "Seleucus may have considered his defeated enemy's choice of location to his own at Antioch" → "Seleucus may have considered his defeated enemy's choice of location inferior to his own at Antioch"
  • Done.
• "an eagle carried the sacrificial meat to Antioch's" → "an eagle carried the sacrificial meat to Antioch"
  • Done.

MSincccc (talk) 07:49, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Lead

• However, following Antigonus's death in the 301 BC Battle of Ipsus, Antigoneia's prominence abruptly ended, as his rival Seleucus I took control of the region. Do we need the comma after "ended"?
  • I think so.

Bottom line

• AirshipJungleman29 It's taken sometime but then the article is well-written and that should be all from me. I will support the nomination. Best, MSincccc (talk) 09:59, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the review MSincccc. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:27, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

A.Cython

• Support: As a GA reviewer. While no drastic changes since the GA review, overall it has been improved in the right direction. Good luck!A.Cython(talk) 02:35, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

UC

I had some reservations about reviewing this -- not for any quality concerns, but simply because it is very short. We certainly do have very short (and very good) FAs, many of which are in the classics-adjacent sphere, but this is not my specialism and it's difficult to be certain of comprehensiveness. It doesn't seem to have an entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (at least, not the 1999 edition that I can check until TWL sorts out OUP access), and it has only a very cursory item in Brill's New Pauly; if there was something significant to say about it, I'd expect it to be there. So my starting position is that we're probably covered for comprehensiveness. (having looked into the sources in more detail, my view on this has changed: there are a couple of important omissions). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 12:04, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

• I'm not sure why the name is transliterated into modern Greek rather than ancient -- it isn't in Greece, and it was abandoned long before modern Greek came about.
  • I'd forgotten there was a separate language parameter...fixed.
• I think the first sentence (per MOS:FIRST) could be better at bringing readers in. Most won't know what "Hellenistic" means, who Antigonus was, or where the Orontes is. Nor do we ever say, as far as I can see, exactly where it is. We should be able to say, for example, that it was near the eastern Mediterranean coast in modern Syria, Turkey or Lebanon, because that's where the River Orontes is. I would suggest adding an image of the Orontes's drainage basin to the lead -- if you're feeling particularly arty, a nice map of Antigonus's kingdom with the Orontes labelled would do the job excellently.
  • Oh no, image creation, my most grievous foe. I'll do my best on that but can't promise anything. I've reformulated the first sentences.
• The measurements in the lead are a bit ugly with the double brackets. Dashes might be neater.
• Its location is unknown: suggest exact location or similar (we know roughly where it was).
• I would give a literal translation of "Diadochi".
• We give Seleucos his title in the lead, but not the body.
  • Done all.
• Personal taste, perhaps, but it seems odd to be resolutely Greek with the transliteration of Antigoneia (not -ea), and completely Latin with e.g. Seleucus, Celaenae, Seleucia.
  • Something only a true classicist would pick up on. Antigoneia seems the most common name in sources, and for the article title I went with that.
    • That's fair enough, but then I wonder why we plump for Latin with the rest -- it's not like the name Celaenae/Kelainai, or even to be honest Seleucus/Seleukos, would get a flash of recognition from many readers in the first place. "Stick with the most common form" is a perfectly defensible principle, but when many of the names have pretty small footprints to begin with (and is Seleucus generally Latinised as such, at least these days?), I wonder whether it's the best one. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:58, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
      • Mostly I go by what is the title of other articles, which I think is a good way of deciding. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:52, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

        Not a problem. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:06, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

• east–west and north–south roads: MOS:DASH.
• dual use of Antioch and Seleucia: I would clarify where these are, to make even clearer that Seleucia and Seleucia Pieria are not the same place.
  • Done both. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:20, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

More to follow. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:20, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

• The historian Diodorus Siculus reports that Antigoneia had a perimeter of seventy stades (7.5 miles (12.1 km)).: see my commments about double brackets ago. Who was Diodorus, and roughly when did he write? A stadion was about 200m, so even if we assume that Diodorus means exactly 70 and not 71 or 69 (unlikely), we can't pretend to an accuracy of 100m: trim the kilometer conversion to 12 km.
  • You learn something new about the capabilities of templates every day.
• Billows estimates its Greco-Macedonian population at 20,000, not including indigenous Asians or slaves: I haven't been able to get hold of the book, but does he make any kind of ballparking guess at what sort of proportion of the population this might have represented? It's a pretty useless statistic without one, but of course if the sources don't extimate, there's not a lot we can do. Can we, however, give some idea of the basis for it? Does a source say that Antigonos moved a certain number of people here? The normal methods would be censuses and estimates from archaeological remains, but I don't think we have either of those.
  • The estimate is referenced in connection with the number of adult male Greek and Macedonian colonists moved to Antioch (5,300, mentioned later), so Billows probably estimated three dependants for each colonist. Unfortunately not much more can be said.
• On another note: De Giorgi 2016, p. 50, says that the exiled population (according to "legend" -- but the real source is John Malalas) was 5,300 Greeks and Macedonians, which is rather a lot less. He's being a bit loose with the source here: Malalas says that the Athenians living in Antigoneia were forced to live in Antioch, along with "some Macedonians" (origin not specified), totalling 5,300 together -- this rather strongly implies that not all of the former residents were moved.
  • An intriguing argument, but unfortunately not discussable as both De Giorgi and Billows take the 5,300 as being the whole number.
    • Right, but we should put this number up with the population estimates: if we say that Malalas gives the Greco-Macedonian population as 5,300 men, and Billows estimates it as 20,000 people in total, and cite De Giorgi there as well, we have something much more convincing than just "Billows pulled a number out of the air based on nothing". Grégoire Poccardi, in De Giorgi's edited volume mentioned below (p. 81), says it's male citizens and that we need to add more, so you have the material to join the dots from John Malalas to Billows nicely. De Giorgi consistently says people rather than men, but if you look at Malalas's Greek (p. 201 here), he uses the word ἄνδρας, 'men', as distinct from 'people'), so this seems to be sloppiness rather than a genuine interpretation. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:58, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
      • Done.
• a potential location on the left bank of the Orontes: suggest "west bank", as even those reviewers who know where the Orontes is are unlikely to know which way it flows (I didn't).
  • Neither do I. The Orontes has the rather annoying property of spending most of its course travelling north, but then doing a U-turn and starting to flow south-west right about the spot of the proposed location. About the only thing I can say with certainty is that it's not the north bank.
• A French military officer named Paul Jacquot: I'd suggest we introduce him as we have everyone else: not "a historian named Diodorus Siculus", but e.g. "Paul Jacquot, a French military officer writing in 1931...". Did he visit the site? There's some context on him in De Georgi and Eger 2021 that would be worth mentioning (for example, that the source here is a tourist guide rather than an academic publication).
• Another point on the location: Libanius (11.85 (cited at De Georgi 2016, p. 51) says that Antiogoneia was 40 stades from Antioch. We could (for example) have a map of the Orontes basin, with Antioch marked with a radius of 40 stades around it.
  • Again, I'll do my best.
• To keep beating this drum: Diodorus (40.47.5) puts it in Upper Syria; I must admit I'm not totally sure which bit of Syria is upper as opposed to lower (up the river?) but we can state it, and link to Syria (region).
  • Upper here is cartographical, not hydrographical, meaning the bit that wasn't known as Coele-Syria. I think this is covered enough already.
• Legends of Antioch's foundation record that in 300 BC Seleucus performed a sacrifice at Antigoneia for a sign from Zeus: the source for this is Libanius, 11.85f: it would be good to name it. I must admit I'm not sure what the basis for calling it a legend is -- Libanius presents it as fact and it doesn't seem particularly unlikely, even if we might question whether the bit about the eagle seizing the sacrificial offering is entirely legit.
  • The legend appears in both Libanius and Malalas (8.13–15), in addition to a later Arabic account, and is described as such (or in similar terms e.g. "royal propaganda") in most modern RS (see e.g. De Giorgi 2016 "The event is one of the mainstays of Antiochs foundation myths, as reported by Libanius and Malalas"). The key part of the legend is "the bit about the eagle", without which the rest has no purpose to be described—it connects to the accounts of Alexander's foundations and mythological symbolism.
    • Yes -- this point is made in De Giorgi's 2024 edited volume below, though I can't immediately remember by whom. The fact would be worth noting here too. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:11, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

      If I have to list all the mythical and pseudo-historical connections of Antioch's foundation I'd be here all week (or at least for two more paragraphs). I'm fine with just referring to "a sign from Zeus" unles there is something else you think really deserves emphasis. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

      • Poccardi (2024, mentioned elsewhere in this review, p. 80 with n. 6) does it with a footnote reading Similar to the foundation myth of the Sarapeion of Alexandria, the coinage of Alexandria of Troy, where an eagle carries an ox’s head and Alexandria of Troy, before receiving its definitive name from Lysimachus after the battle of Ipsos (301 BCE), had been founded shortly after 306 BCE under the name of Antigonia, by the synœcism of six villages, on the initiative of Antigone. An eagle intervened during a sacrifice to indicate the final location of the foundation of Lysimachus. We could do somethimg similar even more briefly (and far more clearly): it's certainly worth saying that it has mythical and pseudo-historical connections. In an article under 1100 words, it's not as if we're cramped for space. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:24, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
• the ancient historians Strabo, Libanius, and John Malalas: this is rather misleading. Strabo is known as a geographer; his great work is an anthropological geography of the world that he knew. Libanius was a rhetorician, and the work in question (cited several times above) is the Oration In Praise Of Antioch (see JSTOR 985424). John Malalas was a historian, or at least a chronicler, but he lived 800 years after the destruction of Antigoneia and about 500 after Strabo: we're smoothing over crucial differences of time, place and purpose between these sources. We need to give it space to breathe and explain exactly what we're dealing with in this material.
  • Adjusted and reorganised.
• On the apparent mutual endorsement of Jacquot, Downey and Cohen, De George (2016, p. 51) seem to disagree that they all put it in the same place. He has Glanville Downey located Antigoneia on a plateau overlooking the Orontes only 8 km northeast of Antioch (Güzelburç) and oriented toward the Amuq Valley’s rich farmland. Similarly, Getzel Cohen’s [sic] argued that Antigoneia might lie north of Antioch, accepting the distance of forty stades (approximately 7.4 km) and situating the city in the vicinity of the lake.68. Cohen actually says (2006, pp. 76f) Most likely it was located northeast of Antioch in the triangle of land where the Kara Su joins the Orontes.; he doesn't cite or mention Jacquot, though he does point readers towards Downey in a footnote. They're definitely all saying that it's in pretty much the same place, but I don't think we can say that Cohen in particular was endorsing Jacquot: he's independently saying more or less the same thing.
  • We don't say Cohen endorsed Jacquot, we say he endorsed the proposed site.
    • Are these all definitely exactly the same place, as opposed to simply more or less in the same parish? It would be nice to have Jacquot's text to hand to confirm how precise he was being: I can try to track it down later on. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:10, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
      • Cohen cites Billows and Downey; Billows also cites Downey. All three refer to the junction of the rivers Orontes and Kara Su, and both Cohen and Downey use the exact phrase "triangle of land". How much more do we need? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:07, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

        I think that depends on how exact Jacquot is being -- if he says "it's somewhere in that triangle", fine, but if he says "it's on the hill of Somesuch, two miles and fourteen feet north of the southern apex of the triangle" -- not fine, because we can't say that an imprecise estimate endorses a precise one. I'm a bit uncertain whether the "plateau overlooking the Orontes" from Downey is this entire area or a geographical feature within it -- I'm guessing the former? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:10, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

        The plateau is the specific proposed location of the city. The triangle of land is the wider area between the (ex-)Lake of Antioch, the Kara Su, and the Orontes. If you're willing to trust the ultra-reliable high-quality RS that is topographic-map.com, there's a section of high ground that matches the description fairly well which you can probably take as what's under discussion. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:25, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

        OK -- so it looks like they're all putting it in the triangle, but not all specifically pointing to the plateau. However, we say that they are all putting it in the same specific place: Paul Jacquot ... identified a potential location on the left bank of the Orontes; endorsed by the later historians Glanville Downey and Getzel Cohen: this site is located on a 3-by-4-kilometre (1.9 by 2.5 mi) plateau 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) northeast of Antioch. Unless I'm missing something (and I probably am, because the specifics of this are getting tricky to follow), I think we probably need to be more careful and say something to the effect that Jacquot identified a specific site, Downey agreed (exactly?), and Cohen puts it in the same rough area. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:23, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

        I'll just swap out Cohen for Billows, who is much more explicit with the identification. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

• Andrea U. De Giorgi argues that the absence of archaeological evidence means this plateau can no longer be identified: another one that needs some space to breathe. Absence of evidence is not, after all, usually evidence of absence, especially in archaeology and particularly when we're dealing with a city that's been consciously destroyed. He seems to be talking about the Amuq Valley Regional Projects (see report here), probably the field survey done under Robert Braidwood in the 1930s. We need to say that this area has been (reasonably) intensively explored by a team looking for evidence of settlements (though admittedly they weren't really looking for Hellenistic settlements), and that they failed to find a suitable candidate for Antigoneia in the area, and that's the basis of De Giorgi's absence-of-evidence claim.
  • Braidwood isn't relevant; De Giorgi is referencing the 1995–2005 survey from your second link, which did focus on Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Roman settlements. I don't see how this one can be given space to breathe—De Giorgi says that that the survey (which he was a part of) has proved that the Güzelburç plateau is not the site of Antigoneia. It's a definitive statement and one that has to be given as such, with attribution.
    • Well, we could start by mentioning that the survey has happened! After all, having a place intensively surveyed enough to tell if there was ever an ancient city there is unusual: normally, the fact that there's no evidence of X being somewhere is almost no reason at all to believe that X wasn't there, simply because in the overwhelming majority of cases nobody has properly looked. The argument as we have presented it -- De Giorgi argues that the absence of archaeological evidence means this plateau can no longer be identified as the site of Antigoneia -- is pretty silly, but once you add the premise that the place has been intensively surveyed, it makes sense. Explaining this would also stop readers reasonably asking what "no longer" means, since surely there wasn't some evidence available in 1931 that's now been lost. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:01, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
      • Done. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:22, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
• On the destruction: there's important context in Cohen 2006, p. 78 (n. 4) as to what that destruction may (and may not) have entailed: we talk about these at the end, to explain Dio Cassius's comment about its survival, but they really need to be stated when we talk about the actual "destruction".
  • I like the current position, which reflects how both Cohen and Billows consider the matter.
    • Maybe it's just fresh eyes, but reading it again with the changes to the bit about Strabo etc, I agree: it flows well. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:13, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
• The point at Cohen 2006, p. 23, that Antigoneia was the first major Hellenistic foundation in Syria is noteworthy.
  • Added.
• Events that took place at Antigoneia included: the senior advisor Aristodemus of Miletus's staged acclamation of Antigonus as king, following the Battle of Salamis in early 306, and Antigonus's subsequent coronation in the royal palace; the burial of his younger son Philip in late 306, shortly before he led forth a strong army to invade Egypt; and a grand festival planned for 302, intended to include theatre and sporting competitions, which was abruptly cancelled when the diadochus Lysimachus invaded Phrygia: this is a giant sentence. On a more nit-picky note, we do make it sound like Philip make a remarkable recovery after his burial and went on to lead an army. Do we need "strong" there?
  • It's a little long, but not excessively, in my book. Clarified the other bits.
• After compensating the crestfallen entrants with a total of 200 gold talents: this word almost certainly needs cutting. Was 200 talents a lot?
  • Cut; Billows notes that 1,000 talents was given to Aristodemus of Miletus to raise a mercengary army in Greece, so it's a fair amount of money.
    • Let's make sure that readers can appreciate that, then: a footnote might be a good way to do this. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:05, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
      • Done. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:23, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
• Seleucus may have considered his defeated enemy's choice of location to his own at Antioch: there's a word missing here.
  • Removed a short time ago, now readded.
• which had a superior water supply, was situated in more fertile lands, and was closer to the sea: this is cited to Downey, who thinks he knows definitively where Antigoneia was. We can't have that cake and eat it: if we're accepting De Giorgi's view that the Güzelburç plateau is now out, we don't know for sure that any of these were true. We can still do something by being clear who's saying this and on what basis.
  • Rephrased, but not much; it's not in doubt that Antioch was closer to the sea or had a superior water supply.
• According to Cohen, the ancient historians Strabo, Libanius, and John Malalas "indicate that Seleucus destroyed or depopulated Antigoneia in order to populate Antioch.: it's weird to say this as "according to" -- you can read it in Libanius (Antigonia itself he obliterated, since it was a memorial of an evil man, and he removed hither the population, among whom were Athenians.), Strabo sort-of says it (Now Nicator founded the first of the settlements, transferring thither the settlers from Antigonia, which had been built near it a short time before by Antigonus), and John Malalas likewise says it straightforwardly: Then he went away and razed the city of Antigonia down to the ground; he took away the materials by river, and set up a statue of Tyche of Antigonia, with the horn of Amaltheia in front of it. ... After destroying Antigonia, Seleucus forced the Athenians who lived there to move to Antioch the great.
  • Removed.
• Related to the above, where a modern source is citing an ancient one, I would cite it too, especially if there's a nice online edition for readers to use. As we can see, in some cases our historians haven't been entirely careful with their primary material.
• Many of Antigoneia's population were likely relocated to Seleucia Pieria, which Seleucus intended to be his western capital, although the Antiochene writers Libanius and Malalas omit this information: we're jumping two-footed into a difficult problem here. This is Downey's theory, and he admits on p. 59 that most of his contemporaries disagreed with him. The only source to mention Seleuceia is Didorus, and the other option -- which Downey says is/was the general view, citing Karl Otfried Müller -- is that Diodorus just got the wrong city. It's basically a giant conjecture, and we need to present it as such (or find someone else who agrees with Downey). Cohen 2006, p. 77, at least says it's plausible, since Seleukeia was a very important place, but that "a number of scholars" think Diodorus just got it wrong.
• preferring to only state that many were settled at Antioch: I can't see this, at least as we frame it, in Cohen: he certainly doesn't follow Downey in alleging an Antiochene coverup -- he only states that the sources differ, not that this was a matter of their authors' preferences.
• The article by Marinoni cited in Cohen 2006 (see p. 77) seems to be important in the question above.
  • That may be, but I cannot read it unless I go to a Milanese museum library, which seems a little excessive. I might be able to access Le Rider's Antioche de Syrie sous les Séleucide (1999) which seems to draw on it; I'll come back to you on that. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:46, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

  Sounds like a good excuse to go to Milan, if you ask me, but reasonable enough. I would, however, suggest a punt at WP:RX: those people can often do some real magic when it comes to tracking down sources. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:23, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

• The Tyche of Antigoneia (De Giorgi 2016, pp. 51f) needs some coverage and attention.
• Although Diodorus Siculus reports that Antigoneia was destroyed by Seleucus: not just Diodorus -- see above.
• Notes 3 and 24: better to put sources in date order within the same footnote (as in note 9 and 19), unless one's labelled as being used for one part.
• Per WP:ISBN, use the ISBN number printed on the book: that's a 10-digit one for Billows and Downey.
• We should mention the debate about the mint: Cohen 2006, p. 77.
• We do have the late comment by George Syncellus that Antigoneia was on the site of Antioch -- Cohen 2006, p. 77 -- one of the secondary sources mentioned it and called it rather unlikely, but I'm struggling to find which one.
• Given our agnosticism about the location, it seems odd to include {{Ancient settlements in Turkey}} at the bottom. Has anyone actually said confidently that it was in modern Turkey -- most of the likely area is, but it's also pretty close to the Syrian border.
  • Removed.
• There's some material in De Giorgi's 2024 edited volume (doi:10.1017/9781108988988) that probably ought to make its way in -- e.g. p. 33, possibly p. 10, and see above re. population. On DOIs -- De Giorgi 2016 has one from CUP that many editors and readers will be able to access.

That's probably my lot for now. Some small nitpicks but a couple of more thorny issues: let me know if you want me to take another look at anything. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 12:04, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

I am happy to do a source review, but UC seems to have covered a lot of sourcing issues/concerns in these comments. When these comments are resolved, please ping me and I will do a focused-source review. Aza24 (talk) 21:48, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley

• "who ruled the eastern provinces of the Macedonian Empire up to Mesopotamia". This is unclear. Where is below Macedonia?
• "Billows has deduced, from later figures of Antioch's foundation, that Athens deputised a draft of settlers for Antigoneia". Also unclear. I do not understand what "later figures of Antioch's foundation" means, or "deputised a draft of settlers".
• This article is obviously a summary of limited information, but the disussion of the location is inadequate. It is on the Orontes River, which is 355 miles long, and as you say that the exact location is unknown, there is presumably some evidence where the town was along the river. I think you need a separate location section, which incorporates and expands on the discussion now (strangely) in the 'Zenith' section. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:43, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  AirshipJungleman29, nudge. FrB.TG (talk) 15:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

  I will be at the library tomorrow to look up an essential book, and will then reply to the above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:05, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

  Books looked at; am reviewing to update. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:56, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been withdrawn, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. FrB.TG (talk) 16:51, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

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