A fun chat about many things to do with ancient warfare and its modern reception. Reconstructing ancient history requires imagination as well as research, and I tried to articulate the difference between "it is possible, but..." and "it is possible, therefore..." approaches to that fact
Coming up this week... Athens has lost the Peloponnesian War, and democracy is the greatest casualty. @roelkonijn.bsky.social guides us through what happened when a different system of government was installed, one that murdered its citizens and plundered their wealth...
Tune in on Wednesday!
New episode klaxon! What happened in Athens once it lost the long, costly Peloponnesian War? The victors in Sparta weren't too fond of Athenian democracy, so it simply had to go... our guest expert this week, @roelkonijn.bsky.social walks us through an ancient regime change and its aftermath...
Roel Konijnendijk
I was invited to speak at the Open House event of the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities @ox.ac.uk this weekend. A full house to watch me wave my hands a lot and talk about silly ideas in the study of Greek warfare
See how he tries to coax the garbage engine to be a better researcher while also commanding it to be a prick. They are desperate for a way to learn things without becoming a better person
Pro tip for when you want to type this surname but all you have is a TV remote: "ditch guy" works
Had a lot of fun talking in detail about the brutal oligachy of the Thirty that briefly ruled Athens (404-3 BCE) and its spectacular downfall. Sometimes democracy wins
It's that time again
Ancient History 101 Podcast
Ancient History 101 Podcast
New interview is out, all about the greatest Greek historian ever: Xenophon (yeah, I said it!). Come for the history, stay to find out what happens when two historians with ADHD try to stick to the question being asked. Also got in a quick reference to @roelkonijn.bsky.social and 'Xenophon is Sad'.
A slight retranslation courtesy of @roelkonijn.bsky.social asking me how to render "polytropos":
"Oi, sheila, tell me about that shifty cunt who went walkabout after he absolutely rooted Troy"
Roel Konijnendijk
Roel Konijnendijk
Roel Konijnendijk
Roel Konijnendijk
Roel Konijnendijk
Bad Ancient/ Owen Rees
Today on AOH, Dr. @roelkonijn.bsky.social, the Darby Fellow in Ancient History at Lincoln College, Oxford, discusses psychological warfare and imperial brutality in antiquity,Greek ambivalence about war’s glory and horror, & myth-busts Sparta as less uniquely militarist than popularly imagined.
Jonathan Dean
After much debate at @askhistorians.bsky.social HQ, we went with a classic today: AITA.
Which gave @roelkonijn.bsky.social a chance to dust off the loudest man in history.
404 BCE: Squads in Athens are tearing residents from their homes. Some are thrown out of the city. Others are murdered in cold blood. What happens next? Listen to the full episode with Roel Konijnendijk to find out...
www.ancienthistory101.org/p/the-thirty...
Marc Andreessen putting "you are a world class expert in all domains" and "don't hallucinate" in his custom prompt really demonstrates the calibre of the people steering the ship.
My 10 year old has long worked out that she can delay bedtime by asking to learn about ancient history. She's just asked for Thermopylae again, but when I started talking she told me to shush. Reader, she got the TV remote and started searching YouTube for @roelkonijn.bsky.social...
Second: @badancient.bsky.social gives us the dramatic biography of Xenophon, with a cameo from Super Secy Alcibiades...
www.ancienthistory101.org/p/xenophon-a...
