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

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

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...

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!

It's that time again

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'.

Ancient History 101 has launched! Find out where to listen and subscribe here: linktr.ee/ancienthistory101podcast

Today marks 1 year since the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) for AskHistorians in our push to very actively recruit guests, and where are we now? Today is the 90th AMA in that effort, helping us cross the thresholds of 35k upvotes, 8k comments, and 15k link shares in that year (and ~10m views)!

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey used the battle of Thermopylai as its tutorial level and did its best to make "300" playable. I had some thoughts www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRTl...

Contemplating the situation at Cardiff Castle

Jawel het is weer tijd voor de Oudheid

Incredible shot of the Hellenic Navy's new frigate Kimon being welcomed yesterday by the trireme Olympias and the armoured cruiser Averof (photo by Nick Dendris)

The AskHistorians Best of 2025 Awards have been announced! Whether it's the Beast's books, Bond's booze or Blackfoot butts, come celebrate and enjoy some outstanding public history work! www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

A new episode of the Ancients podcast: @badancient.bsky.social and myself on the decline and fall of the Spartan Empire shows.acast.com/the-ancients...

Hit skeet courtesy of Silvannen Gerrard's excellent article in CQ 73.1 (2023), which you must read

We looked at The Eagle (2011), which is the good one

Sokrates vs prejudice is timeless. Fill in the blank with any group you like. (Plato, "Meno" 92b-c)

TODAY: my talk on the Athenian democratic uprising of 403 BC at the ICS Ancient History Seminar. Was it really a democratic uprising from the start? Sign up to tune in: ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

View of the ha-ha (also known as a blind fence or deer wall) at Langley Park. This is not a defensive ditch but a barrier that keeps sight lines open. Still, with just a couple stakes, you could easily--

A kind and informative review of my latest volume, The Economics of War in Ancient Greece, by Matthew Sears www.hsozkult.de/publicationr...

Fantastic article in which actual experts on AI and higher education cut through the nonsense surrounding the infinite garbage engines and expose a system captured by the techbro sales pitch. "A general ban is necessary, but nobody dares to say so."

Next week I will be a guest at the University of Mainz 🇩🇪 giving a lecture on military developments of the fourth century BCE as well as a workshop on approaches to public engagement in ancient history

Visited Saffron Walden today and admired its Great Ditch or Battle Ditch. The medieval town was unwalled; this earthwork (ditch + ramp) was its full defensive perimeter

Writing a piece on Greek masculinity and I have now written the word 'man' so often it has become ridiculous. Men: ridiculous

Save the date! Late October @roelkonijn.bsky.social is giving a lecture and a workshop. #AncientHistory #MilitaryHistory

Love to find myself and my ditch opinions mentioned as a favourite of amateur military historians in this podcast by @andreloez.bsky.social & friends

A fun moment on the ol' hellsite

Back on HistoryHit for a live interview with Dan Snow (at his fabulous central London flat) - all about the battle of Thermopylai in excruciating detail www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7_k...

I may not be well known among scholars but I take pride in being well known among DnD players

No court can erase the history of trans people existing. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

Oh my god, this weeks episode of @thisguysucked.com is my favourite least likable Athenian Alcibiades with @roelkonijn.bsky.social!!!

For a bit of fun, watch Tristan and me discuss the merits of hoplites vs legionaries. The format supposes that we should fight our corner, but there really is no point pretending hoplites could have the edge, so we ended up just giving a nice series of mini-lectures www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTGQ...

Our thoughts on whether personal professional experience was ever a methodological requirement for historians, as Polybios said it ought to be (spoilers: no, it was not, but especially soldiers have always loved to bash historians over the head with it)

The mighty @roelkonijn.bsky.social‬ wages war on the centuries old theory that the flourishing of ancient Greece was the result of a rising middle class, and instead takes a close look at the context involved.

My friend @drdragases.bsky.social has been live tweeting WAWIC2025 - the War in the Ancient World International Conference, in Münster, Germany. Exciting papers on the cutting edge of ancient military history

Sparta continues to be a popular #history topic on the net, leading the mighty @roelkonijn.bsky.social to draft up a post on how we can understand how Sparta came to be so powerful at its height, despite little detailed information to help us.

Finally had the pleasure of meeting @nakhthor.bsky.social today, and hearing his Dacre Lecture on sexuality in the Hellenistic world. Truly there are those ancient historians who do the job, and those who show us how to do the job

Ok #classicsbluesky I’ve got a weird question for you. Pollux 10.55 gives a lovely little list of horse grooming tools. Has anyone got any leads on a picture of an actual horse comb (aka a currycomb)? As in has one been dug up somewhere?

People pinged me a few weeks ago to ask my opinion on the defences of Jackson Hole in The Last of Us S2E2. But they already know what I think. This town is an island in a hostile world but somehow it is ringed only by a single flimsy palisade! If you get turned into fungus here, that's on you

Proofs of the final piece to come out of my postdoc research (2018-2020) on the deep roots of scholarship on ancient Greek warfare. Written with much help from the brilliant Prof Herman Paul, who taught me as an MA student back in 2007, but was still somehow willing to supervise me

Richmond Park yesterday

AskHistorians has joined with thirty other research- and academia-focused subreddits to issue this statement condemning recent and ongoing efforts to undermine scholarly research and intellectual freedom in the United States. Please share widely! www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

The village siege in Wheel of Time S3E7 is in some ways clearly trying to be smarter than very similar scenes in recent media (GoT, Rings of Power, even Wheel of Time S1), but in other ways deeply beholden to the standards they set. Still no ditches, but are we making progress?🧵

Watch me agree with Tristan on everything while we recklessly throw cue cards around www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7-...

Back from a brief trip to the Netherlands, where I explored the fine moat of Enkhuizen

Talking about that stuff I do on youtube

We are playing Choose Your Own Adventure on @askhistorians.bsky.social today. Some people are determined to make the battle of Thermopylai happen as it did, but my fav is the chain where Leonidas takes Xerxes's offer, betrays the alliance, then backstabs Demaratos to establish himself at court

I talked to Schnee for his new vid on how to write smart characters. I really admire his ability to see themes, meaning, and lessons in good writing (his Arcane & Gender video is a great example). Me, I just mixed up two dialogues when talking about Sokrates. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS6S...

On the subject of sieges in movies, I recently watched The Great Wall (2016) - a dubious spectacle and box office bomb, but also premised on a straightforward "siege" (tower defence) scenario. Monsters live in a distant mountain; they come out every 60 years; the wall has to stop them. Wat do?

"You understand a siege better after 30 seconds with him than after 50 pages of a Routledge Companion" is one of those endorsements you just want to stick in your CV