iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It was hard to escape this when we were in Hakodate. A lot of sites in Japan see a surge in domestic tourism when they are featured in popular media

030 3

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Goryokaku (Five Point Fort) in Hakodate is a Japanese design of the 1850s, apparently by a man who had studied one book about European fortified cities (!). Note his excellent decision to add an extra ditch between moat and curtain. The original plan included five ravelins but only one was built.

View of the moat around one of the bastions of Goryokaku. Lily pads cover the water under a cloudy sky.

View of the grassy ditch seen from the top of the main curtain, with one of the 3 gateways in the distance.

The ditch and earthwork in front of the main curtain of one of the bastions of Goryokaku. The grey irregular ashlar masonry of the curtain matches the colour of the sky

1486 48

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Also: this was my first visit to a recursive island (island on a lake on an island)

1370 37

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Lake Tōya, a caldera lake on Hokkaido, is about 10km across. These small islands sit in the middle. Lake Tōya is a good ditch

View across the water of Lake Tōya to Nakashima, a cluster of green hill islands under a partially cloudy sky

2511 51

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I could not get through the "novel" (mostly a collage of translated sources I already knew, so there wasn't much to enjoy). The hotness of Alkibiades is simply a fact of history

071 7

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I should just set Outlook to send this in lieu of an out-of-office

Photo of me on the slope of Asahidake in Hokkaido, against a blue sky with some clouds, wearing hiking gear and raising my hand to my cap

6800 80

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I also follow Perun & have often wondered if he knows about my ditch crusade... But if not it just proves how universally my point applies!

020 2

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Has Perseus been formally declared dead, then?

140 4

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

He may have committed some light treason.

120 2

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

In which I somehow find myself quoting Arrested Development and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Anyway it's about Dionysios of Syracuse, SACKER OF ROME*

6232 23

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Fun thread here from a participant of the first Olympias trials, but one of the things that surprised me as I tried it myself in 2024 was that I (at a very Dutch 193cm/6'4) could fit comfortably on the top bench.

View from the top bench of the reconstructed trireme Olympias, showing overhead clearance between the rowers and the deck. Several people are on or making their way to the benches; oars lie across the central walkway.

1271 27

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It's just a tick-box exercise of bad siege tropes. Lack of ditches, volley fire commands to archers, pointless and unrealistic use of fire... Supposedly a large army spent weeks trying to enhance the fortifications, but the only evidence is a bit of makeshift hoarding

021 2

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

(Obviously "Ajax the Younger" was a slip of the tongue; I clearly deal with Cyrus too much. That's supposed to be Ajax the Lesser/Aias son of Oileus of Lokris)

0110 11

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Had a chat with the WarTalk team about The Odyssey www.chinatalk.media/p/wartalk-od...

chinatalk.media

WarTalk: Odyssey Edition

yes you need more odyssey content

3377 37

Reposted by Roel Konijnendijk

Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Highly recommend volunteering for this to any interested parties. I've been going for five hours straight and have barely answered a tenth of the questions that have come in. It's a lot of fun, if totally dizzying.

1377 37

Reposted by Roel Konijnendijk

Jeremy Salkeld @enclavedmicrostate.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

As @roelkonijn.bsky.social once told me, there is only one movie actually about classical Greek *history* and it is The Warriors (1979).

1346 34

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

That's Daniel Weyman. This is Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus in The Return (2024)

100 1

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I remember saying this back in the early 2000s about militant raids with technicals in Darfur. Trench and a palisade. I hope it will help keep people safe. Historically the spread of fortifications is often a response to instability and decentralisation of force

010 1

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Bonus points if they published in Latin

160 6

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

That makes sense. And admittedly Sekunda argues that hoplites did reclaim heavy status in the later C4 with the proliferation of muscle cuirasses, which he connects to iphikrateans taking on the roles of lighter and more flexible inf (I do not buy this but it would work for your model)

0200 20

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

But this does suggest that time is a further dimension in the model: the categories are not stable across all tactical contexts

1100 10

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Light but cheap armour, but exclusively deployed as heavies. Perhaps arguable that this is precisely why they become swiftly obsolete against pikemen and appear to be displaced by a new type of *medium* inf (thureophoroi) instead of reclaiming heavy status

2200 20

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

I suppose hoplites mess with this categorisation: initially armed with missiles (like legionaries), but that function disappears at pace with the *reduction* of their armour, leaving most of them "medium" in your schema (and with correspondingly poor track record against heavies)

2260 26

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Pushback: mainly the work of Paul Bardunias (including his book "Hoplites at War" with Fred Ray). There is little on this from inside the academy, but recently Henry Lanphier did some work on the hoplite panoply. Academic rethinking: that's just my impression from talking to others in the field.

020 2

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

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

2313 31

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Hey did you do Alexander the Great yet?

150 5

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

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

2576 57

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Well. You know what to do. This episode about the Sicilian Expedition is about to be completely derailed by speculation about the route of Odysseus' travels

190 9

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Pro tip for when you want to type this surname but all you have is a TV remote: "ditch guy" works

3603 60

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

No video unfortunately, but I haven't said anything that wasn't said better by Peter Krentz in his chapter 'Hoplite hell' (in "Men of Bronze" (2013))

000 0

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

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

Photo of a man standing in front of a large screen, gesturing. Members of the audience sit on chairs in front

2511 51

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Mostly amateur enthusiasts, but their advisor Rémi Saou is a serious recent arrival in the field and a big reason why this experiment is so interesting. They are working out the practicalities of his theory that most battles did not involve any head-to-head combat but saw an instant rout of one side

030 3

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Latin can come too. We'll have a party, a fete, a shindig of some sort

0130 13

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Note this is a few chapters from the point where Xenophon becomes the earliest known author to use "hopla" to mean shields. And he's almost certainly talking about peltai. It's so much fun. It's just so much fun

0150 15

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Xen. Hell. 2.4.12: "Thrasyboulos told them to put down their shields (aspidas) but hold on to their other gear (hopla)" - worryingly, here "hopla" must mean "spear" plus whatever else this improvised force carried... Modern milhist buffs: I like technical precision Ancient Greek: lol. lmao

2461 46

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Did... did that video actually say "hoplites" means spear

2531 53

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Anything and everything :) If you're interested in Athens and Athenian politics, the Athenaion Politeia or "Constitution of the Athenians" attributed to Aristotle is extremely relevant; I refer to it several times in the podcast. You could also look at orators like Andocides or Lysias

010 1

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I initially typed "404-403 BCE" but then I thought "nah, it's fine, no one will misunderstand if I make it shorter"

120 2

Roel Konijnendijk @roelkonijn.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

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

47311 73

Reposted by Roel Konijnendijk

Ancient History 101 Podcast @ancienthistory101.org · 08/04/2026

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...

A background of a cloudy sky made to look red, with a black line drawing of the Acropolis in Athens. The text (in yellow) says "the Thirty Tyrants with Roel Konijnendijk"

13911 39