Roel Konijnendijk | |
---|---|
Nationality | Dutch |
Academic background | |
Education | BA and MPhil, Leiden University PhD, University College London |
Thesis | Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC (2015) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics,Ancient History |
Notable works | Classical Greek Tactics |
Roel Konijnendijk is a Dutch historian working in the United Kingdom. He is known for his research on Classical Greek warfare and military thought,and has authored the book Classical Greek Tactics .
Konijnendijk enrolled at Leiden University in 2004 where he received a BA and MPhil in history. He has also studied in Taiwan and worked at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. In 2015 he graduated from University College London with a PhD,where he was supervised by Professor Hans van Wees. [1] [2] [3]
Konijnendijk was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and Leiden. He has taught Greek History at Birkbeck,University of Warwick,University of Edinburgh,New College,Oxford,and Lincoln College,Oxford. [4] [5] [6] He has contributed to a number of books on the topics of Classical Greek warfare, [7] the military reforms of Iphicrates, [8] Athenian democracy,and the military history of Sparta. [9] He is also cited as an expert on the training and organization of Classical Greek and Persian armies. [10]
He is a proponent of the theory that Greek warfare was both more brutal than some modern scholars have described,and that it was driven by practicality rather than ritual. [11] [12] [13] His research challenges the so-called "California School" of Greek military scholarship,arguing that its theories were largely based on outdated 19th-century models. [14] [15]
In 2017,Konijnendijk published Classical Greek Tactics:A Cultural History . [16] The book was well received,with praise for Konijnendijk's re-assessment of Greek tactics. [17] [18] [19] With Cezary Kucewicz and Matthew Lloyd he edited Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx (2021),and also wrote three chapters of it. [20]
He published his second monograph,Between Miltiades and Moltke:Early German Studies in Greek Military History,in 2022. [21]
In September 2022,Konijnendijk was appointed Darby Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Lincoln College,Oxford. [22]
Konijnendijk is a moderator and panelist for r/AskHistorians,a history forum on Reddit. [23] [24] He has also written for a number of popular history magazines,including Ancient Warfare ,Ancient History Magazine,Ancient World Magazine,BadAncient,and Desperta Ferro. [1]
In 2021 and 2022,he appeared in a series of videos for Insider,where he discussed the historical accuracy of well-known fantasy and historical drama films such as 300 and The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers . [25] [26] [27]
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens,aided by Plataea,and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia under King Darius I to subjugate Greece. The Greek army inflicted a crushing defeat on the more numerous Persians,marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.
Hoplites were citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states who were primarily armed with spears and shields. Hoplite soldiers used the phalanx formation to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged the soldiers from acting alone,for this would compromise the formation and minimize its strengths. The hoplites were primarily represented by free citizens –propertied farmers and artisans –who were able to afford a linen or bronze armour suit and weapons. They also appear in the stories of Homer,but it is thought that their use began in earnest around the 7th century BC,when weapons became cheap during the Iron Age and ordinary citizens were able to provide their own weapons. Most hoplites were not professional soldiers and often lacked sufficient military training. Some states maintained a small elite professional unit,known as the epilektoi or logades because they were picked from the regular citizen infantry. These existed at times in Athens,Sparta,Argos,Thebes,and Syracuse,among other places. Hoplite soldiers made up the bulk of ancient Greek armies.
The Battle of Plataea was the final land battle during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place in 479 BC near the city of Plataea in Boeotia,and was fought between an alliance of the Greek city-states,and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I.
A peltast was a type of light infantry originating in Thrace and Paeonia and named after the kind of shield he carried. Thucydides mentions the Thracian peltasts,while Xenophon in the Anabasis distinguishes the Thracian and Greek peltast troops.
Iphicrates was an Athenian general,who flourished in the earlier half of the 4th century BC. He is credited with important infantry reforms that revolutionized ancient Greek warfare by regularizing light-armed peltasts.
The phalanx was a rectangular mass military formation,usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears,pikes,sarissas,or similar polearms tightly packed together. The term is particularly used to describe the use of this formation in ancient Greek warfare,although the ancient Greek writers used it to also describe any massed infantry formation,regardless of its equipment. Arrian uses the term in his Array against the Alans when he refers to his legions. In Greek texts,the phalanx may be deployed for battle,on the march,or even camped,thus describing the mass of infantry or cavalry that would deploy in line during battle. They marched forward as one entity.
A shield wall is a military formation that was common in ancient and medieval warfare. There were many slight variations of this formation,but the common factor was soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder and holding their shields so that they would abut or overlap. Each soldier thus benefited from the protection of the shields of his neighbors and his own.
The Kingdom of Macedon possessed one of the greatest armies in the ancient world. It is reputed for the speed and efficiency with which it emerged from Greece to conquer large swathes of territory stretching from Egypt in the west to India in the east. Initially of little account in the Greek world,it was widely regarded as a second-rate power before being made formidable by Philip II,whose son and successor Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire in just over a decade's time.
An aspis or porpax shield was the heavy wooden shield used by the infantry in various periods of ancient Greece.
Warfare occurred throughout the history of Ancient Greece,from the Greek Dark Ages onward. The Greek 'Dark Ages' drew to an end as a significant increase in population allowed urbanized culture to be restored,which led to the rise of the city-states (Poleis). These developments ushered in the period of Archaic Greece. They also restored the capability of organized warfare between these Poleis. The fractious nature of Ancient Greek society seems to have made continuous conflict on this larger scale inevitable.
Miltiades,also known as Miltiades the Younger,was a Greek Athenian statesman known mostly for his role in the Battle of Marathon,as well as for his downfall afterwards. He was the son of Cimon Coalemos,a renowned Olympic chariot-racer,and the father of Cimon,the noted Athenian statesman.
Classical reenactment tends to focus on portrayals of the Greco-Roman world,and especially on modern recreations of Roman legions and ancient Greek hoplites.
A javelin is a light spear designed primarily to be thrown,historically as a ranged weapon. Today,the javelin is predominantly used for sporting purposes such as the javelin throw. The javelin is nearly always thrown by hand,unlike the sling,bow,and crossbow,which launch projectiles with the aid of a hand-held mechanism. However,devices do exist to assist the javelin thrower in achieving greater distances,such as spear-throwers or the amentum.
Heavy infantry consisted of heavily armed and armoured infantrymen who were trained to mount frontal assaults and/or anchor the defensive center of a battle line. This differentiated them from light infantry who were relatively mobile and lightly armoured skirmisher troops intended for screening,scouting,and other tactical roles unsuited to soldiers carrying heavier loads. Heavy infantry typically made use of dense battlefield formations,such as shield wall or phalanx,multiplying their effective weight of arms with force concentration.
The Spartan army was the principle ground force of Sparta. It stood at the center of the ancient Greek city-state,consisting of citizens trained in the disciplines and honor of a warrior society. Subjected to military drills since early manhood,the Spartans became one of the most feared and formidable military forces in the Greek world,attaining legendary status in their wars against Persia. At the height of Sparta's power—between the 6th and 4th centuries BC—other Greeks commonly accepted that "one Spartan was worth several men of any other state."
The military nature of Mycenaean Greece in the Late Bronze Age is evident by the numerous weapons unearthed,warrior and combat representations in contemporary art,as well as by the preserved Greek Linear B records. The Mycenaeans invested in the development of military infrastructure with military production and logistics being supervised directly from the palatial centres.
Warfare was a common occurrence in Greece from the Neolithic Period through its conquest by Alexander the Great and until its conquest by the Roman Empire. Because of this,warfare was a typical theme in many pieces of ancient Greek art. Many works of art,like the Doryphoros or the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos,used military objects in their composition,and many others,like the Chigi vase,had warfare as their main subject. Ancient Greek art is an important aspect of not just the history of art,but the history of warfare as well,due to its frequent spot on many works of ancient Greek art. As each different period in Greek history occurred,more and more types of art formed,as well as differing depictions of warfare.
The hoplites were soldiers from Ancient Greece who were usually free citizens. They had a very uniform and distinct appearance;specifically they were armed with a spear (dory) in their right hand and a heavy round shield in their left.
The Macedonian phalanx was an infantry formation developed by Philip II from the classical Greek phalanx,of which the main innovation was the use of the sarissa,a 6-metre pike. It was famously commanded by Philip's son Alexander the Great during his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire between 334 and 323 BC. The Macedonian phalanx model then spread throughout the Hellenistic world,where it became the standard battle formation for pitched battles. During the Macedonian Wars against the Roman Republic,the phalanx appeared obsolete against the more manoeuvrable Roman legions.
Classical Greek Tactics:A Cultural History is a 2017 non-fiction book by Dutch historian Roel Konijnendijk,published by Brill Publishers.