***Special Guest Episode on Greek Land Warfare w/Owen Rees***
The History of Ancient Greece
Ryan Stitt
4.3 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2020
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this special guest episode, Dr. Owen Rees and I discuss Ancient Greek land warfare in general with lengthy discussions on the definition of a hoplite, its socio-political importance, and the problems surrounding its chronology and historiographic tradition; the problems with the traditional reconstructive models of ancient Greek battles; the important role of cavalry and light infantry, particularly in the Peloponnesian War onwards; and why the concept of an "honorable western way of war" which seeks its origins in ancient Greek warfare is bogus and hyped up in modern ideology. There are also lots of digression on logistics, slaves, baggage trains, training, the Spartan mirage, the brutal experience of war, the fear that it instilled, the war dead, and the transition of soldiers from civilian life to the battlefield and back again, including all the psychological and sociological problems that arise from this.
Show Notes:
http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2020/04/special-guest-episode-on-greek-land.html
Dr Owen Rees
Website: http://owenrees.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/reeshistory
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And the So, The Hi, I'm Ryan Stitt, and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece. We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled |
| 0:44.4 | programming for another special guest episode today. This is the eighth episode in a series where I |
| 0:49.4 | conversed with classicists and ancient historians about either books or articles that they have published, |
| 0:55.0 | their current research interests, or just unique classes and topics that they are teaching |
| 0:59.7 | and exploring further. |
| 1:01.8 | In today's special guest episode, I am joined by Dr. Owen Reese, a freelance historian, writer, |
| 1:06.5 | and researcher. |
| 1:07.8 | He studied ancient history at the University of Reading and history research at the University of |
| 1:12.0 | Nottingham. |
| 1:12.8 | He is an assistant editor to Sparta, Journal of Ancient Spartan in Greek History, |
| 1:17.4 | and a regular contributor to Ancient Warfare magazine. |
| 1:20.4 | He also has published two books on the topic of ancient Greek warfare, great battles of the classical Greek world, and great naval battles of the ancient Greek world. |
| 1:30.0 | On episode 13, we previously covered Hoplite Warfare, but that was four years ago and when I first started the |
| 1:36.4 | podcast. With four years of experience under my belt and with a bit of hindsight, I don't feel as if I did the topic it's due and you will hear why later |
| 1:45.8 | and so one day I plan to redo it until then Dr Reese was kind enough to come on to discuss |
| 1:50.9 | ancient Greek warfare more generally though we focus specifically come on |
| 1:53.2 | to discuss ancient Greek warfare more generally. |
| 1:53.1 | Though we focus specifically on land warfare here, |
| 1:56.5 | as there will be a future special guest episode just on Naval. |
| 2:00.3 | We go into lengthy discussions on the definition of a hoplight, its socio-political importance, |
| 2:06.0 | and the problem surrounding its chronology and historiographic tradition. |
| 2:11.0 | We also discuss the problems with the traditional reconstructive models of ancient Greek battles, |
... |
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