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VanessaVictoriaKilmer @VanessaVictoriaKilmer · 2023-02-26 · 14:48 UTC

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Soatok @[email protected] · 2023-10-17 · 09:27 UTC

Dhole Moments is not a music blog. I will not pretend to be an expert on music, music theory, or music appreciation.

But it goes even further than that: I am so untalented at music that I exert a vacuum pressure on musicians who cross my path at furry conventions.

The end result of this vacuum force looks like this, naturally.
Art: CMYKat

Regular readers of my blog would expect that, should I ever discuss any topic that intersects with computer audio, it would probably involve leaking the contents of encrypted voice chats through, like, compression oracles or something.

Not today, though.

Instead, I’d like to introduce everyone to the Aural Alliance, a furry music label that aims to disrupt the perverted economics of the music industry.

What is the Aural Alliance?

To answer this question, you first need to have a vague sense of how traditional music labels and music industry contracts work: The music industry uses predatory “advances” and crooked accounting to keep artists in debt.

This predatory behavior isn’t exclusively weaponized against black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPoC) artists; it’s used against queer and disabled artists too.

Unless you have star power, you’ll take what you can get, because there are dozens of hungry upstarts ready to seize your opportunity if you hesitate to take it. Chase the carrot, mind the stick.

The Aural Alliance is a rejection of this traditional dynamic.

The Aural Alliance funding pipeline (source)

Traditional music labels will lend you money to cover the production costs of a musical work. Music sales will then be used to pay off your loan before you ever see a dime.

Aural Alliance straight up distributes 60% of its income to all artists, equally, and uses the remaining 40% to cover operations.

Just kidding, we also barely 2 months in managed to pay out over 250$ total to all our currently eligible artists in our first cycle, regardless of their number of streams, and I cannot put into words enough just how happy it made me doing so!
It's a small but significant start. https://t.co/zeaGu3iOY8 pic.twitter.com/xno8kGJiUc
— Aural Alliance // Furries & Music! (@AuralAlliance) September 4, 2023

Archived

Why You Should Care About This

Unlike many bloggers, it’s difficult for me to classify my regular audience with one simple label or categorization.

Dhole Moments is a furry blog, sure, but not everyone who reads my writing is a furry. I write about computers, security, and cryptography, yes, but not everyone who reads my blog is particularly interested in those topics either.

It might be tempting to read about a furry music label built on socialist principles, shrug, and say, “So what? I’m not a fan of furry musicians or socialism. Where’s your post about key management you promised, dhole?!”

To understand the impact and significance of the Aural Alliance, some knowledge on current events and technology culture is needed.

AJ

The Enshittification of Music Sales

Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe a phenomenon that happens to online platforms. The cycle goes like this:

A new platform is operated at a loss, to gain users. This is usually the Venture Capital funding stage of a “start-up”.

Then once they have enough critical mass to exploit the Network Effect, they sell the startup to the public stock market.

This sale is eventually followed by a shift in priority, where they take away the parts of the platform that users loved (usually following the boiling frog strategy), in order to make it a better deal for their new owners.

This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
Cory Doctorow

That’s not the only trick up the sleeves of wealthy business interests.

Enter, Bandcamp

Last year, Epic Games acquired Bandcamp: The only music distribution platform that was fair to indie artists.

Last month, Epic sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, a music licensing service that basically acts as a vampiric middleman: Squeezing money from sellers and buyers alike while providing nothing of value. Songtradr is the outcome of an economist thought experiment, “What if landlords existed for our ear drums?”

Yesterday, Songtradr laid off a significant amount of Bandcamp’s staff.

Bandcamp: extremely profitable company, uniquely beloved of musicians and music fans alike, riding a wave of public goodwill, decides to sell themselves to a billionaire who then dumps them off to another billionaire who now fires half the company https://t.co/YZK3dlTkt7
— 𝔻𝕖𝕖𝕣𝕙𝕠𝕠𝕗 (@deerhoof) October 16, 2023

Archived

Songtradr’s business model is the end goal of every Silicon Valley start-up that receives VC funding: Capture near-monopoly power through technology and the network effect, then become a middleman that only exists to add a transaction fee while a tangled web of contractors that compete with each other actually fulfill the services rendered. And they want to do this while driving positive exponential year-over-year growth, to keep investors happy.

Time and again, this happens to industries that affect millions of peoples’ lives, and we’re all the worse for it.

Any company that calls themselves “Uber for ___” is confessing to this business model. Art by AJ.

Exit, Bandcamp

The enshittification of Bandcamp is well underway by its new masters. Independent musicians the world over would benefit greatly from a good alternative.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a recommendation to offer today.

Bandcamp had too much goodwill with its community for a serious competitor to emerge from the noise floor. The Internet got complacent.

In another business vertical, Itch.io currently has a similar vibe with the indie game dev community: It has fostered tremendous goodwill and treats creators fairly.

In 2021, itch.io properties were added to the Epic Games Store launcher. Thus far, it has remained undisturbed. Who knows how long this will hold out?

(Especially considering the abundance of LGBTQIA+ content hosted on itch.io.)

Credit: CMYKat

Opposition and Hope

Cory Doctorow, who coined the term enshittification, has proposed what he calls an audacious plan to halt it, and throw its effects in reverse.

Cryptography luminary Phil Rogaway was asked to deliver a keynote at NIST’s Third Workshop on Block Cipher Modes of Operation. (Slides available now, recording to be available soon. I will share it here when I have a link to it.)

Rather than focus too much on OCB or his other contributions to computer science, he chose to talk about what he called Radical CS: A rejection of the Standard Technological Narrative (STN) that technology is an apolitical tool that only improves things for everyone.

(TODO: Add video here when it’s public.)

PhilosophyTube recently tackled the topic of Ethical AI, which is way more interesting than you may suspect.

Many of the people behind the hype of large-scale computing (which is what we should be calling it, not AI), whom are trying to influence public opinion and legislation in order to maximize their own profit, are the exact same people that are driving the enshittification of platforms.

They’re also largely the same people that hyped blockchain too. And you best believe I got a video for that one:

Enter, Aural Alliance?

Hackers, queers, and queer hackers have always been part of the resistance to enshittification.

The Aural Alliance isn’t building a new Bandcamp today, they’re merely building a better record label.

If you had to describe your mission in one sentence, what would it be?
Me, to Finn (Founder of the Aural Alliance)

Fostering collective success through respect and collaboration would be the fancy answer I guess haha
Finn

However, sometimes all you need is enough activation energy to get a movement going.

Silver Eagle is the lead developer of Internet radio software, AzuraCast. They have been working with the Aural Alliance on a furry music database project.

If the Aural Alliance is successful in their goals, it will serve as direct, living proof that a better business model is possible; that artists and musicians can get a fair deal from their craft.

If their projects like the furry music database take off, this may also plant the seed from which tomorrow’s Bandcamp alternative will sprout.

And even if that doesn’t happen, at least some artists will suffer less as a result of the Aural Alliance’s work. That’s a win-win to me.

How You Can Help

A non-exhaustive list of ideas:

Follow the Aural Alliance on various platforms (yes, including Bandcamp, for now)
Donate to the Aural Alliance, which benefits all its artists
Write about the Aural Alliance (especially if you have a blog)
If you’re interested in the furry music database project, consider donating to Silver Eagle
Regularly check out the Aural Alliance’s Releases calendar for new songs, albums, etc.
Request your favorite Aural Alliance artists at your favorite furry convention

Finally, I’d like to close with sharing an excellent work from one of the Aural Alliance musicians, Tonya Song, that every LGBTQIA+ person can definitely relate to.

If none of my words can sell you on the value of what the Aural Alliance is doing, this is sure to do it:

Header art by AJLovesDinos.

https://soatok.blog/2023/10/17/aural-alliance-furry-music-to-wag-pounce-to/

#AuralAlliance #enshittification #furries #furry #FurryFandom #music

#auralalliance #enshittification #furries #furry #furryfandom #music

Soatok @[email protected] · 2023-10-17 · 09:27 UTC

Dhole Moments is not a music blog. I will not pretend to be an expert on music, music theory, or music appreciation.

But it goes even further than that: I am so untalented at music that I exert a vacuum pressure on musicians who cross my path at furry conventions.

The end result of this vacuum force looks like this, naturally.
Art: CMYKat

Regular readers of my blog would expect that, should I ever discuss any topic that intersects with computer audio, it would probably involve leaking the contents of encrypted voice chats through, like, compression oracles or something.

Not today, though.

Instead, I’d like to introduce everyone to the Aural Alliance, a furry music label that aims to disrupt the perverted economics of the music industry.

What is the Aural Alliance?

To answer this question, you first need to have a vague sense of how traditional music labels and music industry contracts work: The music industry uses predatory “advances” and crooked accounting to keep artists in debt.

This predatory behavior isn’t exclusively weaponized against black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPoC) artists; it’s used against queer and disabled artists too.

Unless you have star power, you’ll take what you can get, because there are dozens of hungry upstarts ready to seize your opportunity if you hesitate to take it. Chase the carrot, mind the stick.

The Aural Alliance is a rejection of this traditional dynamic.

The Aural Alliance funding pipeline (source)

Traditional music labels will lend you money to cover the production costs of a musical work. Music sales will then be used to pay off your loan before you ever see a dime.

Aural Alliance straight up distributes 60% of its income to all artists, equally, and uses the remaining 40% to cover operations.

Just kidding, we also barely 2 months in managed to pay out over 250$ total to all our currently eligible artists in our first cycle, regardless of their number of streams, and I cannot put into words enough just how happy it made me doing so!
It's a small but significant start. https://t.co/zeaGu3iOY8 pic.twitter.com/xno8kGJiUc
— Aural Alliance // Furries & Music! (@AuralAlliance) September 4, 2023

Archived

Why You Should Care About This

Unlike many bloggers, it’s difficult for me to classify my regular audience with one simple label or categorization.

Dhole Moments is a furry blog, sure, but not everyone who reads my writing is a furry. I write about computers, security, and cryptography, yes, but not everyone who reads my blog is particularly interested in those topics either.

It might be tempting to read about a furry music label built on socialist principles, shrug, and say, “So what? I’m not a fan of furry musicians or socialism. Where’s your post about key management you promised, dhole?!”

To understand the impact and significance of the Aural Alliance, some knowledge on current events and technology culture is needed.

AJ

The Enshittification of Music Sales

Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe a phenomenon that happens to online platforms. The cycle goes like this:

A new platform is operated at a loss, to gain users. This is usually the Venture Capital funding stage of a “start-up”.

Then once they have enough critical mass to exploit the Network Effect, they sell the startup to the public stock market.

This sale is eventually followed by a shift in priority, where they take away the parts of the platform that users loved (usually following the boiling frog strategy), in order to make it a better deal for their new owners.

This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
Cory Doctorow

That’s not the only trick up the sleeves of wealthy business interests.

Enter, Bandcamp

Last year, Epic Games acquired Bandcamp: The only music distribution platform that was fair to indie artists.

Last month, Epic sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, a music licensing service that basically acts as a vampiric middleman: Squeezing money from sellers and buyers alike while providing nothing of value. Songtradr is the outcome of an economist thought experiment, “What if landlords existed for our ear drums?”

Yesterday, Songtradr laid off a significant amount of Bandcamp’s staff.

Bandcamp: extremely profitable company, uniquely beloved of musicians and music fans alike, riding a wave of public goodwill, decides to sell themselves to a billionaire who then dumps them off to another billionaire who now fires half the company https://t.co/YZK3dlTkt7
— 𝔻𝕖𝕖𝕣𝕙𝕠𝕠𝕗 (@deerhoof) October 16, 2023

Archived

Songtradr’s business model is the end goal of every Silicon Valley start-up that receives VC funding: Capture near-monopoly power through technology and the network effect, then become a middleman that only exists to add a transaction fee while a tangled web of contractors that compete with each other actually fulfill the services rendered. And they want to do this while driving positive exponential year-over-year growth, to keep investors happy.

Time and again, this happens to industries that affect millions of peoples’ lives, and we’re all the worse for it.

Any company that calls themselves “Uber for ___” is confessing to this business model. Art by AJ.

Exit, Bandcamp

The enshittification of Bandcamp is well underway by its new masters. Independent musicians the world over would benefit greatly from a good alternative.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a recommendation to offer today.

Bandcamp had too much goodwill with its community for a serious competitor to emerge from the noise floor. The Internet got complacent.

In another business vertical, Itch.io currently has a similar vibe with the indie game dev community: It has fostered tremendous goodwill and treats creators fairly.

In 2021, itch.io properties were added to the Epic Games Store launcher. Thus far, it has remained undisturbed. Who knows how long this will hold out?

(Especially considering the abundance of LGBTQIA+ content hosted on itch.io.)

Credit: CMYKat

Opposition and Hope

Cory Doctorow, who coined the term enshittification, has proposed what he calls an audacious plan to halt it, and throw its effects in reverse.

Cryptography luminary Phil Rogaway was asked to deliver a keynote at NIST’s Third Workshop on Block Cipher Modes of Operation. (Slides available now, recording to be available soon. I will share it here when I have a link to it.)

Rather than focus too much on OCB or his other contributions to computer science, he chose to talk about what he called Radical CS: A rejection of the Standard Technological Narrative (STN) that technology is an apolitical tool that only improves things for everyone.

(TODO: Add video here when it’s public.)

PhilosophyTube recently tackled the topic of Ethical AI, which is way more interesting than you may suspect.

Many of the people behind the hype of large-scale computing (which is what we should be calling it, not AI), whom are trying to influence public opinion and legislation in order to maximize their own profit, are the exact same people that are driving the enshittification of platforms.

They’re also largely the same people that hyped blockchain too. And you best believe I got a video for that one:

Enter, Aural Alliance?

Hackers, queers, and queer hackers have always been part of the resistance to enshittification.

The Aural Alliance isn’t building a new Bandcamp today, they’re merely building a better record label.

If you had to describe your mission in one sentence, what would it be?
Me, to Finn (Founder of the Aural Alliance)

Fostering collective success through respect and collaboration would be the fancy answer I guess haha
Finn

However, sometimes all you need is enough activation energy to get a movement going.

Silver Eagle is the lead developer of Internet radio software, AzuraCast. They have been working with the Aural Alliance on a furry music database project.

If the Aural Alliance is successful in their goals, it will serve as direct, living proof that a better business model is possible; that artists and musicians can get a fair deal from their craft.

If their projects like the furry music database take off, this may also plant the seed from which tomorrow’s Bandcamp alternative will sprout.

And even if that doesn’t happen, at least some artists will suffer less as a result of the Aural Alliance’s work. That’s a win-win to me.

How You Can Help

A non-exhaustive list of ideas:

Follow the Aural Alliance on various platforms (yes, including Bandcamp, for now)
Donate to the Aural Alliance, which benefits all its artists
Write about the Aural Alliance (especially if you have a blog)
If you’re interested in the furry music database project, consider donating to Silver Eagle
Regularly check out the Aural Alliance’s Releases calendar for new songs, albums, etc.
Request your favorite Aural Alliance artists at your favorite furry convention

Finally, I’d like to close with sharing an excellent work from one of the Aural Alliance musicians, Tonya Song, that every LGBTQIA+ person can definitely relate to.

If none of my words can sell you on the value of what the Aural Alliance is doing, this is sure to do it:

Header art by AJLovesDinos.

https://soatok.blog/2023/10/17/aural-alliance-furry-music-to-wag-pounce-to/

#AuralAlliance #enshittification #furries #furry #FurryFandom #music

#auralalliance #enshittification #furries #furry #furryfandom #music

Doc Edward Morbius ⭕ @[email protected] · 2023-12-16 · 01:54 UTC

@dangillmor Excellent points, strong agreement and shared concerns. I was just discussing this with friends a few days ago.

The proprietary software market has always had the problem that marginal costs drive unit revenues down where direct sales are at issue and that market size and corresponding lock-in factors are sufficiently valuable of themselves (future sales + cutting off the air supply of other proprietary-software competition) that companies would actively seek out lower prices for higher market share. E.g.,

"Fighting China's Pirates" (2010)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704300604575554701758669106.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

Several companies have long preferred leasing or subscription based models, most famously and originally IBM, also major enterprise vendors (Oracle, Peoplesoft (RIP), SAP, SAS, Salesforce, etc.). Apple's hardware focus (increasingly supplemented by entertainment subscriptions) is another.

Sprinking LLM AI pixie dust over software makes the licensing / subscription model all the more viable, with additional moats of the lock-in afforded by a proprietary LLM model and the immense costs of developing and training AIs (see Microsoft's multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, largely in the form of Azure Cloud credits).

Then there is the data access issue (dust-up yesterday on HN involving DropBox who claim rights to customer data for AI training: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38627751 source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/. Principle discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629963).

This does make the Free Software world all the more attractive. That's been my preferred model for decades now. Question is whether or not AI/LLM actually does provide a sufficient use-case advantage over unassisted software. That's ... going to be an interesting situation watch.

#ai #llm #SoftwareEconomics #Moats #Monopoly #FreeSoftware #FOSS #Privacy #Trust

#ai #llm #softwareeconomics #moats #monopoly #freesoftware

Doc Edward Morbius ⭕ @[email protected] · 2023-12-16 · 01:54 UTC

@dangillmor Excellent points, strong agreement and shared concerns. I was just discussing this with friends a few days ago.

The proprietary software market has always had the problem that marginal costs drive unit revenues down where direct sales are at issue and that market size and corresponding lock-in factors are sufficiently valuable of themselves (future sales + cutting off the air supply of other proprietary-software competition) that companies would actively seek out lower prices for higher market share. E.g.,

"Fighting China's Pirates" (2010)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704300604575554701758669106.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

Several companies have long preferred leasing or subscription based models, most famously and originally IBM, also major enterprise vendors (Oracle, Peoplesoft (RIP), SAP, SAS, Salesforce, etc.). Apple's hardware focus (increasingly supplemented by entertainment subscriptions) is another.

Sprinking LLM AI pixie dust over software makes the licensing / subscription model all the more viable, with additional moats of the lock-in afforded by a proprietary LLM model and the immense costs of developing and training AIs (see Microsoft's multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, largely in the form of Azure Cloud credits).

Then there is the data access issue (dust-up yesterday on HN involving DropBox who claim rights to customer data for AI training: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38627751 source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/. Principle discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629963).

This does make the Free Software world all the more attractive. That's been my preferred model for decades now. Question is whether or not AI/LLM actually does provide a sufficient use-case advantage over unassisted software. That's ... going to be an interesting situation watch.

#ai #llm #SoftwareEconomics #Moats #Monopoly #FreeSoftware #FOSS #Privacy #Trust

#ai #llm #softwareeconomics #moats #monopoly #freesoftware

Doc Edward Morbius ⭕ @[email protected] · 2023-12-16 · 01:54 UTC

@dangillmor Excellent points, strong agreement and shared concerns. I was just discussing this with friends a few days ago.

The proprietary software market has always had the problem that marginal costs drive unit revenues down where direct sales are at issue and that market size and corresponding lock-in factors are sufficiently valuable of themselves (future sales + cutting off the air supply of other proprietary-software competition) that companies would actively seek out lower prices for higher market share. E.g.,

"Fighting China's Pirates" (2010)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704300604575554701758669106.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

Several companies have long preferred leasing or subscription based models, most famously and originally IBM, also major enterprise vendors (Oracle, Peoplesoft (RIP), SAP, SAS, Salesforce, etc.). Apple's hardware focus (increasingly supplemented by entertainment subscriptions) is another.

Sprinking LLM AI pixie dust over software makes the licensing / subscription model all the more viable, with additional moats of the lock-in afforded by a proprietary LLM model and the immense costs of developing and training AIs (see Microsoft's multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, largely in the form of Azure Cloud credits).

Then there is the data access issue (dust-up yesterday on HN involving DropBox who claim rights to customer data for AI training: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38627751 source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/. Principle discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629963).

This does make the Free Software world all the more attractive. That's been my preferred model for decades now. Question is whether or not AI/LLM actually does provide a sufficient use-case advantage over unassisted software. That's ... going to be an interesting situation watch.

#ai #llm #SoftwareEconomics #Moats #Monopoly #FreeSoftware #FOSS #Privacy #Trust

#ai #llm #softwareeconomics #moats #monopoly #freesoftware

Two Bros Game Night @[email protected] · 2025-10-11 · 15:37 UTC

https://youtu.be/ooQUJNlC_cw

Yes, I know that that the new girl in 100 Girlfriends is Nano "Eiai", not "AI". But if you think I'm ruining this audible pun, you're sorely mistaken... #Crunchyroll #Bibury #100Girlfriends #100人の彼女 #Season1 #anime #harem #comedy #parody #TBGN #SSHITAnime #SaturdayMorning

#crunchyroll #bibury #100girlfriends #100人の彼女 #season1 #anime

Marco Ciappelli🎙️✨:verified: :donor: @[email protected] · 2025-11-15 · 22:20 UTC

Who or what do we blindly trust with our #health? 🤔

White Coats or Black Boxes?

Some thoughts on AI, medicine, human judgment, and how #AI could help us think more instead of less.

Reflections from a conversation with #healthcare leaders on trust, transparency, and who really benefits from AI in #medicine

I grew up in a world where you didn't question your doctor. You didn't ask about lab results. You didn't research your medications. "Doctor's orders" was gospel.

My grandmother never saw her own test results. She wouldn't have known what to do with them anyway.

We like to think we've evolved past that. But have we? Or have we just traded blind trust in white coats for blind trust in #algorithms?

That's the question that kept surfacing in my head after this Expert Panel Discussion I hosted with Sean Martin, CISSP and an extraordinary group of people:

Dr. Robert Pearl, M.D. (former CEO, The Permanente Medical Group, Inc.)

Robert Havasy (HIMSS)

John Sapp Jr (Texas Mutual Insurance Company)

Jim St. Clair (Altarum)

Robert Booker (HITRUST)

We gathered to discuss AI in healthcare. What emerged was something deeper: a reckoning with how we've always delegated medical decisions—and whether AI might actually force us to become smarter, more analytical, more inquisitive about our own health.

Here's my theory: AI doesn't have to make us dumber. It could make us think more, not less. But only if we choose to engage. Only if we demand transparency. Only if we resist trading one form of blind trust for another.

400,000 people die annually from misdiagnoses in America. That's not AI failure—that's human failure we've learned to accept.

The question isn't whether AI will transform healthcare. It already is.

The question is: Will we finally start asking questions?

About our doctors AND our algorithms?

Then tell me—what kind of trust are we building? Who benefits? Who bears the risk?

Let's keep exploring what it means to be human in this Hybrid Analog Digital Society.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-what-do-we-blindly-trust-our-health-some-thoughts-marco-ciappelli-tyd3c

Comment, share, and be merry! 🙂

Studio C60 / ITSPmagazine

#HealthcareAI #MedicalEthics #DigitalHealth #technology #cybersecurity #PatientEmpowerment #HealthTech #CriticalThinking #podcast

#health #ai #healthcare #medicine #algorithms #healthcareai

Sean @[email protected] · 2019-05-04 · 08:01 UTC

Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”

Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)

Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.

Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.

Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:

Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”
Kurt Raaflaub, Archaic and Classical Greece,” in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Center for Hellenic Studies: Washington, DC, 1999) p. 133: “Since the goal was to defeat, not annihilate, the enemy, the fleeing losers usually were not pursued and casualties, though potentially serious, often were limited.”

Somehow the exception in the ancient sources became the norm in the moderns! I had forgotten about this because Peter Krentz debunked it in his great article “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn” in 2002, and because its not one of the aspects of the California school which many people I know still believe, like many people still believe that hoplite gear was very heavy.

The book is very readable which is more than anyone can say about my German.

If I have one criticism it would be that this book is so tightly focused and text-centred that it excludes some things which could make its view even stronger. I have an article in press for a few years which argues that some of the brilliant scholars who refuted the California school unthinkingly reproduced its assumptions about what questions to ask and sources to rely on. Its one thing to ask whether hoplites fought in files two cubits wide or four cubits wide, another to ask whether we should look at Greek ethnic warfare or warfare in the Aegean region. (The article will appear has appeared in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8).

The bibliography of about 380 items excludes some things, particularly works outside ‘academic’ classics and by presses that expect a book to sell thousands not hundreds of copies. This isn’t a monograph which addresses the archaeologists like Imma Killian-Dirlmeier, the writings of Peter Connolly, or the wargamers from the 1970s to the 2000s who looked at what academics had to offer in English, decided it was not helpful, and wrote their own books, some of them quite good. Looking at this wider context could have showed that the dominance of the text-focused Prussian school was not inevitable, and how these ideas spread before academics were writing books in English on them. But people writing a PhD in the UK are under strong pressure to complete it in three or four years, so they have to be ruthless about defining a research topic and not wasting time on anything else.

If you just want three books on early Greek warfare, I would still recommend Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, Josho Brouwers’ Henchmen of Ares, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. But if you want to read more widely, I would recommend this. I hope that the wider world interested in early Greek warfare learns to talk about the Prussian, English, and California schools, just like the world interested in Greek catapults knows about the 19th century Prussian and French scholars who built the first reconstructions.

If you can’t obtain the published version, the original dissertation is available as Konijnendijk, Roel (2015) Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC. Doctoral thesis, University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470175/ Scholars who want something to cite should check the printed version!

Don’t make me chase you down! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Edit 2021-09-25: Converted to blocks, added link to published article from Melammu conferences.

Edit 2026-03-01: Cite Raaflaub

#ancient #bookReview #classicalGreek #hoplite

#ancient #bookreview #classicalgreek #hoplite

Sean @[email protected] · 2019-05-04 · 08:01 UTC

Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”

Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)

Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.

Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.

Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:

Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”