A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
Hey folks, fireside this week as I get ready for the start of a new semester! For this week, I wanted to talk briefly about the wrinkles that financing navies poses with regards to our worldbuilding primer on pre-modern armies. "what about navies?" has been a frequent question in comments and from patrons. Now a … Continue reading Fireside Friday, August 14, 2026 (On Financing Pre-Modern Navies)
Hey folks, Fireside this week, as I am fresh back from a short family trip before the jaws of the Fall semester close upon me. I did get a chance to see Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and I wrote a review of it for Foreign Policy (alas, paywalled, I assume), although by far the most … Continue reading Fireside Friday, July 31, 2026 (On The Odyssey)
Hey folks, Fireside this week! I've been a bit behind because we had some family travel followed by an issue with a water leak in the basement which has pushed me out of my normal home office space (fortunately no books or computers were harmed and we're working on water damage restoration now). All of … Continue reading Fireside Friday, July 10, 2026 (On the Chud Vision of Roman History)
Hey folks, fireside this week! Next week we'll cap off our look at the Carthaginian army by covering some of the 'odds and ends' components (slingers, elephants), before looking at how that mixture of troop-types was employed in battle during the third century. Percy, enjoying a look out of my office window through the curtains. … Continue reading Fireside Friday, May 15, 2026
Hey everyone, we have a Fireside this week and then next week we'll get back to our somewhat silly break discussing the mechanics of warfare in Dune. But I did want to stop to chatter a bit about something that came up in that discussion, which is something about the nature of personalist regimes in … Continue reading Fireside Friday, March 6, 2026
Hey folks, Fireside this week! I have ended up a bit behind in my work and as always it is the blog that much suffer first. In this case, we have in two weeks twice managed to have snow which only increased my workload (it didn't cancel any of my classes, but did require me … Continue reading Fireside Friday, February 6, 2026 (On Ancient Migrations)
Hey folks, Fireside this week! Hopefully everyone enjoyed our series on the running debate over hoplites! As a social media note, I am going to attempt to start setting up a presence on Threads (with my own name, bretdevereaux, as my handle as always). I'm not leaving Bluesky by any means, just diversifying a bit; … Continue reading Fireside Friday, January 23, 2025 (On the Cowardice of the Statue PfPs)
Hey folks! Fireside this week. I had wanted to have my post on the hoplite debate (the othismos over othismos) ready for this week, but it's not quite done, so I am shifting that to next week. So instead this week I want to outline another debate in ancient military history, the 'Roman strategy debate.' … Continue reading Fireside Friday, November 7, 2025 (On the Roman Strategy Debate)
Hey folks, Fireside this week! Next week we should be back to start looking at the other half of labor in the peasant household, everything that isn't agriculture. Also, here are some cats: Catching that perfectly timed Percy-yawn, while Ollie (below) is doing his best Percy impression with those narrowed eyes. For this week's musing, … Continue reading Fireside Friday, September 19, 2025 (On the Use and Abuse of Malthus)
Hey folks, Fireside this week! As I noted a couple of weeks ago, things are probably going to get more than a little fireside-y over the next few weeks, simply because of the start of the semester - and a semester in which I am undertaking a set of entire new preps (that is, teaching … Continue reading Fireside Friday, August 27, 2025 (On Defending History)