Not even sure who this is supposed to be because this is not the promo-Odysseus helmet.
Apart from the vertebrae everything kinda looks sci-fi

Is it the English translation maybe? I do find Clausewitz in German very comfortable to read, these senctences are like half as long as any Thucydides translation that I can access tbh and they're also not half as confusingly constructed as scholarly papers of 80s-early 2000s

When I do ancient history memes, I shouldn’t do such obscure one tbh

But wouldn’t Wheeler be more angry by an overeager usage of du Picq in ancient battles…?

Since all other teachers/profs at uni mainly go for literature first, primary sources second, he opted in for the primary-sources-only path.

He‘s more of a source-criticism-from-a-narrative-angle than a reconstruction type of historian.

His go-to sentence at the beginning of a course is always „If my students leave my class saying ‚I‘m smarter than before‘, I’ve done something wrong“

If the Greek history professor at my uni ever taught archaic warfare, he’d probably just hand everyone Homer and Herodotus, say „figure it out“ and hope that everyone figures out that we can’t say anything for certain lol

most sauroter findings in Thrace stem from aristocratic cavalrymen graves (besides the two incidental findings)

Wouldn't this kind of tomb rather contain a cavalry spear instead of an infatnry sarissa?

Most obvious case of „here‘s a list of buzz words you gotta use to legitimise our war in 1 minute or less“

Makes me immediately think of this one, of a returning warrior with prisoner, both in Attic helmets, and accompanying warrior in pilos

I do find it iconographically interesting that the „standard“ helmet seems to be the pointy pilos for all soldiers, while the „main character“ of the shield wall has a distinct (Samno-)Attic helmet.
Most Paestan tomb paintings show the Attic helmet but also mostly one or two warriors per wall

I’ve seen a few interpretations on the standing figure being either Mars/Marmers or a noble.
Never noticed the cows, though my first instinct would be to either have a practical interpretation (warfare around herds as so often the case in Livy) or the bull as the Samnite spirit animal (Strabo)

On what basis? (Can’t access the document)

Both that and the chucking of the signum becoming a surprisingly frequent literary topos that I can imagine is certainly (at least omewhat) grounded in reality

The material cost of the pila is a very interesting consideration!

The "attritional" fighting style of the Romans maybe also showed in their charges, like when the Romans just forego the throwing of pila to deliver one deceicive charge:
a-breefe-discourse.blogspot.com/2025/06/roma...

Somewhere, E.L. Wheeler sneezed, after your wrote that.