Palamedes A Journal of Ancient History 4/2009

Not inappropriately, the editors of almost every new journal in the field of classical studies and ancient history customarily begin with justifying their project. This is quite natural considering the overabundance of journals in our discipline. The editors of Palamedes. A Journal of Ancient History, sponsored by Warsaw University and by the Institute of History of the said University in particular, are not unaware of this difficulty. Still, it is somewhat surprising that - alongside quite a few highly valuable series of studies in ancient history and some respectable classical journals - there is no ancient history journal published on a regular basis in Poland. And since we have found the relevant scholarly community productive and lively enough to venture such an enterprise, we decided to run the risk. In addition, the fora where, within the frames of cultural history broadly defined, ancient historians, classical philologists, archaeologists, jurists, and epigraphists - in a word all those who study Greek and Roman antiquity in its material, linguistic or intellectual manifestations - can meet with their Orientalist, Egyptologist etc. counterparts are still extremely rare. Furthermore, it is our intention to try to provide, starting with the second volume in every issue of this journal, an up-to-date overview of the most important books from our discipline published in Poland and/or in Polish that otherwise would hardly have been accessible to the international reader.