WELCOME TO CEECS, a website intended to serve, in simple and compact form, as a clearing house for information on Central and East European Classical Scholarship since the end of World War II. The countries covered will be the lands of the former Soviet Union (The Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan), Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia ( The following are the kinds of items, by country, that will appear on the website:

*Reviews of monographs, editions and translations of Classical texts , and journal volumes.

*The leadership and involvement of national Academies of Sciences in Classical Studies.

*Descriptions of Classics programs at individual institutions (e.g., universities, teacher training colleges, seminaries, hopefully even secondary schools). These will, to the extent possible, include lists of faculty members, with their academic ranks and addresses and brief statements of their teaching and research specialties.

*More extensive profiles of individual prominent scholars, current and past (since 1945).

*Information on scholarly associations concerned with Classical Studies, and on the activities and programs of these organizations in furthering the study of the Classics. I also hope to include timely notices of upcoming meetings and reports on recently conducted congresses, commemorative observances, colloquia, seminars, and other gatherings.

*Information on libraries, museums and other institutions holding major resources of Classics-related materials.

*Lists and descriptions of periodicals, serial publications, commemorative/festschrift volumes, tributes/in memoriams, bibliographical surveys and similar materials with substantial Classics content, that have been in existence, at one time or other, since the end of World War II.

*Lists of major archaeological sites and field research centers.

The term "Classics," as here used, refers to Ancient Greek and Roman/Latin Studies. These include languages/literatures/etymologies/linguistics, history, art and archaeology, philosophy and religion, science, pedagogy, and auxiliary disciplines such as epigraphy, sphragistics. numismatics, papyrology, palaeography and textual criticism. Because Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature also are extensively studied in Central and East Europe by traditional Classicists, work in these fields will be discussed to some extent. Near Eastern Studies, as they bear on the Ancient Greco-Roman world, will likewise receive substantial treatment. However, given the massive amounts of data to be dealt with, the focus of necessity must be on Ancient Greece and Rome, from the Creto-Mycenaean era to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Classicists who already have computers and regularly visit the Internet know that many Academies of Sciences, educational and cultural institutions, and serial publications already have websites. Several of the websites and web pages deal specifically and in detail with Classical Studies and even have English-language formats. Though mentioning these Internet locations already in place, I obviously do not intend, apart from basic reference information already accepted as being "in the public domain", to repeat or duplicate their content. For topics not yet sufficiently covered, or appearing on the Internet in non-English languages, I shall make fuller reports and give all presentations in English. English, indeed, will be the language of the website, apart from some addresses, which are best left in their original tongues. Names of publications not printed in the Western European languages and alphabets will be both listed in the original language (transliterated for Cyrillic) and translated into English.