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As is obvious from the above, my "data bank" project is a massive one, and through its entire duration must be considered as a "work in progress". My hope is to get it started and involve a growing team of colleagues who will keep it going. Initially I myself will be the general editor, and all materials destined for inclusion in the website will first be screened and, as necessary, modified by myself. New information will constantly be added and every attempt will be made, on a regular basis, to update, correct, and supplement the information already on the website. I therefore respectfully invite, indeed urge, the cooperation of any and all Classics colleagues, interested in and/or knowledgeable on this topic, both within and outside of Central and East Europe. Materials for inclusion under any of the categories described above, comments, corrections and suggestions may be sent by mail to my postal address at 2107 Teague Road, Houston, TEXAS 77080-6409, USA, or forwarded through the website’s e-mail address Choceecs@aol.com.It would be nice, indeed, if as many of you as possible contacted me individually and introduced yourselves so that we could establish more and more communication links for this endeavor. Language should pose few problems: Besides my obvious familiarity with Latin and Ancient Greek, I have a reading knowledge not only of Western European languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese) but likewise of many of the Central and East European languages (Polish, Russian, Belorusian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian). For the languages of the remaining countries with which we will be working (e.g., Albania, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) I expect to secure the help of persons already conversant in these tongues.
Some information about myself. My name is Chester Natunewicz, and I have degrees in Classics (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.) from Yale University. I am a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. In a long career my main scholarly interest has been Greek and Roman Classical scholarship in Central and East Europe. I have several publications on this topic, and have accumulated hundreds of pages of relevant data. I have come to know many colleagues personally from the regions dealt with (at international Classics meetings or in their own lands), and over the years have exchanged scholarly materials with them, forwarding English-language publications in return for printed materials in their own languages. I strongly feel that too little is known in the West about the outstanding contributions which Central and East European Classicists have made to the spread and promotion of knowledge about Ancient Greece and Rome. Some of the difficulty stems from the scholarship’s being produced in languages not commonly studied or understood in the West (As I was recently told in Russia, "Russica non leguntur"). Still, for many centuries now there have been thousands of brilliant and energetic professionals in Central and East Europe working on all aspects of Ancient Greek and Roman civilization, even during their own lands’ darkest periods of political and intellectual repression. Today likewise, with the disappearance of the Soviet bloc, and despite the fact that many of the politically liberated countries, while using a good part of their limited financial resources to promote Western-style materialistic economic systems, are spending less than in the past to support traditional academic disciplines, the Classics are holding their own, and more people, especially Classics colleagues in the West, should be made aware of this fact. It will also be gratifying to Central and East European Classicists to know that more folks outside their own immediate regions are learning about their scholarly accomplishments and, hopefully, will begin, on the basis of information obtained through this electronic medium, to establish more contacts with them. Thus the raison d’etre for my website. I encourage as many of you as possible to join with me.
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