Marek Węcowski – författare

Ostracism is by far the most emblematic institution of ancient Athenian democracy. This volume offers a reassessment of recently found ostraka (or potsherds, on which the names of the 'candidates' for exile were inscribed by citizens) from several Greek cities outside Athens, a thorough reconstruction of the history and of the procedure of ostracism in Athens, and a comprehensive account of the political circumstances of the introduction of the law on ostracism by Cleisthenes in 508/507 BCE. Marek Węcowski's original study focuses not only on the final stage, the day of the vote, but on the entire operation and procedure of ostracisation. Tracing the logic of the political play in Athens between the opening and final stages of ostracism, Węcowski argues that Athenian ostracism was a mechanism devised to impose compromise on the main players in Athenian political life, thereby avoiding the punishment of political elites by exile of leading politicians resulting from unpredictable votes by the citizenry. To support this hypothesis, Węcowski turns to the theory of the 'evolution of cooperation' as formulated by the American mathematician and political scientist Robert Axelrod based on the iterated prisoner's dilemma in game theory, applied as a probabilistic analogy to the dynamics of Athenian political life under democracy.

In The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet, Wecowski offers a comprehensive account of the origins of the symposion and its close relationship with the rise of the Greek city-state or polis. Broadly defined as a culture-oriented aristocratic banquet, the symposion--which literally means 'drinking together'--was a nocturnal wine party held by Greek aristocrats from Homer to Alexander the Great. Its distinctive feature was the crucial importance of diverse cultural competitions, including improvising convivial poetry, among the guests. Cultural skills and abilities were a prerequisite in order for one to be included in elite drinking circles, and, as such, the symposion served as a forum for the natural selection of Greek aristocracy.

Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History is published on behalf of the University of Warsaw. It seeks to provide a forum 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 and Egyptological counterparts.

Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History is published on behalf of the University of Warsaw. It seeks to provide a forum 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 and Egyptological counterparts.

Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History is published on behalf of the University of Warsaw. It seeks to provide a forum 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 and Egyptological counterparts.

Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History is published by Lockwood Press on behalf of the University of Warsaw. 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 and Egyptological, counterparts are still extremely rare.   Palamedes seeks to provide such a forum. Publishing in English, French, German, and Italian, Palamedes seeks to showcase the work of the Polish scholarly community while at the same time offering an outlet for research among the international community of scholars. To that end, the editors invite contributions in the fields of Greek and Roman antiquity and Near Eastern civilizations Please see Contents for details of this volume.

Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History is published on behalf of the University of Warsaw. It seeks to provide a forum 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 and Egyptological counterparts.