ElAnt v1n2 - EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

July marks the second, monthly issue of Electronic Antiquity . We would like to thank all of those readers who responded with such good wishes and encouragement to our first issue. We have attempted, wherever it has been possible, to incorporate their suggestions. This is as true of the format and content which we have adopted as it is of our means of distribution.

Electronic Antiquity remains unashamedly catholic and interdisciplinary in its approach. July, of course, has its backbone of scholarly articles. But we would like to single out those pieces which reach beyond our disciplinary bounds. This issue offers a fascinating article on theories of democracy by Professor Graham Maddox - erstwhile Classicist, now Professor of Politics and Dean of the Faculty of Arts (U.N.E.-Armidale), and author of the standard work on the Australian constitution. Coming months will see more of this type of material on EA 's screens. We would also like to highlight Sallie Goetsch's Bacchae review - this sort of material exemplifies the ways by which classics can speak across temporal divides.

Our brief, as we have defined it, is also to be informative. That is surely one of the real challenges offered to the electronic publisher. Professor Dee Clayman has provided us with a long and absorbing report on what is happening with the project to produce an e-version of the L'Annee Philologique (see the file 'Keeping In Touch'). Ian Worthington's Electronic Forum (in the same file) has been expanded to include information on a number of new electronic discussion groups, journals and text repositories.

There are some new regulars. Professor Kenneth Hamma, from the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, will now include within EA monthly reports on the museum's latest acquisitions. Almost as interesting will be his advance notice of scholars due to visit the Getty. Sallie Goetsch, from the University of Michigan, has also joined us as a theatre reviewer. In this issue she covers a production of the Bacchae recently staged at Stratford, Ontario. In future issues she will cover some recent live productions in England. Robert Baker persists - can there be any other word for it - with his translations of Martial. We encourage other translators to try us with their material.

July also marks the beginning of a new series of reports on Who's Who in Classics. Arthur Pomeroy, from the Victoria University of Wellington, has a listing of staff, their research interests and the research topics of New Zealand graduate students. In future months we will publish the list compiled by Bill Dominik (from the University of Natal and editor of Scholia ) of African classicists. And, still later, we will print a comparable list for Australia. We'd hope our coverage will be able to be expanded to other countries as well. These catalogues, thanks to gopher, can remain as a permanent archive and resource. Of even more importance is that they may encourage intercontinental communication. It was that, after all, which got us started in the first place with Electronic Antiquity .

EA remains committed to the ideals we stated in our first editorial. Distance, above all, is what has motivated us to undertake to this project. Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Asia, their distance from the libraries and the universities of the northern hemisphere is a persistent difficulty. Electronic transmission offers us one way of realistically and speedily overcoming some of this disability. We hope that Electronic Antiquity goes some way towards overcoming this problem - not just for those of us in the southern hemisphere, but for those of you living and working off the beaten track in the northern hemisphere.

We hope you continue to gain some benefit and enjoyment from our journal. We hope too that you'll consider joining us. Although we are resisting the temptation to develop a house style for articles, some consistency within the journal is necessary (see the file 'Guidelines'). Submission of contributions should be electronic, either e-mail or on disk. We prefer e-mail.

Again, we are pleased to acknowledge the generous assistance of the Information Technology Services at the University of Tasmania, which stores the journal and provides gopher and ftp access.

COPYRIGHT NOTE: Copyright remains with authors, but due reference should be made to this journal if any part of the above is later published elsewhere.

Electronic Antiquity Vol. 1 Issue 2 - July 1993
edited by Peter Toohey and Ian Worthington
antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au
ISSN 1320-3606