The author of this article has focused on two issues. The first concerns the early activity of Gaius Julius Caesar and his position on the conflict between Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius. Caesar was then in close relations with the Cynno-Marian camp at the time, as evidenced by his marriage to Cornelia, daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and his appointment as a priest of Jupiter. In the second half of the article, Tomasz Ładoń analyses the conflict Sulla and Caesar after the end of the first civil war. Ładoń describes the causes and the course of this conflict and goes on to conclude that Caesar, despite his initial disagreements with Sulla, not only was not persecuted, but reached a compromise with him during the Sullan restauration in the 70s of the first century BC., which allowed him to start building his own career.

The declining years of the Republic brought many transformations and the development of new political, social and religious ideologies. Gaius Julius Caesar was indisputably one of the greatest religious “innovators” in this period. In this context, accusations of impietas against Caesar, leveled by his adversaries, are characteristic. They can be divided into several categories:
—— negation of the existence of the gods: this accusation concerned Caesar’s statement during the Catilinarian trials that death brought rest rather than agony; that beyond death there was no more worry or joy. Marcus Porcius Cato accused Caesar of the lack of belief in the afterlife and in punishment after death;
—— violations of the sacrosanctitas of the tribunes of the people Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, whom Caesar deprived of power;
—— profanatio templi, connected with the placing of the statute of the commander (Caesar) in the quadriga on the Capitoline Hill, with the globe at Caesar’s feet, and a picture bearing the inscription “To Invincible God” (Deo invicto), which was put in the Quirinus temple;
—— violatio luci: Caesar was accused of cutting down the “holy grove” near Marseille;
—— contra auspicia: Caesar was accused of ignoring the observation of the sky in 59 BCE and obnuntiatio of Bibulus;
—— bella impia: the main charge was that of triggering the civil war, which was explicitly called: bellum impium, scelerum, nefandum, and, furthermore, supplicationes, ovatio and triumphus were not allowed for victories;
—— posthumous impietas: Caesar was commemorated by special Parentalia and supplicationes, which Cicero regarded as “inexpiabiles religiones”.

This article discusses the policy of Gaius Iulius Caesar towards the “Transpadani” — the inhabitants of the province “Gallia Cisalpina”, who had a Latin status in the 60s of 1st BCE. Caesar’s first recorded political actions were carried out in 67 and 65 BCE. In the 60s Caesar may have begun campaigning for changing the Latin status of the “Transpadani” and for making them legally equal to the rest of the province and Italy. The result of his activities was the building of client relationships that benefited him greatly in the power struggles in fifties and forties of Ist BCE.

The use of chariots in warfare had a long tradition in the ancient Near East, but not in northern Europe. In many regions, chariots and the horses that pulled them were interred with wealthy leaders in their tombs. Chariots were common in Europe until around 100 BCE, although they continued to be used for much longer in Britain. Their speed and agility caused serious difficulties for the Roman infantry. Chariots were not intended to charge headlong into enemy formations. The warrior was able to fight against horsemen from the chariot’s platform, but would dismount to fight infantry soldiers on foot. In the meantime, the charioteer would move away a short distance from the battle, waiting to collect the warrior and carry him to safety, if necessary. A typical British chariot consisted of a small platform, open in the front and in the back, mounted on a wooden axle and with wheels made strong by iron tires. The charioteers sat at the front of the platform between two sideboards made of wood or wickerwork. However, the double arcade seems to be the most convincing interpretation of the evidence found on coins. In Britain, most horses were the size of the modern Dartmoor ponies and were effective in pulling chariots. The continental Gauls learned to breed larger horses capable of carrying a warrior and his weapon. The war-chariot of the Britons almost certainly did not have scythes. There is no accepted archaeological evidence concerning scythed chariots.

One of the distinctive features of Caesar’s narrative about wars was the praise he bestowed on the merits of his centurions. The question arises why he promoted this category of soldiers and whether source analysis confirms the plausibility of their combat achievements. Michał Norbert Faszcza has collected and examined the relevant information contained in the extant written sources in an attempt not only to find confirmation of Caesar’s claims in the context of the growing importance of the centurions in the 1st century BCE, but also to ponder the reason for Caesar’s use this type of literary device. The centurions are a genuine symbol of Caesar’s army, and therefore this theme is of key importance for the reconstruction of the internal relations in his legions.

In this article, Barbara Trygar analyses Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s The Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio drawing detto il Colosseo. The Colosseum is one of world’s greatest buildings and for centuries it has inspired artists all over the world. This symbolic place reminds man about the drama of life: the fight between “to be” and “not to be” and the struggle for the values of freedom, truth, and the good. The drawing (engraving) by the Italian printmaker is a provoking reflection on the axiological and metaphysical dimensions of human life.

During the interregnum period during the sessions of the Lublin Sejm, both the pre-convocation and relational ones, the Lublin nobility, including this voivodship’s officials, firmly supported the candidacy of Stanisław Leszczyński. This was also reflected in the election sejm, where a total of 395 deputies voted for him. After the entry of Russian and Saxony troops into the Republic, the Lublin nobility relatively quickly, because on December 18, 1733, established in his defense a “particular” confederation. Felicjan Gałęzowski, a Lublin sub-judge, was elected as its marshal. The Lublin nobility also took part in the general Dzikowska confederation, established on 5 November 1734, setting out a military unit of a total of 280 horses.

This article examines the phenomenon of hospitality from a historical perspective. The author’s aim is to show that the tradition of hospitality in the Central European region has deep historical roots, and that it is also strongly linked to various socio-political and economic processes that took place in different historical epochs.

After World War I, a conflict broke out between Poland and Germany over Upper Silesia. It was to be settled, according to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, by a plebiscite. However, on May 3, 1921, the Polish uprising broke out. Insurgent troops occupied the eastern part of the plebiscite area. On May 21, 1921, German troops of the so-called Upper Silesia Self-Defense (Selbstschutz Oberschlesiens) carried out an effective counteroffensive, known as the Battle of St. Anne’s Mountain. In this article, Ryszard Kaczmarek discusses the dispute that has been going on for many years among historians about who had planned and who commanded this military operation. The main opponents in this operation were: Karl Hoefer, the commander-in-chief of the Self-Defense, and Bernhard Hülsen, the commander of one of the Self-Defense’s units. For many years, until the outbreak of World War II, both these officers claimed victory in the Battle of St. Anne’s Mountain. On the basis of the extant correspondence stored in the military section of the Federal Archives in Freiburg, Kaczmarek reconstructs the course of events during the operation. He author shows the political conditions of military decisions and the complicated relations of the democratic government of the Weimar Republic with officers who were associated with the nationalist right.

The state of knowledge about the personnel of the German occupation apparatus of power, including the Nazi party, in Upper Silesia during World War II is already very advanced. This has been made possible by the availability of the existing source materials, primarily those stored in the State Archives in Katowice. They allow us not only to identify of the activities of the most important Nazi dignitaries, but also of the representatives of the local occupation elites. Mirosław Węcki’s analysis of Karl Schikorski — a Volksdeutsch and an NSDAP functionary operating during the war in Tychy, a city located in the Pszczyński district — illustrates the possibility of conducting such research based, among other sources, on the personnel files of the Nazi party. This microregional type of approach is important for the adequate understanding of life during the occupation, especially since the local supporters of the Nazi regime, derived from the pre-war German minority, left a tragic mark on the fate of the Polish inhabitants of the region.

In her article, Lisa Haberkern discusses the conclusions of the research whose aim was to reconstruct the memory relating to the inmates of so-called post-war labor camps in Upper Silesia on the basis of the accounts of their family members. She has studied materials relating to the Zgoda labor camp in Świętochłowice, whose history is well documented. Haberkern focuses on the limitations that a historian encounters when researching “oral history” sources. The fact of discrepancies in collective memory is well-known, but it is important not only to be aware of this fact, but to use it in historical research. In order to reconstruct the historical facts stored in the memory of an individual, it is necessary first to reconstruct that person’s way of seeing the past by taking into account the features of the place and of the period. The unreliability and changeableness of memory prevent uncritical acceptance of accounts about past events which a researcher may extract from it. For this reason, the establishing of historical facts on the basis of oral history must always be preceded by a reconstruction of the historical contexts in which the memory of those facts was formed.

This article presents the basic assumptions and theses of the collection of essays The Alternative Augustan Age (ed. K. Morrell, J. Osgood, K. Welch, New York 2019). This book is a post-conference publication; the conference papers, according to the intention of the organisers, are concerning the so-called the Age of Augustus and not the princeps directly. Moving away from the narrative focus on Augustus’s actions in literary sources is the most characteristic feature of the book. When discussing its content, Paul Hay’s and Kit Morrell’s articles have been discussed most copiously. These scholars draw attention to the analogies between some of Augustus’s initiatives and the ideas and reforms with which the three politicians associated with the faction of the optimates, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gnaeus Pompeius the Great and Marcus Porcius Cato came up towards the end of the republic. According to the author of this article, not all the similarities identified by those researchers find equally robust support in the sources. Nevertheless, their research sheds new light on the problem of Augustus’s relationship to the traditions of the republic.

In her review of Dario Calomino’s book Defacing the Past, Anna Anzorge-Potrzebowska presents her reflections on the condemnation of memory inspired by this publication. Calomino’s aim has been to trace the changes introduced to the images of Roman rulers across various media. Those changes could (though not always had to) bear marks of a negative judgment of a given figure for ideological or political reasons. Calomino’s focus is on numismatics. His considerations are supplemented by references to analogous modifications of images of people from the emperors’ entourage and extensive use of sources other than numismatic. This approach places Calomino in a stream of research connected with the condemnation of memory. The way this author conducts the narrative also highlights such issues as the memory culture, the policy of historical memory in the Roman empire. The reviewer deliberately indicates here the area of the empire because Calomino’s book is not devoted exclusively to the Roman perspective.

Denis Sdvižkov’s book Letters from the Prussian War combines the source material — consisting of a collection of private and official correspondence of officers of the Imperial Russian Army, direct participants in and witnesses of the Seven Years’ War (1756—1763) — with an extensive and original introductory study. Using anthropological and microhistorical approaches in an analysis of numerous personal testimonies, the Author shows how the daily life during the war and the key event of the 1758 campaign — the Battle of Zorndorf/Sarbinowo — were reflected in the experience of the Russian military. In addition to reconstructing the battle itself, the book pays much attention to everyday life, career strategies, values, religiosity and morality of the members of the Russian officer corps as well as to the role of the Zorndorf battle in the war propaganda and the historical memory in Russia and Prussia.

The publication From the History of Social Welfare in Interwar Poland. Summer Semicolonies in Łódź combines two perspectives: history and pedagogy. Joanna Sosnowska presents in it the main assumptions of social welfare, including childcare, adopted by the Łódź authorities in the interwar period. She based her research on the source material found, among other places, in the State Archives in Łódź and the Archives of the Department of Ethnology of the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Lodz. On the example of summer semicolonies organized in this city, she discusses the methods of organizing holidays in the city’s parks, sources of their funding, as well as participants and staff. The scholar also addresses some general issues related to the care, upbringing and education of children and teenagers. The book may therefore be of interest to historians of education, educators, sociologists, as well as planners and organizers in the area of childcare.