A new challenge
Back in 2012, I had a meeting in Utrecht with Karwansaray Publishers to talk about publishing my PhD thesis in the form of a book. Those talks went really well and the book was published in 2013 as Henchmen of Ares. One of the people present was Jasper Oorthuys, founding editor of Ancient Warfare. He needed time to focus on other things and asked me if I was interested in taking over temporarily as editor of the magazine. Of course I was!
What was originally supposed to a temporary job turned into a fixed position. But by the end of end of 2014, we were thinking about starting a new magazine that focused more broadly on the ancient world. I was immensely interested in doing this. If you’ve read my book you’ll know that I didn’t really focus on the nitty-gritty of ancient Greek military matters, but was more interested in the socio-cultural context of military developments. Ancient History Magazine seemed like a good way to broaden my horizons.
We had good relations with Jona Lendering, who is a living font of knowledge with regards to the ancient world. It was logical that we brought him aboard to help out with getting the magazine started. We created a website for the magazine in February 2015 and launched a Kickstarter campaign in March to guage interest in the magazine. That campaign was a big success and so Ancient History Magazine became a reality.
Initially, the plan was for both Jona and me to edit the magazine together, but this soon proved impractical. We put the trial issue together (issue 0) and I contributed to the first issue, but other than that Jona was left to his devices. When he made the hard decision to step down as editor of the magazine, we were left wondering what to do. Who could we hire to replace him?
As Jasper explains in his blog post, after a hiatus of a little over four years, he was itching to get back in the saddle and run the magazine that he had originally founded. And with Jona’s departure, I was looking at Ancient History Magazine and thinking of what I would do with the magazine, what new regular departments I would introduce, and what kind of themes I’d pick for future issues.
Issue 8 of Ancient History Magazine was largely done by the time that Jona left. Peter Konieczny, our multi-talented editor of Medieval Warfare, is helping out in the transition by giving that issue the necessary spit and polish and making sure that it’s up to the highest standards. From issue 9, I will be the editor of Ancient History Magazine, with an ‘official’ start date of 1 January 2017, while Jasper will be taking over as editor of Ancient Warfare.
Jasper and I will be working together on both magazines. We each have our own expertise, and Jasper will help out, as he has done in the past, with articles on the Romans, while I focus on the Greeks. Outside experts will help us as necessary to ensure that articles on other topics, especially Egypt and the Near East, will be up to our usual standards. It’s going to be an interesting journey, and I look forward to sharing it with you!
And that means now’s the best time to get a subscription to Ancient History Magazine.
