Ludwik Piotrowicz’s research on Ancient History

Ludwik Piotrowicz (1886-1957) was a classical scholar and professor of Ancient History. He studied classical philology and archaeology at the Jagiellonian University under Kazimierz Morawski and Piotr Bieńkowski. He spent also some years in Berlin where he studied under epigraphist Otto Hirschfeld and ancient historian Eduard Meyer. His habilitation was on difference between Plutarch's and Appian's accounts of domestic politics of the late Roman Republic. In 1919 he was called to a professorship with chair at the University of Poznan. In 1922 he moved to a similar position at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow where he remained until his death. He was one of many professors of Jagiellonian University arrested by Nazis during Sonderaktion Krakau in 1939. After being freed in 1940, he was involved in charity work. Until 1945 he served as a head of the Polish Welfare Committee in Krakow and a member of the Committee of Three, which took care of aid to the persecuted families of people related to the University. Piotrowicz is chiefly remembered for his two volume book Dzieje rzymskie (The Roman History) published in 1934 but his research interests were very broad. He published studies on the fall of Assyria, Cimmerian invasion of Asia Minor and on toparchoi and nomarchoi - Egyptian officials of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Later, he broadened his research interests to include studies of the Greek, Celtic and Roman coins found in Polish territories and ancient inhabitants of these areas. He published also his translations of Greek writers such as Aristotle, Appian and Herodianus and Atlas do historii starożytnej (Atlas of Ancient History)