The “social” and “cultural” turns, as well as the “material turn”, have had a remarkable impact on the historiography of education, significantly changing its paradigm, method, sources and objects, often over-shadowing the traditional approach to the discipline that entails the exclusive study of the history of ideas and theories. In view of these radical changes of the last fifty years, we can now ask how the history of educational ideas might be rethought for nowadays, epistemologically and methodologically, both in research contexts and in university teaching courses. This rethinking of the traditional objects of historical research in education will inevitably also involve the Classics. Appropriately contextualized in their time, the Classics have always provided an opportunity for scholars to study a specific cultural period, to retrace the development of the history of education through ideas, theories, doctrines, and even educational practices. (from the Preamble)