Department of Classics and Ancient History, Durham University
Special invited lecture by Prof Sam Lieu FBA: ‘The Battle of Aigospotamoi (405 BCE) – Historiography versus Topography’
Wednesday 13th May 5-6pm
Ritson Room, 38 North Bailey, Durham.
Summary: The Battle of Aigospotamoi (405 BCE) was the final and decisive battle of the Peloponnesian War. An amphibious engagement, it was fought and won by the Spartans in the narrow confines of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and on a long strand on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The exact location of the site of the battle, crucial to our interpretation of the events as recorded in the Classical sources, remains heavily contested by scholars. The lecture utilizes both Classical and Byzantine sources and draws on a series of topographical studies made by the lecturer to help locate the site of the battle and will advance a new hypothesis that will challenge the way in which the Classical sources on the battle have traditionally been interpreted.
Biography: Emeritus Professor Samuel N.C. Lieu is Honorary President of the International Union of Academies (President 2017-2021) and a Bye Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. Until 2016 he was Inaugural Distinguished Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and until 1996, Professor of Ancient History and Classical Civilization at Warwick University, UK. He is director of the UNESCO sponsored Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum project and has published extensively on the history of Manichaeism and of Eastern Manichaean Texts. He has also published on the Emperor Julian and Medieval lives of Constantine as well on the history of the Dardanelles (Hellespont) in the Byzantine period. In 2021 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and Member of the Academia Europaea in 2022.
Full details here.
If you plan to attend, please notify arlene.v.holmes-henderson@durham.ac.uk by Friday 8th May 2026.
Note: this is not a Classical Association event – please contact the organisers directly with any enquiries.