Presented as part of the Centre for Classical Studies Seminar Series

The final battle of the Peloponnesian War was at Aigospotamoi on the coast of the Hellespont in 405 BC, where the Spartan Lysandros managed to destroy the last remaining Athenian fleet. Nobody can doubt the decisive nature of this action, but a recent visit to the scene suggested to me some problems in the traditional account. And indeed it would be no surprise if such drastic loss in such desperate times might have sparked some less than completely factual explanations of what went wrong.

Dr Peter Londey holds degrees in ancient history from the University of New England and Monash University. He has worked previously both in Classics and as a historian at the Australian War Memoria, where he wrote Other people's wars: a history of Australian peacekeeping (2004). He is one of the team writing Australia's Official History of Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War operations. He also works on the life of George Gittoes; Delphoi and central Greece; and the Gallipoli peninsula in antiquity.