Invitation: AGIDO/AΓHΔΩ/CSPS lecture (online): Stavros Mitsianis (Crete) and Abigail (Abbie) Costello (Nottingham), “Across the Sea: Empowerment and the Hellenistic Royal Women of Sparta and the Seleucid Kingdom”” | Monday 1st June 2026, 17:00 p.m. (GMT)
You are cordially invited to join us for an AGIDO/AΓHΔΩ talk by Stavros Mitsianis (Crete) and Abigail (Abbie) Costello (Nottingham).
Summary of talk:
This presentation compares the royal women of Sparta and the Seleucid kingdom during the Hellenistic period through the theme of empowerment. To examine empowerment, Stavros and Abbie concentrate on (a) strategic marriage, (b) property, wealth and land ownership, and (c) the role these royal women had within politics. Archaeological material (e.g. inscriptions and coinage) and literary evidence (e.g. Plutarch, Appian and Polybius) are used to consider these aspects, with a particular focus on the lives of Laodike I, Laodike III, Cleopatra Thea, Agiatis and Chilonis. Overall, Stavros and Abbie question whether the empowerment of these royal women was as distant as the sea between them.
Speaker biographies: Stavros Mitsianis completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Crete, and he is currently completing his MA on the Roman war (192-188 B.C.) of Antiochus III the great with emphasis on the treaty of Apamea and its impact on the Seleucid Dynasty until the end of the reign of the Seleucid King Antiochus VII Sidetes (138-129 B.C.). Stavros is joined by Abigail (Abbie) Costello, a first-year doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, who was awarded the Wolfson scholarship. Her MA dissertation focused on Spartan women and their association with textiles during the Archaic and Classical periods to challenge the traditional and feminist perspectives. For her doctoral research, she is diachronically examining the role of the non-royal Spartan women from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period.
This event will be held online through MS Teams. If you would like to attend this talk, please register via this sign-up link: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/ebecad8b-84b2-4d98-a233-0e1cd0d439c1@67bda7ee-fd80-41ef-ac91-358418290a1e
The talk will also be livestreamed via this link: https://vachosradio.gr/ (no registration required for the livestream)
The webinar series is kindly supported by the “Daughters of Penelope – Sparta” Association.
We look forward to seeing you there
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