Lionel Casson

Lionel Casson (July 22, 1914 – July 18, 2009) was a classical archaeologist, professor emeritus at New York University, and a specialist in maritime history. He earned his B.A. in 1934 at New York University, and in 1936 became an assistant professor. He later earned his Ph.D. there during 1939. In 2005 he was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America Gold Medal.

Early years He was born Lionel I. Cohen on July 22, 1914, in Brooklyn, and later changed his last name to "Casson". As a teenager he owned a sailboat that he would use on Long Island Sound. He attended New York University for all of his collegiate studies, earning a bachelor's degree there in 1934, a master's in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1939 and was employed at NYU as an instructor. He served as an officer of the United States Navy during World War II, responsible for the interrogation of prisoners of war.

After completing his military service, Casson returned to NYU, where he served as a professor of classics from 1961 to 1979. The author of 23 books on maritime history and classic literature, Casson used ancient material ranging from Demosthenes's speeches and works by Thucydides to cargo manifests and archeological studies of ancient shipwrecks and the contents of the amphorae they carried to develop a framework for the development of shipbuilding, maritime trade routes and naval warfare in the ancient world.

His 1959 book The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times told how civilizations along the Mediterranean Sea began by having their ships travel along the coast and then advanced to voyages across the sea, far from the sight of shore. Commerce and military ventures resulted in journeys to such remote locales as India with more specialized crafts designed that expanded the original flat-bottomed boats into vessels such as the trireme propelled by hundreds of oarsmen to speeds of seven knots by its 170 oars. Illustrated History of Ships and Boats, published by Doubleday in 1964, provided a history of boats from ancient craft carved from wood or made from animal skins up to the day's most modern nuclear submarines. In the book, Casson puts Homer at the top of a most-popular author list, "with the Iliad favored over the Odyssey" on his best-seller list.

He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders.

Casson died of pneumonia in Manhattan at age 94 on July 18, 2009. He was survived by his wife, the former Julia Michelman, as well as two daughters and two grandchildren.