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Agora. Dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2009.
Those of you who were around this journal last summer may remember that I like Hypatia, the 4th century CE Alexandrian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and feminist/freethinking martyr, quite a lot.
Yeah, there is a line, and I am quite happy that John C. Wright sees me as being on the other side of it from him. Happy to be there, happy to stay there.
Anyway, given that personal history with Hypatia and also the fact that she was awesome and more people should know about her and one of the multitudinous historical wrongs I would right if I could is the total loss of all her works, not to mention her murder, I couldn't not go see this movie.
The movie falls into two unequal parts: the first part takes place in 391 CE and involves the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria, which in reality housed a branch of the Library in Alexandria and in the film houses the Library itself. Hypatia's father Theon allows pagan violence against Christians mocking the Olympian-Egyptian gods in the forum, which leads to the pagans barricading themselves inside the Serapeum and its eventual destruction. Just before this, Hypatia rejects the advances of her aristocratic student Orestes, and her slave Davus abandons her and his furtive interest in Greco-Roman philosophy for Christianity, particularly as it's practiced by an order of desert warrior monks called the parabalani.
( We must endeavor to see the world as it actually is. )
So yes, philosopher and feminist martyr. Hypatia = awesome. John C. Wright, eat your heart out.
Those of you who were around this journal last summer may remember that I like Hypatia, the 4th century CE Alexandrian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and feminist/freethinking martyr, quite a lot.
Anyway, given that personal history with Hypatia and also the fact that she was awesome and more people should know about her and one of the multitudinous historical wrongs I would right if I could is the total loss of all her works, not to mention her murder, I couldn't not go see this movie.
The movie falls into two unequal parts: the first part takes place in 391 CE and involves the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria, which in reality housed a branch of the Library in Alexandria and in the film houses the Library itself. Hypatia's father Theon allows pagan violence against Christians mocking the Olympian-Egyptian gods in the forum, which leads to the pagans barricading themselves inside the Serapeum and its eventual destruction. Just before this, Hypatia rejects the advances of her aristocratic student Orestes, and her slave Davus abandons her and his furtive interest in Greco-Roman philosophy for Christianity, particularly as it's practiced by an order of desert warrior monks called the parabalani.
( We must endeavor to see the world as it actually is. )
So yes, philosopher and feminist martyr. Hypatia = awesome. John C. Wright, eat your heart out.