Agora, The Film

[Ludovicus]

"Agora" is playing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I went to see it yesterday. I'm not expert in late Roman Egypt, but I was puzzled by all the Egyptian architecture and art in the Library of Alexandria complex. Wasn't Alexandria founded as a Greek city?

 

 

Otherwise, I found the scenic elements very well done and was enthralled by the satellite images of the delta and the fly-over photography of the city. The Library and city appear from the start a bit damaged and uncared for. I appreciated this realistic touch.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

The Greek did build it but the Ptolemies did use a lot of egyptian sculpture in their buildings (for exemple in front of the Pharos were two colossal statues) and we find a lot of fragments of egyptian architecture into the sea. So I'm not that surprised of the reconstruction shown in the movie. But of course we don't know for sure

[Ursus]

A lot of the architecture from Egypt surviving today is in fact Ptolemaic reconstructions. The Ptolemies were keen on positioning themselves as Egyptian style rulers to keep the good graces of their subjects.

[Ludovicus]

I certainly don't know my Ptolemies. My thanks to the above two posters.

[Onasander]

Between earthquakes dumping a chunk of the city into the sea, and Julius Caesar torching the place, not a whole lot from the ptolemy era in terms of monumental architecture would be expected in the Agora period.

 

By that time, the main library was gone, and the movie is dealing with almost what we would today call a branch library.

 

Alot is made about the Christians burning the books there..... I dont doubt a bookburning, merely the scope. It wasnt that much longer after the muslims invaded, and it took them 6 months to burn all the books in the furnaces of the bath house.... doubt the monks of the desert wrote that many books in the gap between!

 

A further issue is, the export of copies from the library apparently had long since stopped. Obviously, Julius Ceasar is a culprit in the mess for burning down the shipping warehouse for the library, but the average aristocrat also is to blame.... they bought the copies, made private libraries, and failed to maintain these libraries. You can see it in the stupidity of the aristocracy of the later empire, as well as the marred state of many classics from the ancient world we now adore already being noted to exist in a fragmentary state prior to the fires.

 

In otherwords, the library was already a failed concept, destined for destruction. It hurts me to say this as a Cynic Philosopher, having visited some of the best libraries in the US. Romans just didnt like to read.

 

Agora is made out to be a desperate last stand of classical philosophy and paganism vs zealotry and christianity for a predominantly European, agnostic population. Classical philosophy lived on, and neo platonism certainly didnt die out, it was a branch of the Indian Vedantic philosophy, and is still a part of the tradition of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions in the west. What did fall was the last bastion of a sect that never really could cut it with imperial patronage on their own. They pushed their luck, and got stomped out, like countless disfavored philosophical schools in history.

 

Christian church fathers continued to believe in superstitions such as the world being round (unproven) for quite some time after this. It wasnt until the seeds of modern science was laid by Cosmas IndicoIndicopleus that it was discovered, by geometrical theorem, and great oceanic travel between Ethiopia and India, making naturalistic studies and astronomical studies rivaling the scope of Darwins ocean journeys to discovery, that the earth was actually flat, and the sky resembled the lid of a carryout rice box from a chinese restaurant..... and only then did those old pagan superstitions the learned hierarchy of the church start to die out. The era of science and discovery stamped out the quaint beliefs of the ancient world, and the middle ages was better for it.

 

Yes, its true, it went counter-intuitively just like that. Its something to consider regarding the stereotypical certainty we have of modern knowledge over that of a mere few centuries before. Some aspects, such as computers and programming, we are good at, other aspects, its debatable...... but its human nature to be barrow minded and side with whatever faction gives us the most honey now. And in many parts of the world, propaganda says its science over 'religion', though just what that means cant ever really be scrutinized without jeopardizing the duality. Youll find both sides share unexpected faults and short commings, as well as misplaced blind faith in various things.

 

Agora is a good movie, its set in a period and deals with a difficult subject, but it needs to be remembered its biased to fulfill the agenda of a european secularist movement, and picked sides in moving the audience to support it. This isn't too different from the TV show Chanakya, used to target Alexander the Great, who was a English Speaking Monotheist in the series, or Queen Seon Duk, clearly denouncing the modern DPRK's economic strategy over the souths in a ancient setting. The prejudice against the southland in Romance of the Three Kingdoms has long been known, and has shifted in different political eras.

 

Agora is part of that tradition..... its a historical drama burden by modern ideological baggage in order to corner a particular modern audience looking for something to relate too. For the Dutch, English spiritual agnostics watching.Agora teary eyed, thinking it was the end of the world, rest assured, that world was already long dead before the library was retaken by the egyptian mob. They had centuries to copy every book and disperse them everywhere. Just the pagan nobility never seemed to care. It was the monks who did, or the Babylonian Arabs, or Charlemagne. People just didnt care, be they pagan or christian for the most part. Library fetishes are very much a modern phenomena, one that peaked in the 20th century. Dont expect a whole lot from the ancient world here.