Post by bjorn on Jul 8, 2013 12:38:56 GMT
Not quite sure if this TV-program has been mentioned earlier - www.channel4.com/programmes/the-ancient-world-with-bettany-hughes/episode-guide/series-2/episode-1
Fortunately, a certain Skybright has a timely comment 25 March 2010 at 21:02:
The programme last night was very interesting. As it happened I had just come back from a preview screening of the film Agora which was set in 4th-5th century Alexandria. Your programme used a considerable number of clips from the film, which was fair enough, since they really depicted well the majesty, atmosphere and cosmopolitan nature of the ancient city. However, I think your programme also leaned too much on the message of the film. This seems to be that of cool, classical and atheistic scientific knowledge, as personified by Hypatia, being destroyed by the irrational forces of religion, and particularly an ascendant Christianity. Fortunately your programme shied away from the film's anachronism of describing Hypatia as an atheist in the modern sense. All sources attest that she was a pagan, and respected some Christian thinkers. However, you did dwell on scenes of the Christian mob destroying scrolls in the Serapeum, as if they had sacked the library of Alexandria. Although the Serapeum had previously been used as a supplement to the Great Library, there is little evidence that many books remained at the time of its destruction in 391. It is an 18th century simplification that blames Theophilus for destroying the library. In fact the library of Alexandria suffered a number of damaging events, listed in a variety of sources, some of which are very ancient. These include the fire caused (accidentally) by Julius Caesar in in 48 BC, according to Plutarch Most of the remaining library was destroyed when the Emperor Aurelian conquered the city after a revolt in the 3rd century and much of the literature in the Serapeum was probably removed to Constantinople. By 378 CE when Ammianus Marcellinus was writing, the library in the Serapeum was spoken of as having been destroyed in the past. The contemporary writers describing the destruction of the Serapeum by Theophilus, which 'Agora' tried to depict did not mention the destruction of any library or scrolls. The programme seems to have gone along with the film-makers in a rather simplistic depiction of the loss of ancient thought and the valuing of scholarship, under the irrational forces of a Christianity seeking temporal power. But in fact, the decline of Alexandria has a great deal more to do with the waning of the Roman Empire."
The part about the alleged (and very Agora-tainted) destruction of the library in 391 is some minutes into this part of the program: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DIb9k17qU
Fortunately, a certain Skybright has a timely comment 25 March 2010 at 21:02:
The programme last night was very interesting. As it happened I had just come back from a preview screening of the film Agora which was set in 4th-5th century Alexandria. Your programme used a considerable number of clips from the film, which was fair enough, since they really depicted well the majesty, atmosphere and cosmopolitan nature of the ancient city. However, I think your programme also leaned too much on the message of the film. This seems to be that of cool, classical and atheistic scientific knowledge, as personified by Hypatia, being destroyed by the irrational forces of religion, and particularly an ascendant Christianity. Fortunately your programme shied away from the film's anachronism of describing Hypatia as an atheist in the modern sense. All sources attest that she was a pagan, and respected some Christian thinkers. However, you did dwell on scenes of the Christian mob destroying scrolls in the Serapeum, as if they had sacked the library of Alexandria. Although the Serapeum had previously been used as a supplement to the Great Library, there is little evidence that many books remained at the time of its destruction in 391. It is an 18th century simplification that blames Theophilus for destroying the library. In fact the library of Alexandria suffered a number of damaging events, listed in a variety of sources, some of which are very ancient. These include the fire caused (accidentally) by Julius Caesar in in 48 BC, according to Plutarch Most of the remaining library was destroyed when the Emperor Aurelian conquered the city after a revolt in the 3rd century and much of the literature in the Serapeum was probably removed to Constantinople. By 378 CE when Ammianus Marcellinus was writing, the library in the Serapeum was spoken of as having been destroyed in the past. The contemporary writers describing the destruction of the Serapeum by Theophilus, which 'Agora' tried to depict did not mention the destruction of any library or scrolls. The programme seems to have gone along with the film-makers in a rather simplistic depiction of the loss of ancient thought and the valuing of scholarship, under the irrational forces of a Christianity seeking temporal power. But in fact, the decline of Alexandria has a great deal more to do with the waning of the Roman Empire."
The part about the alleged (and very Agora-tainted) destruction of the library in 391 is some minutes into this part of the program: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DIb9k17qU