{"id":1968,"date":"2010-11-09T15:09:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T22:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1968"},"modified":"2010-11-14T23:16:03","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T06:16:03","slug":"agora-its-a-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1968","title":{"rendered":"Agora: It’s a Riot"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally watched <\/a>Agora<\/a> <\/em>on DVD last night. It’s one rioting mob after another interspersed with astronomy lessons.<\/p>\n

You have your Pagan mob, your Jewish mob, your Christian mob(s). A Muslim mob would have fit right in, but had not yet been invented.<\/p>\n

And did Hypatia<\/a> really discover that planetary orbits were elliptical, not perfect Platonic circles? No. It was the sort of issue that would have engaged her interest, however.<\/p>\n

Here is the historical part: There was a Pagan neoplatonic philosopher-teacher in 5th-century Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of an intellectual father, who was murdered by a sort of Christian Taliban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was a Roman prefect (governor) named Orestes<\/a> and a fanatical monk named Ammonius<\/a>. And Mullah<\/span> Bishop Cyril,<\/a> of course.<\/p>\n

And the rest is movie-making. (Military historians will note that the Roman soldiers look more like the 1st century CE than the 5th.)\u00a0 For more on the actual Hyptia\u2014and on the movie version\u2014visit Egregores.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE: See also Kallisti’s review with its “motivational poster.<\/a>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally watched Agora on DVD last night. It’s one rioting mob after another interspersed with astronomy lessons. You have your Pagan mob, your Jewish mob, your Christian mob(s). A Muslim mob would have fit right in, but had not yet been invented. And did Hypatia really discover that planetary orbits were elliptical, not perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[116,36,90],"class_list":["post-1968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-egypt","tag-movies","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-vK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1432,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1432","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":0},"title":"Who Was Hypatia?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"With the build-up among Pagan moviegoers for a North American release of Alelejandro Amenabar's Agora, here is a quick biography of the philosopher Hypatia herself and the religious conflicts that led to her murder by a Christian mob. (She was a bit older at her death than is Rachel Weisz.)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by Peter the Lector brutally murdered Hypatia, one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria. Mary Evans Picture Library \/ Alamy","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.smithsonianmag.com\/images\/Hypatia-murdered-388.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1125,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1125","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":1},"title":"Awaiting a Movie about Hypatia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Hypatia of Alexandria, born c. 355 (?) and murdered by a Christian mob in 415, was a Neoplatonic philosopher and mathematician\u2014math and philosophy were more intertwined then than they are today.Her life and death are part of the plot of Agora, a forthcoming movie directed by Alejandro Amen\u00e1bar. You can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1000,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1000","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry to Fill Space","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Back from a week on the road to a full inbox and a desk covered with bills to pay, I offer a few links for your kind attention:\u00b6 Attention Kemetic reconstructionists: Don't let your temple-builders become anemic.\u00b6 A list of things that offend Muslims. Anyone want to try the Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":821,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=821","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":3},"title":"Blog Valhalla, Polytheism, Books and More","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Yvonne Aburrow's Pagan theologies wiki has what might be the definitive list of active Pagan blogs. I am adding a link on my sidebar.\u00b6 Speaking of which, this blog now appears on BeliefNet's Blog Heaven page again. Thanks to everyone who made a fuss.\u00b6Bedside reading: I started, put aside,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7913,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7913","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":4},"title":"Pentagram Pizza from the Godmother’s Recipe","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 The archaeologist Margaret Murray played a key part in the origins of Wicca \u2014 and she was occasionally a magic-worker herself, by her own admission in her memoir My First Hundred Years (1963). Ethan Doyle White examines her role in a guest post at Adventures in History and Archaeology,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Alaska\"","block_context":{"text":"Alaska","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=alaska"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1736,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1736","url_meta":{"origin":1968,"position":5},"title":"“Agora”: Pagans vs. Christians or Atheists vs. Religious?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Living in the cinematic boonies as I do, I will probably not see Agora until it comes out on DVD. Here is a long dissection of it, from period-incorrect Roman armor to its avoidance of exactly what Hypatia taught: But because the film never bothers to make her neo-Platonist asceticism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1968"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1988,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions\/1988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}