User:Pottermak/Sandbox

REVIEW OF AGORA MOVIE:

The portrayal of women as teachers is more or less accurate. Hypatia was not the first female philosopher in the Hellenistic world. Nor was she the last - a generation later Aedisia was another famous pagan Neo-Platonist teacher who worked in Alexandria.

Much ot the film's depiction of pagans Christians and Jews has some historical basis, as Alexandria had long been a city of often violent clashes between factions and religious groups. The movie makes some changes to the history which seem aimed at making the Christians led by Bishop Cyril to be the villains of the story. The film invents an attack on the Jews by Cyril's faction that provokes a Jewish response. Historically, it actually was the Jews that struck "first".

""The movie's first half centres on"" "the Great Library of Alexandria" and depicts Hypatia teaching there. In fact, the Great Library had long since ceased to exist. The movie seems to be trying to depict the "daughter library" in the Serapeum, but evidence shows that this temple was derelict by Hypatia's time and had long since ceased to house any library. The scenes of a Christian mob sacking a library are fiction and there is zero evidence Hypatia had any connection with the Serapeum in any way.--Pottermak (talk) 08:40, 17 September 2014 (UTC)