Film "Agora" Profiles Female Mathematician and Pagan Martyr Hypatia

The new film "Agora" starring Rachel Weisz as 4th century CE female scholar, Hypatia, sounds almost like the antithesis of Ben Hur.

"The heart of the film is Hypatia (Rachel Weisz in an unfaltering performance), the fourth century AD philosopher and teacher who lived in Alexandria during the Roman Empire. Married only to her unquenchable intellect and passion for mathematics and astronomy, she is loved by two men: her slave, Davus (Max Minghella), and her student, Orestes (Oscar Isaac).

Politics in the film are weakest during the overtly political speeches and monologues, and best captured in the details. Like many, Davus seeks not spiritual salvation in the Christian uprising but freedom from slavery, despite the bloodshed. His first attempt at prayer is brilliant: Unable to remember the Lord's Prayer, he quickly falls into a mantra to God to keep Hypatia away from Orestes. For his part, Orestes will renounce paganism and convert to Christianity during his rise in Roman politics." - More: Reuter

Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last known mathematician associated with the museum of Alexandria. She traveled to both Athens and Italy to study, before becoming head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in approximately 400 AD . According to the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia the Suda, she worked as teacher of philosophy, teaching the works of Plato and Aristotle. - More: Wikipedia

"Hypatia corresponded with and hosted scholars from others cities. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, was one of her correspondents and he visited her frequently. Hypatia was a popular lecturer, drawing students from many parts of the empire.

From the little historical information about Hypatia that survives, it appears that she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope, with Synesius of Greece, who was her student and later colleague.

Hypatia dressed in the clothing of a scholar or teacher, rather than in women's clothing. She moved about freely, driving her own chariot, contrary to the norm for women's public behavior. She exerted considerable political influence in the city."

"...[The local Christian bishop Cyril incited] a mob led by fanatical Christian monks in 415 to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. They dragged her from her chariot and, according to accounts from that time, stripped her, killed her, stripped her flesh from her bones, scattered her body parts through the streets, and burned some remaining parts of her body in the library of Caesareum." - More: About.com

So much for compassion and tolerance!

Update: 7/7/09: Agora trailer has been released. Apparently, the film is set to premiere in December!

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Bulgaria Archeologists Unearth 1900-Year-Old Thracian Chariot

"A team of Bulgarian archeologists has discovered a unique, fully preserved four-wheeled Thracian chariot, which is more than 1900 years old.

The discovery was made close to the village of Borisovo, Yambol District in southeast Bulgaria by a team of the Archeological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The expedition is led by the leading Bulgarian archeologist Daniela Agre. The chariot is unique because it is the only one found in Bulgaria in the very way the ancient Thracians laid it in the tomb of a wealthy aristocrat.

It also has a very complicated construction, and all artifacts found in its trunk are fully preserved including pottery and glass vessels.

The skeletons of two horses drawing the chariot and a dog, who were murdered ritually during the funeral 1900 years ago are also fully preserved. The horse bow of the chariot has a small metal panther on its top, which resembles the symbol of the Jaguar automobile.

According to Daniela Agre, the chariot dates back to the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan, when Thrace was already a Roman province but many Thracian aristocrats had preserved their privileges and were serving in parts of the Roman army.

She explained there was a major north-south Thracian road in what is today southeast Bulgaria, and that the whole region was extremely rich in invaluable archeology objects." If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!

Topographical Map of Ancient Palmyra Planned

"Although a settlement dating back to the second millennium BC has
already been identified as Palmyra, a new settlement was evidently
established at another site in the third century BC and was later
abandoned in the Roman period. While we know a great deal about the
later Roman city, the Hellenistic settlement of Palmyra has never been
investigated," explains Project Manager Prof. Andreas Schmidt-Colinet
from the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna.
"The current investigation gives us a unique opportunity to analyse the
transition from the Hellenistic period to the time of the Roman Empire
by studying the settlement structures that have been uncovered here over
a wide area."

Chronology of the Settlement & Trade Routes

In view of the large size of the area, the project has thus far focussed
on small sections of the ancient urban settlement structures. This work
is already yielding results, particularly as regards the chronology of
the individual phases of construction and the trade and commercial
background of the Hellenistic "Sand City". The investigations show that
building activities were divided across various major phases stretching
from the third century B.C. to the end of the third century A.D. This
indicates that the site could have fallen out of use around the time
when the city was conquered by the Roman emperor Aurelian or around the
construction of the wall under the emperor Diocletian.

Pottery finds are particularly important for helping to determine the
trade routes used by the citizens of Palmyra. Overall, the
archaeologists have found far larger amounts of local domestic pottery
than imported ceramic goods from other areas.
Nevertheless, amphorae from Rhodes - large clay containers used to
transport wine - and goods imported from Africa show that Palmyra had
connections with far flung corners of the world from the late
Hellenistic period until the late Roman period. Prof. Schmidt-Colinet
comments on the team's discoveries: "Our pottery finds reveal a
continuous progression of Hellenistic-Roman ceramics over a period of
600 years. What's more, we now have the first ever archaeological
evidence for a Hellenistic settlement with continuous habitation over
six centuries extending into the Roman period."

Looking to the future, the archaeologists aim to completely uncover a
monumental courtyard-type structure at the centre of the Hellenistic
settlement that has close parallels with Syrian caravan structures.
However, the team is not just hoping to reveal how or why the individual
rooms were built, it also wants to determine the overall importance of
the structure for the city of Palmyra. At the end of the project, the
findings from the excavations, which have been made possible by the FWF,
will be combined with aerial photographs and structures that are still
visible above ground to provide a topographical map of Palmyra." If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!

Ancient Ecoscience of the Mediterranean Basin

A good summary article about the ecological damage incurred in the Mediterranean Basin in ancient times:

"...The ancient Greeks took an essentially scientific view of their environment, and some Grecian writers saw that their land was deteriorating under human stewardship. Four centuries before Christ, Plato described Attica (the region around Athens), saying: "What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left." The description is even more apt today.

The Romans, in contrast, took a strictly utilitarian view of their environment: The land was there to be exploited by Homo Sapiens . The trend toward deforestation started in Greece and spread—during the Roman Empire—from the hills of Galilee in Palestine and the Taurus Mountains of Turkey in the east, to the mountains of Spain in the west. Various features of the Roman agricultural economy greatly encouraged this process . . . and their society had no counterbalancing conservation ethic.

Both the Egyptians and Greeks were determined hunters. They forced many larger animals (such as the lions in upper Egypt and in Greece) to extinction. But the Roman Empire had a far greater destructive impact on the fauna of the ancient world than did its predecessors. Not only were animals hunted for skins, feathers, and ivory . . . but multitudes were captured for use in "games".

Huge numbers of beasts were pitted against each other (and against human beings) in lethal combats. Titus, for example, had some 9,000 wild animals slaughtered during the three months' dedication of the Colosseum, and Trajan's conquest of Dacia (modern Romania) was celebrated by games in which 11,000 beasts were killed. When one considers that tens or even hundreds of lions, leopards, rhinos, buffalos, and so on must have died—or been killed—in transport or captivity for every one that lived to entertain the citizens, the probable scale of the Roman impact on wildlife staggers the imagination.

The Romans hit hard at their environment . . . but it struck back! Deforestation, the depletion of soils, and the exhaustion of mines were all factors in the fall of Rome's Empire. The Romans didn't finish the job, however. The last great plundering of Mediterranean forest resources occurred in the late Middle Ages, when the demand for timber for fuel and shipbuilding was very great. As a result, there's very little first-growth sclerophyllous forest left in the Mediterranean basin today . . . the best examples being in the Camargue of southern France and on the peninsula of Mt. Athos in Greece (protected by the famous monastery there)..." If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!