- What is the theme of Agora? - To me, its a difficult question.

I always say its a story of a woman, a civilization, and a planet. I tried to see the earth in perspective. I tried to look at the earth as smallas small as possible Alejandro Amenabar on Agora, in interview at wwwsite http://www.webcitation.org/5qKVt2Mdc

Since 2005, two Hypatia novels, one of which has been re-released under new title in 2010. Following Maria Dzielskas 1996 invaluable study Hypatia of Alexandria , since 2000 four book-length studies on Hypatias life and thought. 2010 re-release of Charles Kingsleys nineteenth century classic Hypatia, or New Foes With an Old Face including a To Kindle edition (!) Feminist hero? Enlightenment martyr (Voltaire et al)? Last of the Athenians/pagans/classical philosophers? Gibbon on Hypatia, her gorgeous train of horses, Cyrils jealous eye, and indelible crimethe decline and fall of the classical world

Mathematical commentaries: Euclid, Diophantus, Apollonius Conics (to which well return below) Astronomical commentaries: Ptolemys Almagest, perhaps also The Handy Tables. Her sophia: ... such attainments in literature and science as to surpass all the philosophers of her time (Socrates Scholastius, c. 450 CE) Her sophrosyne: articulate and eloquent in speaking as she was prudent and civil in her deeds. (loc cit.) Her trasn-religious urbanity: students from amongst pagans, Jews, Christians, as in Agora, and leading citizens: Orestes (to be the prefect of Alexandria) and Synesius, to be a bishop. Adored by her students: Palladus (you who are yourself the beauty of reasoning) and Synesius (I account you the only good thing that remains inviolate, along with virtue Letter 81; she who legitimately presides over the mysteries of philosophy. Letter 137)

East and West; Europe and Africa; paganism and monotheism; Christianity and Judaism free inquiry and dogmatic faith? Athens and Jerusalem (Shestov, Levinas,Leo Strauss & his students)? The eclipse of paganism, the rise of Christianity: in the decades preceding the films action (391 and then 412-415 C. E.), the Emperor Julian had tried and failed to arrest the great cultural shift from paganism to Christendom, which a Christian minister in the film warns Hypatia is a matter of time (Agora, scene 16 [1:23:55-1:24:00]). Interesting times + Hypatias virtues + paucity of direct evidence = space and cause for the proliferation of different Hypatias, esp. in a time like ours which strikingly resembles the religious diversity and conflicts of late C4 CE Alexandria.

Two poles or equants of our concern: What is philosophy? For the ancients, a way of life, not a profession What can the effects of the scientific revolution in natural philosophy be on such a notion of philosophy? Carried through by recourse to the figure of Hypatia in Agora, a modern depiction of an ancient, female sophos or sage.

The Ptolemaic view (scenes 1 and 3, in Hypatias Academy)

Retrogression (problem) and epicycles (the Ptolemaic way of saving appearances, and the commitment to circular motionor else to posit that the earth is accentric relative to the suns orbit, see Agora 1:06:30 [not to have a centre breaks my heart, Aspasias])

Aristarchus and Copernicus simpler solutionheliocentrism, not geocentrism

But heliocentrism conflicts with our sense that the earth we walk on is the most stable down to earth thing that could be! The ship experiment, showing relativity of motion (its external, indifferent character, rather than the Aristotelian idea that the way something tends to move belongs to its specific nature). Agora scene 12 [1:01:30-1:03:30],

The earth moves around the sun = the earth is a heavenly body or planet itself The Aristotelian objection that movement down here is imperfect, yet surely the planets move in perfect spheres. The filth and mire of the world, Montaigne in the final decades of the 16th century, bespeaks its place as the worst, the lowest, the most lifeless part of the universe, the bottom storey of the house Agora 1:23:20, the argument in the mouth of prefect Orestes, look around you, death and destruction. If the stars move in a circle, why would they share their perfection with us? Amenabars Hypatia, faced with the contradiction, does not defend the perfection of the heavens, but brings them down to earth, anticipating the 17th century break with the ancient conception, i.e. possibility of celestial physics or even mechanics(!). ie. Perhaps they do not move in spheres, as their different brightnesses during retrogression would imply ...

The Conics of Apollonius on which Hypatia wrote commentary) show ... thatscandalously--the sphere is not perfect and sui generis. It can be generated as one of a series of four shapes made by slicing a cone at different angles ... (Agora 1:37:10 -1:38:10)

Perhaps then epicycles can be avoided by supposing that planets move around the earth, and the earth the sunbut not in spheres. Rather in ellipses ... This implies that orbits have not one centre, but two equants ... [Agora 1:38:10-ff.]

Is this not a simply antiChristian film? Against political reductionism: responding to art as wholly reducible to political content Plus: Amenabars Hypatia as surely like Christ, with the slave boy Davus as like Peter, betraying her and then repenting from shame Two shaping allegorised thoughts: An ellipse has two centres, not oneso too the film is an argument against extremism, not Christianity, Judaism, or any one tradition; not Athens without Jeruselem; nor men solely, but women also. And ...

Euclids first koinia ennoia: if two things are equal to a third, then they are equal to each other. The three, unequal statements of Euclids first common notion in the film: Hypatias to Orestes and Synesius; Orestes to Christians and Jews; and Synesius false application of it to Hypatia, in front of Orestesin order to try to convert Hypatia from pagan philosophy

as Euclids common notion suggests, so too, before the vast greatness of the cosmos, Christians and pagans, Christians and Jews, are equal to each other i.e. The hero of the film is this greater, third (not fifth or ethereal!) element: the vastness of the cosmos itself Amenabar: I was on a boat in Malta in 2004, and for the first time I saw the Milky Way, and I was overwhelmed ... I wanted to convey this. The nine views from above, at start and end, and each great moment of violence and passion between these two poles.

The ancient view of philosophy as an ethical pursuit and way of living (bios)hence the relevance of biographies, memorabilia. The passions as partial, closed and distorting perspectives on the world Spiritual exercises to combat the passions, and reshape the prokoptas (students) thinking The example of the cloth with menstrual blood in Agora as a spiritual exercise Hypatias sophrosyne reconsidered: a philosophical comportment

Cf. P.Hadot, The View from Above in Philosophy as a Way of Life. Lady Philosophy to Boethius in Consolations II.7:

'Yes,' said she, '... there is one thing which can attract minds, which, though by nature excelling, yet are not led by perfection to the furthest bounds of virtue; and that thing is the love of fame and reputation for deserving well of one's country. Think then thus upon it, and see that it is but a slight thing of no weight. As you have learnt from astronomers' showing, the whole circumference of the earth is but as a point compared with the size of the heavens. That is, if you compare the earth with the circle of the universe, it must be reckoned as of no size at all. And of this tiny portion of the universe there is but a fourth part, as you have learnt from the demonstration of Ptolemaeus [Ptolemy], which is inhabited by living beings known to us. If from this fourth part you imagine subtracted all that is covered by sea and marsh, and all the vast regions of thirsty desert, you will find but the narrowest space left for human habitation. And do you think of setting forth your fame and publishing your name in this space, which is but as a point within another point so closely circumscribed? And what size or magnificence can fame have which is shut in by such close and narrow bounds? ...

i.e. Smarten up!

The aim of repeatedly recalling to mind the view to attain to greatness of soul, and in all schools its function was to teach people to despise human affairs and to achieve inner peace. (Hadot 242-243) Cf. Philo of Alexandria, on philosophy and the view from above: As their goal is a life of peace and serenity, [the philosophers] contemplate nature and everything found within her: they attentively explore the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, and every nature found therein. In thought, they accompany the moon, the sun, and the rotations of the other stars, whether fixed or wandering. Their bodies remain on earth, but they give wings to their souls, so that, rising into the ether, they may observe the powers which dwell there, as is fitting for those who have truly become citizens of the world ... (at Hadot 243-244)

Amenabar on Agora as political and suprapolitical film:

The moviewhat it is saying is that every time you defend your ideas by using arms, by killing people, then you become [like] an insect and that happened with the Jews, that happened with the Christians and that happened with the Pagans. It's happening nowadays with fundamentalism... any kind of fundamentalism ... If you film alot of people from above and speed it up, we look like ants. I wanted to show that perspective so people would realise were nothing but tiny creatures ...

Yes and, at the same time, ... greatyou see these highly developed people as small as ants [at the same time] knowing so much about the universe. So the movie shows man at his best and at his worst.

The ethical import of the view from above does not presuppose the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, or any system with particular or even general pronoia/providence Ancient atomism and the infinite universe in Lucretius De Rerum Natura a double thought: humans as both tiny in the cosmic perspective, and great enough to realise thisand perhaps therefore to temper their less noble passions Agora as an argument for the ethical import of scientific, disenchanted culture in engendering enlightened or philosophic humility.

The film Agora is about: ... [a sense] mostly [of] having travelled to the stars ... and if people dont like the film, I hope at least that it makes them want to climb a mountain one day, or go to the desert or the sea, and look at the starsbecause we cant see them from the city. And I think that at least once in our lives, we should look at the sky around us and see where we are, because it is really amazing ...