"City Square", formerly known as Agora. The word comes from the Greek Ἀγορά, which means a public meeting area in the center of an ancient Greek city-state. After entering English, it is not wrong to translate into "square". But rashly using it as a movie title always feels a bit misleading. At first glance, I thought it was going to be Plaza or Square in a modern city. There is always a sense of "Prague Square" or "Tiananmen Square".
Since the original title is the city-state square, it naturally implies the age—Greek or Hellenistic period. The film tells the background of Alexandria during the Hellenistic period under the rule of the Roman Empire. Some classmates said, you are wrong, it is the age of the Roman Empire, why is it still Hellenistic? In fact, yes, politically speaking, the Ptolemaic Egypt has long since turned into smoke, but the Hellenization of speaking Greek and learning Greek culture is not over yet. And this film just reflects the scene of the afterglow of the Hellenistic era.
The protagonist Hypatia is a famous female mathematician in the history of science. Of course, she calls herself a philosopher in the film, because at that time there was no physics, only natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics and metaphysics, which are also the category of philosophy. Her research on conic sections is famous in history, but what else she did, the author is not very clear. Baidu Encyclopedia introduces the female philosopher as follows:
Hypatia is the daughter of Theon, the last researcher at the Museum of Alexandria, both her father and her mentor. Hypatia did not teach at the Alexandria Museum, but taught at her own home. Around 400 AD, Hypatia became the leader of the Platonic school in Alexandria, teaching mathematics and philosophy, and among her students were many well-known Christians. No portrait of Hypatia survived, but in the imagination of nineteenth-century writers and artists, she had the beauty of the goddess Athena.
In 391, Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, destroyed some of the pagan centers of faith in the city, possibly including the Museum of Alexandria, and determined to include the Temple of Serapeum (a temple dedicated to Egyptian worship). Serapis, the night god, is also a sub-library of the Great Library of Alexandria). In the same year, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I issued a ban on all types of pagan worship, after which Christians throughout the Roman Empire threw themselves into the fight against paganism and began to destroy all forms of Christianization. pagan churches - although this phenomenon was already in vogue even before the ban.
The most legendary story about the female philosopher is, of course, her death. There are various rumors about how she was killed and dismembered, and readers who are interested in it can search the Internet. In short, there is always no shortage of such gossip news. But in any case, it will not be the kind of death in the film. (This reminds me of the depiction of Shang Yang's death at the end of "The Great Qin Empire". They all interpreted the extremely tragic death into a romantic unbearable, the goddess of literature and art, you white liar)
I was incited by Mr. Wu Guosheng to watch this film at first, and somehow Agora was mentioned in class. I heard that it was related to the history of science, so I came to watch it. From this point of view, I have to say that I am disappointed. Not to mention that the screenwriter let Hypatia come up with the divine setting of elliptical orbits of celestial bodies more than 1,200 years earlier than Kepler, nor that the goddess can come up with this shocking astronomical conclusion based on philosophical discussions and appearance alone. It is really embarrassing to look at the proportion and role of science in the film.
Science and the vastness of the starry sky are but a beautiful and fragile embellishment in the face of the shocking portrayals of religion, politics and mass movements. That's it.
For a man with a cosmic heart and a scientific mind, this position is clearly unacceptable. But protests are useless. Since the director has finished filming, no matter how dissatisfied he is, he has no choice but to go to the sci-fi film to make up for it. Here, I will not talk about the little bit of common sense in the history of science (such as the Ptolemaic system, epicycles, heliocentric theory, Aristarch, etc.), but I want to talk about the religious and political issues involved in this film. ——This is probably where most people are confused after reading it: Don’t look at the fact that Christianity is now at the top of the world’s cultural chain, claiming to be the protector of culture, but early Christianity turned out to be, that is, TMD is so murderous and hard to describe. ? (righteous speech)
Don't worry, take your time, take a bite first, and then calm down.
In fact, if you read a little more history, you will know that from ancient times to the present, such things as mass movements have been a must-have for almost all politically conscious ideologies. The evil of the Christians in the movie is very powerful, and of course the Jews who become the latter among the winners and losers (they always lose in terms of force and politics), but the evil against the Greeks (or Hellenistic citizens) is not. Selectively ignored. In fact, the person who is best at speaking in the square, and who can best describe the white as black and the black as white, is obviously the founder of public speaking, the Greeks. Have you forgotten how Socrates was sentenced to death by the people of Athens? Forget how ancient Greek democracy was denounced by Aristotle as the source of tyranny?
Of course, different cultures have different ways of exercising. Compared with the original Hebrew "stoning", the Greek civil trial and "exile law" still seem too aristocratic and cunning. Indeed, what appears to be an ideological tyranny is actually—here I have to borrow the words of the great God of Marx—class struggle. Due to well-known reasons, the term class struggle is now a bit subtle, and many people are disgusted, some people avoid it, and many people regard it as a joke. But this must not hide one thing: the struggle between aristocratic culture and commoner culture has always been the main thread of political and cultural evolution since ancient times.
When the director explained the struggle between Christianity and polytheism in Alexandria, he seemed to ignore an important fact, that most Christians were slaves at the bottom, while polytheism was more of a more aristocratic religion. (There are also many hints in the film, such as the transformation of the slave Davus, from ignorance to joining the army of jihadists. Some people say that they do not understand, but it actually implies his sensitivity and inferiority to his class/class identity. But obviously, the film is only So far) The religious struggle in Hellenistic Alexandria was only a shell on the surface, but it was an instigated "class struggle".
In any era, the slogan of class struggle is beautiful. "The princes and generals, I would rather have seeds." "The journey of the road is also the public." "Everywhere is uneven, and no one is full of warmth." "Fight the local tyrants and divide the land." "Everyone is free and equal. "And so on, until now, remains the most rousing declaration in human history, and which still occupies the moral high ground. However, after thousands of years, we will find that Utopia has never been realized, but behind each exciting slogan, blood is floating, corpses are piled up into mountains, the earth is turned upside down, and the dynasty is changed. Many facts just changed a set of concepts, and then reappeared in a grand manner. "In the name of the father", I don't know how many black things have been washed into white, and how many solid things have disappeared.
At the same time, each fixed cultural soil or ideological form is by no means static, but must change as it gains or loses power. In the film, Christianity and mob politics are seamlessly combined, but it does not hinder the Renaissance after the Middle Ages. Ecclesiasticalism is the spokesman for the nobility; Christianity in today's world has been crowned as the global religion with the expansion of the European Empire era and the era of great maritime colonization. , enjoying its glory, while Islam, which is also a Semitic religion, has replaced the position of Christianity in the Hellenistic era, becoming a cultural form linked to mass movements, terrorism, and populist politics; When the bourgeoisie was upstart, the surging communism embraced the "slaves" of the industrial age, the working class, and led to a new round of class struggle.
Having said that, I have to borrow a Marxist saying that every ideology serves the people they represent - in any case, this is the truth.
Going back to the film, it wouldn't be surprising if the Christians at the time had publicly abused Hypatia and brutally murdered her. It may be difficult for contemporary Christians to accept this reality. After all, from time to time, today's extravagant and civilized Christianity is not the same as the early Christianity involved in mass movements. The brutality shown in the film comes not so much from religion or politics, but from the mass movement of gods blocking and killing gods and Buddhas.
Regarding the mass movement, there is a perennial call sign author "Wang Taotao" on Zhihu and WeChat who devoted himself to this matter, and interested parties can search for them on the Internet. What I want to mention here is not admiration, but vigilance. Generally speaking, the admiration and emphasis on mass movements can easily be linked to less favorable words such as brainwashing, rabble, thick black studies, and Machiavellianism. This does reflect the "original sin" of the mass movement to a certain extent. But I have to admit that, similar to the vanity of eliminating "class differences", it is almost impossible to deny the existence of "rabble people". From the economic laws alone, we can know that Jesus did not just call the people "lambs". As I said - whether it is a flock of sheep or a group of dogs, the more closely connected people are, the more porridge they are.
The real difficulty is independent thinking, independent personality, and a cold-eyed sobriety amid the excitement.
In the age of cold weapons, the square was such a place to "cook porridge". Once the anger and hatred come from the crowd, the axe, the sword and the gun collide with each other, and the fight is really a number and aura. As you can see in the film, even the Governor-General with his elite soldiers, it is very difficult to escape from a mob. With the development of modern technology, if gun control is implemented again, the danger of mobs will be greatly reduced, but it is not without. What has changed is the way of struggle, what has not changed is the existence of classes and the difficulty of reconciling contradictions. In this sense, Agora's practical significance still exists - the square of this Hellenistic city-state is more like a metaphor, a tragedy told over and over again, telling us the fragility of the seemingly strong foundations of civilization: noble wisdom and culture The bottom line of survival is like a huge wave, which one is more powerful, philosophy and scepter, and which one is more worthy of our pursuit, is still an unsolved mystery to this day.
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