Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities (Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

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Description

This innovative study uses one well-documented moment of violence as a kick off point for a wide-ranging examination of the information and interactions of pagan philosophers, Christian ascetics, and bishops from the fourth to the early seventh century. Edward J. Watts reconstructs a revolt that erupted in Alexandria in 486 when a group of students attacked a Christian adolescent who had publicly insulted the scholars’ teachers. Pagan students, Christians affiliated with a local monastery, and the Alexandrian ecclesiastical leaders all cast the incident in a different light, and every group tried with that interpretation to steer subsequent events. Watts, drawing on Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac sources, shows how historical traditions and notions of a shared past shaped the interactions and behavior of these high-profile communities. Connecting oral and written texts to the non-public relationships that gave them that means and to the actions that gave them form, Riot in Alexandria draws new attention to the understudied social and cultural history of the later fifth-century Roman world and on the same time opens a new window on past due antique intellectual life.

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