Agora: Hypatia, a martyr for philosophy

I managed to catch the Anglo-Spanish film Agora and an enjoyable romp it is too. The film is set in fourth century Roman/Byzantine Alexandria and purports to tell the story of the legendary philosopher Hypatia – neoplatonist, proto-feminist, Enlightenment heroine, described by her admirers as the 'last of the Hellenes' and as having 'the mind of Plato and the body of Aphrodite', who was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians as the sect gained the upper hand over Greek religion and the Greek way of life.

Indeed, the film – no doubt to make a point about contemporary religious fanaticism – adopts wholesale the version of events that has Hypatia as a martyr for reason and philosophy, a victim of religious dogmatism and bigotry, and portrays the hateful Christians as a barbaric mob of class warriors and misogynists and Christianity as an ignorant, anti-Greek doctrine; but the crudeness of its legitimate message aside, the film is not bad at all.