THE LAWS OF THE CHRISTIAN ROMAN EMPERORS

Helen   Friday, 26 June 2020

This is a most remarkable collection of texts, for which I am very grateful. My only suggestion concerns the still from the film Agora. This film is historically wildly inaccurate in many ways, but most pertinent here is the fact that, though the Serapeum was built as a sort of "daughter" library to the main library, it was no longer used for that purpose at the time of its destruction. It is also not clear how it ended up being destroyed. A Christian mob has been blamed by Eunapius, but other accounts, including letters to and from Theodosius, suggest it was demolished after gangs of pagans had tortured and murdered Christians in it. The pagans were pardoned, but all pagan images were to be destroyed.