Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Ancient Society and History)

By: Christopher Haas

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Synopsis: “A valuable and much needed contribution to the study of Alexandria and late antiquity” which presents “a vivid and interesting portrait” (Classical Review).A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic TitleSecond only to Rome in the ancient world, Alexandria was home to many of late antiquity’s most brilliant writers, philosophers, and theologians—among them Philo, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, Hypatia, Cyril, and John Philoponus. Now, in Alexandria in Late Antiquity, Christopher Haas places these figures within the physical and social context of Alexandria’s bustling urban milieu.Haas explores the broad avenues and back alleys of Alexandria’s neighborhoods, its suburbs and waterfront, and aspects of material culture that underlay Alexandrian social and intellectual life. Moving between the city’s Jewish, pagan, and Christian blocs, he details the fiercely competitive nature of Alexandrian social dynamics. In contrast to the notion that Alexandria’s diverse communities coexisted peaceably, Haas finds that struggles for social dominance and cultural hegemony often resulted in violence and bloodshed.Haas concludes that Alexandrian society achieved a certain stability and reintegration—a process that resulted in the transformation of Alexandrian civic identity during the crucial centuries between antiquity and the Middle Ages.