History ArtisticLicenseHistory / Agora

* Hypatia's murder was a bit more spectacular in real life, as she was dragged out of her chariot, not caught while walking around.

* Alexandria's portrayal in the film is an incredible work of recreation, but its architecture and decoration is deeply [[TheCoconutEffect Ancient Egyptian]] despite the time setting being the Late Roman Empire and the city being founded by Macedonian Greeks in the first place. Some of this was because RealLifeWritesThePlot, though: director Aménabar had originally conceived a more accurate setting but production went over budget and he was forced to use an already built Egyptian design. The Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD rather than the fifth for the same reason.
* The real Serapeum was certainly considered the spiritual sucessor to the burned Great Library, and it is possible, if not probable, that it carried scrolls rescued from the latter at some point, with chroniclers like Orosius confirming it had books that the Christians sacked. However [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Serapeum contemporary sources]] suggest the building's library was nothing impressive at the time of its destruction, possibly implying many of the books had been moved to other places over the years, so the resultant loss of knowledge was likely not as extreme and tragical as portrayed in the film.

* In real life, Hypatia was a believer of Neoplatonism, a school of thought of a kind we would call religious today, that considered philosophy as just a way to connect with the divine. In the film, she is still officially such, as she teaches in a Platonic school, but her self-declared beliefs sound much more like scientifical atheism, a change presumably done so the faith vs. science controversy that composes the film's theme will be clearer. This, as mentioned above, allowes her to use empirical reasoning, which in real life was contrary to her school of thinking.

* In real life, Hypatia's rejection of a suitor via menstrual rags was even nastier than portrayed in ''Agora'': she did not use it to merely dispel his idealization of her, but to condemn his sexuality altogether. The Hypatia from the film doesn't seem to condemn sex by itself, given the mentioned modification, and even has a scene lamenting she has never known the topic of love. Also, the film interprets the suitor was no other than Orestes, which would have been unlikely not to be mentioned in the chronicles due to the notoriety of the incident.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani forcing a Pagan priest to burn alive. In real life, this kind of incidents happened with some frequency, but the cause of the battle was another, and a more spectacular one: it started when some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.

* In the film, the enmity between Orestes and Cyril starts due to Hypatia's growing unpopularity among the Christians, which drives Cyril to attack her and Orestes to protect her in turn. In real life, their clash had nothing to do with Hypatia at first, as it came actually from their different stances towards the Jews: Orestes was protective of them, even ordering the execution of a Christian named Hierax who had been causing trouble against their community, while Cyril was hostile, constanty preaching against the Jews and accusing them of attacks on Christians. It was later when Cyril and his allies started targeting Hypatia, among rumors that she was the brain behind Orestes' actions.

* Alexandria's portrayal is the film is an incredible work of recreation, but it has been noted that its architecture is deeply Egyptian in style and completely covered in ancient Egytian artwork, despite the city was founded by Greeks and Macedonians in real life. This particular deviation happened because RealLifeWritesThePlot, though: director Aménabar had originally conceived a city much more closer to History, with plenty of Hellenistic Greek architecture, but production got overbudgeted at this point and he was forced to choose a cheaper, preexistent Egyptian design in order not to blow things out. This also led to the film's Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD, when the film is actually set in the fourth century AD.

* The ship used by Hypatia to test her theories has ratlines, which were invented centuries later.

* In the film, set on 5th century, Hypatia is a Neoplatonist teacher that draws heavily from an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism empiricist]] mindset in order to conduct her experiments. However, while proto-empiricism was already around at the time in association to schools like Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, Neoplatonism was [[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-28/#feature completely opposed]] to it. Hypatia and her colleagues were staunch rationalists that believed they could uncover the mysteries of the universe by reasoning alone. Historically, moreover, ''scientifical'' empiricism came around '''11th century''' by Avicenna's hand, and its usage in astronomy was not applied until Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler did it in the 16th century of all times. Had the historical Hypatia performed the same experiment of dropping a grain sack on a moving boat, she would have been more likely to attribute this to the action of the Neoplatonist divinity than to the possibility that it meant the Earth was moving around the Sun.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani forcing a Pagan priest to burn alive. In real life, this kind of incidents did happened with some frequency, but the cause of the battle was another, and a more spectacular one: it started when some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.

* The film makes it look like the Alexandrian Christians formed a single, cohesive community that only suffered an inner struggle with the clash between Orested and Cyril. This could not be farther from reality, as at the time there was a variety of opposing Christian sects, including Nicenes, Novatians, Arians and [[UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}} Gnostics]], and some of them had their own enmities with Cyril.

* In the film, set on 5th century, Hypatia is a Neo-Platonist teacher that draws heavily from an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism empiricist]] mindset in order to conduct her experiments. However, while proto-empiricism was already around at the time in association to schools like Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, Neo-Platonism was [[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-28/#feature completely opposed]] to it. Hypatia and her colleagues were staunch rationalists that believed they could uncover the mysteries of the universe by reasoning alone. Historically, moreover, ''scientifical'' empiricism came around '''11th century''' by Avicenna's hand, and its usage in astronomy was not applied until Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler did it in the 16th century of all times. Had the historical Hypatia performed the same experiment of dropping a grain sack on a moving boat, she would have been more likely to attribute this to the action of the Neo-Platonist divinity than to the possibility that it meant the Earth was moving around the Sun.

* In real life, Hypatia was a believer of Neo-Platonism, which considered philosophy as just a way to connect with the divine. In the film, she is still officially such, as she teaches in a Platonic school, but her self-declared beliefs sound much more like scientifical atheism, a change presumably done so the faith vs. science controversy that composes the film's theme will be clearer. This, as mentioned above, allowes her to use empirical reasoning, which in real life was contrary to her school of thinking.
* The real Hypatia was apparently married (presumably in a Neo-Platonist, celibate way) to another philosopher named Isidorus. This character is AdaptedOut of the film, whose version of Hypatia claims to have never loved romantically.

* Towards the end of the film, Synesius makes a FaceHeelTurn and presses Hypatia into converting, betraying her when she refuses. This would have been impossible in real life, not only because he actually died a year ''before'' Hypatia, but also because he was completely the opposite of how he is portrayed here: while he did try to get Hypatia to become a Christian, he respected her no and remained her close friend until the end of his life (calling her "mother, sister, teacher, and withal benefactress, and whatsoever is honoured in name and deed"), defended her and her theories in several circles, and was surprisingly tolerant of Neo-Platonism in general.

* Chronicles do exalt Hypatia as having made "such attainments in literature and science as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time," but there's no evidence that she studied specifically the system of Aristarchus (she could have been reasonably familiar with it, but that's) nor made the astronomical advances portrayed in the film, which would have been difficult for her due to the philosophical reasons given above.

* Towards the end of the film, Synesius makes a FaceHeelTurn and presses Hypatia into converting, betraying her when she refuses. This would have been impossible in real life, not only because he actually died a year ''before'' Hypatia, but also because he was completely the opposite of how he is portrayed here: while he did try to get Hypatia to become a Christian, he respected her negative and remained her close friend until the end of his life (calling her "mother, sister, teacher, and withal benefactress, and whatsoever is honoured in name and deed"), defended her and her theories in several circles, and was surprisingly tolerant of Neo-Platonism in general.

* The film gives the impression that the Christian takeover cornered Hypatia politically, leaving her as a barely tolerated erudite known only among her former disciples and her Christian enemies. In real life, Hypatia was very popular and respected among both Christians and non-Christians alike until the end of her life, and was never publicly condemned by other than Cyril and his inner faction. The news of her murder horrified most people in the city, to the point chronicles from the time point to her murder as an example to lament how nasty political fighting was becoming.
* In the film, the enmity between Orestes and Cyril starts due to Hypatia's increasing unpopularity among the Christians, which drives Cyril to attack her and Orestes to protect her in turn. In real life, their clash had nothing to do with Hypatia at first, as it came actually from their different stances towards the Jews: Orestes was protective of them, even ordering the execution of a Christian named Hierax who had been causing trouble against their community, while Cyril was hostile, constanty preaching against the Jews and accusing them of attacks on Christians. It was later when Cyril and his allies started targeting Hypatia, among rumors that she was the brain behind Orestes' actions.

* Alexandria's portrayal is the film is an incredible work of recreation, but it has been noted that its architecture is deeply Egyptian in style and is completely covered in ancient Egytian artwork, despite the city was founded by Greeks and Macedonians in real life. This particular deviation happened because RealLifeWritesThePlot, though: director Aménabar had originally conceived a city much more closer to History, with plenty of Hellenistic Greek architecture, but production got overbudgeted at this point and he was forced to choose a cheaper, preexistent Egyptian design in order not to blow things out. This also led to the film's Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD, when the film is actually set in the fourth century AD.

* The real Serapeum was certainly considered the spiritual sucessor to the burned Great Library, and it is possible, if not probable, that it carried rescued books from the latter at some point, but [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Serapeum contemporary sources]] suggest the building's library was considered a thing of the past by the time of its destruction. Whether this means its collection of books had been moved to another place or that it never was located here to begin with remains unknown.
* In the film, set on 5th century, Hypatia is a Neo-Platonist teacher that draws heavily from an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism empiricist]] mindset in order to conduct her experiments. However, while proto-empiricism was already around at the time in association to schools like Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, Neo-Platonism was [[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-28/#feature completely opposed]] to it. Hypatia and her colleagues would have been staunch rationalists that believed they could uncover the mysteries of the universe by reasoning alone. In real life, moreover, ''scientifical'' empiricism came around '''11th century''' by Avicenna's hand, and its usage in astronomy was not applied until Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler did it in the 16th century of all times. Had the historical Hypatia performed the same experiment of dropping a grain sack on a moving boat, she would have been more likely to attribute this to the action of the Neo-Platonist divinity than to the possibility that it meant the Earth was moving around the Sun.

* In real life, Hypatia was a believer of Neo-Platonism, which considered philosophy as a way to connect with the divine. In the film, she is still officially such, as she teaches in a Platonic school, but her self-declared beliefs sound much more like scientifical atheism, a change presumably done so the faith vs. science controversy that composes the film's theme will be clearer. This, as mentioned above, allowes her to use empirical reasoning, which in real life was contrary to her school of thinking.

* In real life, Hypatia's rejection of a suitor via menstrual rags was even nastier than portrayed in ''Agora'': she did not use it to merely dispel his idealization of her, but to condemn his sexuality altogether. The Hypatia from the film doesn't seem to condemn sex by itself, given the mentioned modification, and even has a scene lamenting she has never known the topic of love.
* Towards the end of the film, Synesius becomes a villain who presses Hypatia into converting and later betrays her when she refuses. This would have been impossible in real life, not only because he actually died a year ''before'' Hypatia, but also because he was completely the opposite of how he is portrayed here: his historical version remained a great friend to Hypatia until the end of his life, defended her and her theories in several circles, and was surprisingly tolerant of Neo-Platonism in general, so he never pressed her into becoming a Christian.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani forcing a Pagan priest to burn alive. In real life, this kind of incidents did happen at the time, but the cause of the battle was another, and a more spectacular one: it started when some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.
* While Hypatia could have been reasonably familiar with the system of Aristarchus, there's no evidence that she studied it nor made the astronomical advances portrayed in the film, and it would have been difficult due to the reasons given above.

* The film gives the impression that, after the Christian takeover, Hypatia was left as an obscure erudite only known among her former disciples and her Christian enemies. In real life, Hypatia was a very popular and respected figure in the city among both Christians and non-Christians alike, and most of them were horrified by the news of her murder.
* Violent clashes between Jews and Christians were relatively commonplace at the time, but the scene of the stoning shown in the film and its political consequences are not covered by any historical chronicle.
* While Hypatia's murderers were Christians and almost certainly operated in league with Cyril and the Parabalani, most evidences suggest that she was killed by political reasons rather than religious disputes, namely the rumor that she was manipulating Orestes into opposing Cyril. Obviously, the fact that she was an ardent Pagan and a woman didn't help precisely to endear her to the Christian militants (later Christians even accused her of being a witch and using spells to control Cyril's opposition), but unlike portrayed in the film, this would have been a secondary motivation at the best.

* Alexandria's portrayal is the film is an incredible work of recreation, but it has been noted that its architecture is deeply Egyptian in style and is completely covered in ancient Egytian artwork, despite the city was founded by Greeks and Macedonians in real life. This particular deviation happened because RealLifeWritesThePlot, though: director Aménabar had originally conceived a city much more closer to History, with plenty of Hellenistic Greek architecture, but production got overbudgeted at this point and he was forced to choose a cheaper, preexistent Egyptian design in order not to blow things out.
* The Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD, when the film is actually set in the fourth century AD. This strikes as odd considering how much care was put in recreating all the rest of the setting.

* The real Hypatia was apparently married (presumably in a Neo-Platonist, celibate way) to another philosopher named Isidorus. This character is AdaptedOut of the film, whose version of Hypatia claims to have never loved romantically anyone.

* Towards the end of the film, Synesius becomes a villain who presses Hypatia into converting and later betrays her when she refuses. This would have been impossible in real life, not only because he actually died a year ''before'' Hypatia, but also because he was completely the opposite of how he is portrayed here: his historical version remained a great friend to Hypatia until the end of his life, defended her and her theories in several circles, and was surprisingly tolerant of Neo-Platonism, so he never pressed her into becoming a Christian.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani forcing a Pagan priest to burn alive. In real life, this kind of incidents did happen at the time, but the cause of the battle was another: it started when some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.

* Violent clashes between Jews and Christians were basically commonplace at the time, but the scene of the stoning shown in the film in particular and its political consequences are not covered by any historical chronicle.
* While Hypatia's murderers were Christians and almost certainly operated in league with Cyril and the Parabalani, most evidences suggest that she was killed by political reasons rather than religious disputes, namely the rumor that she was manipulating Orestes into opposing Cyril. Obviously, the fact that she was an ardent Pagan didn't help precisely to endear her to the Christian militants (later Christians even accused her of being a witch and using spells to control Cyril's opposition), but unlike portrayed in the film, this would have been a secondary motivation at the best.

* The Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD, when the film is actually set in the fifth century AD. This strikes as odd considering how much care was put in recreating all the rest of the setting.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani forcing a Pagan priest to burn alive. In real life, this kind of incidents did happen at the time, but the cause of the battle was another: it started when because some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.

* In the film, set on 5th century, Hypatia draws heavily from an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism empiricist]] mindset in order to conduct her experiments. However, while proto-empiricism was already around at the time in association to schools like Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, Platonism was [[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-28/#feature completely opposed]] to it. Being Neo-Platonic thinkers, Hypatia and her colleagues would have been staunch rationalists that believed they could uncover the mysteries of the universe by reasoning alone. In real life, scientifical empiricism came around ''11th century'' by Avicenna's hand, and its usage in astronomy was not applied until Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler did it in the 16th century of all times. As a result, had the historical Hypatia performed the same experiment of dropping a grain sack on a moving boat, she would have been more likely to attribute this to the action of the Neo-Platonist divinity than to the possibility that it meant the Earth was moving around the Sun.

* The real Hypatia was apparently married (presumably in a Neo-Platonist, celibate way) to another philosopher named Isidorus. This character is AdaptedOut of the film, whose version of Hypatia claims to have never loved romantically.

* In the film, the battle between Pagans and Christians that ended with the destruction of the Serapeum is caused by some Parabalani trying to burn a Pagan priest alive. In real life, this kind of incidents did happen at the time, but the cause of the battle was another: it started when because some Christian workers found Pagan paraphernalia in an unused temple and started parading mockingly through the city with it, infuriating all the Pagan citizens who witnessed the joke. Some chronicles also feature details that might or might not be propaganda, as Christian writers claimed the philosophers were torturing Christian prisoners inside the besieged Serapeum, while Pagan writers claim the Christians started the hostilities and later tried to make all the battle's corpses pass as murdered Christians.
* While Hypatia could have been reasonably familiar with the system of Aristarchus, there's no evidence that she studied it nor made the astronomical advances portrayed in the film.
* In real life, the Christians completely demolished the Serapeum to the ground. In the film, the building itself is left mostly intact years after the incident, having been only vandalized and sacked.

* Violent clashes between Jews and Christians were basically commonplace at the time, but the scene of the stoning shown in the film in particular and its political consequences are not covered in any historical chronicle.

* The Roman soldiers use equipment from the first century AD, when the film is actually set in the fifth century AD. This strikes as odd considering how much care was put in recreating all the rest of the setting.

* In real life, Hypatia was a Neo-Platonist. In the film, she is still officially such, as she teaches in a Platonic school, but she declares herself an agnostic (presumably so the faith vs. science controversy will be clearer). This allows her to use empirical reasoning, which in real life was [[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-28/#feature contrary to her school of thought and religion.]] Consequently, she is shown making astronomical advances which rely on these methods (despite there being no contemporary evidence tying her to these advances in real life).
* In real life, Hypatia's rejection of a suitor via menstrual rags was even nastier than portrayed in ''Agora'': she did not use it to merely dispel his idealization of her, but to condemn his sexuality altogether. The Hypatia from the film doesn't seem to condemn sex by itself, given the mentioned modification, and even has a scene lamenting she has never known the topic of love. The last point could count another departure, as the real Hypatia might have been married (presumably in a celibate way) to another philosopher named Isidorus.

* The film gives the impression that, after the Christian takeover, Hypatia was left as an obscure erudite only known among her former disciples and her Christian enemies. In real life, Hypatia was a very popular and respected figure in the city among both Christians and non-Christians alike, and most of them were horrified by the news of her murder. Also, while while her murderers were Christians and almost certainly operated in league with Cyril and the Parabalani, most evidences suggest that she was killed by political reasons rather than religious disputes, namely the rumor that she was manipulating Orestes into opposing Cyril (although, obviously, anti-pagan overtones behind the murder cannot be discarded at all).