Summary The fate of the Serapeum and especially of its library is still a hotly-debated topic. The present paper aims to provide a consistent reading of the extant source evidence. Christian authors, such as Tertullian, Epiphanius of Salamis, and John Chrysostom, acknowledge that the Septuagint bible translation was moved from the original royal library to the Serapeum by the end of the second century A.D. This could be because the Serapeum had become Alexandria’s main library after the temple was rebuilt (...) following a fire in 181 A.D. Writing in the early fifth century, Orosius is our most important witness that the Christian mob destroyed not only the temple building, but also the library and that this library was the successor of the original Ptolemaic library. There are several other possible allusions to the destruction of the library, for example, in sermons delivered by John Chrysostom in the 390s. This article also argues that Ammianus Marcellinus, Aphthonius, and Epiphanius of Salamis were aware of the destruction of the library when they wrote their descriptions of the Serapeum probably not before 391. Taken together, these sources illuminate the ways in which events of such magnitude broke very quickly in various parts of the Roman empire. Nevertheless, some authors, especially the pagan ones, were hesitant to refer to the destruction other than in allusive and muted ways, probably because of the heated religious atmosphere in the immediate aftermath. (shrink)

The Martyrdom of Polycarp narrates a martyrdom ‘according to the Gospel’. Numerous facets of the text echo the passion materials of the Gospels, and Polycarp is directly said to imitate Christ. Various scholars have discussed the imitatio Christi theme within the work. Such an approach focuses upon Christ as an exemplar of suffering to be imitated, through specific events of similar suffering. But the Christology of the Martyrdom of Polycarp is far richer than this focus alone. Jesus Christ is also (...) the Son, Savior, eternal high priest, teacher, elector, king, and alternative to Caesar. As the sovereign, he actively coordinates events and chooses martyrs from among his servants. (shrink)

The martyr is a potent symbol of sacrifice in Western cultural discourse. Understanding martyrdom as sacrifice, however, blunts the potency of the martyr's action. It obscures the violence by which the martyr's death becomes, paradoxically, a means to define institutional life. In this article, I propose an analogous relationship between the early Christian martyr and Giorgio Agamben's enigmatic homo sacer. Like homo sacer, the Christian martyr provides an “other” against which to organize institutional life. Read as a sacrifice, the martyr (...) also exemplifies the threat of biopolitics that Agamben describes, where mere existence can be isolated from political life and made subject to sovereign violence. Distinguishing the martyr from their institutional appropriation is a step toward exposing the modes of violence inherent in sovereign power. It provides the possibility of reconceptualizing the martyr as an autonomous figure of resistance, not as homo sacer but as homo profanus. (shrink)

Gryphius’s Catharina von Georgien questions the very foundation of the international legal order by demonstrating the fragility, indeed the impossibility of peace as an agreement based on voluntary consent. As an alternative, it develops a martyrological model of international order, which, however, is intrinsically paradoxical. In so doing, it institutes a martyrological poetics that conceives of tragic play as a poetic form capable of evoking a vision of eternal peace through the representation of suffering and death in the world of (...) sovereign states. (shrink)

This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a broader, provincial discourse on the importance of legal procedure in criminal trials in the Roman Empire. By focusing on moments of criminal confrontations, these texts not only attempted to explain and glorify the deaths of martyrs, but also sought to make sense of a process that was designed by the Roman state to be arbitrary and terrifying. In the course of their narratives, (...) the martyr acts articulate a distinctly provincial understanding of imperial judicial procedures. They politicize this understanding in ways consequential for current scholarly models of the relations between the imperial government and provincial society more broadly. (shrink)