Theophilus is only attested in John Malalas, as a chronographer who defended a Christian era starting in AM 5916 or 5967. The fragments show an interest in Greek literature and myth, and a knowledge of Julius Africanus and Eusebius of Caesarea. He wrote from an Alexandrian perspective, probably in the fifth century.

The chronography of Annianus, composed in 412, stands out by closely mapping the chronology of the world onto the Alexandrian 532-year Easter cycle, of which he may be the originator. He also defended that Christ was born in AM 5500, which had its roots in Christian exegesis. This generated a set of chronological anomalies, especially the fact that he situated birth and death of Christ about 10 years later than usual in Christian chronography. As a consequence, there is hardly any trace of Annianus before the second half of the sixth century, when Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem sparked a controversy. Annianus’ chronology, which supported the date of 25 December, was put forward by the defenders of that date (especially Heron), whilst those defending 6 January drew on Andreas. Due to this controversy, Annianus’ chronography travelled from Alexandria to Constantinople and was transmitted to Syriac and hence into Arabic.

The texts written in honour of Ioannes the Almsgiver, the Cypriot Patriarch of Alexandria, highlight his acts of philanthropy rather than paying attention to his role in historical developments of the early seventh century. This is evident in the stories which make up the composition of Leontios of Neapolis (BHG 886), likely commissioned by Arkadios I, Archbishop of Cyprus and a learned and influential figure. These stories supplement the now lost work that Ioannes Moschos and Sophronios dedicated to the saintly Patriarch. Leontios criticises their style, introduces a non-elaborate language, and is little interested in presenting facts in chronological order. The value of Epitome BHG 887 v lies in its preserving, in its first part and in abridged form, stories from the text of Ioannes Moschos and Sophronios. The BHG 887x Epitome, edited in the Appendix of the book, is notable for the inclusion of some rare and/or otherwise unattested words.

This is the only work that survives by Socrates Scholasticus, a figure traditionally believed to be a lawyer, despite no evidence indicating as much. His Ecclesiastical History was likely written late in the reign of Theodosius II, covering the period from Emperor Constantine to Emperor Theodosius II (from 305 to 439). Like his fellow fifth-century historians Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Sozomen, Socrates, who likely wrote his work before they wrote theirs, picks up his narrative of church history where Eusebius of Caesarea left off in his Ecclesiastical History and tracks the activity of bishops, priests, monks, emperors, imperial officials, and military figures as they operate within the then-new cultural matrix of an imperialized Christianity. He draws on the original writings of many of his subjects and incorporates material from Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine, Rufinus of Aquileia’s Ecclesiastical History, and the lost work of Gelasius of Caesarea, among other sources. While Socrates avoids the triumphalist tone that defined the writings of his predecessor Eusebius, he nevertheless uses his work to argue that the world benefits from a strong relationship between Christian worship and state power.

Alexander the Great envisioned a city network designed to control “spear won” territory in the wake of his conquests. Alexander imagined a world bridging Greek and Asian cultures – a new era of globalization. He was willing to force whole populations across continents to this end, via city mergers, mass deportations, and resettlements. From its Macedonian foundations, the Hellenistic Age had urban roots. Greek economic influence spanned from Afghanistan to the Atlantic. Trade increased markedly, as did cultural exchange. There was unprecedented hybridization, closely reflected in city building. The urban form dwarfed what existed in the old poleis. Their geopolitical importance increased under territorial empires, the dominant form of statecraft. Cities managed flows of resources. They defended trading routes against nomads, projecting royal military power. Out of Alexander’s splintered empire, his namesake Alexandria was the closest realization of his global vision. There were darker sides to this: Alexandria was part of a system entailing political domination over peripheral zones.

Chapter 2 relates the shocking death of Elmer Ellsworth, the effect it had on his men, and the regiment’s first battle experience at Bull Run. Conflicting accounts emerged in the aftermath of the fight: some positive, heralding the Fire Zouaves’ reckless bravery; but many others were damning, painting a portrait of the men’s panic and fear.

Chapter 6 returns to William Thackeray’s Mediterranean travel writing to show how his humor fails to challenge the dominant heritage discourse in Jerusalem. Although Thackeray derides other Mediterranean sites for inauthenticity, he cannot profane Jerusalem, which means he cannot return it to human (and imperial) use, either by word play or physical contact. Anthony Trollope takes up this problem in his novel The Bertrams, in which he reconceives some places, like Alexandria, for modern use. These sites are wiped of their significance to British heritage discourse as ancient lands and rendered available for modernization. Jerusalem, though, proves too sacred, and thus too integral to British cultural heritage, to be colonized in the same way. Some holy sites thus endure as historical relics while others are rewritten as a “middle” East.

I loathe everything to do with The People,’ writes Callimachus, and this (public) turning away from the public poetry of the fifth century is a stance, a gesture, repeated in a multiformity of guises throughout the texts of the Hellenistic period. Although the practices of literary production, performance and circulation are known in even less detail for this period than for the fifth century (and many questions about, say, the constitution of the public of Hellenistic literature are simply not answerable with any security), none the less there are much-discussed and highly significant shifts both in the conditions of literary production and in the presentation of the poet’s voice which require some brief introductory remarks.

This chapter draws together the book’s overarching narrative by examining the regional transformations inscribed in the social and material architecture of the Italian care home, the Casa di Riposo, in Alexandria, Egypt. The institution was founded in 1928, at the height of the community’s importance in regional politics. Designed to house over 250 individuals, its inhabitants were fewer than 20 at the time of writing. Within its halls, it contains a locked and abandoned museum, aptly named ’The Time Machine’, which displays the accumulated objects of departed Italians. Walls grew around the building in proportion to Alexandria’s expanding population. During moments of political revolt since 2011, demonstrators’ calls for new futures reverberated in the Casa di Riposo’s emptying halls. Using the Casa di Riposo as an analytical lens, this conclusion suggests that imperial afterlives, even in states of absence and entropy, demonstrate the contested nature of historical temporalities in shaping migration, empire, and decolonisation in the modern Mediterranean.

This chapter gives an overview of the major hydraulic works that have been undertaken in Alexandria from its foundation to the Arab conquest. Fresh water in and around Alexandria is positioned as a historical agent around which the city’s plurisecular history wove itself. Built on a rocky substrate that, until recently, protected it from the subsidence that affected most of the northern edge of the Delta, the city stood on a locus that was rich in subterranean water. This chapters shows how for centuries, Alexandrians were careful to collect, store, and distribute this underground freshwater as a way to keep themselves alive. Concomitantly, geoarchaeological and written evidence document sustained yet at times interrupted attempts by state authorities to enhance the city’s commercial appeal and water supply by tying it to the Nile via artificially maintained canals. These canals’ histories, as well as those of the city’s known hyponomes, cisterns, and other lifting devices, allowed the Macedonian foundation to develop on a grand scale, and to survive during periods of water crisis.

The image of Alexander flourished across the disiecta membra of the empire he created and far beyond it. Consideration is given here to the appropriation of the king’s image in the broader sense – and principally through the medium of texts – in relation to the founders of the greater two of the Successor dynasties, those of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. The legend of Seleucus was richly bathed in Alexander-imagery, and this imagery was focused, in different ways, on the person of Seleucus himself. Some of the tales focus syntagmatically on his personal interaction with the king, whilst he yet lived, and indeed in one case even after even he had died. Others serve to establish paradigmatic or typological parallel between the actions of Alexander and those of Seleucus, and some seek to do both. The case of Ptolemy is different: whilst there is again some focus on Ptolemy’s personal interaction with Alexander, much of the legend-generation focuses rather on Alexander’s relationship with Ptolemy’s city of Alexandria, the glory of which was the king’s tomb. So long as Ptolemy remained ensconced in the city, he could afford to bask in a more indirectly reflected variety of the king’s charisma.

This chapter deals with the main issues bearing upon Clitarchus and his work, moving beyond the usual division between Testimonia and Fragmenta and giving attention to the context and the agenda of each writer that mentioned him. Attention is given to his popularity as an Alexander historian and as a fine writer, as well as to the real significance of the narrative material attributed to him. This evidence can be combined with his few known biographical details in the evaluation of his chronology, which remains uncertain. The last two sections, dealing with his chronology and with the presentation of Alexander in his work, end with a question mark and invite the reader’s own reflections.

This chapter argues that the representation of the inhabited world by the Periegesis of Dionysius of Alexandria, dateable between 130 and 18, is not, as sometimes suggested, timeless, but very alert to the impact of Rome on peoples it has incorporated into its empire, and displays pride in the Hellenic culture that has spread even beyond that empire’s frontiers.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 invasion of Egypt represented the first modern attempt to incorporate an Islamic society into the European fold. Although the expedition was a military fiasco, it left a lasting legacy in the region. The invasion constituted the formative moment for the discourse of Orientalism, when all of its ideological components converged and a full arsenal of instruments of Western domination was employed to protect it. The occupation itself did little to modernize Egyptian society, because the revolutionary principles that the French tried to introduce were too radical and foreign, and met determined local resistance. But Napoleon created a political vacuum in Egypt that was soon filled by Kavalali Mehmet Ali Pasha, who, within a decade of the French departure, began laying the foundation for the reformed and modernized Egypt that later would play such an important role in the Middle East.

This is the introduction to the volume as a whole. It opens by considering Apuleius’ claims to dissection as evidence for a widespread interest in anatomy and dissection in the ancient world, particularly in the Roman period. It goes on to define the terms dissection and anatomy as used throughout the book and to lay out the overarching subject and aims of the project, while situating it within existing literature related to the topic. It particularly seeks to highlight the prevalence and importance of animal dissection, as opposed to the much rarer instances of human dissection, and to emphasize the pivotal role of the Roman period, which has often been underplayed in favor of the Hellenistic period. It concludes with an overview of the structure and contents of the book.

This chapter is concerned with Alexander in Egypt in both life and legend. Subjects discussed include his foundation of Alexandria, which became a new capital for Egypt on the Mediterranean coast, his expedition through the Libyan desert to Siwah, where the oracle’s recognition of the conqueror as son of Zeus-Ammon resonated in both Greek and Egyptian cultic terms, his acceptance as the pharaoh of Egypt, and finally, after his death in Babylon, his return for burial to Egypt, where his embalmed corpse and tomb in Alexandria became the centre of Ptolemaic ruler cult, a focal point for later visits of Roman emperors, and where the question of its actual location remains a source of continuing fascination and debate. In the accounts of classical historians, Alexander in Egypt is already variously presented; the historiography is as important as the history. From the start some specifically local legendary elements may be seen and over time the Romance or Legend of Alexander in its many different forms overshadows and surpasses any strictly historical account.