Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note on abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The embassies to Gaius and Claudius
- Chapter 3 The Acta Alexandrinorum: Augustus to the Severans
- Chapter 4 The Acta Alexandrinorum: The historical background
- Chapter 5 Between loyalty and dissent: The Acta Alexandrinorum and contemporary literature
- Chapter 6 Conclusion
- Appendix I Editions of the Acta Alexandrinorum and related texts
- Appendix II The status of the Alexandrian Jews
- Appendix III The ‘dubious or unidentified’ fragments
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note on abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The embassies to Gaius and Claudius
- Chapter 3 The Acta Alexandrinorum: Augustus to the Severans
- Chapter 4 The Acta Alexandrinorum: The historical background
- Chapter 5 Between loyalty and dissent: The Acta Alexandrinorum and contemporary literature
- Chapter 6 Conclusion
- Appendix I Editions of the Acta Alexandrinorum and related texts
- Appendix II The status of the Alexandrian Jews
- Appendix III The ‘dubious or unidentified’ fragments
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE ACTA ALEXANDRINORUM PROPER AND ACTA RELATED LITERATURE
The vast majority of the many thousands of papyri that have been recovered from ancient Egypt are documents, but roughly a tenth are literary and ‘sub-literary’ texts. Some of these contain works which had survived anyway, such as those of Homer and Thucydides, but others have yielded lost pieces of ancient literature, e.g. Aristotle's Constitution of Athens. Among this latter group are a series of texts that have become known as the Acta Alexandrinorum or the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs.
The Acta Alexandrinorum tell the stories of the heroic deaths of Alexandrian Greek nobles. The favoured form of these stories is a record of their trial scene in the imperial court, usually presented as the official minutes (acta), with only a small amount of narrative. The Acta Alexandrinorum recycle the same archetypal story where a group of Alexandrian ambassadors travel to Rome and, on arrival, face a hostile emperor who has allied himself with their enemies, usually the Jewish community resident in Alexandria. A bitter exchange of words follows between the emperor and the Alexandrians, who bravely defy the emperor on behalf of their beloved fatherland, and scornfully attribute his hostility towards them to his lack of high birth and culture. The stories usually end with at least some of the Alexandrians being led away to execution, recalling as they depart the long and glorious line of Alexandrians who have died before them in a similar fashion.
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- Information
- Loyalty and Dissidence in Roman EgyptThe Case of the Acta Alexandrinorum, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008