AOrestes (Oscar Isaac) attempts to warn Hypatia about the accusations Cyril (Sami Samir) has raised against her, accusations of 'ungodliness' and 'witchcraft,' but Hypatia refuses to be publically baptized and give up her right to independent thought. As she is walking in the agora, she is apprehended by the parabolani and taken away. Davus (Max Minghella) follows but can do nothing to stop them from defiling her in public and calling her names like 'witch' and 'whore.' The parabolani strip her naked and suggest flaying her skin with their knives. Trying to stop them, Davus advises them not to stain their hands with impure blood, so they decide to stone her instead. When the parabolani go off to find stones, Davus takes Hypatia in his arms, sobbing because of his love for her while smothering her with his hand. The last thing Hypatia sees is the blue sky through a circle in the roof, which appears as an ellips from her point of view. By the time the parabolani return with their stones, Hypatia is dead. Davus tells them that she has fainted, and they proceed to pelt her. In the final scene, the camera pans upwards into the sky, and a caption reads: 'Hypatia's mutilated body was dragged through the streets and burnt on a pyre. Orestes disappeared, never to be seen again. Cyril seized power of Alexandra. Much later, Cyril was declared a saint and doctor of the Church. Although none of Hypatia's works have survived, it is known that she was an outstanding astronomer and renowned for her mathematical studies on conic curves. 1200 years later, in the 17th century, the astronomer Johannes Kepler discovered that one of these curves, the ellipse, governs the motion of the planets.'
QOn what was Hypatia's view of the world based?
AAccording to the movie, she first believed the geocentric theory of Ptolemy [@90 CE - 168 CE] that the sun and the wandering planets revolved around the earth in a perfect circle. Near the end of the movie, however, she was coming to the conclusion that the earth might also be a wanderer around a heliocentric sun, an idea that was first expressed some 600 years earlier by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus [@310 BCE - 230 BCE] but wasn't put forth again until the 1400s by the Prussian astronomer Copernicus [1473-1543]. Hypatia also postulates the possibility of Earth's orbit around the Sun being elliptical rather than a perfect circle. This point is reinforced by the final shot where we pull up out of the skylight at the centre of the library and away from the Earth. The last thing we see with any clarity is the skylight, at an angle, forming an ellipse.
QHow much sex, violence, and profanity are in this movie?
AFor detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Agora can be found here.
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