LATE ANTIQUE CULTURE AND PRIVATE LIFEAlexandrian teacher Hypatia had been killed in Christian–pagan conflicts ear-
lier in the century (Chapter 1); Zachariah, from Maiuma in Gaza and later
bishop of Mytilene, studied grammar and rhetoric in Alexandria and went on
to study law at Berytus; he wrote in his Life of the future patriarch Severus
about their student days in Alexandria and their adventures with pagan stu-
dents including Paralius from Aphrodisias in Caria, a small and remote city
from which we happen to have good evidence for the persistence of pagan-
ism and the educational opportunities open to young men from the better-off
families. The interplay of religious affiliation with education is vividly illus-
trated by the fact that one of Paralius’ brothers was a Christian and lived at
the time in a monastic complex near Alexandria, and the fact that while pagan
and Christian students studied together, religious rivalry sometimes erupted
into violence.^14 The extent and organization of higher education in Alexandria
has been spectacularly revealed by the excavation of an extensive late antique
urban complex in the city, in the area known as Komm el-Dikka, where a
large number of classrooms are preserved, where the pupils declaimed or per-
formed their exercises in front of their teacher and fellow students.^15
Teachers were needed to perpetuate the system, while in turn training in clas-
sical rhetoric was regarded as an essential qualification for the imperial bureauc-
racy and indeed for any secular office. We can see the process clearly in the
mid-fourth century, when Constantine’s new governing class was very much
Figure 6.1 One of the classrooms uncovered at Komm el-Dikka, Alexandria