A taste for rioting: Christians in Alexandria

The Alexandrians loved a good quarrel, according to Tom Holland, historian and author of ‘Dynasty’ and ‘In the Shadow of the Sword’. According to Philo of Alexandria, Alexandrian women would grab the testicles of any man they disagreed with, and religion was often a focus for tension. In a swift overview from early Christianity to the coming of Islam, Tom talks about the bust of Germanicus, an imperial sculpture carved around AD 19, which, centuries later, was inscribed on the forehead with a cross, and therefore effectively ‘Christianised’.