Abstract
Horapollon, whom we met in the Dioscore anthology, is a famous figure in5th-centuryAlexandria , who will serve as our guide into the world of higher learning.
At the crossroads of networks
Alexandria's position as an interface between its hinterland (the chôra) and the eastern Mediterranean basin, unified under the banner of the Eastern Roman Empire, attracted students and lectures from all over Egypt : Horapollon himself came from a village near Panopolis. People also come from all over the Empire to train or complete their education in Alexandria : this is the case of the pupils who attend Horapollon's lectures, as we know from the Life of Severus by Zachariah the Scholastic.
Alexandria also sent its own to other provinces, where they made a career of it, spreading throughout the Hellenic-speaking world a little of the Alexandrian spirit for which it was famous. Horapollon's grandfather, for example, left Alexandria to teach Greek grammar and literature in Constantinople, the capital of the Empire.
All these exchanges reveal the extreme mobility of those involved in higher education in the period: students did not hesitate to spend time in several university centers during their training, depending on the discipline they were studying (Beirut for law, Athens for philosophy, etc.) and the various stages of their course. Alexandria, for example, attracted students wishing, among other things, to train in rhetoric before continuing their law studies in Constantinople (Agathias of Myrina) or Beirut (Zachariah of Mytilene and Severus of Antioch) - training in rhetoric being considered a propaedeutic to, or a component of, law studies. The same mobility can be observed among teachers. The Mediterranean region became a place of academic and intellectual exchange, according to the disciplinary profile of its major centers, and thanks to the networks that the great aristocratic families forged between the cities of Greece, Asia Minor, the Syro-Palestinian domain and Egypt, not to mention Rome. These networks were built through marriages, but also thanks to old families whose history was marked by migrations and dispersals throughout the Mediterranean world.
What (infra)structures ? (1)
In such a competitive world, however, it is essential to provide an environment that is conducive to superior conditions of study and lectures. Horapollon's complaint, found in the Dioscore jar, alludes to this when he speaks of the " academies " (akadêmiai) he attends and the " museums " (mouseia) to which his father has devoted all his work. These terms (which echo the Lagid Museum and Plato's school) take us into the very infrastructure of Alexandrian university education - which, despite what modern usage of the word university might lead us to believe, was a disparate conglomeration of lectures given by various teachers whose status was not necessarily identical.
