Sophia’s Visions
Alexandria, 1 CE, and the centuries to come · lessons and gamebooks · B1 upwards
Sophia teaches in the Library of Alexandria. One afternoon, touching the wet ink of Philo’s first book, she sees the future for the first time, and she cannot change what she sees. Each part is a story, a grammar lesson, exercises with instant checking, an honest guide to what historians know, and a gamebook. Alexandria was the crossroads of the world, and the visions reach from Rome to Parthia, India and China. The grammar rises in level as the story goes on.
Arc 1: Philo’s lifetime
The First VisionFree
Philo grown old before the emperor Gaius, and a glimpse of a soldier in the temple of Serapis. Future forms.
The King of MockeryPremium
A paper crown in the market, and the riots of 38 CE under the prefect Flaccus. The passive voice.
The Embassy to GaiusPremium
Philo, an old man, before the emperor Caligula in Rome. Reported speech and reporting verbs.
The NephewPremium
Tiberius Julius Alexander, who left his family’s faith and became prefect of Egypt. Third and mixed conditionals, wish and if only.
Arc 2: Rome and the Flavians
Alexandria Chooses an EmperorPremium
The year of the four emperors, and Vespasian’s healings at the Serapeum. Modal verbs of deduction.
The General’s ProphetPremium
Josephus: the cave at Jotapata, the prophecy to Vespasian, and the Flavians’ historian. Hedging and distancing language.
The Fall of JerusalemPremium
Titus, the burning of the Temple, the triumph and the Jewish tax. Cleft sentences.
DomitianPremium
The Jewish tax collected harshly, “Jewish ways” in the palace, and the first Roman mentions of Christians. Participle clauses.
Arc 3: Beyond the Empire
The Monsoon RoadPremium
From Alexandria to India: the monsoon winds, the Muziris papyrus and Roman coins in southern India. Advanced comparison.
Silk and the SeresPremium
Han China, the middlemen of the silk trade, and Gan Ying at the edge of the sea. Inversion for emphasis.
Ban ZhaoPremium
China’s great woman historian, her Lessons for Women, and the coming of paper. Concession and contrast.
The ParthiansPremium
Carrhae, the meeting on the Euphrates in 1 CE, Trajan’s war and the Jewish revolt of 115–117. Nominalisation.
The King and the MonkPremium
Ashoka’s edicts in Greek, King Menander’s questions, the Kushans and Gandhara, and the legend of Thomas. Advanced questions.
Arc 4: The sect that became an empire’s faith
MessiahsPremium
The many prophets and kings of first-century Judaea, and the disputed sources about one of them. Advanced relative clauses.
Paul and the Parting of the WaysPremium
Philo on the Law, Paul and Apollos, and the slow separation of two communities. The subjunctive and formal structures.
Alexandria’s ChristiansPremium
The Gnostic teachers, Clement and Origen, and how Philo’s books were saved by Christians. Ellipsis and substitution.
PersecutionsPremium
Trajan’s rules, Perpetua’s diary, Decius’s certificates from Egypt, Diocletian, and the debate over numbers. Discourse markers for argument.
ConstantinePremium
The Milvian Bridge, Milan, Arius of Alexandria and Nicaea, and Philo’s Logos as a word to fight over. Word formation.
Arc 5: Rome’s long crisis
Plague and MassacrePremium
The Antonine plague, Galen, and Caracalla’s massacre in Alexandria. The future in the past.
ZenobiaPremium
Shapur captures an emperor, Zenobia takes Egypt, and the Library’s quarter burns. Causatives.
DiocletianPremium
Four emperors, the Edict on Maximum Prices, the siege of Alexandria and “Pompey’s Pillar”. Advanced quantifiers.
Arc 6: The end of the old world
The SerapeumPremium
391 CE: the riot, the axe and the fall of the temple of Serapis. Alternatives to if.
HypatiaPremium
The mathematician and philosopher of Alexandria, and 415 CE. Understatement, euphemism and litotes.
What SurvivedPremium
The last part: the House of Wisdom, Toledo, palimpsests, papyri in the sand, and Sophia’s letter to the future. The future perfect and future continuous.
Other lives
Sophia’s visions also reach beyond the story of Alexandria, to single lives that hold a real question: what would you have done in their place? Each is a lesson and a gamebook, like the parts above.
Salutius: the Emperor Who Said NoPremium
363 CE: the emperor Julian dies in Persia, and the army offers the throne to his friend, a philosopher, who refuses. Third and mixed conditionals, and saying how sure you are. B2–C1.
Livingstone and Burton: Two Roads to the NilePremium
Two British explorers, the search for the source of the Nile, and the Africans who made both journeys possible. Comparing and contrasting, and referring to sources. B2–C1.
Zheng He: the Fleet That Never Sailed AgainPremium
1405–1433: China’s treasure fleets sail to India, Arabia and East Africa, and then the voyages simply stop. Should they have kept sailing? Past modals: should have, needn’t have, didn’t need to. B2–C1.
Seacole and Nightingale: Two Women at WarPremium
The Crimean War, 1854–1856: one woman organised the hospitals and counted the dead, the other healed soldiers near the front at her own expense. Why was one remembered and the other almost forgotten? What is said, believed and claimed. B2–C1.
Olaudah Equiano: the Man Who Wrote His Own FreedomPremium
1745–1797: enslaved as a boy, he bought his own freedom, wrote a bestselling life story and fought the slave trade, and historians still argue about where he was born. Telling a life story: had been working, would, used to, was never to. B2–C1.
Ibn Battuta: the Man Who Never Stopped TravellingPremium
1325–1354: a young lawyer from Tangier sets out for Mecca and comes home twenty-four years later, having reached India, China and Mali. How much of the book he dictated is true? Participle clauses for writing about journeys. B2–C1.
Pelayo: the King of the MountainsPremium
718–737: after the fall of the Visigothic kingdom, a band of rebels in the mountains of Asturias defeats an Umayyad army at Covadonga, and a kingdom is born. The winners remembered a miracle, the losers a nuisance: what really happened? Speculating about the past: must have, can’t have, may have. B2–C1.
Gamel Woolsey and the English CemeteryPremium
Málaga, 1831–1968: a garden of graves founded so that strangers no longer had to be buried on the beach at night, and the American poet who lived in Churriana and lies there beside Gerald Brenan. Relative clauses, and a poem to read. B2–C1.