Procopius of Gaza

If you were a posh Roman in the fourth, fifth, sixth century, you'd send your kids to Gaza to be educated.

And there were these extraordinary figures like Procopius of Gaza and John of Gaza.

There was a school of rhetoric, which was the world leader.

That's my new area of study.

And it was a major center of education.

The greatest of all the teachers of Gaza was Procopius of Gaza, whose 169 surviving letters give an intimate picture of the intellectual life of that coast 1,500 years ago.

Procopius invented the katana, a chain of linked commentary that became the model for every subsequent work of biblical interpretation.

When the Syrian Theodore of Tarsus was made Archbishop of Canterbury in the seventh century, he carried Procopius' commentaries in his baggage from the Mediterranean to Canterbury.

It's incredibly improbable, this racy Gaza literary festival in a city famous then for its wine, its Indian spice trade, gardens of figs and almonds and palms.

A merchant is recorded passing through Gaza in the late 5th century with two giraffes and an elephant, and it's probably this that's being pictured in this mosaic for us here.

Hold those images of the school of rhetoric, of the elephant, of the giraffe, the Procopius of Gaza and the Erotic Literary Festival beside the images coming out of Gaza this morning on your phones.

The same city, the same coast, the same people.