Review: Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia of Alexandria

by Maria Dzielska

A few women are known to have been scholars and philosophers in the ancient world, but none is even remotely as famous as the extraordinary Hypatia of Alexandria. Around the opening of the fifth century A.D., just before barbarians overwhelmed the western part of the Roman Empire, Alexandria was a leading centre of culture and learning, the third city after Rome and Constantinople, and Hypatia was a key figure in the civic and intellectual life of Alexandria. Her writings and lectures on Greek literature, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy were so brilliant, and her charisma was so powerful, that bright aristocratic young men came from long distances to listen to her. Some stayed for years; most hoped to be invited to the special meetings she held in her home where students often became disciples of “the most holy and revered philosopher.” Her renown was such that it became protocol for newly arrived imperial officials, or those merely passing through the area, to pay a courtesy call on her. Her advice was sought by officials at all levels of government. Her terrible death at the hands of religious rioters in 415, so violent and so entangled with the larger conflicts of her time, has kept her name alive through the centuries, even after all her writings were lost.

The story of Hypatia’s life and death has been told many times by major writers such as Gibbon and Voltaire, by minor novelists and poets, and recently in the 2007 film Agora starring Rachel Weisz (yes, Hypatia was not only gifted but also beautiful—“the spirit of Plato in the body of Aphrodite”). Most re-tellings aim to score points against the Church, to serve as an object lesson in the cause of feminism, or to bemoan the loss of a great scientist. Yet, despite the various uses to which her story has been put, the original sources are scarce. The layers of special pleading added onto the scanty facts  have created a need for a volume like Maria Dzielska’s Hypatia of Alexandria, whose aim is to separate fact from fiction. This is not another rendering of the Hypatia story; rather, it is an academic’s careful examination of the sources in order to clarify exactly what is known, what may be fairly inferred, and what is not known, about history’s most famous woman philospher.

To understand the profound effect Hypatia had on her disciples Dzielska examines the letters of Synesius, a Christian, later bishop of the Libyan city of Cyrene, who attended her meetings in his younger years. For Synesius, Hypatia is “a blessed lady who radiates knowledge and wisdom from divine Plato himself and his successor Plotinus.” His 159 surviving letters, addressed to Hypatia and fellow disciples after he returned to Cyrene, reveal much about the meetings Hypatia held with her closest followers. Hypatia was a philosopher solidly in the Neoplatonic tradition for whom the purpose of life is the cultivation of a virtuous soul and the rigorous exercise of reason. She taught philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. Her mathematics focused on the algebra of Diophantus, geometry from Euclid and Apollonius of Perge, and the writings of Pythagorus. Her astronomy was that of Ptolemy. In fact, it is likely that Ptolemy’s Almagest, his important work on mathematics and the motions of the heavenly bodies,  survives today only because of Hypatia’s work as editor and publisher.

Yet it is wrong to think of her as a scholar in a university lecture hall. All the intellectual work and nurturing of one’s soul was a means to an end, mere preparation for the ultimate goal, which was to achieve a contemplative, mystical union with the divine, the One, “the most ineffable of ineffable things.” Synesius’s letters speak of experiences deeper than mere intellectual excitement. “It was granted to you and me,” he writes to a friend, “to experience marvelous things, the bare recital of which had seemed to be incredible.” However, Hypatia had no interest in divination, magic, rituals, or sacrifices, even though accusations of witchcraft were later used to whip up the frenzy against her which led to her murder.

The source documents do not agree in every detail about her death in March of 415, but they all agree that it was hideous. In the most oft-cited version, a gang of Christian thugs, followers of Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, after accusing her of witchcraft, seized her, dragged her into a church, stripped her naked, tore the flesh off her bones with pottery shards, and burned the remains. No one was ever held to account for it. Cyril was later named a saint.

The significance of her death has been cast in many lights. It has been said that her death was a result of the clash of great historical forces, the final remnants of paganism submerged in the rising tide of Christianity, that her death was a Christ-like sacrifice on the altar of history enabling the ushering in of Christianity, that she was murdered out of misogyny, that her death put an end to Greek learning and marked the end of Classical antiquity, that the murder of “the most eminent woman scientist before Marie Curie” extinguished freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry, and natural reason in the West for a thousand years, that she was the innocent victim of religious fanaticism and the Church’s cruel and relentless quest for earthly dominance.

Dzielska argues that Hypatia was murdered for a simple reason, not because she was pagan or a woman, but because she was caught up in a power struggle between two men, Bishop Cyril and the imperial governor, Orestes, who opposed Cyril’s aggressive encroachments on civil authority. To break the influence Hypatia and her powerful friends had over Orestes, Cyril unleashed his strong-arm squad of parabolans (Christian brothers) on her. Defenders of Cyril say he did it inadvertently, but  Cyril had resorted to using his thugs before, first to defeat those he called heretics, then to expel all the Jews from Alexandria.

Hypatia of Alexandria is a fascinating read, not only for what it reveals about Hypatia and her times, but also as a case study in the methods scholars use to reconstruct our knowledge of the distant past.

Incidentally, when Hypatia was murdered, her age was probably a dignified fifty or sixty, not the ravishing  thirtyishness of Rachel Weisz in the otherwise quite authentic Agora.