Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia was a pagan philosopher in Alexandria around AD 400.

As Maria Dzielska shows, she occupies a special place in western culture – her life, and more particularly her death in AD 415 at the hands of a Christian mob, became a metaphor for a clash of civilizations. In these terms, it signifies the death of the old Hellenic world of ideas and learning and the rise of a new Christian world based on faith.

Dzielska’s pithy book explores Hypatia the myth, as created in literature such as Charles Kingsley’s 1853 novel Hypatia or the New Foes with an Old… show more.

I fell in love with Hypatia, the fifth-century mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher when she was featured in an art installation. She had a romantic story: a beautiful pagan scholar, revered by her students and the Alexandrian city fathers and murdered by a Christian mob. I embarked on a quest to find out more about this remarkable woman whom I’d never heard of and vowed to tell her story.

However, the facts on the ground were scant and contradictory. Hypatia was young or maybe sixty when she died. She was murdered because she was a woman or a pagan or collateral… show more.