1Hypatia’s principal claim to fame is being lynched by Christian fanatics. As a pagan martyr, she has always been a stick to beat Christians with, a symbol in the continuing struggle between science and revealed religion. The memorable account in Gibbon begins wickedly “On a fatal day in the holy season of lent”1. As a woman, she can be seen as a feminist as well as a pagan martyr. Her name has been a feminist symbol down the centuries, more recently a potent name in lesbian and gay circles. As an Egyptian, she has also been claimed as a black woman martyr2. There is an asteroid named after her, a crater on the moon, and a journal of feminist studies. As early as 1886 the women of Wichita Kansas, familiar from the movies of our youth as a lawless western cattle-town, formed a literary society called the Hypatia Club3. Lake Hypatia in Alabama is a retreat for freethinkers and atheists. Rather less in tune with her scholarly activity there is Hypatia Capital, a merchant bank whose strategy focuses on the top female executives in the Fortune 1 000.

2A few seconds’googling will produce countless eulogies of Hypatia as a uniquely gifted philosopher and mathematician, the second female scientist after Marie Curie, the only woman in antiquity appointed to a university chair, an original genius who anticipated Copernicus with the heliocentric hypothesis. The 2009 movie Agora goes even further in this direction. A millennium before Kepler Hypatia discovered that earth and its sister planets not only go round the sun but do so in ellipses, not circles. She remained unmarried, and could therefore be seen as a model of pagan virginity. Alternatively, since the monks are said to have killed her because of her influence on the prefect of Egypt, she could be seen as a slut. It is fascinating to observe how down the centuries she has served as a lay figure for the prejudices of successive generations.

3In 1720 an Irish freethinker called John Toland published a pamphlet titled Hypatia, or the history of a most beautiful, most vertuous, and everyway accomplish’d Lady, who was torn to Pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the Pride, Emulation, and Cruelty of their Archbishop, commonly, but undeservedly stiled St. Cyril, ostensibly in defence of Hypatia, but in fact an attack on the established church of his own day, as proved by the publication of a reply the following year by one Thomas Lewis, under the no less provocative but slightly briefer title: The History of Hypatia, a most impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria. In defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy from the Aspersions of Mr. Toland. Hypatia’s name is blackened to save the good name of the clergy of eighteenth century London.

4The last few years have seen a veritable flood of books on Hypatia, biographies; novels; love stories (virginity notwithstanding); and even children’s books. Oddly enough Agora throws away the climax of the stostory: Hypatia is not lynched by fanatics, but discreetly suffocated by an unrequited lover! The fullest account of her afterlife in European culture is now a remarkable recent book by Silvia Ronchey4.

5A more or less suppressed eroticism runs through much of this literature, inaugurated by the ecclesiastical historian Socrates, who claims that the monks stripped her naked, a hint first exploited by Voltaire. One of the few items Ronchey missed is a short story by David Martin which describes in unpleasant detail a gang rape in the stacks of the Alexandrian library, allegedly the very day the library was set on fire, thus combining two sensational myths in one5.

6Gibbon describes her flesh being scraped from her bones with oystershells, maliciously using the language of Christian martyr texts to attack the zealotry of the early church. Actually we are told only that the monks killed her with roof tiles, a common weapon in ancient street fighting6. Over the years the most popular of the novels has proved Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face (1853), the New Foes being the Catholic church. The event that leads to her murder is the plot of the prefect Orestes to rebel from Rome and declare himself king of Egypt with Hypatia as his queen. As the monks carry her off, “she shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing back, rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snowwhite against the dusky mass around.” Kingsley was no doubt correct in assuming that the monks were dark-skinned Egyptians, but it is instructive that he thought of Hypatia as a fair-skinned English rose. He was not the only Victorian to make this assumption. Charles Mitchell (1854-1903) was so carried away by Kingsley’s account that in his famous painting of Hypatia as a naked blonde he forgot to include the monks who supposedly stripped her7.

7To return to Hypatia herself rather than her myth, why did she meet so spectacular a death? Was she killed for her paganism? Or was she a martyr to science, or to freedom of speech? Currently, most scholars think she was killed in the course of a political struggle between the prefect Orestes and the patriarch Cyril. There may be an element of truth in all these explanations, but I will be suggesting that the precipitating factor is to be sought elsewhere.

8To set her own writings on one side for the moment, our knowledge of Hypatia comes from five sources, all but one Christian: her student Synesius, later a Christian bishop; the ecclesiastical histories of Socrates and Philostorgius, both contemporaries; the Life of Isidorus written early in the sixth century by Damascius, the last head of Plato’s Academy in Athens; and the Chronicle of the late seventh century Coptic bishop John of Nikiu. Of these the evidence of Synesius is in a class by itself; letters written to Hypatia herself by a former student who admired and kept in touch with her throughout his life. Unfortunately for us, he predeceased her.

9Socrates and Damascius pose a curious problem. We might expect to find the ecclesiastical historian and the pagan philosopher disagreeing in their assessment of Hypatia. But it is Socrates who is favourable and Damascius who is hostile8. According to Damascius, Isidorus, his own teacher and predecessor as head of the Academy, surpassed Hypatia “not only as a man excels a woman, but also as a real philosopher excels a mere geometrician.” Damascius also says “wrapping herself in the tribon, she taught publicly as she paraded through the city to anyone who wanted to hear.” Some have identified this tribon with the rough cloak worn by Cynics in earlier times, and on this basis classified her as a “Cynic preacher.” But by the fifth century the tribon had long since lost these associations. Elsewhere Damascius describes Proclus trying to persuade Isidorus, apparently something of a dandy, to wear the tribon9, no doubt a simple, plain garment, but hardly the cheap piece of cloth “worn during the day and folded at night for bedding” of the old-time Cynic10. Socrates says that it was from her carriage that the monks grabbed her, and street philosophers do not drive around town in carriages.

10Socrates too says that she taught all comers, and the “publicly” has been thought to mean that she held an official chair. Perhaps, but since Damascius goes on to say, rather dismissively, that she taught “Plato or Aristotle or any other philosopher you care to name,” his complaint is surely that by wearing the tribon she was falsely affecting the status of a real philosopher, instead of the geometrician she was. He is depreciating Hypatia for teaching what he regarded as the sacred texts of Plato and Aristotle in public, to large classes rather than to an exclusive circle of initiates, as he and his predecessors did in the School of Athens.

11One more example. The most notorious story told of Hypatia, prominently featured in Agora, is how she discouraged unwelcome attentions from a lovesick student by throwing a used sanitary napkin at him: “this is what you are in love with, young man, nothing that is beautiful.” This is said to illustrate Hypatia playing the Cynic11. But Damascius also refers to what he calls an “ignorant” version, according to which Hypatia cured the student of his infatuation through music, which he dismisses on the curious grounds that “knowledge of music had by then long disappeared.” The question whether music could arouse or calm the passions was much debated by ancient philosophers, from Pythagoras on. A century after Hypatia the Alexandrian philosopher Ammonius was still telling the story of the flute girl who calmed amorous youths by changing from the Phrygian to the Dorian mode12. This famous story dates from the age of Pericles, and Damascius may have dismissed it as an anachronistic philosophical pose. We may well be sceptical of both versions13, but Damascius’s scepticism certainly implies hostility to Hypatia.

12Why was Damascius so hostile to his fellow pagan? During his one and only visit to Athens, Synesius wrote a letter to his brother, complaining that the once great intellectual centre was not what it was. Philosophy has left Athens, and today “Egypt has received and cherishes the fruitful wisdom of Hypatia. In days of old Athens was the home of the wise… now two Plutarchian sages draw the young to their lecture room, not by the fame of their eloquence, but by bribing them with pots of honey from Hymettus.” The two Plutarchian sages are presumably Plutarch, head of the Academy at the time of Synesius’s visit, and his assistant and later successor Syrianus. It would not be surprising if Damascius had avenged the insult by mocking Hypatia in turn.

13A central element in the modern Hypatia myth is that she was the last great mathematician of the ancient world14. An article in the journal Astronomy and Geophysics for 2010 under the title “An astronomical murder” argues, at the cost of moving the year of her death to 416, that Hypatia was killed because she embarrassed the Alexandrian church by proving that their date for Easter was wrong15. But why should it ever have crossed her mind to enter what must have seemed to any pagan a pointless as well as provocative Christian controversy?

14It has long been customary to lament the disappearance of Hypatia’s writings, allegedly brilliant, original treatises destroyed by jealous Christians, afraid of science. But such regret may be premature, in more senses than one. Let us turn to our sources for Hypatia’s teaching: Synesius, and what can be reconstructed of her mathematical writings. They tell a very different story. In fact, they tell two very different stories. First, her published work. She is credited by her entry in the Suda Lexicon16, with commentaries (ὑπόμνηματα) on the Conic Sections of the third century BC Apollonius of Perga and the Arithmetica of the second or third century AD Diophantus of Alexandria. The central item on the list is more of a puzzle. The work in question must be Ptolemy’s Handy Tables, astronomical tables that supplement his mathematical masterpiece, the Almagest. Following Tannery, most critics have inserted an “on”, Greek εἰς, construing “<a commentary on> the Astronomical Canon.”

15But there is a problem. Her father, Theon, is credited with two commentaries on the Handy Tables, in addition to his thirteen book commentary on the Almagest itself. Years ago, before either work had been published, Tannery made the reasonable suggestion that one of them was in fact by Hypatia. But both have now been published, and it is established by their prefaces and cross references that Theon did indeed write both himself, the “large commentary” in five books, and a one-book abridgment. We can hardly believe that Hypatia added a third. The word order too is against Tannery’s insertion. In the transmitted text, ὑπόμνημα appears twice, at the beginning and end of the list. But if she had written commentaries on all three works, we should expect it to appear once only, whether at beginning or end: commentaries on A, B, and C. The middle item in the Suda list is surely just the title of her book: Astronomical Canon, namely Ptolemy’s Handy Tables, according to Otto Neugebauer “one of the most important astronomical documents of antiquity”17.

16The Handy Tables themselves do not survive in Ptolemy’s original edition, but in a version in modern times widely attributed to Theon. But the attribution is not attested by any MS, nor does Theon himself refer to any such edition in either of his commentaries18. On the basis of the original, unemended Suda entry, I suggest that it was Hypatia who actually edited the text, no doubt under Theon’s guidance and encouragement.

17In support, we may turn to Theon’s commentary on the Almagest, which, like the Almagest itself, ran to thirteen books, eleven of which survive more or less complete. Here is the heading to Book III19:

Commentary (ὑπόμνημα) by Theon of Alexandria on Book III of Ptolemy’s Almagest, edition revised by my daughter Hypatia, the philosopher (ἐκδόσεως παραναγνωσθεíσης τῇ φιλοσόφῳ θυγατρί μου Ὑπατίᾳ).

18This has always been taken to mean that Hypatia revised Theon’s commentary. According to Deakin, “Theon, recognizing the superiority of Hypatia’s work, suppressed his own earlier edition in favor of one revised by his daughter”20. It is naturally tempting to interpret the linking of the two names in terms of their father-daughter relationship, but we find an exactly parallel linking of two names in the titles of the sixth century mathematician Eutocius of Ascalon. His commentaries on three books of Archimedes all close with the explicit “Commentary (ὑπόμνημα) of Eutocius… edition revised (ἐκδόσεως παραναγνωσθέισης, the identical formula) by Isidore of Miletus, the engineer, my teacher”. Once again teacher and student, but this time it is the teacher who is the reviser, not the student. And no ordinary teacher. Isidore of Miletus was one of the architects of Hagia Sophia. Famous architects do not usually “revise” their students’commentaries.

19The solution is provided by the headings to Books I and II of Theon’s commentary:

Commentary (ὑπόμνημα) by Theon of Alexandria on Book I (II) of Ptolemy’s Almagest, in his own edition (τῆς παρ’ αὐτοῦ γεγενημένης ἐκδόσεως).

20Previous scholars have taken this to mean: “the original edition, in contrast to Hypatia’s”21. But we would naturally assume that, when composing Books I-II of his commentary, Theon had not yet written Book III, much less seen it revised by someone else22. Here too we find the identical formula in Eutocius. All four books of his commentary on the Conica of Apollonius open with the words “Commentary (ὑπόμνημα) of Eutocius… in his own edition” (τῆς κατ’αὐτὸν ἐκδόσεως). Eutocius is distinguishing between his commentary and the edition of the text he is commenting on. In his commentary he frequently cites manuscript variants (ἐν τισιν ἀντιγράφοις), and in the preface to Book IV claims that the book “is clear and elegant, especially in my edition (ἔκδοσις), which is also equipped with a commentary (σχόλια)”23. Heiberg drew attention to passages indicating that the commentary was written in the margins of Eutocius’s text24, a practice found in fifth-and sixth-century papyrus codices of the classics (the Antinoe Theocritus is perhaps the most elaborate example)25.

21For his commentary on Archimedes, Eutocius used the edition of his teacher Isidore; for Apollonius, he produced his own edition. We are surely bound to make a similar assumption about Theon. While commenting on all 13 books of the Almagest, he only edited the text of the first two. At this point in the long task that lay ahead of him he enlisted his daughter’s assistance, and they divided the labour between them.

22Deakin objects that this interpretation has Hypatia “performing the more menial task of preparing text,” which he later glosses as “merely proofreading”26. This is seriously to underestimate both the difficulty and the importance of constructing the text of a mathematical classic in late antiquity, an entirely different enterprise from editing the text of (say) Theocritus. Then as now, the editor of a literary classic did his best to establish what the original author wrote. In the case of Theocritus this might include restoring his Doric dialect. But the editor of a mathematical text was expected to check (and if necessary correct) the author’s propositions and proofs, and modernise the notation, to present the work in a form that contemporary readers could understand. In the case of Archimedes that would involve eliminating his Doric dialect. Mathematical texts must have suffered from the “corrections” of incompetent editors much more than literary texts. The ninth-century Arabic translators of Apollonius found pre-Eutocian texts unintelligible27.

23Theon would not have considered editing the text that accompanied his commentary a “menial task”. He himself had produced an influential edition of Euclid. In Book II of his Almagest commentary he remarks “that sectors of equal circles are to one another as the angles on which they stand I have proved in my edition (ἔκδοσις) of [Euclid’s] Elements at the end of Book 6”. Just such a proposition appears in almost all extant manuscripts at the end of Book 6, some of them explicitly stated to be “from Theon’s edition (again ἔκδοσις)”. Note that he does not claim to be correcting an error or supplementing a lacuna in the original text of Euclid here. He positively boasts that this proposition is his own work. As Thomas Heath put it in his great edition of Euclid, Theon was not concerned “to discover and restore from manuscripts the actual words which Euclid had written, but aimed much more at removing difficulties that might be felt by learners in studying the book [and…] suppl[ying] intermediate steps where Euclid’s argument seemed too rapid and not easy enough to follow”28. However unsatisfactory by modern standards, this sort of “editing” must have involved considerable labour and (however misguided) expertise. As Theon’s pupil, at this stage evidently working as his collaborator, Hypatia presumably “edited” Ptolemy the same way. The “large number of interpolations” detected in the text of the Almagest by Gerald Toomer may in part at least be Hypatia’s work29.

24So Hypatia did much more than just contribute one or two ideas to a single book in a revision of her father’s commentary. Knorr pointed out that Book III employs a different method of long division from Book I, supposedly a contribution by Hypatia30. Not only is that pure speculation. Such a detail could hardly be described as “revising”. Not that the verb παραναγιγνώσκειν means “revise” in the sense one might apply to a commentary: that is to say, bring up to date or add new material. It means check for exact verbal accuracy. It is used, for example, of actors checking the accuracy of their copies against the master text of the Greek tragedians in Athens31. Obviously a good word to describe editing a text. Hypatia edited the whole of Book III, and perhaps all remaining nine books of the Almagest32.

25Theon went on to compile the large and small commentaries on the Handy Tables, and during his labours no doubt came to feel the need for a new edition of this text too. If so, to whom is he more likely to have entrusted the task than Hypatia? She would already have covered much of the ground when editing the Almagest. So far from Hypatia’s works being entirely lost, we may have well over 1 000 pages of Greek edited by her.

26In fact we can go further still. Of the thirteen original books of Diophantus’s Arithmetica, only six survive in Greek33. But we now know that at least another four survived to be translated into Arabic ca 860. More interesting still, the Arabic text seems to be an expanded version of Diophantus’s text, incorporating verifications of his demonstrations and interpolated problems. Clearly the purpose was to make a difficult text easier to follow. Either the translator incorporated into his text material from an elementary exegetical commentary; or the text he translated had already been amplified in this way. The surviving Greek text already contains a number of what look like explanatory interpolations. The obvious candidate as source for this additional material is Hypatia, Diophantus’s only known ancient commentator, once again following her father’s method34.

27Knorr objected that the interpolations in the Arabic Diophantus are “of such a low level as not to require any real mathematical insight”, concluding that to identify the unknown commentator in this way “would thus isolate an essentially trivial mind… in direct conflict with ancient testimonies of Hypatia’s high caliber as a philosopher and mathematician”35.

28But Theon too enjoyed a high reputation, yet his surviving work has been judged “completely unoriginal”36. Hypatia’s work on Diophantus was what we might today call a school edition, designed for the use of students rather than professional mathematicians.

29It may be, then, that so far from having to lament the loss of Hypatia’s published writings, we are in fact in a position to form a rather accurate impression of them. The more extravagant expectations are dashed. Theon and Hypatia kept alive but did not advance study of the ancient mathematical classics. Nothing to inspire Copernicus or Kepler. Au contraire, they devoted the greater part of their scholarly activity to providing a solid grounding for the Ptolemaic system! To our surprise we discover that her forte seems to have been providing reader-friendly texts. It is easy to see why Damascius was unimpressed.

30Yet Hypatia did teach philosophy too. The traditional assumption is that she was an old fashioned Platonist, unaffected by the growing influence of Iamblichus37, but this does not really square with the evidence of Synesius. The defining feature of Synesius’s neoplatonism is his enthusiasm for the so-called Chaldaean Oracles, a collection purporting to be divine revelations in hexameter verse, given a platonizing interpretation by the Neoplatonists. It was the semi-magical practices known as theurgy based on the Oracles that formed the most esoteric part of Athenian Neoplatonism. Synesius directly quotes the Oracles by name four times in his work on Dream Divination, and there are countless echoes in his hymns38. Who initiated Synesius into these secrets? Who but his only known philosophy professor, his guru, Hypatia?

31Who did Hypatia study philosophy with? Various Neoplatonists have been suggested, but her only known teacher is Theon. In addition to his extensive mathematical oeuvre, Theon also wrote books on the occult: On signs; The examination of birds and the croaking of ravens; and commentaries on Hermes Trismegistus and Orpheus39. In the course of his book on dream divination Synesius remarks on the superiority of dream divination over bird divination, revealing himself remarkably well informed about the technicalities of bird divination. He also shows knowledge of the Hermetica.

32Did Synesius get his interest in Hermetica and bird divination from studying with Theon? He nowhere mentions Theon, and the most natural explanation is that Hypatia, here as elsewhere, followed in her father’s footsteps, teaching the same subjects and introducing her father’s books to her own pupils. In the case of the exact sciences too we can be confident that the missing link was Hypatia. Synesius describes the silver astrolabe he had made with the guidance of Hypatia, his “most revered teacher”40. Obviously she must have been drawing on her father’s published treatise on the astrolabe, lost but reconstructable in outline from Arabic accounts41. It is natural to assume that she played the same role in the case of divination and the Hermetica.

33Listen to the way Synesius speaks of Hypatia’s philosophical teaching. In a letter to a fellow student he says: “we have seen with our own eyes, we have heard with our own ears the lady who rightfully presides over the mysteries of philosophy” (Ep. 137). In another letter (Ep. 4 = 5G) he asks his brother to “salute for me the most holy and revered philosopher, and give my homage also to the blessed company that delights in her oracular utterance” (θεσπεσίας αὐδῆς). On his deathbed, he writes to her as “Mother, sister, teacher, benefactress in all things” (Ep. 16). It would not be surprising if it was from the teacher he describes in such terms that Synesius had derived both his knowledge of the Chaldaean Oracles and more generally his conception of philosophy as an esoteric mystery, not to be discussed with un-initiates.

34Even when he refers to her instruction in the exact sciences, it is in the same ecstatic terms, “holy geometry” or “divine geometry” (Ep. 93), treating it as a propaideutic to philosophy. It was above all as a philosopher that he revered Hypatia. His letters to her are headed either “Hypatia the philosopher” or just “the philosopher” (τῇ φιλοσόφῳ). It is as “the philosopher” that Theon proudly styled her in the heading to Book III of his Almagest commentary.

35On this evidence, it might seem that some at least of Hypatia’s classes were just as esoteric as those of Plutarch and Syrianus at Athens. So was Damascius mistaken? Not on his own terms. First, to judge from Synesius’s contemptuous reference to the “Plutarchians” of Athens, she was no fan of their teaching. Second, there is no evidence that Hypatia published anything on Plato or Aristotle. To anyone who knew her only from her published work, she was indeed a geometrician rather than a philosopher. Second, unlike the Athenians, she did not form a school and so had no successors to propagate her views. The “school of Alexandria” as Damascius knew it descended from Hierocles, a pupil of Plutarch, and Ammonius, a pupil of Proclus. From Synesius’s correspondence we can identify three fellow students of Hypatia. But there is no suggestion that any of them became serious philosophers. One became governor of Libya, and while we know nothing of the careers of the other two, Synesius tells both of them to give his regards to unnamed officials, suggesting that they moved in administrative rather than academic circles42. Hypatia may have been an inspiring teacher, but her pupils were not aspiring academics but, like Synesius, rich young men studying philosophy as a guide to the good life, whether pagans or Christians.

36Nonetheless, seen from this point of view, her teaching cannot have looked so innocent to Christians, despite or perhaps because of the fact that she had many Christian students. So did her paganism play any part in her death? It has not (I think) been observed that, despite the fact that all our sources except Damascius were Christians, no one before John of Nikiu, writing 300 years after the event, actually says she was a pagan. This would be rather strange if it was precisely her paganism that provoked her death.

37If contemporaries thought of her as a pagan martyr, it is also strange that Damascius, who has much about the persecution of pagan philosophers in Alexandria, does not say so. I am not suggesting that she was a Christian, but the fact that she had devoted Christian students suggests that her paganism did not influence her teaching. Indeed her public reputation as a scholar rested on her work in mathematics and algebra. It is also surely significant that her reputation as a teacher dates from the years immediately following the destruction of the Serapeum and other pagan temples in 391. Clearly she did not suffer during this earlier anti-pagan violence. While sacrifice and other pagan rituals were forbidden, it was not against the law simply to be a pagan.

38But however popular Hypatia was, the mere fact that she was a pagan was surely found scandalous by more extreme elements in the Christian community. Who actually killed her? Most have assumed the Nitrian monks Socrates describes as attacking Orestes earlier in the year, though all he actually says is “some hotheads”43. But a law of 416 responding to the events of 415 lays the blame on “the terror of the so-called parabalani”, apparently Christian social workers of some sort44. Since both groups took orders from Cyril, according to Socrates people laid the blame on Cyril. But Socrates had an axe of his own to grind. Cyril persecuted the Novatian sect Socrates favoured, and subsequently became the great enemy of the church of Constantinople, where Socrates lived. Better to portray Hypatia as the innocent victim of a savage murder than a dangerous pagan who might be held to deserve such a fate. John of Nikiu gives us a glimpse of Cyril’s point of view.

39There is also another factor, one so obvious that it is easy to overlook: her gender. The rising tide of Christian asceticism had brought about drastic changes in the public position of women during Hypatia’s lifetime. On the one hand Christianity allowed women new scope and new status. On the other, the insistence on submissiveness increasingly circumscribed their public activity45. The much travelled ascetic grandes dames of the age, the two Melanias, were always accompanied by large bands of fellow ascetics46. Surviving texts constantly harp on woman as the Eve figure. Another Egyptian of the age, Isidore of Pelusium, reports the drastic steps a virtuous Christian girl took to discourage a would-be lover. She shaved her head completely, wiped a mixture of ashes and water all over her face and then addressed him in much the same terms as Hypatia supposedly addressed her admirer: “Is this the ugliness you are in love with”47? The Alexandrian clergy told Palladius of a girl who, in her youth, “was exceedingly pretty and really to be avoided because of her beauty, in case one be suspected of having been with her”48. There could be only one reason why any man should be tempted to speak to a pretty girl. Among the evil thoughts Evagrius Ponticus lists to guard against is “a beautiful woman engaging us in serious conversation, while we wish to do evil and shameful things with her”49. The younger Melania wore the cheapest and oldest clothes she could find “trying in this way to extinguish the beauty of her youth”50. Obviously these are extreme views, but then those who killed Hypatia were extremists.

40Late antique philosophers had many female students, but we know of only two other professors. We have already seen what Damascius thought of a female professor. In Book 3 of his Synagogē Pappus of Alexandria attacks at some length the incompetence of the pupils of Pandrosion, who taught mathematics in early fourth century Alexandria. While not naming the pupils, he apostrophizes Pandrosion herself, surely ironically, with an adjective whose termination emphasizes her gender, “excellent Pandrosion” (κρατίστη Πανδροσίον)51. Then there is Sosipatra, the widow of a pupil of Iamblichus, who taught on a private estate near Pergamum in the mid fourth century. Eunapius assigns her a disproportionately long entry, emphasizing her clairvoyance rather than her teaching. Robert Penella plausibly suggests that he wrote her up as a sort of Asiatic answer to Hypatia, whom he ostentatiously does not mention52.

41Unlike many professors, Hypatia was not content to live quietly, do her research and teach her classes. If she had, few would even have been aware of her paganism. Instead, despite both paganism and gender, she chose to play the active role in Alexandrian public life that prominent philosophers and sophists had played without risk in the early centuries of the empire53. She was seen driving around the streets of Alexandria in her carriage and conversing with men as equals. Even before a barbarous death lifted her fame to another level, she was a celebrity in a major city.

42Not the least interesting detail in Socrates’s account of Hypatia is his remark “it was against this woman that envy (φθόνος) took up arms”. Intriguingly enough, Damascius too accuses Cyril of envy (φθόνος again). Why did two men with such different agendas both accuse Cyril of jealjealousy? Jealous of what? In the context of Damascius’s narrative, Cyril was jealous of all the officials (ἄρχοντες again) he saw crowding into Hypatia’s house. They paid her the compliment of visiting her first, as happened at Athens. According to Marinus’s biography, Proclus, in his capacity as head of the Academy, did indeed hobnob with the ἄρχοντες of Athens54. At this period, the term ἄρχοντες always designates imperial officials rather than local magistrates55. The distinction is not unimportant. It means that the grandees who called on Hypatia were not local connections inherited from her father, but the new governor and his entourage. Her name was evidently on the official list of Alexandrian VIPs given to visiting dignitaries.

43Nor were these purely social calls. Hypatia’s influence extended beyond her classroom. A letter from Synesius two years before her death, after lamenting his own declining influence, continues: “you are still powerful and long may you continue to make use of that power”. He then asks her to use her influence on behalf of two young kinsmen of his who were having problems claiming an inheritance: “let all who honour you do what they can, whether private citizens or officials” (ἄρχοντες again)56. Synesius seems to have assumed that she had a pipeline to the imperial bureaucracy.

44At the age of 34, Cyril had only recently succeeded, in a contested election57, to the patriarchate held by his uncle Theophilus for 27 tempestuous years, years that had made Alexandria a major player in ecclesiastical politics. He must have been eager to win the respect enjoyed by his great predecessor, and since before his election he had only been a reader, the lowest rung on the ecclesiastical hierarchy, may not yet have been on the VIP list. It would not be surprising if he had been jealous that a mere woman, a pagan at that, enjoyed such public respect in the community.

45According to Socrates, “because of the freedom of speech (παρρησία) her learning had earned her, she moved modestly in the company of officials (ἄρχοντες). Nor did she feel embarrassed at being in the presence of men. For everyone admired and respected her for her extraordinary modesty”. There is an obvious subtext here: she moved among men without embarrassment despite being a woman. But she did at least behave modestly (mentioned twice) because this is how women were supposed to behave in male company.

46But this modesty does not quite suit his reference to the “splendid frankness that came from her learning”, by which he must mean the frankness traditionally allowed philosophers (speaking truth to power)58. Marinus describes Proclus as almost forcing officials to do what he wanted by “the philosopher’s frankness” (τῇ φιλοσόφῳ παρρησίᾳ)59. When the philosopher was a pagan in a Christian world, this frankness became more provocative. And in the eyes of Cyril and his followers, it surely became intolerable when the philosopher was a woman as well as a pagan. It was one thing for the wife or daughters of an important man to play hostess, but quite another for an unmarried woman to receive callers and address public officials frankly as an equal. Above all, by so acting Hypatia was drawing attention to her most vulnerable suit, her paganism.

47There can be no question that Hypatia’s death arose out of the anti-Jewish riots of 415 and the struggle for power between Cyril and Orestes60. According to Agora, Orestes was a former student of Hypatia, in fact none other than the rejected lover. But there is no reason to believe he had ever been in Alexandria before he was appointed governor. Christopher Haas argued that Orestes “made use of his working relationship with Hypatia to forge a party of Alexandrians opposed to the patriarch”, and that this is what led to her death61. But the only evidence for such a party is Socrates’s remark that Orestes met Hypatia “often”, giving rise to what he characterises as the slander (διαβολή) that it was Hypatia who stood in the way of reconciliation between governor and patriarch. That is to say, our only source for such a relationship denies that it was a factor in the conflict. In any case, since Cyril’s goal was to extend his authority as bishop, a pagan was the last person likely to persuade him to back down.

48By 415 Hypatia was probably in her sixties, with long experience of the often violent politics of Alexandria. Though active in civic affairs when they concerned her or her pupils, it is surely incredible that, a woman as well as a pagan, she would be rash enough to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs, in this case a quarrel between Christians about Jews. And even if, improbably, Cyril thought she was, as a shrewd politician himself he is not likely to have imagined that a public lynching would solve the problem. Only a week or so earlier, when Orestes put to death a minion of Cyril’s who had seriously wounded him with a stone, Cyril proclaimed the man a martyr to the faith62. Though not above using violence as a tactic, Cyril of all people knew the value, and danger, of creating martyrs. It is hard to believe that Cyril directly ordered the brutal public murder of a prominent local celebrity, an act that undoubtedly did both him and his cause more harm than good. It achieved nothing in the conflict with Orestes, infuriated the emperor, and required major bribes to forestall retribution63.

49Given the close relations between Cyril and the parabalani, my guess is something on the lines of Henry II’s famous remark about Thomas Becket, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,” taken more literally than he intended by those anxious to anticipate their master’s wishes. Violence was already in the air, and their attack was inspired by a combination of factors: her paganism, her gender, and her supposed influence over Orestes. As for her paganism, it was not her science or even her philosophy that worried them: it was their conviction that she had bewitched him with her spells. John of Nikiu says she beguiled people with her astrolabes, which he ignorantly supposes to be, not a scientific apparatus, but a magical instrument! This too was a fear accentuated by her gender as much as her paganism. Witches, of course, were always women64.

50According to John, the people surrounded Cyril and named him “the new Theophilus”; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city. I doubt if this was the immediate reaction of Cyril himself, though after the murder he may well have tried to turn what was undoubtedly a public relations disaster to his advantage by proclaiming the destruction of paganism.

51Bertrand Russell famously remarked that, after Hypatia’s murder, “Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers”65. Doubly false. Hypatia’s death spelled the end of neither philosophy nor even paganism in Alexandra. The pagan Olympiodorus was still holding the public chair of philosophy there 150 years later66. But we hear no more of unmarried women venturing to raise their voices in civic affairs. The saddest aspect of Hypatia’s tragedy is the fact that the source of her fame may also have been the source of her downfall.