Who Was Hypatia of Alexandria Really?

Alongside the venerable ranks of Cleopatra, Boudicca, and Olympias, the philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (lived c. 350 x c. 375 – 415 AD) is one of the single most famous historical women of classical antiquity. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about her out there and, if you have read about her previously, there is a very high probability that the vast majority of what you have read about her is fiction. Join as we discover the real Hypatia of history, as well as how the myths surrounding her have accrued over the years.

The Myth

First, I will briefly summarize the Hypatia of modern popular culture. This Hypatia is a brilliant, forward-thinking atheistic rationalist who proves the heliocentric model of Aristarchos over a millennium before Copernicus. She is also supposed to have invented the plane astrolabe and the hydrometer. To top it all off, she is young and extraordinarily beautiful. The ignorant, obscurantist Christians, however, do not understand her and believe she is a witch, so they brutally murder her, burn the Library of Alexandria, and bring on the Dark Ages.

The only parts of this story that are actually true are that Hypatia was a real person and that she really was murdered by Christians. Everything else is pure fantasy, the result of centuries of myth-making by people with different polemical agendas.

Hypatia the Neoplatonist

First of all, the historical Hypatia was neither a rationalist nor an atheist; she was, in fact, a pagan Neoplatonist philosopher. In case you were unaware, Neoplatonism is the name given by modern scholars to a mystical school of philosophy based on the teachings of Plato that thrived during late antiquity. The Neoplatonists believed in the existence of a single, all-encompassing, incorporeal principle, which they called “the One,” or, in Greek, “τὸ Ἕν” (tò Hén). The Neoplatonists regarded the traditional Greco-Roman deities as manifestations of the One and believed that union with the One is the ultimate goal of all philosophy.

Neoplatonists did not call themselves “Neoplatonists”; instead, they merely thought of themselves as followers of the philosophy of Plato. Neoplatonism is a name that has been given to the school by modern scholars to distinguish it from the earlier phases of Platonic philosophy. The histories of Neoplatonism and Christian theology are closely entwined. The Greek philosopher Ammonios Sakkas (lived c. 175 – c. 242 AD), whose ideas were influential in the development of Neoplatonism, is said to have been born a Christian. In turn, Neoplatonist ideas also profoundly influenced early Christian theology.

Hypatia’s school of Neoplatonism in particular seems to have been of a rather conservative variety, founded primarily on the teachings of the early Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinos of Lykopolis (lived c. 205 – 270 AD). Other schools of Neoplatonism that existed during Hypatia’s lifetime were heavily influenced by the ideas of the later Neoplatonist philosophers Porphyrios of Tyre (lived c. 234 – c. 305 AD) and Iamblichos of Chalkis-on-Belos (lived c. 245 – c. 325 AD). Hypatia’s school, on the other hand, seems to have been less greatly influenced by these thinkers.

ABOVE: Photograph of a late Roman marble head identified as a possible depiction of the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinos of Lykopolis, on whose teachings Hypatia’s school seems to have largely been based

Hypatia’s supposed inventions

Hypatia did not really make any groundbreaking scientific inventions or discoveries either. Although, as I discuss in this other article I wrote, it is true that the Greek astronomer Aristarchos of Samos (lived c. 310 – c. 230 BC) did indeed propose a heliocentric model of the universe in antiquity, we have no evidence to suggest that Hypatia was even aware of this model and certainly no evidence to suggest that she supported it.

The stories about Hypatia inventing the plane astrolabe and the hydrometer are similarly spurious; both inventions were in use hundreds of years before she was born. The claim that she invented the plane astrolabe originates from a misunderstanding of a statement by her student Synesios (lived c. 373 – c. 414 AD) in one of his letters, in which he states that she taught him how to construct a plane astrolabe, but never mentions anything about her having invented the device herself.

The claim that she invented the hydrometer comes from another statement by Synesios in Letter 15, addressed to Hypatia, in which he requests her to construct one for him, giving detailed instructions on how to build one. Once again, he never says anything about her having invented the hydrometer and, in fact, the level of detail with which he gives instructions for building it seems to indicate that he assumes she has never built one before.

ABOVE: Photograph of a plane astrolabe, a kind of device Hypatia built and studied, but did not actually invent. The one shown here is a modern one from Iran.

Hypatia’s main area of study was in mathematics, which, like the Pythagoreans before them, the Neoplatonists regarded as sacred and a key to unlocking the secrets of the Divine. Hypatia’s reputation as a great mathematician within her own lifetime was exuberant. The contemporary Christian historian Philostorgios (lived c. 368 – c. 439 AD) declares that her mathematical work excelled even that of her father Theon, who had been regarded as the greatest mathematician of his generation. Hypatia edited the text of Book III of Ptolemy’s Almagest and wrote commentaries on Diophantos’s Arithmetica and Apollonios of Perga’s Conics. Her commentary on the Arithmetica has survived in part through an Arabic translation.

The ancients, however, seem to have had low expectations because, by modern standards, in terms of originality and insight, both Hypatia and Theon’s surviving mathematical works are underwhelming to say the least. Hypatia’s work on the Arithmetica is so basic and so trivial that historian of mathematics Wilbur Knorr calls it “of such low level as not to require any real mathematical insight” and even argues that the commentary cannot really have been written by her because it falls so drastically short of Hypatia’s reputation. No other ancient author is known to have written a commentary of the Arithmetica, however, and other scholars support the identification of the commentary as Hypatia’s.

The historical Hypatia, then, does not seem to have been much of an original thinker, but we should not judge her harshly on account of this. In Hypatia’s time, intellectuals generally did not publish original works of their own, but rather wrote commentaries on the writings of earlier thinkers. Hypatia, then, was simply following the same trend that all her contemporaries were following.

Besides, while she may not have invented or discovered anything and she may not have been quite as great of a mathematician as the ancient writers made her out to be, Hypatia was undoubtedly a great teacher. She could instill a fervent passion for philosophy in her students like few others before or since. In a letter written around 395 AD, her pupil Synesios calls her “a person so renowned, her reputation seemed literally incredible.” Indeed, Synesios’s letters practically gush about his love and gratitude for Hypatia’s instruction.

Hypatia’s alleged beauty

Many modern tellers of Hypatia’s story have claimed that she was young and extraordinarily beautiful at the time of her death. This claim, however, is almost entirely rooted in fantasy. We do not know when Hypatia was born or how old she was at the time of her death, but the chronicler Ioannes Malalas (lived c. 491 – c. 578 AD), who wrote around one hundred years afterwards, seems to have thought that she was quite old at the time.

I am inclined to agree with Ioannes Malalas on this issue, since the ancient sources universally agree that Hypatia was a renowned scholar who taught students from throughout the Mediterranean world. Building a scholarly reputation takes a long time and I doubt Hypatia could have been so renowned at such a young age. I therefore strongly suspect that she was at least in her fifties or sixties at the time of her murder.

As I discuss in this article I wrote in which I treat the subject of Hypatia’s appearance in detail, there are no surviving ancient depictions of her, nor are there any reliable, detailed descriptions of her appearance. The notion that she was extraordinarily beautiful is derived from the Neoplatonist philosopher Damaskios of Syria (lived c. 458 – after 538 AD), who wrote a great deal about Hypatia in his Life of Isidoros, which is partially preserved through quotation in the Souda, a Byzantine encyclopedia written in the tenth century AD.

Damaskios claims that Hypatia was “exceedingly beautiful and fair of form.” This description should be treated with skepticism, however, since there is no way Damaskios could have possibly seen Hypatia herself, since he was not even born until nearly half a century after her death. Furthermore, we have no evidence that he ever saw any authentic portrait of her or that he ever had the opportunity to interview anyone who had known her while she was alive.

It is therefore highly probable that Damaskios’s description of Hypatia relies entirely on rumor or simply his own imagination. We know nothing about what she really looked like. It is entirely plausible that she really was extraordinarily beautiful as Damaskios claims, but it is also entirely possible that her reputation for beauty is simply a male fantasy.

Damaskios also states that Hypatia was a lifelong virgin who rejected all of her many suitors, a claim which is likely historically true and which is compatible with Neoplatonist teachings, which valued celibacy in both men and women. On the other hand, the only specific account Damaskios gives of her rejecting a suitor (by showing him her bloody menstrual rags) is probably apocryphal.

Hypatia and Christians

Contrary to the popular myth, Hypatia’s relationship with Christians was actually surprisingly good. Although Hypatia herself was a pagan, she was tolerant of Christians and accepted them as students without discrimination; in fact, all of her students whose names have been recorded were themselves Christians. This was highly unusual. While other Neoplatonists in Alexandria at the time were generally hostile towards Christians because they regarded them as inherently un-philosophical, Hypatia and her father Theon were both openly accepting towards them.

All our sources agree that the people of Alexandria loved Hypatia, both Christians and non-Christians alike. The contemporary Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos (lived c. 380 – after c. 439) praises her in the highest possible terms in Book VII, Chapter 15 of his Ecclesiastical History. Here is Sokrates Scholastikos’s description of Hypatia, as translated by A. C. Zenos:

“There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in coming to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”

Even the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilos, who was known throughout the Roman Empire as a vehement opponent of paganism, did not trouble her. In fact, as best as we can tell, his disposition towards her seems to have been more-or-less favorable. He gave her free reign to teach and establish connections. He even appointed one of Hypatia’s own students, Synesios, as bishop of Ptolemaïs, a major city in the region of Kyrenaïka in North Africa.

Synesios remained a lifelong friend of Hypatia’s and they remained in close contact even after his appointment as bishop. Seven of his letters addressed to her are extant. Unfortunately, none of her letters to him have survived.

ABOVE: Color illumination from the Alexandrian World Chronicle, dating to the fifth or sixth century AD, illustrating the destruction of the Serapeion in 391 AD. The man on the left is Theophilos, the bishop of Alexandria from 384 until 412.

Hypatia, then, taught Christian students, had many Christian admirers, and even had powerful friends in the church hierarchy. She subscribed to a pagan philosophical school that bore many close resemblances to Christianity and upheld the belief in an omnipotent, monistic, incorporeal Deity. While Hypatia herself was certainly not a Christian, she had far more in common with her Christian contemporaries than with the modern rationalists who often champion her.

Events leading up to Hypatia’s murder

Our earliest and most reliable sources on Hypatia’s death all portray it as essentially politically motivated. The events leading up to her death are all extremely complicated and involve plenty of riots, rivalries, and political intrigue. They are described by Hypatia’s contemporary, the Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos, in Book VII of his Ecclesiastical History.

In 412, Theophilos, the bishop of Alexandria who had been so tolerant towards Hypatia, died without having appointed a successor. A violent feud broke out between Theophilos’s young nephew Cyril and his archdeacon Timothy, both of whom claimed to be the rightful bishop. Cyril had a reputation as something of a hothead and the Novatianists in Alexandria threw their support behind Timothy.

For three days, there was fighting and bloodshed in the streets. Finally, Cyril won and assumed the diocese. Cyril immediately set about obtaining revenge against all those who had supported his rival. In order to punish them for having sided with Timothy, Cyril shut down the Novatianists’ churches, confiscated their property, and stripped their bishop Theopemptos of all authority.

Cyril as bishop does not seem to have set well with Hypatia and her allies. In his letters, Synesios speaks of Theophilos in glowing terms, but his attitude towards Cyril is noticeably icy. Only one letter from Synesios to Cyril has survived; it is very brief and its general tone can perhaps be guessed from the opening sentence: “Go, my brother Cyril, to your mother Church, from whom you have not been excommunicated, but only separated for a period which is measured according to that which your shortcomings deserve.”

In 414 AD, a feud broke out between Cyril and the Jews of Alexandria over Cyril’s growing hegemony. A small group of Jews massacred a group of Christians after luring them out with false cries that a church was burning. In retaliation, Cyril closed down all the synagogues, confiscated all property belonging to Jews in the city, and expelled all the Jews themselves from Alexandria.

This act outraged the Roman prefect Orestes, who was a recent convert to Christianity. Orestes, however, was not much of a strong leader, so his method of taking action was to write a scathing letter to Emperor Theodosios II complaining about Cyril’s behavior. The emperor did nothing and Cyril was positively outraged.

A group of monks known as the parabalani, who were under Cyril’s authority and whose official purpose was to tend to the sick and bury the dead, came into Alexandria from the surrounding countryside. In practice, these monks basically functioned as Cyril’s personal thugs.

The parabalani incited a riot against Orestes, accusing him of being a pagan, despite his own repeated insistence that he had converted to Christianity and been baptized in Constantinople. One of the monks named Ammonios attacked Orestes by hurling a stone at him, nearly killing him. Orestes had Ammonios publicly tortured to death to make an example for other would-be attackers.

Cyril tried to have Ammonios proclaimed a martyr of the faith. This disgusted many Christians, who objected that Ammonios had not been killed for his faith; instead he had been executed for attempting to assassinate the Christian prefect. A large number of Christians in Alexandria simply longed for Cyril and Orestes to reconcile and for the feud to be over.

Now, as it happened, Orestes was a close associate of Hypatia and, at this point, he began frequently consulting her for advice. The classical historian Edward J. Watts notes in his book City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria that Orestes made a very shrewd political maneuver in picking Hypatia as his advisor because she was a relatively uncontroversial figure who was widely respected by both Christians and non-Christians alike.

Rumors began to spread, however, claiming that Hypatia was deliberately trying to exacerbate the conflict and that she was actively trying to prevent Orestes from reconciling with Cyril. It is uncertain where these rumors originated from, but it is clear that the person with the most to gain from them would have been Cyril himself. These rumors may therefore have been an attempt by Cyril to undermine Hypatia’s reputation and weaken her alliance with Orestes.

Whoever the source of these rumors may have been, they certainly prompted more violent action. One day in March 415 AD, while Hypatia was riding in her carriage, she was stopped by a vicious mob of Cyril’s supporters. They dragged her out of her carriage to a church where they stripped her and murdered her with roof tiles. A horrified Sokrates Scholastikos describes the awful events of that day in great detail:

“Some of them [i.e. Christian supporters of the bishop Cyril] therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her [i.e. Hypatia] returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Kaisareion, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.”

“After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Kinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort.”

Hypatia’s murder is also referenced by another contemporary Christian writer Philostorgios, whose work survives only in a ninth-century epitome. The late fifth-century pagan Neoplatonist philosopher Damaskios also references the murder. Damaskios blames Cyril for having directly ordered the murder and claims that he did it out of personal jealousy for Hypatia. Modern scholars are divided on whether or not Cyril was directly involved in the murder, but most consider it likely that he was at least indirectly responsible for it.

ABOVE: Imaginative illustration of the death of Hypatia by Louis Figuier from 1866 depicting how the artist imagined it might have looked

Hypatia the witch?

In any case, none of our earliest sources mention anything at all about Christians thinking that Hypatia was a witch and they all portray her murder as essentially a brutal, politically-motivated assassination, one which shocked and horrified most Christians of the time. Hypatia’s death, then, is honestly more comparable to the assassination of Julius Caesar or Abraham Lincoln than it is to a witch-hunt.

The first we hear of Hypatia being associated with Satanism or black magic is from the Coptic bishop John of Nikiû, who lived in the late seventh century AD—over 200 years after Hypatia’s death. John of Nikiû writes in his Chronicle 84.87-103:

“And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honored her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom. But he went once under circumstances of danger. And he not only did this, but he drew many believers to her, and he himself received the unbelievers at his house…”

“And thereafter a multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate — now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ — and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a (lofty) chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Kaisareion.”

“Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her [till they brought her] through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Kinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him ‘the new Theophilos’; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city.”

It does not take much to recognize this account as a blatant apologetic for Hypatia’s murderers; by portraying Hypatia as an evil sorceress, John of Nikiû is trying to show that her murder was therefore justified. John of Nikiû also lived in a very different time from Hypatia. In Hypatia’s time, traditional polytheistic religion was in decline, but it was still very much a living presence.

By the time John of Nikiû was writing, however, traditional polytheistic religion had been almost completely eradicated in Egypt. The few remaining pagans were mostly living on the margins of society and, in the absence of extensive direct contact between Christians and pagans, popular Christian portrayals of pagans were often reduced to cheap stereotypes of them as sorcerers and evildoers.

John of Nikiû’s portrayal of Hypatia, then, is probably not based on sources or traditions regarding Hypatia specifically, but rather on contemporary stereotypes about “pagans” of his own time. There is therefore extraordinarily little solid evidence to conclude that many Christians of Hypatia’s own lifetime regarded her as a sorceress. Perhaps a few Christians regarded her this way, but this does not at all seem to have been the prevailing opinion concerning her.

The birth of a legend

Hypatia was undoubtedly a highly significant historical figure, but she was far from the only female Neoplatonic philosopher who lived during the period of late antiquity; on the contrary, there were plenty of other women like her who taught philosophy during this period. For instance, another female philosopher and mathematician in Alexandria named Aidesia lived shortly after Hypatia and attracted a very similar reputation, yet almost no one today outside of scholarly circles has even heard of her.

Likewise, Asklepigenia, who was a prominent mystic in Athens around the same time as Aidesia, is also obscure, even though a great deal of information about her teachings has survived. Another female Neoplatonic philosopher named Theodora of Emesa lived in the late fifth and early sixth centuries AD, about a century after Hypatia, and hardly anyone outside of academia has heard of her either.

The main reason why so many people have heard of Hypatia and not of any of the other female philosophers who lived during the same time period is not because these other women were insignificant, but rather because of the fact that, of these three philosophers, Hypatia is the only one who was enshrined as a legend by later authors and romanticists.

Unfortunately, the reason why later authors found Hypatia such an appealing figure to write about and not any of these other women is largely not on account of anything Hypatia did or taught while she was alive but rather on account of the gruesome manner in which Hypatia died.

Hypatia’s death immediately shocked Christians and non-Christians alike all across the Roman world. While Alexandria was already notorious for its many riots and periodic outbreaks of violence, philosophers and women were both classes of people who were widely regarded as untouchable. People simply took it for granted that even the most vicious of mobs would leave them alone.

The bloody murder of a woman philosopher at the hands of a Christian mob was beyond merely appalling; it was a sign that Alexandria was a place where all the accepted conventions had been overthrown and where violence was allowed to run unchecked.

Hypatia’s murder was so shocking that, according to Edward J. Watts, it may have even resulted in the creation of a new law designed to protect Jews and pagans. A version of an imperial law from 423 AD, eight years after Hypatia’s death, specifically states:

“We especially command those persons who are truly Christians, or who are said to be, that they shall not abuse the authority of religion and dare to lay violent hands on Jews and pagans who are living quietly and attempting nothing disorderly or unlawful.”

We don’t know for certain if this law was created specifically in response to Hypatia’s murder, but it’s hard to imagine that her murder had nothing to do with it.

Cyril’s later career and influence

Actually, the reason why Hypatia is so famous today is not even necessarily merely how she died, but who might have been involved. You see, Cyril of Alexandria was not just some obscure, ordinary bishop; for eastern Christians, the bishop of Alexandria wielded roughly the same authority as the bishop of Rome wielded in the west.

Furthermore, Hypatia’s murder came at the very beginning of Cyril’s career and he went on to have a very real and major role in shaping Christian doctrine. In 431, sixteen years after Hypatia’s murder, Cyril served as the president of the Council of Ephesos, the third ecumenical council, where he was the leading opponent of Nestorianism.

As a result of Cyril’s vocal leadership (as well as quite a few of his ethically questionable shenanigans), the Council of Ephesos ruled that Christ has one nature that is simultaneously fully human and fully divine at the same time. It also ruled that salvation is by the grace of God and declared Pelagianism, which taught that salvation was by personal merit, heretical.

The Council of Ephesos also overturned the First Council of Constantinople, which had modified the Nicene Creed, and proclaimed Trinitarianism the only orthodox position. Without Cyril, orthodox Christology might have turned out as something entirely different. Cyril still continues to be venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran Christians even today.

As one might imagine, this makes Cyril a tremendously important figure and makes his potential involvement in Hypatia’s murder a very, very big deal. However, no matter how you look at Hypatia’s murder, Cyril does not come out looking good. The best case scenario for him is that he did nothing to stop his followers as they spread false rumors about Hypatia and eventually murdered her. The worst case scenario is that he was not only responsible for the rumors but, as Damaskios claims, ordered the murder himself.

ABOVE: 1876 painting of Cyril of Alexandria speaking at the Council of Ephesos by the Russian painter Vasily Surikov

The remaking of Hypatia

Ironically, through her death, Hypatia became a symbol of everything she had opposed in life. As a living person, she had been a symbol of religious tolerance and cooperation between pagans and Christians, a beacon of hope that two groups could peacefully coexist. For future Neoplatonists such as Damaskios, however, Hypatia became something of a “Martyr for Philosophy” whose death only served as proof that Christians were all barbarians and scoundrels who could not be trusted and whose ideology was antithetical to the virtues of philosophy.

In a bizarre twist, throughout the Middle Ages, Christians coopted Hypatia as a symbol of Christian virtue and she is believed to have been the inspiration behind the legendary Saint Catharine of Alexandria, one of the most popular and widely beloved saints of the Middle Ages. Like Hypatia, Saint Catharine is said to have been an intellectual and lifelong virgin who lived in Alexandria and was brutally martyred, the only significant difference being that, for Saint Catharine, the roles are reversed, with her being a Christian and her killers being pagans.

The New Enlightenment Hypatia

With the Reformation and Enlightenment, Hypatia became the cause célèbre for a new movement: anti-Christianity, or, more especially, anti-Catholicism. In 1720, the Irish Deist and polemicist John Toland (lived 1670 – 1722) wrote a pamphlet with the rather longwinded title Hypatia: Or the History of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way 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, stil’d St. Cyril.

In this pamphlet, Toland portrayed Hypatia as a freethinking Deistic genius, a champion of Enlightenment rationalism, who was brutally murdered by the dumb and misunderstanding Christians. It was this pamphlet that first made the story of Hypatia popular among Enlightenment authors.

Despite its influence, however, Toland’s pamphlet was filled with inaccuracies. Most notably, Hypatia was not an Enlightenment freethinker because she lived nearly 1,200 years before the Enlightenment. Likewise, Toland completely omitted the political causes of Hypatia’s murder, reducing the whole complex series of events to a relatively simple case of Christians just being evil.

ABOVE: Frontispiece and title page from John Toland’s anti-Catholic polemic about Hypatia, which brought Hypatia renewed attention among Enlightenment intellectuals, but also greatly distorted the account of her death

Voltaire’s Hypatia

From there, the legend only grew. The French Enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet (lived 1694 – 1778), better known as “Voltaire,” wrote about Hypatia in 1732 in his Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke ou le tombeau de fantisme, taking very much the same line of thinking as Toland, claiming that Hypatia believed in “the laws of rational Nature” and “the capacities of the human mind free of dogmas.” These are, of course, really Voltaire’s own views; he is merely attributing them to Hypatia.

Voltaire also continued the sexualization of Hypatia, which Damaskios had begun through his descriptions of Hypatia’s beauty. Voltaire rather lewdly insinuates in the entry for Hypatia in his 1772 Dictionairre philosophique: “When one strips beautiful women naked, it is not to massacre them.” Thus, Voltaire’s writings simultaneously exult Hypatia as a martyr for reason while also treating her as a mere sexual object for male gratification.

ABOVE: Portrait of the French Enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet, better known as “Voltaire,” who greatly contributed to the mythologization of Hypatia

Edward Gibbon’s Hypatia

The English Deistic historian Edward Gibbon (lived 1737 – 1794) incorporated Hypatia’s murder as part of his polemic against Christianity in his massive, multi-volume historical work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his work, Gibbon portrayed the rise of Christianity as a major factor in hastening the Roman Empire’s decline.

In Gibbon’s history, Cyril is transformed into a sort of menacing, soulless bogeyman. Gibbon also notes that Cyril is still venerated by Christians as a saint, commenting: “superstition [i.e. Christianity] perhaps would more gently expiate the blood of a virgin, than the banishment of a saint.”

Interestingly, in fixating on Hypatia’s murder and on Cyril’s possible involvement, the Enlightenment polemicists lost sight of who Hypatia really was and her lifelong tolerance towards people of all beliefs.

One also notices the casual antisemitism in the fact that these writers chose to fixate on Hypatia’s murder, but treat with unsettling paucity the fact that Cyril is known for certain to have expelled all the Jews from Alexandria and confiscated all their belongings, a crime whose magnitude Hypatia and Orestes both seem to have clearly realized, but which subsequent generations have seemed keen to ignore.

ABOVE: Portrait of the English Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon, whose portrayal of Hypatia in his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has proven influential

The “Last of the Hellenes”

Hypatia rode to renewed fame in the eighteenth century through anti-Christian polemics, but, in the nineteenth century, a new movement took her over and remade her once again. The Neoclassicists and Romanticists could not resist the image of her as a martyr to philosophy and, in their writings, she became romanticized as the “Last of the Hellenes.”

Hypatia was not, in fact, the “Last of the Hellenes”; she was not even the last Hellenic philosopher. As I mentioned above, there were plenty of other philosophers, even female philosophers, who lived and worked in Alexandria and Athens after Hypatia. Pagan Neoplatonic philosophy survived in Athens until the reign of Emperor Justinian (ruled 527–565), who sought to extinguish the last remnants of paganism.

Really, though, Neoplatonism was never truly eradicated; it was simply absorbed and Christianized. The eastern Church Fathers such as Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzos, all of whom lived before Hypatia’s time, espoused ideas similar to Neoplatonism. This influence only spread with time. In a very real sense, Hellenic philosophy never died in the east.

Undoubtedly, the single work that most greatly impacted Hypatia’s reputation in the nineteenth century was Charles Kingsley’s 1853 romance novel Hypatia; Or, Old Foes with a New Face, which was wildly popular and was translated into other European languages. It remained continuously in print straight into the 1900s, was adapted into numerous successful stage productions, and inspired paintings and works of art.

The novel, however, had virtually no historical basis and shows more influence from the literature of Kingsley’s own time than actual ancient sources about Hypatia. It portrays Hypatia as precisely the kind of heroine that mid-Victorian Romantics loved: beautiful and well-spoken, but powerless against the inevitable tragedy that results from her having been born too late in time. (One is reminded, almost, of William Wordsworth’s poem from nearly half a century earlier, “The World Is Too Much With Us.”)

ABOVE: Painting from 1885 by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles William Mitchell showing the death of Hypatia as described in Charles Kingsley’s  bestselling 1853 romance novel Hypatia; Or, Old Foes with a New Face

Hypatia in the twentieth century

In the twentieth century, things took an even weirder turn. In 1908, a highly eccentric American writer by the name of Elbert Hubbard (lived 1856 – 1915), who is otherwise known for his founding of the Roycroft art community in East Aurora, New York, published a “biography” of Hypatia as part of his series Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers. Even though it claimed to be historically accurate, the book was basically a complete work of fiction. Hubbard completely made up stories about Hypatia not found in any ancient sources.

For instance, he invents a highly fanciful and elaborate “exercise routine,” which he claims Theon devised for Hypatia as a little girl to ensure that she would grow up to be a “perfect human being.” He also baldly asserts that she travelled to Athens and received tutelage there from none other than the great Neoplatonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Athens (not to be confused with the earlier and more famous Middle Platonist Ploutarchos of Chaironeia). Hubbard even fabricated quotes espousing modern, rationalist views and attributed them to Hypatia and Theon.

Hubbard’s book was aimed at children and, if it had only been read by that target audience, its fictions and fabrications probably would have done little harm. Unfortunately, that was not what happened. In 1974, a scholar named Lynn M. Osen used Hubbard’s biography as her main source for her article about Hypatia in her book Women in Mathematics, which was published by the MIT Press. Twelve years later, Margaret Alic relied on Osen’s article as one of her main sources for her article about Hypatia in her book Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century.

Through Osen and Alic, Hubbard’s stories became disseminated into many reference works and popular writings about Hypatia. Fordham University’s medieval history course likewise used Hubbard’s fictional biography as their main source about Hypatia. As I discuss in my article about misattributed quotes, Hubbard’s fake quotes are all over the internet. Thus, through ignorance and sloppy scholarship, pure fiction has somehow been spun into pseudohistorical fact.

ABOVE: Portrait of the American author Elbert Hubbard, whose 1908 fictional biography of Hypatia has had enormous influence

Carl Sagan’s portrayal of Hypatia as a scholar at the Great Library of Alexandria

Meanwhile, Hypatia received star treatment in the thirteenth and final episode of Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, a series which captured the hearts of an entire generation of science enthusiasts and remained the most-watched PBS documentary series for a full decade.

While there is no denying that Carl Sagan was a great scientist and great popularizer of science, he was most certainly not a good historian. In fact, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage has promoted so many egregious and pernicious misconceptions about ancient history in general that I have written an entire article debunking its claims in depth. Sagan’s treatment of Hypatia is particularly egregious and therefore worth discussing at some length.

Right out of the gate, Sagan claims that Hypatia was born in 370 AD, but we do not actually know when she was born and it’s possible she may have been born ten, twenty, or even thirty years earlier. Like his predecessors, Sagan completely omits the political events leading up to Hypatia’s death and, of course, inaccurately portrays her as a modern rationalist.

His most bizarre and original mistake, however, is his claim that Hypatia was the last scholar to work in the Great Library of Alexandria. He makes it sound as though the Christians who murdered Hypatia immediately went and stormed the Great Library. As I discuss in this article about the Great Library that I originally published in July 2019, however, by the time Hypatia was even born, the Great Library that Sagan is thinking of had not existed for nearly a century at the very least.

The Library of Alexandria’s decline began in 145 BC, 515 years before Hypatia’s death, when Ptolemy VIII Physkon (ruled c. 145 – c. 116 BC) attempted to purge all foreign intellectuals from the city of Alexandria. Aristarchos of Samothrake, the last head librarian of the Library of Alexandria who is known to have been a professional scholar, fled from Alexandria and went into exile on the island of Kypros. Ptolemy VIII Physkon replaced Aristarchos with one of his bodyguards, a man named Kydas who, as far as we know, had no scholarly background whatsoever.

A significant portion of the Great Library’s collection was probably destroyed in 48 BC when Julius Caesar’s men accidentally set fire to the docks of Alexandria and the fire spread throughout the city. Although this fire has often been interpreted as having destroyed the entire library, a report from the Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 AD) states that the fire did not actually destroy the Great Library itself, but rather a warehouse located near the docks that the Great Library was using to keep scrolls. Regardless of how much damage the fire in 48 BC actually inflicted on the Great Library’s collection, the library certainly does appear to have survived in some form.

Under Roman rule, the Great Library of Alexandria appears to have undergone a long period of gradual decline. We do not know exactly when the Great Library ceased to exist, but it disappears from the historical record in around the middle of the third century AD.

If there was anything left of the library in 272 AD, it would have certainly been destroyed when the forces of the emperor Aurelian reconquered the city of Alexandria from Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, who had captured it, and, in the process, utterly demolished the entire Broucheion quarter of Alexandria in which the Great Library had once been located, leaving behind only ruins.

Even if, by some miracle, the Great Library of Alexandria somehow managed to survive the destruction of the Broucheion quarter in 272 AD by Aurelian, there’s absolutely no way it could have survived past the third century, since, in 297 AD, the forces of the emperor Diocletian destroyed most of the Broucheion quarter again.

ABOVE: Nineteenth-century imagining of what the Library of Alexandria might have looked like by O. von Corven, based loosely on some early archaeological findings in relation to buildings of the same time period

The decline of the Library of Alexandria, however, corresponded with the growth of other libraries throughout the city of Alexandria. As the Great Library declined, many of the scrolls that had once been housed in it appear to have been gradually transferred to other, smaller libraries throughout the city.

A large collection of scrolls that had once been held in the Great Library of Alexandria is known to have at one point been housed in the Serapeion of Alexandria, a temple dedicated to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis. (Sagan, interestingly, seems to conflate the Library of Alexandria with the Serapeion, because he states, erroneously, that the Library was dedicated to Serapis when, in fact, it was actually dedicated to the Muses as part of the Mouseion.)

Unlike the Great Library, the Serapeion still existed during Hypatia’s lifetime, but we have no evidence that it still had scrolls in it. In fact, it is quite likely that the Serapeion did not have any substantial collections of scrolls during Hypatia’s lifetime, since Ammonios Markellinos, a visitor to Alexandria in the 360s, refers to the Serapeion’s collections in the past tense, indicating that, by his time, the scrolls were already gone.

During Hypatia’s lifetime, the Serapeion was a popular location for Neoplatonist philosophers to teach and give lectures. Hypatia would not have fit in very well at the Serapeion, however, and it is highly unlikely that she ever taught there. Hypatia and her father Theon both seem to have adhered to a rather conservative form of Neoplatonism based primarily on the teachings of Plotinos; meanwhile, the Neoplatonists who taught at the Serapeion appear to have been much more heavily influenced by the teachings of later Neoplatonists such as Porphyrios and Iamblichos.

Iamblichos’s teachings, which appear to have been especially influential among the Neoplatonists who taught at the Serapeion, heavily emphasized the mystical, esoteric, and ritualistic aspects of the Neoplatonist philosophy. While Hypatia and her father devoted most of their studies to mathematics and astronomy, the Neoplatonists who taught at the Serapeion appear to have been more interested in theurgy—the study of cultic rituals.

For instance, Damaskios of Athens records in his Life of Isidoros that one of the more prominent teachers at the Serapeion during this time period was a man named Olympos of Kilikia, who openly instructed his students on how to perform theurgic rituals and how to honor the gods in the same way as their ancestors, despite knowing that this kind of instruction would almost certainly provoke outrage from the Christian population of Alexandria.

In 391 AD, a group of Christians under the leadership of Bishop Theophilos of Alexandria (the same bishop who was so tolerant towards Hypatia, if you recall) led an attack on the Serapeion and demolished almost the entire building. It is the destruction of the Serapeion that Carl Sagan seems to have been thinking of when he claimed that the Christians destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Of course, the destruction of the Serapeion actually took place over twenty years before Hypatia’s murder.

ABOVE: The ruins of the Serapeion in Alexandria today

Agora: A new culmination of the myth

In 2009, the Spanish English-language historical drama film Agora, written and directed by the Spanish screenwriter Alexandro Amenábar and starring the English actress Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, took Carl Sagan’s story to an epic scale. Better researched than most of its predecessors, Agora shows just enough of the political background of Hypatia’s murder to demonstrate that the writers really did do their homework.

In fact, I actually really enjoyed Agora and I think that it is definitely one of the better movies out there set in antiquity. One thing I liked about it is that it feels more like a genuine period piece than the typical Hollywood sword-and-sandal film and it does a good job of capturing the general chaotic political atmosphere of Alexandria in late antiquity. Unfortunately, it deviates significantly from the historical narrative for the sake of some rather ham-fisted sermonizing about how all forms of Christianity are supposedly inherently evil and violent.

The film inflates Hypatia’s achievements far beyond even what previous adaptations had done, portraying her as having discovered proof for the heliocentric model of the universe roughly 1,128 years before Copernicus. As I have already mentioned, this is definitely not historically accurate. Nonetheless, I can understand why the filmmakers chose to make this change; they’re obviously trying to emphasize that Hypatia was extremely smart, in a way that ordinary people will be able to understand and appreciate.

Like Toland, Voltaire, Hubbard, and countless others, Agora makes Hypatia out to be an avowed rationalist and it heavily implies that she is an atheist. In reality, of course, as I pointed out before, she was a fifth-century Neoplatonist who believed that the whole universe emanates from an incorporeal, all-encompassing, monistic principle known as “the One.” She also certainly believed in a large number of deities and angelic beings, all of whom she would have seen as emanating from “the One.”

Hypatia also almost certainly believed that deities could speak through oracles and that astrology was an effective method of predicting the future. Not only did most Neoplatonists of her era believe these things, but we have specific evidence that Hypatia believed them. Notably, her student Synesios references the Chaldean Oracles in his letters. Although we can’t be absolutely certain of how he learned about them, he most likely learned about them from her. Likewise, Hypatia is known to have edited the text of Ptolemy’s Almagest, a text which substantially deals with the topic of astrology.

ABOVE: The Priestess of Delphi, painted in 1891 by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier. Hypatia almost certainly believed in the power of oracles.

Clearly imitating Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Agora contains an inaccuracy-laden scene in which the Christians raid the Serapeion (which is, to the filmmakers’ credit, somewhat delineated from the earlier Great Library, albeit only vaguely). Fortunately, the filmmakers were wise enough to make this scene occur decades prior to Hypatia’s murder, which is more in line with the historical timeline than Sagan’s implication that it happened afterward. The movie, however, puts a disturbing twist on the destruction of the Serapeion.

You may recall that, in historical reality, there were probably very few scrolls left in Serapeion at the time of its destruction and the Christians completely demolished the building itself. In the film, however, the Christians mostly ignore the building and instead round up all the scrolls and burn them. The Serapeion is then converted into a church (which it actually was eventually), but the film makes this the same church in which Hypatia is later killed (which is not accurate).

In the film, followers of traditional religion are portrayed as essentially a monolith. The distinction between the school of Hypatia and her father and their fellow Neoplatonists at the Serapeion is completely lost, with Hypatia and Theon portrayed as apparently working at the Serapeion alongside them. Similarly, the film portrays Christians as essentially a monolithic group of violent fanatics, without distinguishing between the many different factions of Christians that existed at the time.

ABOVE: Screenshot from the movie Agora of Hypatia trying to rescue scrolls from the Serapeion as it is being demolished by a Christian mob

I do not mind the fact that the film portrays some Christians as deranged and murderous fanatics; that part I think is, sadly, all too true. The problem I have is that this fanaticism is portrayed as an inevitable and integral aspect of Christianity itself. The film seems to imply that Christianity in any form inevitably leads to violence and the oppression of women.

In a subplot, one of Theon’s slaves who looks up to Hypatia is seduced into converting to Christianity and ends up attempting to rape her, seemingly as a result of this conversion. By the end of the film, both Orestes and Synesios forsake Hypatia because she is a woman and Cyril has read to them 1 Timothy 2:8-12, which forbids women from teaching, leaving Hypatia abandoned and alone, without allies. Not only did this never happen, but it is absolutely contrary to everything we know about Synesios.

Synesios was a passionate and eclectic philosopher—not at all the sort of person who would simply accept Cyril’s version of Christianity. He only accepted his position as bishop of Ptolemaïs under the condition that he be allowed to remain married to his wife and that he be allowed to maintain his belief in the pre-existence of the soul—a central tenet of Neoplatonic philosophy which sat uneasy with some Christians, although it had not yet been declared heretical and had earlier been championed by no less an authority than the revered theologian Origenes (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD).

ABOVE: Screenshot from the movie Agora of Synesios as the bishop of Ptolemaïs

Historically speaking, Synesios was probably already dead by the time Hypatia was murdered, since none of his letters mention anything about her death, even though news of it surely would have absolutely devastated him. If he was still alive at the time, however, I am convinced that he would have sided with Hypatia over Cyril any day and that he would have passionately disagreed with Cyril’s interpretation of the scriptures.

I think that Agora could have been much more historically accurate and frankly much more compelling if they had taken a more nuanced approach and emphasized that there were different factions within both traditional polytheism and Christianity in Alexandria at the time. They could have used the character of Synesios to emphasize the existence of a more moderate, intellectual form of Christianity that was more tolerant of female teachers and people who weren’t Christians. The fact that they didn’t do this feels like a wasted opportunity.

Agora also contains some rather disturbing racial implications, which seem to be inadvertent, but are nonetheless hard to ignore. The film literally equates goodness with whiteness and evil with darkness. Hypatia and her allies are portrayed as pale-skinned and very European-looking and, for some reason, they seem to mostly seem to dress in all white. Meanwhile, Cyril and his supporters are portrayed as darker-skinned and, for some reason, they seem to mostly dress in all black.

ABOVE: Image of Hypatia of Alexandria, as portrayed by the British actress Rachel Weisz in the 2009 film Agora, directed by Alexandro Amenábar

The Beginning of the “Dark Ages”?

Both Cosmos and Agora portray Hypatia’s death as the beginning of the so-called “Dark Ages,” but, when we look at it historically, it was really no such thing. As I have mentioned above, Neoplatonic philosophy did not die with Hypatia and she was far from the last of her kind.

While Hypatia’s death roughly coincides with the period of decline in the West Roman Empire on the opposite end of the Mediterranean, Hypatia actually lived in the East Roman Empire, which survived for over a full millennium after her death until it was finally conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 with the Fall of Constantinople. All the rhetoric about her death marking the end of antiquity, then, is really hollow. It was an incredibly tragic event, but it was not the end of everything.

ABOVE: Map of the divided Roman Empire upon the death of Theodosius I in around 391 AD, with the West Roman Empire shown in red and the East Roman Empire, where Hypatia lived, shown in purple. The West declined and collapsed in the fifth century, but the East survived until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453 with the Fall of Constantinople.

Conclusion

The historical Hypatia of Alexandria was a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in the city of Alexandria in the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD. Her mathematical work was regarded as brilliant in her lifetime, but it was hardly groundbreaking. She was a great teacher and she was beloved by her pupils. Despite being a pagan herself, she was tolerant towards Christians and taught many Christian students.

According to contemporary sources, Hypatia was widely beloved by Christians and non-Christians alike. She also had many powerful friends, both in the church and in the regional government. Synesios, the bishop of Ptolemaïs, was her former pupil and lifelong friend. She also advised Orestes, the Roman prefect of Egypt. Her murder in March 415 was motivated by her close relationship with Orestes and transformed her into a martyr. It has only been in the 1,600 years since then that she has become the legend we know today.