52 Facts About Hypatia

Hypatia was a prominent thinker in Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy.

Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor.

Hypatia constructed astrolabes and hydrometers, but did not invent either of these, which were both in use long before she was born.

Hypatia was tolerant towards Christians and taught many Christian students, including Synesius, the future bishop of Ptolemais.

Ancient sources record that Hypatia was widely beloved by pagans and Christians alike and that she established great influence with the political elite in Alexandria.

Towards the end of her life, Hypatia advised Orestes, the Roman prefect of Alexandria, who was in the midst of a political feud with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria.

Hypatia's murder shocked the empire and transformed her into a "martyr for philosophy", leading future Neoplatonists such as Damascius to become increasingly fervent in their opposition to Christianity.

Many scholars have followed Richard Hoche in inferring that Hypatia was born around 370.

Hypatia was a Neoplatonist, but, like her father, she rejected the teachings of Iamblichus and instead embraced the original Neoplatonism formulated by Plotinus.

Seven letters by Synesius to Hypatia have survived, but none from her addressed to him are extant.

The Christian historian Socrates of Constantinople, a contemporary of Hypatia, describes her in his Ecclesiastical History:.

Philostorgius, another Christian historian, who was a contemporary of Hypatia, states that she excelled her father in mathematics and the lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria records that, like her father, she was an extraordinarily talented astronomer.

Damascius writes that Hypatia was "exceedingly beautiful and fair of form", but nothing else is known regarding her physical appearance and no ancient depictions of her have survived.

Damascius states that Hypatia remained a lifelong virgin and that, when one of the men who came to her lectures tried to court her, she tried to soothe his lust by playing the lyre.

Partly as a result of Theophilus's tolerance, Hypatia became extremely popular with the people of Alexandria and exerted profound political influence.

Hypatia had been training his nephew Cyril, but had not officially named him as his successor.

Hypatia's school seems to have immediately taken a strong distrust towards the new bishop, as evidenced by the fact that, in all his vast correspondences, Synesius only ever wrote one letter to Cyril, in which he treats the younger bishop as inexperienced and misguided.

Socrates Scholasticus mentions rumors accusing Hypatia of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril.

Hypatia's death sent shockwaves throughout the empire; for centuries, philosophers had been seen as effectively untouchable during the displays of public violence that sometimes occurred in Roman cities and the murder of a female philosopher at the hand of a mob was seen as "profoundly dangerous and destabilizing".

Watts argues that Hypatia's murder was the turning point in Cyril's fight to gain political control of Alexandria.

Hypatia had been the linchpin holding Orestes's opposition against Cyril together, and, without her, the opposition quickly collapsed.

Hypatia has been described as a universal genius, but she was probably more of a teacher and commentator than an innovator.

The Suda mistakenly states that all of Hypatia's writings have been lost, but modern scholarship has identified several works by her as extant.

Hypatia wrote in Greek, which was the language spoken by most educated people in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time.

Hypatia is known to have edited the existing text of Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest.

Hypatia's contribution is thought to be an improved method for the long division algorithms needed for astronomical computation.

Hypatia wrote a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which had been written sometime around the year 250 AD.

The first person to deduce that the additional material in the Arabic manuscripts came from Hypatia was the nineteenth-century scholar Paul Tannery.

Hypatia wrote a commentary on Apollonius of Perga's work on conic sections, but this commentary is no longer extant.

Hypatia created an "Astronomical Canon"; this is believed to have been either a new edition of the Handy Tables by the Alexandrian Ptolemy or the aforementioned commentary on his Almagest.

One of Synesius's letters describes Hypatia as having taught him how to construct a silver plane astrolabe as a gift for an official.

The statement from Synesius's letter has sometimes been wrongly interpreted to mean that Hypatia invented the plane astrolabe herself, but the plane astrolabe was in use at least 500 years before Hypatia was born.

Synesius's wording indicates that Hypatia did not design or construct the astrolabe herself, but merely acted as a guide and mentor during the process of constructing it.

Hypatia was not the last female Neoplatonist philosopher; later ones include Aedesia, Asclepigenia, and Theodora of Emesa.

Damascius's account of the Christian murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing direct responsibility to Bishop Cyril.

Hypatia's death was similar to those of Christian martyrs in Alexandria, who had been dragged through the streets during the Decian persecution in 250.

The Byzantine Suda encyclopedia contains a very long entry about Hypatia, which summarizes two different accounts of her life.

Interest in the "literary legend of Hypatia" began to rise.

Leconte de Lisle's first poem portrayed Hypatia as a woman born after her time, a victim of the laws of history.

On 2 January 1893, a much higher-profile stage play adaptation Hypatia, written by G Stuart Ogilvie and produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree, opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London.

In 1843, German authors Soldan and Heppe argued in their highly influential History of the Witchcraft Trials that Hypatia may have been, in effect, the first famous "witch" punished under Christian authority.

Hypatia was honored as an astronomer when 238 Hypatia, a main belt asteroid discovered in 1884, was named for her.

The lunar crater Hypatia was named for her, in addition to craters named for her father Theon.

Around the same time, Hypatia was adopted by feminists, and her life and death began to be viewed in the light of the women's rights movement.

For example, Kathleen Wider proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, and Stephen Greenblatt writes that her murder "effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life".

Falsehoods and misconceptions about Hypatia continued to proliferate throughout the late twentieth century.

Chicago states that the social unrest leading to Hypatia's murder resulted from Roman patriarchy and mistreatment of women and that this ongoing unrest can only be brought to an end through the restoration of an original, primeval matriarchy.

Hypatia concludes that Hypatia's writings were burned in the Library of Alexandria when it was destroyed.

Major works of twentieth century literature contain references to Hypatia, including Marcel Proust's stories "Madame Swann At Home" and "Within a Budding Grove" from In Search of Lost Time, and Iain Pears's The Dream of Scipio.

Hypatia has continued to be a popular subject in both fiction and nonfiction by authors in many countries and languages.

Ki Longfellow's novel Flow Down Like Silver invents an elaborate backstory for why Hypatia first started teaching.

The 2009 film Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenabar and starring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, is a heavily fictionalized dramatization of Hypatia's final years.