Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia was one of the earliest female mathematicians and astronomers -- though she wasn't the very first, she was among the greatest. At the time of her murder, she was the foremost mathematician and astronomer in the West - possibly in the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuffworks dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy being listened, and I'm Holly Fry, and today you
were going to talk about a very influential and awesome

(00:22):
lady mathematician and astronomer. Her name was Hypatia and she
lived in Alexandria. She was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher,
and although none of her original writings have survived until today,
we do know that she wrote at least one book
on astronomy and two on math. She also taught and lectured,

(00:42):
and she she developed a whole following of her own
devoted students, and she really helped preserve the knowledge of
other scholars like Euclid and Ptolemy. She was one of
the earliest female mathematicians and astronomers, and even though she
wasn't the very first woman ever to study these fields,
she was definitely the best known woman in antiquity to

(01:05):
pursue them. She was also among the greatest. At the
time of her murder, she was the foremost mathematician and
astronomer in the West and possibly in the entire world.
I know she's fantastic UH. There's no clear record of
when Hypatia was born. Her year of birth UH used
to often be cited as three seventy, but today most

(01:27):
scholars will generally say it was closer to three fifty
or three fifty five. But it's still all pretty speculative.
It's based on events we know she and her father
witnessed and how old they might have been at the time,
and also the age of her most famous pupil, Cinesius
of Cyrene. We also know basically nothing about her early life,
and we don't know who her mother was. It's possible

(01:50):
that Hapatia had a brother named Epiphanius. His name crops
up in some of her father's writings, but he might
have just been a favorite student of her father. The
translation could really go either way. Hypatious father Theon was
also a mathematician and astronomer, and he was the last
known member of the Alexandrian Museum. This museum was not

(02:11):
a building of exhibits and collections as we would think
of a museum today. It was more akin to a
university or a research center, and it also housed the
Fame Library at Alexandria, which contained about half a million scrolls,
including Aristotle's entire personal collection, archives of Greek plays, original
editions of scholarly writings, etcetera. And when people came to

(02:33):
the library, they would copy any scrolls they had with
them and leave them there. Uh. Most of the physical
buildings that made up the museum were actually destroyed by
two seventy two, and it's unclear exactly when the library
was destroyed, but it's work in preservation and education actually
continued for quite a while after that. Yes, there was

(02:53):
a lot of destruction and rebuilding and moving things around,
So it's a little unclear exactly when all of those buildings. Yeah,
the kind of it's really fuzzy, yes, but the work
that the museum was doing in terms of educating people
and preserving knowledge did continue on for for quite a
while after the buildings were probably also all gone. Um.

(03:14):
Theon's own work was also really about preservation and teaching.
Euclid's works survived in part thanks to Theon's efforts. Um.
One of Euclid's most important and influential works was called Elements,
and until the nineteenth century, the only edition of this
book that existed was Theon's edition. Theon also wrote commentaries

(03:36):
on some of Ptolemy's works. These were basically copies of
the original piece with explanations and additional notes. So while
Theon wasn't like a groundbreaking new mathematician coming up with
all kinds of new mathematical concepts, he was really preserving
ideas of earlier mathematicians and making sure that they survived

(03:58):
for later generations to learn from the first archivist and
not maybe not the first, but that was really what
his work was all about. Theon and Hypatia also worked together.
It's actually possible that Book three of his commentary on
Ptolemy's Almagest, which is a thirteen volume astronomical manual, was
really written by Hypatia. His inscription says it was quote

(04:20):
prepared by her. It's a little unclear whether she did
the actual writing on it um, so it's possible that
writing of hers exists, but we don't really know this
was really hers or her father's, or how exactly she
was involved in creating it. The attribution is not absolute
on that one. Right when Theon died, he was regarded
as the world's foremost mathematician, and after his death that

(04:43):
distinction passed on to his daughter, she continued on with
his tradition of teaching and preserving mathematical knowledge and writing
her own books and commentaries, and in point of fact,
according to historical accounts, Hypatia far surpassed her father's accomplishments.
She was said to be profoundly intelligent. She was articulate, prudent,

(05:04):
community minded, and to top it all off, apparently also
beautiful full package. Socrates Scholasticus, also known as Socrates of Constantinople,
not the classical philosopher Socrates, a different person with the
same name, described her this way quote, there was a
woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon,

(05:27):
who had 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 Platinus, 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

(05:48):
she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind,
she not infrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates.
Neither did she feel abashed, and coming to an assembly
of men for all men on account of her extraordinary
dignity and virtue admired her, the more high praise. She
was extremely highly respected. Yeah, there are many people who,

(06:11):
for one reason or another did not like her. That
there's reasons often boiled down to religion. Uh. But even so,
like the praise of her mind and her ability and
her presentation is pretty much universal among all accounts. If
only everyone could enjoy such delights, I know, um, I mean,
that's really that's incredibly high praise. I can't think of

(06:33):
a single like public figure now that you could say that.
Of right, there's there's no one that's universally like everyone
respects them, even if they disagree with them. There's always
some you know, ra ra about the whole thing, right anyway. Uh.
We also know from surviving letters that Hypatia had the
skill and knowledge to craft scientific devices like astrolabes and

(06:53):
what was called the hydroscope. Although we're not sure what
the hydroscope did exactly, we just know there was a
thing called that and that had to do with astronomy,
and that she could figure out how to make one um.
Primary sources almost unanimously describe her as never marrying and
leading an entirely celibate life, so much so that the
one reference that does exist to her having a husband

(07:16):
named Isidorus is mostly written off as an error. Today.
There was also a historical person named Isadorus, but he
died before she lived. She was definitely not married to
that guy. Like there has been no other candidate for
who this Issodorus might have been. So pretty much all
the scholars who look at all of this, I think
that like that was one person's error and writing a

(07:40):
biography of her because everyone else right. And we do
know that those kinds of errors happen in transcription when
people are copying down records into other books and stuff.
It happens all the time in history. Yes, that's part
of sort of unraveling history. A lot of the time
is figuring out which accounts are factual and which ones
are either in Belle store accidentally incorrect. From the early

(08:03):
encyclopedia known as the Suda, there's a quote that says
she was so very beautiful and attractive that one of
those who attended her lectures fell in love with her.
He was not able to contain his desire, but he
informed her of his condition. Ignorant reports say Hypatia relieved
him of his disease by music, but truth proclaims that
music failed to have any effect. She brought some of

(08:26):
her female rags and threw them before him, showing him
the sign of her unclean origin, and said, you love this,
oh youth, and there is nothing beautiful about it. His
soul was turned away by shame and surprise at the
unpleasant sight, and he was brought to his right mind.
I love this story so much. I both love it

(08:46):
and have that. You know, Hi Patia, You're so smart?
Why you gotta hate this thing about yourself? Well, and
that one of one of the books that I read
about Hi Patia did get into that about how to
a modern woman's ear. Yeah, you do kind of. But
when you look, uh historically at at the world of

(09:08):
women's bodies and women's physiology, even at the time that
like a girl's first period was sometimes viewed as a
magical thing. Uh so this whole story maybe more about
power than about like how grossus this is? Yeah. Well,
and she also was moving in circles that were almost
entirely males, so that probably informed her view on things.

(09:31):
I were in hypacious shoes and I wanted a dude
to get away from me. That might be a thing,
that might be a weapon at my disposal. Uh. Sadly,
Hypatia lived at a time when the intellectual life in
which she so obviously excelled was quickly crumbling and disappearing,
and her life and her accomplishments are often overshadowed by

(09:54):
her death, and understanding how that came to be requires
some understanding of what was going on politically and socially
in Alexandria at the time. The Greek city of Alexandria
had been founded in Egypt during the reign of Alexander
the Great about six hundred years before Hypatia's birth in
b C. It really quickly became a renowned place of learning, knowledge, literature,

(10:18):
and culture. It was really one of the great intellectual
centers of the world. Ptolemy was Alexandria's founder and first ruler,
and Ptolemy sort of co opted the Egyptian gods Therapists,
which was a god of the underworld, as a sun
god to be worshiped in Alexandria and he built a
temple to him that temple will be important in just

(10:40):
a bit. Rome annexed Alexandria in a d b c.
And it continued to be governed by the Pharaohs until
Cleopatra's death fifty years later. Although it became governed by
Rome at this point, Alexandria really continued to be a
heavily Greek city with very Greek traditions and culture. Before

(11:01):
the advent of Christianity, both Pagans and Jews lived in Alexandria,
and Christianity was introduced to Alexandria very early in the
religion's history. The apostle Mark founded the first Christian church
in Alexandria in the year forty eight, and Christianity spread
over the next few hundred years, becoming the dominant and
eventually official religion of the Roman Empire. By the time

(11:24):
Hypatia was born, things were not going well in Alexandria. Christianity, Judaism,
and Paganism, which was kind of a blanket characterization for
people who were neither Christian nor Jewish, were they were
not coexisting harmoniously. There was really a lot of hostility
among the religions, and the Roman Empire at the same
time was in decline. On top of that, ongoing civil

(11:47):
wars were leading to the destruction of Alexandria's libraries and
other important buildings and all of the knowledge that they contained.
In three hundred sixty four, the Roman Empire split into
the Eastern and Western Empires, and Alexandria became part of
the Eastern Empire, and life there started to go rather

(12:08):
sharply downhill. There was constant conflict between the people of
different religions and philosophies, and the civil government was constantly
at odds with the leadership of all of these various religions,
so it was really just a hotbed in a morass
of anger and dismay so much, and there was also
internal strife within Christianity as well. Was still a relatively

(12:32):
new religion at this point, and some people were considering
some views to be orthodox and others heretical. Without getting
into too long of a digression on the particulars, the
orthodox Christians were the ones who believed everything outlined in
the Nicene Creed, which was originally drafted in the Council
of Nicea in three twenty five. The quote heretical Christians

(12:55):
disagreed with one or more of the specific tenants that's
laid out in the Nicene Creed. The Nicing Creed was
further revised and expanded over the next hundred and twenty
five years, and it's still one of the major statements
of orthodox faith in Christianity today. So there was really
huge strife within Christianity between the people who believed all
of the Nicing Creed and the people who took issue

(13:18):
with one or more parts of it. Yeah, you're a
heretic by virtue of disagreeing with one part of it. Basically,
that was pretty much what was going on. It was
a pretty black and white split. Yeah, well, and the
Nicing Creed was basically set down as the official this
is what we believe statement. That's basically what it is.
And so the people who did not believe in one
of those things were viewed with all kinds of like

(13:39):
heretical anger, suspicion, and condition and contempt are totally what
was going on. In three ninety one, the emperor ordered
that all pagan temples be destroyed. The Offulist the archbishop
carried these orders out and he destroyed the temple to
Therapist that Ptolemy had built, which at this point was
being used to house the last remnants of the museums work.

(14:01):
Most scholars really mark this is the final nail in
the museum's coffin, like this was really the end of
that institution. Yeah, that appears to be when the work
of the museum ceased, even though the buildings themselves were
pretty much gone before that. In four twelve, the Offalis's nephew, Cyril,
who later became Saint Cyril of Alexandria, succeeded him as

(14:23):
the archbishop. Cyril was even less tolerant of other religions
than his uncle had been, and he was constantly fighting
with Orestes, who was the prefect basically Alexandria's governor. And
Orestes was also Christian, but he was a more tolerant
flavor of Christian than Saint Cyril was. At this point,

(14:43):
tensions in Alexandria, which had already been high for many
years at this point, really started to escalate. And then
two years later a group of Jewish extremists massacred a
number of Christians by setting fire to one of the
major churches in the middle of the night and then
slaughtered the Christians who came to try to put out
the fire. In response, Cyril decided to drive the Jews

(15:06):
out of Alexandria, and riots immediately followed. Attempts at reconciliation failed,
and tensions between Cyril and the Christians versus Orestes in
the secular government just got worse and worse. At one point,
a monk named Ammonius tried to kill Orestes by throwing
a stone at his head during a brawl. Ammonius was

(15:27):
then arrested and tortured to death over the objections of
a lot of his followers, Cyril canonized Ammonious, which sort
of implicated him in this whole assassination attempt. This did
not reflect well on Cyril, and Orestes came out looking
like the victor in the whole situation. So to bring

(15:49):
it all back to Hypatia, we knew, or we know
that Hypatient Orestes knew one another. Arrestes often came to
her for advice and counsel, so in the aftermath of
the dispute between Cyril and Arrestes, Hypatia apparently became something
of a target for Christian zealots. She was also a
neo Platonist, so she fell under that broad pagan umbrella

(16:11):
and was consequently a target for persecution. Right, she apparently
didn't write down a lot of her philosophical writings. She
lectured a lot, but didn't record a lot of that
in writing, so we don't know a lot of the
particulars of what her beliefs were. That everyone pretty much
agrees that she was a neo Platonist, and since she
got lumped in with the bigger quote pagan group, sorting

(16:33):
out any of it is probably a little bit of
a trick. So in March of four fift or possibly
for sixteen, during Lent, a mob of Christian zealots led
by a man named Peter the Lector, attacked the carriage
that Hypatia was traveling in. They pulled her out of
it and dragged her into a nearby church, and once

(16:55):
there they stripped her naked and beat her to death
with roof tiles. After that they dismembered her body and
burned the pieces. We'll just let that sit for a minute. Yeah,
it's so gruesome and savage. It's gruesome and savage, and
it's like all of the accounts, some of them kind
of used different words for for what was used to

(17:15):
beat her to death, but the the account is pretty
much the same in all the historical sources, Okay. Uh
mathematics professor Ari Blankee theorizes a more specific cause for
the mob's targeting of Hypatia that it actually had to
do with when to celebrate Easter, which according to the

(17:36):
First Council of Nicia, falls on the first Sunday after
the first full moon on or after the spring equinox.
Thanks to its astronomical tradition, Alexandria was responsible for setting
the exact dates for Easter, which the rest of Rome followed.
But Blankie speculates that Hypatia calculated that the equinox would
fall on a different date than the one Alexandria was

(17:58):
actually using, which would embarrassed the Alexandrian Church and cause
it to lose face before the rest of Rome. So
it's really much more of an astronomy intrigue story from
that point of view, right, and that that that is
one of those things that uh I can see where
we would get to that conclusion, but it's not something
that is actually cited in any of the historical sources.

(18:21):
But Alexandria and the rest of Rome did celebrate Easter
on two completely different dates, uh in in four seventeen.
So if if this did, if it was a precursor,
that that seems to be a little piece of evidence,
but it's not something that's actually referenced in historical sources. Yeah,
it's like a piece together. It's a fairly well thought

(18:42):
out theory based on circumstantial evidence. There's no hard case
file on it, right, And regardless of what the root
cause was for Hypatia to be targeted, the general consensus
today is also that St. Cyril as he later became,
was not directly involved in her death, but that his
actions did really inflame the tensions that led up to it.

(19:06):
After Hypatia's death, the tradition of education and knowledge in
Alexandria pretty much died out. Uh. Most of what remains
of the scholarly traditions of Alexandria we have, uh it
thanks to the Arabs who captured Alexandria roughly two hundred
years after all of this was over, and many of
the Greek documents that still exist are in the form

(19:26):
of translations into Arabic. Yes. Uh. And it's not that
suddenly everyone was stupid after after high patient time. But
she had really been at that point the keystone in
this intellectual tradition, and once she died, there was not
an immediate new person to take over. And based on
what the climate was like socially and politically in Alexandria

(19:49):
at that point, other cities easily moved into like into
a higher rung of you know, what's the smartest place, uh,
because it was not a good time to be a
scholar in in Alexandria anymore. In the words of the
poet Palladus of Alexandria, writing in the fourth or fifth century, quote,

(20:11):
revered Hypatia ornament of learning, stainless star of wise teaching.
When I see thee in thy discourse, I worshiped the
looking on the starry house of the Virgin, for thy
business is in heaven. So lovely memorial to her. Yeah,

(20:34):
she comes up frequently in lists of important women in
science and philosophy. She's well she should, yes, so as
we said before there, you know, there were certainly female
scholars before Hypatia, but she was the first, uh, especially
in the Western world, truly famous female scholar about whom

(20:56):
we have a pretty large amount of information. Know, I
love her. It is not surprising at all that now
there are you know, but there are journals, academic journals
named after her, and the conferences and things like that. So,
by chance, do you also have some listener mail for us?
Have two pieces of listener mail. We are going to

(21:19):
read them both because they are both about wonderful animal. Uh.
They are both about our recent episode about Felicia the ferret,
And we're going to start with this email that we
got from Cynthia. Cynthia says, hi, ladies, I loved your
episode featuring Felicia the Ferret and the animals of the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Last year, I worked as a
communications intern at the lab and had the great honor

(21:41):
of living on site at the laboratory dorms. Since many
of the lab's experiments take place underground, Fermi Lab has
worked very hard to restore most of their campus to
its original prairie state before European settlement. Not only is
the prairie restoration involved an important plant and animal conservation
where it's a very beautiful place to live, work, or visit.

(22:03):
I'd encourage anyone in the area to take a drive
through the laboratory grounds and visit the Letterman Science Center.
Living in the dorms right next to bison was an
amazing experience, and I regularly saw coyotes, foxes, deer, and
other wild life. I think it's wonderful how many of
the world's top business was working at the cutting edge
of science have come together to preserve this little slice

(22:25):
of nature near Chicago. Thank you so much for covering
FIRMU Lab in your podcast. Thank you so much for
that letter. So cool. I know we were so happy
to hear that, and I agree that's what drew me
to the story in the first place, is the fact
that it is all these scientists who are also kind
of into animal preserving animals. Again, it's a story about

(22:45):
science and animals. And there's no torture, there's no like unpleasant,
there's no dogs in space forever, there's no jimpanzees. It's
just good stuff. Uh. And then another and another wonderful
piece of mail. This is an actual card that we
got in the mail and it has number one adorable
animals on it. Um there are there are rabbits and

(23:09):
guinea pigs and a little weasel. Uh. It's it's super
duper cute. Uh, and it is from Corey, and Corey says,
Dear Tracy and Holly, I just listened to your podcast
about Felicia the ferret and wanted to let you know
a lot has changed in the ferret world since we
were kids. I'm happy to hear this. She goes on.

(23:29):
I work in Indiana's oldest and only exotic Animals Specialty
veterinary clinic, and our doctor has been seeing ferrets since
they first began to appear on the pet market. She
says that back then they made terrible pets for children,
would bite all the time, and she wasn't even able
to pick them up without thick leather gloves. Then, about

(23:50):
twenty years ago Marshall's Farms ferrets really started to take off.
These breeders began selecting only the nicest and gentlest ferrets
for their breeding stock, and the result today is that
bites from ferrets are extremely rare, and I wasn't I
wouldn't hesitate to hand a faret to any child. Now,
there is a downside to all the selective breeding. Ferrets

(24:11):
have a much higher incidence of congenital disorders and much
shorter lifespans as well. They're also spade a neuter to
the very young age, and tends to be much smaller
than intact ferrets. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about the smell, though,
which is why I will never have a ferret, sincerely, Corey.
So that definitely the when I was a child and

(24:33):
being like, I want to ferret and seeing ferrets in
the science center who were kind of biting and mean
and all of that. That was definitely earlier than the
twenty year ago introduction of much nicer, gentler ferrets. And
if you heard the kind of chuckle in my voice
that was talking about selecting the gentlest ferrets for the
breeding stock, that's because I'm thinking, of course, that is
what we should do if we want to have nice ferrets,

(24:55):
to breed the nice ferrets with each other. So I
also really loved hearing this more information, and she drew
us pictures of farets in the cars so great. It's
a really fun. There are little ferret sketches, cute, qute, cute.
This was definitely like a good male day. Sure when
we got this one, for sure, And I mean I

(25:16):
asked for the smell. I have friends that have ferrets,
and I think, you know, we're very very fastidious about it.
You can keep that to a bare minimum. Walk in
their house and go ferret house. Well, and you know
we both have cats. Yeah, I have a cat that
you can't touch at the vet without gloves or it
will bite you. So this is not a faret hate scenario. No, no,

(25:39):
And I wasn't trying to sube that ferrets are terrible animals.
They're adorable, you know, so cute. When I was a child,
people caution to me about them being biting and smelly. Yeah.
And I want all the weird animals to be my friends.
So that's cool tee for penguin walked in and try
to be friended snake, no problem. Uh. You know, I've

(26:02):
been playing a game called Don't Start. It's one of
my favorite games player right now. And and you can
tweak your settings of the world when you build it.
Mine is currently set to lots of pigs. Huh. Yes,
you can have fewer pigs, normal pigs, h more pigs,
lots of pigs. I have the maximum number of pigs.
I will want to talk to you at length later

(26:23):
about how that affects the outcome of the game. I
will totally get into that, Okay, if this were if
this were our prior podcast, pop Stuff, you might have
a whole episode on it, But we don't about pigs
and videos about pleeds and video games and how they
change the gameplay. Anyway, thank you all for indulging us
with that digression. If you would like to write to

(26:44):
us about video game pigs, or ferrets, or hypatia or
any other subject, you may. We are at History Podcast
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(27:06):
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(27:28):
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