The Life and Death of Hypatia

Words by S.B. Julian

Art by Yaleeza Patchett

“There was a woman named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science as to surpass all the philosophers of her own time.” -Socrates of Constantinople

Alexandria, Egypt, ca. 400 C.E.

Diodora: (looking out the window of Hypatia's house, hearing footsteps) Look: here comes Orestes, your protector. From his face he doesn't look pleased about his meeting with the Emperor. But Theodosius was always going to side with the Christian bishop. You know that, don't you? (Orestes enters.)

Hypatia: Orestes! What news from Theodosius? Tell me: you entered his palace? He sat in state with the pious Pulcheria at his side? So religious, yet such grand trappings! You lay at their feet a petition for science, for study, for free inquiry, and they decreed … ?

Orestes: They found for the churchman, Cyril. They uphold the Church.

Diodora (groans): Are you surprised?

Hypatia: So you were right, Diodora. Now Cyril has even more ammunition against me. They uphold the Church. Church! A church is but an invention of a tribe of men; what about learning the secrets of Nature herself!

Orestes: Nature herself is just what they most dislike. Theodosius supports Bishop Cyril. Not nature but heaven is their business. They would have you and all who teach at the Museum thinking only of your fitness for heaven.

Hypatia: My business is not heaven but the heavens—the very stars our souls are yoked to!

Diodora: I wish you wouldn’t speak like that—you do it even in the street where anyone can hear and misunderstand. I warn you! I feel danger, I see it more clearly than anything you can see with that thing! (She points at Hypatia's astrolabe and stalks out.)

Orestes: To some, your servant would seem as unorthodox as your calling.

Hypatia: Forgive her. She is my friend, and she thinks I am lost in darkness. Do you think so too?

Orestes: To me you seem to stand pale and serene in a pool of delicate light, gracious and luminous.

Hypatia: Well! But I repudiate nothing that is dark. Look at the stars, whose movements, could we measure them all, might tell us all we need to know of past, future, and reality. Yet we only see them because of darkness. We cannot know anything without seeing the opposite―seeing its opposite so wholly that it is hidden by its opposite, negated by it. Then, by its absence, we know it.

Orestes: Theodosius, by contrast, told me that the darkness of the Devil swallows up the light of Christ and will swallow up the salvation of the world if we don't fight it in every pagan place it lurks. Have you lectured at the Museum as you have just spoken, about darkness?

Hypatia: Not yet, these are private thoughts.

Orestes: Which you share with me!

Hypatia: I seem to, yes.

Orestes: Which is why your maid lurks so suspiciously there in the shadows. (He nods at the door.)

Hypatia: (calling) Diodora, for goodness sake come in. (Diodora re-enters with a candle.)

Diodora: (stiffly, unsmiling) Your candle, Madam. (She places the candle in an alcove before the picture of the goddess Isis holding her son Horus.) May Great Mother Isis protect you.

Hypatia: Diodora is always trying to shed light but her predictions die out in flickering riddles and warnings I don’t understand.

Diodora: Won’t understand.

Hypatia: Do you understand yourself then?

Diodora: No, I only know the depths of my ignorance.

Hypatia: So, a true Socratic!

Diodora: Socrates was brought to death's threshold by his enemies. His enemies appointed themselves on the grounds of thinking differently than he did.

Hypatia: Yes. The worst kind of enemies: the enemies of thought itself.

Diodora: Knowing that, you still go to the Museum and speak as you do.

Hypatia: How could I not? It's my task. (She turns to Orestes.) But I do understand this: the news from Theodosius is bad, Cyril grows stronger, and his mob of ruffians bolder.

Orestes: Just so. But I'm not done with him. He does not govern this city. We do have a civil administration, and the Prefect is me. But it isn’t safe for you. Why not go to Athens for a time, like you did when your father had you studying under Plutarch the Younger?

Hypatia: I could. But no. I'd only have to come back. This is my home, and the Museum is my life. It was my promise to my father to continue our work.

Orestes: He wouldn’t have wanted you in danger. Don’t you see how dangerous this church-state conflict is?

Hypatia: I don’t fore-judge the outcome. Not to judge but to observe—that's my task. To hold a question in a still, clear mind not made turgid by dabbling in public dispute. Then, in the stillness, an answer may emerge. I shall not invent it like a demagogue, but receive it. I shall not marry it like a monk the church, but entertain it as a guest, until a yet more stimulating idea pays a call. (She runs up to Orestes and grasps his hand.) Yes, stimulating! That is how you judge the worth of an idea: does it make you more alive, make you happy? It's not a mere belief that's imposed on you, which you run to as to shelter in the rain. Rather it entices you into the sunshine and the cleansing wind!

Diodora: (pulling shawl around her) How I fear this sun, this wind. My beautiful Hypatia will be a gazelle on a hillside, chasing the wind and being brought down by wolves. (She exits.)

Orestes: She's right: be careful. Keep your gaze low. Your enterprise is a long one: you could afford a little intermission. (She gives him her hand, he exits.)

Hypatia: Good-bye, Friend.

Some time later. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, is kneeling before an altar in the cathedral. The nave is dark but for candle light. Cyril wears purple robes, and two monks in brown tunics kneel behind him. He stands; the monks stand. He walks down a side aisle, pausing to look out a window, murmuring. He points.

Cyril: It isn't right that that impious house stands on the very doorstep of the cathedral—the house of the old heretic Theon now occupied by his arrogant daughter Hypatia, and her old witch of a companion. Hypatia's lectures attract all too much attention to the Museum. Most of what's inside the place should be burned, as indeed much of it was in 391. Hypatia's becoming too big a problem. Her reputation is too large for her station. The Emperor may be weak, but I'm not. The state's weak, but the Church is not. In Alexandria, the Church's authority rests with me, and I've never shirked a role, never forgotten to watch and pray. My predecessor Theophilus was too tolerant of pagans. Now God is judging us. History too will judge us. (He glances back at the two monks following him at a respectful distance.) You know what we need to do, don't you?

The monks, faces half-hidden by their brown cowls, exchange silent looks. The trio exits the cathedral.

A few years later. Hypatia awaits students at the Museum. Orestes arrives, amorous and chatty. He distracts her with nonsense-games and she pretends to be bothered.

Orestes: It’s rhyme-time my dear, and there’s no one here but us. So humour me.

Hypatia: (laughs) Oh no, not that again. You’re worse than Diodora's Thalia.

Orestes: Thalia’s a clever little clown. She knows how to play. Take off that teaching shawl.

Hypatia: Thalia's a child, I’m here to work! Will you stay to meet the new students?

Orestes: Shh—remember the rhyme game. Anything serious is to be said in rhyme. Then you have to wonder: was it worth the trouble? You see? It's a discipline of the mind.

Hypatia: Oh, right. Well let's see:

I’m thinking about the realm atomic,

and you twist everything until it’s comic.

Orestes: Ha! Very good. Isn’t it better for everything to be comic? Especially when things are going really badly. It’s odd how sad things make you cry, but really hopeless things make you laugh.

Hypatia: Do they? That’s a serious proposition, and since we're playing the rhyme-game, you should have said it in rhyme.

Orestes: Okay:

Comic’s a tonic,

but tragic is magic.

Hypatia: (laughing) How true: it is magic. Look at the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides.

Both laughter and crying express as tears

and the cure for both is passing years.

But why do we feel better by feeling worse? Why exalted by disaster?

Orestes: You mean, why catharsis? Too bad we can’t ask the champion clown himself: Aristotle.

Hypatia: Champion clown? What heresy! And you’re supposed to be the sober public administrator, loving reason! The public doesn’t know the real you.

Orestes: It’s not reason I’m in love with, and I’m about as rational as Bacchus. You know the real me—anyway, you don't take Aristotle seriously either. I wonder which was his favourite Muse.

Hypatia: It wasn't “amuse”, anyway—he was a sour old crank. You know what he said about women and childbearing. Did he really think women were empty vessels awaiting an infusion of male seed, the womb a mere hothouse to grow another Socrates or Aristotle in? As if children don't look as much like their mothers as their fathers? Thalia is the very image of Diodora. Diodora has a theory ...

Orestes: (drily) I'm sure she does. But she doesn't play and tell jokes and speak in rhyme, like we do.

Hypatia: Do you think Socrates and Diotima spoke in rhyme? Or Pericles and Aspasia?

Orestes: They probably did! It's all the same, the musing of muses—it's eros, vita, spiritus. Take Antigone: she was the whole package, wasn't she? Love, life and spirit. That's why play-goers adore her—she's weirdly sexy, seductively inviting risk and courting doom.

Hypatia: Why is that sexy?

Orestes: God knows. One shouldn't think it is, I suppose ...

Hypatia: I would have thought she was Thanatos—death—not Eros. But shush! I hear the students coming.

(Students enter, talking, seating themselves. Orestes stays. Hypatia begins to lecture, pointing to a pattern on the wall of ten dots within a triangle.)

Hypatia: Here is the diagram created by Pythagoras, representing the universe, with atom-like points representing emanation from matter to individual soul to world soul to the divine at the top (pointing at each). Now, let's consider the atoms of Leucippus and Democritus … (Noise is heard outside, loud knocking on the door. Orestes opens it.)

Orestes: Good Lord, it’s the bishop. Cyril. (He bows, showily.) Your Grace.

Cyril: (Facing Hypatia) May we join you, Madam? (Students murmur, shake heads. Watching, monks press noisily in. Cyril turns to them.) Hush! Leave us! (They withdraw.)

Hypatia: Of course. Let’s shut the door and open our minds.

Cyril: Madam, you seem to feel you have a teaching. I too. Only my charge comes not from my own ambition or my own fancy, but from the authority of the Church. I am charged to promote the gospel, the word of God, the one truth.

Hypatia: So, you come with one truth and you fear any alternative. You don’t like this place. You don’t like our study of numbers and charts—our maps of knowledge.

Cyril: Knowledge! You merely sin, when eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. What of Jesus Christ?

Hypatia: I have no opinion of Jesus Christ.

Cyril: You are not asked to have an opinion, but to follow him unquestioningly! The holy book tells us what to think. You spread creeds we have been commanded to reject since the word of God was given to the prophets.

Hypatia: “Unquestioningly”? Questioning is my job. And I have no business with your prophets.

Cyril: Then you are immoral.

Hypatia: Morality, like other forms of health, comes of harmonizing with the music of the elements and the stars, as the numbers reveal it to us. (She pauses, then walks away, hands up in giving-up gesture.) There is no other response I can make that doesn’t depend upon your knowing it already. Orestes, what do you say?

Orestes: (goes to door and opens it) You have delivered your message Your Grace, and you have been received with all the courtesy you can expect, but there is no meeting of minds here.

Cyril: “Minds” are but opportunity for sin! You have two tasks: obedience to the word of God, and to the authority of the Church. If you prefer pagan error or arrogant inventions of your own, you are asking for trouble in the next world—and in this one. (With this threat, he leaves. Light on the wall highlights the triangle with ten dots: the Pythagorean symbol.)

A few years later: Hypatia and Diodora's daughter Thalia are at home, talking. It's night, and a storm is raging outside. Church bells ring. Diodora enters carrying a candle.

Diodora: Thalia! So this is where you’ve got to. What are you doing here, sitting in the dark?

Hypatia: I asked her to come, Diodora—she cheers me up. Not like you, all gloomy and fretful! Come here and sit with us. Bring the light. (Diodora sits down.) When I was a child looking out the window from my bed, I felt the night sky was close and private … It was like a lovely soft blanket sprinkled with specks of silvery light, like the warm blanket a mother wraps around a baby.

Diodora: You were looking at Noot, the Great Mother as sky, over-arching the world she birthed. She birthed everything: earth, animals, plants, river … She birthed her daughter-self, Isis, who gathered up the body parts of her murdered mate Osiris and then lay upon his re-assembled body in the river and brought forth their child Horus. (As she speaks she gets up and places the candle in front of the image of Isis and the infant Horus.)

Thalia: In the church I saw a statue like that, but they call it Jesus and Mary.

Diodora: It is the same. That is all we know and all we need to know.

Hypatia: (smiling) Not all, perhaps.

Diodora: All. But you don’t hear me. It’s all ideals and forms with you .

Hypatia: I hear everything you say! I am sky, you are earth, and together we make the life of mind and body. We make this. (She holds up a pendant hanging from her neck.)

Thalia: What is that, Hypatia?

Hypatia: A magic pendant.

Thalia: Magic?

Hypatia: Yes, but real magic—the magic of reality—the numbers and shapes of it.

Diodora: You see what I mean?

Hypatia: It's the ten-dot triangle—sacred to the Master, Pythagoras. (She removes it and holds it up, pointing.) The top point—the number one—is Unity, and each level below expresses multiplicity, as physical matter expresses it in the line, the surface, and in three dimensions. It represents the whole cosmos, and the emanation of our souls and of all the arts and sciences our senses and reason produce.

Thalia: It's the shape of the pyramids of the ancient kings!

Diodora: The Carthaginians and Phrygians put a head upon that shape to symbolize the Great Mother.

Hypatia: And the Christians too use its three points for their trinity. It is the sign of truth. Don’t you love it? (She hands it to Thalia.)

Thalia: Yes!

Hypatia: Sometimes when my mind gets stuck I just gaze at it, and my thoughts flow again. Noot—or Gaia as Homer called her—she who blended with the sky and brought forth all life, she has a music of motion which is measured by number, and shaped by numbers’ bodies—lines and angles, circles and cones. The flow of water, the swell of seeds, the deaths and rebirths of seasons and creatures, all are measured, weighed, numbered. We too are carried along, yet we stand outside ourselves, as abstract as mathematics, with pure meaning—only meaning—in our souls.

Thalia: (holding it up, turning it) How do you mean it makes your thoughts flow? What is it like when your thoughts flow?

Hypatia: Well … wonderful! It means forgetting the silly squabbles of senate and court and church and marketplace, and seeing the numbers and shapes that make up real truth—truth behind the visible and invisible world.

Thalia: The invisible world?

Hypatia: Yes: behind the hills and buildings and objects and people, even behind the sun and stars, are the ideal forms of these things, the source they emanate from. That is what we really seek. (They are silent a moment, listening to the wind howl outside).

Thalia: Is that what you teach at the Museum? Is it what you believe in? Is that why you have enemies?

Hypatia: Believe in? No: I don’t have beliefs, I have ideas. Beliefs are like a tightly wrapped cape which if you once put it on to keep warm, and then say “this and only this is my cape, and it's better than your cape”, will become your prison. I don’t deal in beliefs, but in theories. And yes: that is why I have enemies. Nothing is more unpopular with law-makers than alternative theories.

Thalia: What are theories then, if they're not beliefs?

Hypatia: Theories are loose capes that can be changed—re-made and improved when you get new information. They can grow when your understanding grows out of them.

Thalia: Until you understand everything? And put it all on one sacred scroll?

Hypatia: There can never be one scroll that says everything. That is why we speak of the Mysteries. They are outside time, and beyond reason. Reality is outside time. (Thalia hands back the medallion.) When you grow up and study the Mysteries, I will give this to you. Or it shall be yours when I die, whichever comes first.

Thalia: Won’t that be in time?

Hypatia (laughing): Aha, a philosopher already! We live our bodily lives in time, but lift up our minds to eternity. That is what is represented by the top point of the triangle.

Thalia: Oh, you mean eternal life, like in the resurrection of Serapis and of Jesus, who died and were born again.

Hypatia: Resurrection—what a long word for a young girl whose mother doesn't even let go to school! You see Dio, she mops up ideas despite your best efforts.

Diodora: I only want to keep her safe. Not resurrection but insurrection is what you deal in. You put us all in danger. The one thing that prefect Orestes says that makes sense is that you should get away across the sea, get away to safety. (The wind howls louder.) Listen to that wind! Do you remember, Hypatia, when we were coming back from Athens all those years ago, sailing across the middle of the Earth, how the sea wouldn't keep still? A jeering wind and insolent waves pummelled our ship, challenging the mariners. (Hypatia nods, Thalia winces.) You and I felt fragile, imprisoned at Neptune's pleasure, and you said, “Look up Dio, look at the steady stars, the still points that move on a stately course that the angry sea doesn't even know about. The goddess Diana pulls the sea about and the sea spits and churns resentfully, but the starry worlds don't care.”

Hypatia: Of course I remember. We were far from land and gazing up at another universe, at dots of light on the black canvas of night, steady points guiding the sailors.

Diodora: We clutched each other in the storm, but in the morning all was calm again, the sea was still and the sun drowned out the starry points, and soon we were home and safe.

Hypatia: And now we're in another storm, this a point-less human one.

Diodora: We drifted home on a silky sea which we could cross again if only you'd be sensible ... (There's a sudden noise of running feet and shouts outside. A loud crash. Thalia screams.)

Diodora: Hypatia! What is this? I feel frozen. I feel paralyzed. (A spray of stones hits the window, glass shatters. Shouts outside. They yelp, gasp, duck down.)

Thalia: What is it? What’s happening?

Diodora: Thalia’s bleeding. Find a bandage! (Hypatia grasps a cloth and binds Thalia’s wrist. All goes quiet, and they sit huddled under the broken window. Hypatia rises to look carefully out.)

Hypatia (whispering): Blow out the candle. They’ve gone. (She sits down again). Diodora, you’re right. Thalia is hurt—this is frightening, it's a warning. We shall go away. Not forever, but for a time.

Diodora: Yes. Now, you begin to grasp it.

Hypatia: Where are the servants? Where is the porter, when we need him?

Diodora: They fear to come, they fear to sin, they fear to help you and enrage the monks.

Hypatia: (staring at her, appalled): What? Has it got that bad? Well, stay here tonight, we'll sleep here together. Look, pull out the other couch ... (They pull up blankets and blow out the other candle.) We'll stay together tonight and make plans in the morning.

Darkness falls except for one beam trained on the church tower visible from the window. One chime sounds. The next day Hypatia gathers up her scrolls to take to the Museum, where she wants to give one more lecture before the trio leaves Alexandria.

Diodora: Please! Make no last lecture, lie low, and when we are ready: we go. Quickly and silently.

Hypatia: I will not sneak away. I'll meet my colleagues one last time, to do our work. Our work is our delight. Why should we be kept from what delights us by a gang of unlettered priests and ruffians? They darken the spirit. Do you want to live in that fetid murk? Do you want your daughter to grow up in it?

Diodora: I want my daughter to grow up. Keep your ideas and understandings here at home. Do not go to the Museum today, I beg you.

Hypatia gets into her carriage, and is driven down the street.

Thalia: Are we really leaving? Must we? What will become of us?

Diodora: It will be wonderful! You'll see. Just you and me and Hypatia, safe and hidden across the sea.

Thalia: Across the sea where? On an island?

Diodora: Yes.

Thalia: A secret magical island?

Diodora: Yes, a magical island.

Thalia: Then it must be Ten-Dot Island. When we get there, we’ll call it Ten-Dot Island.

Diodora: Yes, we will. We will be a whole universe of ourselves alone: the earth, the sky, the child, and Ten-Dot Island!

Loud noises are heard in the street, rising as they speak: the sounds of running feet and shouting. Hypatia's carriage has been ambushed and overturned. The Prefect Orestes runs up to the scene, arriving as Hypatia's body is dragged down an alley. He tries to follow but the gang attacks him. He dives toward a different alley, but they follow. He stops, and allows them to drive him away.

Thalia runs up from the other direction, Diodora pursuing her. The carriage driver lies dead on the road. The crowd scatters. As the scene empties Diodora freezes, taking in the carnage. Thalia spots something glinting on the ground: the Ten-Dot medallion. She scoops it up and runs down the street, wailing. Diodora stands motionless, weeping.

About the author

S. B. Julian, BA, MLS, is a memoirs coach and writer of fiction and creative non-fiction in BC, Canada.

About the illustrator

Yaleeza Patchett has been creating whimsical art and illustrations since a child; her inspiration comes from the cartoons, comic strips and animated movies she grew up with. Four years ago, Yaleeza began expanding her art into her own business named Rowan Ink. It began with a simple pair of hand-painted custom-made shoes for a friend’s birthday. Through her artistic journey she has expanded into different art mediums, but her true passion is sketching, illustrating and painting. Yaleeza currently resides in the south side of Indianapolis with her husband, her dog, and her cat. You can find her current artwork at Rowaninkstudio.com