Hypatia of Alexandria Looks To The Sky
Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415) was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician in Roman Egypt. She was a pagan scholar in Alexandria who was murdered by a Christian mob. Maybe some backstory would help.
Late Antiquity is a term historians use for the time when the late Roman Empire morphed into the medieval world. Some say it was 250-750 AD, others shorten it to 350-650 AD, but whatever years you put on it, it’s not a time in history that most people know anything about. If your high school history teacher was named “Coach Something,” there is a good chance Coach knew almost nothing about Late Antiquity.
If you like Roman history, then you ignore Late Antiquity because all of the cool gladiators and pagan temples are being replaced by contemplating monks and Christian churches. If you like medieval history for all the knights and jousting and tournaments, those things are all 500 years in the future. The Vikings won’t even show up for several hundred years. So, most people skip right over this time period.
Rather than lay the scene in Fair Verona, this one will be in Alexandria, Egypt. By 415 AD, Alexandria had been the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire for almost 500 years. The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, and it ceased to be independent just after Cleopatra ceased to live there anymore in 31 BC because she ceased to live at all. See any movie starring Cleopatra for the details.
The Mouseion, the Temple of the Muses in the Library of Alexandria, was the greatest repository of knowledge in the world. All the famous thinkers from over the centuries like Archimedes and Euclid taught there. It had over 500,000 books in a world where even a single book was a very expensive treasure. It was kind of a big deal.
The smartest nerds from every land gathered there to study and learn. There had been more Greek-speaking Jewish people in Alexandria than in Jerusalem since the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Their students sat in classrooms side-by-side with pagan and Christian scholars. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 380s and the newer faith was ascendant, growing in people, power, and prestige.
Now, Hypatia.
Hypatia was the daughter of the last Head Librarian of the Library of Alexandria. He tutored her in math, astronomy, and science, just as if she were a boy. She followed her dad into the family business, becoming an academic and teaching students the same subjects she had learned. She was one of the most popular lecturers in Alexandria and dressed in the same types of robes worn by men to mark them as scholars.
Hypatia designed a type of astrolabe, the device for mapping stars and planets in observational astronomy. She was especially renowned for explaining how to use it to her students to help them become keen astronomers. During an eclipse, she certainly would have advised her students not to look directly into the sun. To repeat, even if you are President of the United States, DO NOT look directly at the sun.
In 415 AD, religious tensions were escalating between the growing Christian community and their pagan and Jewish neighbors. Tensions reached a boiling point during a riot when 500 Christian monks clad in black robes attacked pagan temples and even pagans themselves.
The mob knocked over Hypatia’s chariot and dragged her into a church. She was given a choice: 1) accept the new Christian faith and become a nun or 2) die. She declined to convert. The mob killed her and burned her as a witch.
The murder of Hypatia is seen as a marker of the decline of Alexandria as a cultural center and one of the key markers of the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The times, they were a-changin’.
The future rarely arrives on schedule. It’s always happening, right now.
Technological waves sweep aside the old way of doing things. Whether it was the first industrial revolution which finally did away with the Middle Ages, or the advent of the personal computer, or the internet, or now maybe AI, the world changes and brings with it a new way of working.
Hypatia’s world changed, but she stayed the same. Had she adapted to the times, she might have continued teaching for decades, influencing students from all over the world.
You don’t have to jump on the bandwagon. Just because suddenly everyone is talking about a new app or software, you don’t have to use it.
But if this is a BIG change, a permanent shift in the way work gets done, then it doesn’t benefit you or your work to still use a typewriter or not have an email address. You may never get to Inbox Zero, but ride the wave of incoming messages and try to keep afloat with technological changes.
