Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Hypatia of Alexandria: mathematician, martyr and feminist icon About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in late antique Egypt by Professor Edith Hall and comedian Olga Koch to learn about the life of mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. An important mathematical and astronomical thinker, Hypatia is best known today for her brutal death at the hands of Christian fundamentalists. Born to a well-respected mathematician named Theon in fourth-century Alexandria, Hypatia received an unusually advanced education for a woman, and eventually took over her father’s school. But with the city in which she lived riven by religious and political conflicts during the declining days of the Roman empire, she came to the attention of radical Christians – with fatal consequences. In this episode we explore Hypatia’s trailblazing life as a philosopher and mathematician, and her afterlife as a martyr for intellectual enquiry, and as a certified feminist icon.
If you’re a fan of trailblazing women from history, religious conflicts, and the twilight of the Roman empire, you’ll love our episode on Hypatia of Alexandria.
If you want more ancient philosophers with Professor Edith Hall, listen to our episodes on Pythagoras and Aristotle. And for more from Olga Koch, check out our episodes on Ivan the Terrible and Vital Electricity.
You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Adam Simcox
Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript 10,880 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:47 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are grabbing our maths textbooks and frolicking back to the fourth century to Egypt to learn all about mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. And to help us, we have one terrific teacher and one sublime student in history corner. She's professor- Of classics at Durham University. You might have heard her on Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics or Great Lives on BBC Radio 4. Maybe you've read one of her many books, including Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, and Facing Down The Furies. And you'll know her from our episodes on Pythagoras, The Triangle Guy, and Aristotle. It's Professor Edith Hall. Welcome back, Edith.
2:28 Speaker 03 Hello, I'm thrilled to be here.
2:30 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you back. And in comedy corner, she's comedian, writer, and actor. You'll have seen her on Mock the Week, QI, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, Late Night Mash, or you've heard her co-hosting the BBC's funny technology podcast, Human Error. Maybe you've seen her award-nominated stand-up show, Olga Cock Comes From Money. And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes on Ivan the Terrible and Vital Electricity. It's Olga Cock. Welcome back, Olga.
2:52 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for having me.
2:53 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you here. Olga, previously on the show, you said that your history knowledge is basically all the American presidents, and that's it.
3:02 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, the thing is, even that was lying. I think maybe half of them at most.
3:07 Greg Jenner? Okay, I was gonna ask you, who's the 12th American president?
3:10 Speaker 04 Oh, fourth.
3:11 Greg Jenner? 12th?
3:12 Speaker 04 Oh, god.
3:12 Greg Jenner? Never mind.
3:13 Speaker 04 John Adams is somewhere in there.
3:14 Greg Jenner? He's quite early, let's be honest.
3:16 Speaker 04 One thing, is he earlier than fourth?
3:18 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
3:19 Speaker 04 Is he second?
3:20 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
3:20 Speaker 04 Oh, boy. This is bad. This is bad. Shut it down!
3:25 Greg Jenner? Okay, you are doing a PhD right now.
3:28 Speaker 04 Yes. Crucially, not in history. I would like your listeners to know.
3:32 Greg Jenner? But you're a woman in STEM, right?
3:33 Speaker 04 Yes.
3:34 Greg Jenner? So...
3:34 Speaker 04 Proudly so.
3:35 Greg Jenner? Good. So have you heard of Hypatia of Alexandria?
3:38 Speaker 04 If I'm being completely honest, I only found out that she was a mathematician, but I wanna say 30 seconds ago. This is gonna be a very, very fun episode, if anything, just for me.
3:48 Greg Jenner? So, what do you know?
3:55 Greg Jenner? Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast, which is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subjects. You might know, from the introduction, like Olga has just discovered, that Hypatia was a philosopher and mathematician. She's a bigger name in recent years, thanks to the 2009 film, Agora, starring Rachel Weisz. But you may also know Hypatia from a 1987 episode of Doctor Who, where she's one of several geniuses kidnapped to build a- Super Brain. I did not see that episode. I've not seen any episodes of Doctor Who. But what's the truth-
4:24 Speaker 04 That's really not on brand for you at all.
4:25 Greg Jenner? I know, I give off real Doctor Who energy, but I've never seen it. But what's the truth behind the dramatic Hollywood Hypatia? How much of a genius was she really? And what on earth is a conic section? Let's find out. Right, Professor Edith, when we did our Pythagoras episode, it turned out we couldn't trust anything written about him by anyone. A lot of fun, but not hugely helpful. Are we on firmer historical ground with Hypatia of Alexandria?
4:49 Speaker 03 We are. We're on slightly firmer-
4:51 Greg Jenner? You immediately caveated.
4:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, slightly firmer historical ground because we've got two sources that are approximately contemporary with her, as well as one or two that are quite a lot later. So we've actually got some letters by a guy called Sinnesius of Cyrene, who was some kind of student or acolyte of her Cyrenees in Libya. So this is, we're talking about the North African Greek intellectual diaspora. He seems to have absolutely adored her, wanted to send her his work and his ideas. She doesn't seem to have answered very much.
5:25 Speaker 04 Okay, I like her already.
5:27 Speaker 03 At some point stopped contacting him, but the respect he holds her in is very indicative. And there's another one, a guy called Socrates, who's given this silly surname Scholasticus, just to distinguish him from the Socrates.
5:42 Greg Jenner? I was gonna say, not the famous one.
5:43 Speaker 03 And Socrates the scholar was actually in Constantinople, and he wrote a whole chapter about her. So we do have some facts. Unfortunately, one or two of those facts seems to be completely wrong. But we are on much further ground. She really existed, whereas we're not even absolutely sure Pythagoras did.
6:01 Greg Jenner? Progress.
6:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:03 Speaker 03 There are really only, in her case, two ways of looking at it from the ancient sources. For and against. Whereas with Pythagoras, we've found many different modalities.
6:13 Greg Jenner? Yeah, just a bit. Okay, so Sinnesius of Cyrene, what a name. He's a bit of a fanboy. Oh, you are an expert in reply guys.
6:23 Speaker 04 Wow, what a swerve. I like that.
6:25 Greg Jenner? Are you on firm historical territory here? This is the psychology of people who write back?
6:30 Speaker 04 I guess so. It's very interesting. So basically, my masters was about reply guys, which are a catch-all slang term for men who, I guess, incessantly respond to women who don't act like they exist on the internet in a sort of very casual and very, I guess, like buddy-buddy fashion that's overly familiar. This guy kind of, I mean, recontextualizes it. It's not a modern phenomenon. It's been around.
6:54 Speaker 03 I'm just a very elderly professor of Greek at retirement age, and I actually have quite a lot of very strange men writing to me who think that I have enough time to answer. They're usually completely insane theories about the ancient world. Like, they've found out where Atlantis is.
7:12 Greg Jenner? Oh, good.
7:13 Speaker 03 Or they've designed the wooden horse of Troy and realized that it couldn't actually fit. You know what I mean?
7:19 Speaker 04 Oh, my God. I know exactly the kind of guy I mean.
7:21 Speaker 03 They want me to take them intellectually seriously. It's very interesting, sort of sexual kink.
7:25 Speaker 04 Oh, my God. This, oh, my God, I could talk about this for hours. That's incredible.
7:29 Greg Jenner? Good. We're off to a good start.
7:30 Speaker 04 Because men love explaining history to women, but you're a professor of history, so it must be so confusing for them.
7:37 Greg Jenner? What other sources do we have for Hypatia? We have the letters of her fanboy, Seneithius.
7:43 Speaker 03 We've got the biography by Socrates, the scholar. There's another guy called Damascus, who wrote a life of another Neoplatonist in which she has some interesting stuff, really more about the culture of Alexandria, where she grew up. And we've got the amazingly horrible John of Nikiou, who is a 7th century Coptic bishop. Coptic is the language of the more, shall we say, primitive, I think it's actually a technical term, primitive Christianity in Egypt. And he wrote a world history, like you do, mansplaining history for everybody. And his paragraph on Hypatia is very important because it reflects what people like him thought of her.
8:26 Speaker 03 And that is that she is a seductress, a high-class sex worker who beguiles people with... Witchcraft. So we get, we've got a text that reflects what people were shouting in the street.
8:38 Speaker 04 Then say that when I solve one quadratic equation and all of a sudden I'm a witch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:43 Speaker 03 So it's, but it's really important because it shows that that particular animus against her had been quite articulately expressed in terms of sexual beguirmance and magic tricks. And that is presumably why she, oh no, cannot do spoilers.
8:59 Greg Jenner? Yeah, don't do spoilers. Yeah. Cause Olga doesn't know.
9:01 Speaker 04 I don't know anything.
9:02 Greg Jenner? Yeah, we'll, we'll come to spoilers later.
9:04 Speaker 03 Anyway, John of Nicchu is the kind of religious person that I have avoided all my life being a vicar's daughter.
9:12 Greg Jenner? So Olga, we haven't got tons on the life of Hypatia. How would you feel if your future biography was compiled from DMs that you'd sent or people had sent to you and some random guy in, in Turkey?
9:22 Speaker 04 That's exactly how I'd wanna go.
9:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, I wanna, yeah, just leave a fantasy.
9:29 Greg Jenner? Yes.
9:29 Speaker 04 She was so good at math, it made people hard. That's what I want.
9:37 Speaker 04 That's the byline of the book. Yeah.
9:41 Greg Jenner? Before we get to Hypatia.
9:42 Speaker 03 Is that an astrolabe in your pocket?
9:48 Greg Jenner? Marvelous. Right. Before we get to Hypatia herself, let's talk about the world she was born into. We've previously done an episode in the previous series about the city of Alexandria in Egypt. For Olga's benefit, Edith, can you give us a quick rundown of life in late 4th century Alexandria? This, this amazing city of, of learning.
10:05 Speaker 03 It is a city which has had the very famous library and several other libraries and museums attached to it. It's a university city. It's still the greatest university in the whole of the Greco-Roman world. But it's multi-ethnic to an extraordinary degree and has had a history of huge liberalism about that. So you've got a massive Jewish population who have very well-treated for the most part. I mean, of course, lots of times when they weren't, but you know, that they live there. They have had their works translated into Greek from Hebrew. But you've also, because of the particular point in history. In the four nineties, the first really harsh edicts from the new Christian emperors
10:50 Speaker 03 were coming out. So the three nine one is the edict of Theodosius, that all pagan temples have to be shut down.
10:59 Greg Jenner? Right.
11:00 Speaker 03 So she comes into the world, she's born between three fifty and three seventy A D C E, the exact point as she's reaching adulthood.
11:10 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
11:11 Speaker 03 Where being an old pagan philosopher is beginning to become a very dangerous thing to be.
11:16 Greg Jenner? So we have the rise of Christianity, we've got obviously a large Jewish.
11:20 Speaker 03 Yes.
11:20 Greg Jenner? Sort of traditional sort of community there. But she's a pagan, which means she worships multiple gods.
11:25 Speaker 03 Yes, I don't think she did worship multiple gods because she's actually a neo-Platonist pagan. So what happened to a lot.
11:32 Speaker 04 Come on, obviously.
11:34 Greg Jenner? It's very important.
11:35 Speaker 04 You're embarrassing us.
11:36 Greg Jenner? I know, sorry.
11:37 Speaker 03 So while there's a sort of notional acceptance of the pagan pantheon, I don't think she had any kind of real kind of faith or prayer life to gods, because she believes in this neo-Platonist model of the universe, which is that all of the physical world that we can see around us, everything, our bodies, the environment, nature, anything made out of matter, is a second-rate copy of the eternal oneness of the world of ideas.
12:05 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:06 Speaker 04 Oh, my yoga teacher thinks the same.
12:07 Speaker 03 Right. A lot of people do. This was basically Plato's model.
12:12 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:12 Speaker 03 It's tweaked. There is a god, but the god is oneness, right? This sublime world of ideas in our heads. So I don't think she, she will have absolutely done some public rituals, she'll have appeared at respectable events, just as people go to church, even if they don't believe in religion, or they go to the synagogue, without actually having a prayer life, as it were. But she's deeply spiritual in terms of feeling in touch with this divine other world of ideas. And that actually fits with doing mathematics, because maths is about these abstract laws that always hold.
12:47 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's a question I would have. It's like, if a person in Alexandria at the time wanted to study math, how sort of religiously informed would it be? Or would they just be completely discreet and separate?
12:58 Speaker 03 It would really be very separate at this time. We had made huge advances in all kinds of areas, not just arithmetic, but in geometry and all kinds of other branches of it. And that was very tied in with other great interests, which is astronomy.
13:14 Greg Jenner? Yeah, and we'll get to that. So let's talk about her childhood very briefly. You said she's born somewhere in the 350s, 370s. I mean, when we talk about, this is like late antiquity, this is the ancient world, but she's like nearly 800 years after Plato.
13:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, yeah.
13:28 Greg Jenner? It's ancient history to her.
13:30 Speaker 03 Okay, thank you. One of my hobby horses about people's misunderstandings of the classical world, so called in broad senses, is that it lasted for a millennium. So you've got Homer, his poems are 800 B.C. In fact, the heroes he's talking about were 1300 B.C.
13:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah, 1250 or so, yeah.
13:49 Speaker 03 But the first, yeah, yeah, late Bronze Age. He's 8th century to 7th century BCE. And I personally, when asked, when do I put an end to the classical world, precisely say 391. It is that edict of Theodosius, where things tipped from being public pagan worship, still being okay to know the Christian sort of closure. But other scholars will put it much later. They'll say, well, actually, all this sort of philosophy was going on for another 200 years, 300 years, till the Arab conquest. She's actually just on the tail end, as it's all going crumbling, poor woman. But people were still Neoplatonists practicing so for another two centuries afterwards.
14:31 Greg Jenner? Olga, how do you think a young woman like Hypatia got into maths in the ancient world?
14:35 Speaker 04 Well, she was a pagan, so I guess she started out by counting the gods.
14:39 Greg Jenner? One to 12. What's your inkling? How do you think a young woman gets into math at that point in history?
14:45 Speaker 04 Oh, my God, she lets a man explain it to her. Was it part of like a curriculum in school?
14:52 Speaker 03 What she taught actually was part of her university curriculum. No, she's a nepo baby.
14:58 Speaker 04 Of course. I mean, I wasn't gonna say her dad, but we were all thinking it.
15:01 Speaker 03 And her dad is called Theon, Theon, which just means godly. And he is kind of head of the maths department at the at the at the library and museum. I mean, he is the professor of maths in Alexandria. No son is mentioned. We know nothing about any other member of the family. No mother is mentioned, no sister is mentioned. It's highly likely if he only had one kid and it was a girl. We there are several instances of this in antiquity where men sort of politely forgot that there was no Y chromosome and actually trained up the daughter as an apprentice. I mean, that's gone on throughout history. We actually know of four other women who were around in the fourth century. One actually in Alexandria.
15:44 Speaker 04 Four, four whole women.
15:45 Greg Jenner? Four whole women, count them.
15:46 Speaker 04 That's a lot. We have confirmation of four.
15:49 Speaker 03 There was a mathematician, a good one, called Pandrosion, which is a beautiful name. It actually means all moist like the morning dew. Then we've got one over at Pergamon, which is the other, the second biggest library, which is on the west coast of Turkey. We've got somebody else in Athens, who's another Neoplatonist. So she isn't alone.
16:15 Greg Jenner? But Hypatia is effectively treated as a sort of as a son almost by her dad.
16:19 Speaker 03 I believe so.
16:19 Greg Jenner? And and he's called Theon. What does Hypatia mean? You've given us his name.
16:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, Hypatia is such a weird, that's a sort of Victorian pronunciation.
16:27 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I was gonna say.
16:28 Speaker 03 Hypatia.
16:28 Greg Jenner? Oh.
16:29 Speaker 03 Hypatia. It means the very high highest up, the summit, the pinnacle of excellence.
16:36 Greg Jenner? Wow.
16:37 Speaker 03 Just the very topmost. No pressure. You know, the topmost. It's just from the Greek word hoopso, which means elevation.
16:44 Greg Jenner? That's amazing.
16:45 Speaker 04 I like that a lot.
16:46 Greg Jenner? What does olig mean?
16:47 Speaker 04 I don't want to talk about it. Uh, no, it's actually short for oligarch, so.
16:55 Speaker 04 To be clear, that's a joke.
16:58 Greg Jenner? She's named the Heist Summit. Dad expects big things of her, right?
17:02 Speaker 03 Absolutely. But it's also, you know, in terms of being into astronomy, it's kind of, you know, it's an appropriate name. It's like looking upwards.
17:09 Speaker 04 Nominative discernmentism, yeah.
17:11 Greg Jenner? So we have, I have Pasha sort of taking on her dad's school job. He's the teacher, he's the maths professor at the Library of Alexandria. She takes the role on. You know, what is on syllabus? What would be on the course that she's teaching?
17:23 Speaker 03 There would be Neoplatonist philosophy.
17:25 Greg Jenner? Sure.
17:25 Speaker 03 So how do we think about the material world? How do we think about the One, the unity? That will have been introduced actually by a version of Aristotle's logic. So it's not, you know, it's kind of a synthesis. There's a bit of Stoicism in there.
17:40 Greg Jenner? Right.
17:40 Speaker 03 Because the way to achieve union with the One intellectually and psychologically is actually by a mild form of asceticism. You know, you've got to live quite a disciplined life physically. You cannot do self-indulgence.
17:54 Greg Jenner? No luxuries.
17:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. So it's got a monastic kind of hint, but it's not actually in any way religious. It's all about the self and self-discipline. Then there will have been maths, there'll have been Euclidean maths, there'll have been optics, and there'll have been astronomy. So basically, all the fields in which you can apply maths.
18:15 Greg Jenner? Yeah. So optics would be light, right? How light moves and bounces off things and so on.
18:19 Speaker 03 Well, and vision.
18:20 Greg Jenner? And vision, of course, yeah. And Euclidean, I mean, Euclid is a great mathematician, isn't he? He's like the guy.
18:25 Speaker 03 Yes. And trigonometry, geometry. I mean, all these are Greek words because they were being practised in antiquity.
18:33 Speaker 04 I mean, she sounds busy. She didn't have time to respond to fan mail, clearly.
18:36 Speaker 03 They didn't do, they didn't do statistics because that's a Latin word.
18:40 Greg Jenner? Oh, well, that's Romans for you, isn't it? The Romans, they love data.
18:43 Speaker 03 Exactly.
18:44 Speaker 04 No spreadsheets in Alexandria. Confirmed.
18:49 Greg Jenner? Okay, so Hypatia, or how did you pronounce it?
18:51 Speaker 03 Hypatia.
18:53 Greg Jenner? Hypatia. That sounds slightly like you're sort of, I don't know, it feels slightly like you're tripping over. Hypatia, it's almost like you're sort of falling down a staircase.
18:59 Speaker 03 It's very, it's very pretty and green.
19:01 Greg Jenner? It's beautiful. Okay, so she's a Neoplatonist. So we've got the three levels of reality, the soul, intelligence and the divine one that might not be that divine. And-
19:08 Speaker 03 Actual reality isn't real.
19:10 Greg Jenner? What?
19:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, so material reality is not real.
19:15 Greg Jenner? Okay.
19:15 Speaker 03 The three levels of soul, intelligence and the one.
19:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a paraffeximily of the one.
19:19 Greg Jenner? Right.
19:19 Speaker 04 Come on.
19:20 Greg Jenner? It's a photocopy of reality. Okay, fine. Are we living in The Matrix? Is that what you're saying? Am I Neo? Are you Neo? Who's Neo here? Um, all right. So Hypatia is mostly teaching men?
19:32 Speaker 03 Yes.
19:33 Greg Jenner? Are there any women in her class?
19:34 Speaker 03 I very much doubt it. We can't, I cannot tell you that for, you know, for a fact, but usually that our source is saying that the Musion, the museum, which is the, the big library where the teaching goes on, did not admit women. So she seems to be quite exceptional. And I'm sure that if she'd actually got married, she wouldn't have been allowed in. You know, I think it's this sort of, she's sort of a virgin who doesn't have anything to do with sex. So she's like a pagan high priestess.
20:00 Speaker 04 Oh, and she stays that way throughout her entire life?
20:02 Speaker 03 As far as we know, yeah.
20:03 Speaker 04 Oh my god.
20:04 Greg Jenner? Wow. So she's a virgin and a matlet. Cliche confirmed. Harsh, sorry. Sorry, matlets. Olga, how do you imagine the student-teacher relationship going if she's got a class of men who are expecting to learn from men and hear this woman teaching them?
20:20 Speaker 04 Honestly, guys, I, I, I don't know. I, I feel like, first of all, it would stink. Okay? Let's just throw that there. A bunch of young boys in one room, unventilated, that place stunk. I can tell you this much, all right? Also, deodorant hasn't been invented, from, from, from what I can gather.
20:36 Greg Jenner? Lynx, North Africa, yeah.
20:40 Speaker 04 Yes, I think it would be a lot of disciplining. And I bet they would all keep falling for her. She would be the only woman in the university. So they'd be like, I guess you're the one. There's no other chicks. Ding ding ding.
20:50 Greg Jenner? I think, I think.
20:50 Speaker 04 Is this true?
20:51 Speaker 03 Well, there is a story which I'm absolutely sure is apocryphal, but that one student who was so lovelorn that he kept harassing her to try to get her to go out with him. And it's said that she threw a soaking sanitary pad at him.
21:06 Speaker 04 Queen!
21:07 Speaker 03 And said, that's what you're in love with. Like, my physical body.
21:11 Speaker 04 Oh, my God, I love that.
21:12 Speaker 03 What you should be after is the true love of the one ideal form of beauty, not this material copy.
21:21 Speaker 04 She probably would have proved her point better if he didn't absolutely love getting a pad thrown at him. I can guarantee you that. This, okay, this reminds me, my fiance was so in love with this history teacher in middle school that when she got married and changed her name, he insisted on still using her maiden name in front of the entire class. Wow. Teenage boys are crazy.
21:41 Greg Jenner? Hot for teacher. It's a powerful pheromone combination, isn't it?
21:45 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
21:46 Speaker 04 This is incredible behaviour.
21:47 Speaker 03 It is incredible behaviour.
21:49 Greg Jenner? So she's got a student who's in love with her. She chucks a sanitary towel at his head. HR surely had words there, because you can't do that. But that's an interesting sort of comeback.
21:57 Speaker 04 I bet all the other boys were like, can I have one? I'm telling you.
22:00 Greg Jenner? She's got her fans and her students sort of seem to really admire her.
22:03 Speaker 03 They do.
22:04 Greg Jenner? We haven't got her getting married. So she commits herself to her work. That's her life's work.
22:08 Speaker 03 Yes.
22:08 Greg Jenner? Which is interesting. So we now are kind of moving through to her mathematics career. What does she contribute to mathematics? You know, her father had been the great teacher at the school. Does she add new knowledge? Is she as great a mathematician as perhaps Hollywood would like her to be?
22:24 Speaker 03 Probably not that original. She was an expert expounder of complicated mathematical ideas. She wrote big commentary books. This was the great age of commentaries. On Euclid's Elements, on a guy called Diophantus, who wrote the Treatise on Arithmetic that everybody did. Probably on Ptolemy's Almagest. Almost certainly on Archimedes, who was one of the greatest, you know, mechanical engineers.
22:55 Speaker 04 Okay, sounds like she was a reply girl.
22:57 Speaker 03 Yeah. But her own contribution seems to have been a development, again of somebody else. A guy called Apollonius had written a book on conic sections.
23:06 Greg Jenner? Oh, my favourite.
23:09 Speaker 03 She does seem to have advanced how you measure cones or how cones exist. Something to do with cutting through the curving surface that goes around to measure it by doing some sort of intersection. It's not completely clear. I have tried this with an ice cream cone myself.
23:27 Speaker 04 Well, sometimes it's important that it's the developments in these commentaries actually make the original work more relevant. Like, nobody really cared who Shakespeare was, and then Ten Things I Hate About You came out. And then people sort of started getting it. So I don't think we should underestimate her contribution.
23:44 Speaker 03 No, she was genuinely held to have said something completely original about cones. And she was also said to just be a really charismatic, brilliant communicator of this stuff.
23:56 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so she's an amazing teacher. Right, you know, her students love her.
23:58 Speaker 03 And that is an enormous gift, to be able to express very complicated ideas in very simple ways.
24:03 Greg Jenner? We need to talk about her astrology career. Sorry, astronomy career. She's not on TikTok. She's not, she's not a kind of astrology girly. She's an astronomy girly. She's all about the stars and planets and how to measure the heavens. What do we know of this work?
24:17 Speaker 03 Very little.
24:18 Greg Jenner? Great.
24:19 Speaker 03 I'm sorry. I mean, the fact that she comments on Ptolemy is the most important evidence. I mean, you cannot read Ptolemy's Almagest without knowing an awful lot of stuff. There's also some people have said she invented the astrolabe. Now, we know that's not true, but she could have somehow refined it or
24:38 Speaker 04 The what, sorry?
24:39 Speaker 03 The astrolabe. It's the model of
24:41 Speaker 04 The astrolabe.
24:42 Greg Jenner? Yeah, not astrolabea, if that's what you're thinking.
24:44 Speaker 04 I wasn't thinking about it, but I know what you were thinking about.
24:47 Speaker 03 It's a spherical teaching aid to help you understand how the constellations move around the
24:53 Speaker 04 All right, cool.
24:54 Speaker 03 The planet. It's very, very advanced. The ancient Greeks were, given that people, some people still think the earth is flat, you know, it's really quite remarkable that they figured out, no.
25:03 Speaker 04 Okay, but they had an, they had an upper, sorry, what am I thinking of? Oh, my God. I'm doing a joke, but I forgot three words that I need to do this joke. Oh, yeah, there wasn't a light pollution, so they could actually see the stars in the cities. So it's not really fair.
25:17 Greg Jenner? That's nice.
25:18 Speaker 04 It's not really fair. We can't do that.
25:20 Greg Jenner? That's true.
25:21 Speaker 04 We don't see the stars. If we could see the stars, we would also be very smart.
25:23 Speaker 03 Yes, well, she almost certainly used one for teaching. Yeah. She may well have refined it. Yeah. Even though we do now know that it's not true that she actually invented it. But it's just a very beautiful image of this girl boss, as you put it, teaching with her astrolabe. Yeah.
25:40 Greg Jenner? And her fanboy Sionisius, he sent her a letter at the end of his life saying, could you help me with an astrolabe? I'd like an astrolabe.
25:47 Speaker 03 Yes, please, could you source me one, darling?
25:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah. She's doing commentaries on other earlier writers.
25:52 Speaker 03 Yes.
25:52 Greg Jenner? Maybe some original research, maybe refining instruments like an astrolabe.
25:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:57 Greg Jenner? She may have written philosophy, but none of it survives?
26:00 Speaker 03 Yes. Some scholars say that we've got about 5% of all of basically what was written in classical antiquity. I suspect it's less than that. I think it's probably nearer 1% or 2% because the process of copying out papyrus and then vellum and manuscript and all the rest of it had to be copied out and copied out every century in these monasteries of Byzantium, or it wouldn't have survived through to the 15th century to get into print.
26:27 Speaker 04 Well, you'd hope that it was the best 5%, right? Because now I'm thinking about what if the 5% that survives me is like all the text messages I've ever sent and they have to extrapolate my stand-up genius from the sort of BRB text messages.
26:40 Speaker 03 It is a really interesting question. If only 5% of your sort of life's work could be saved.
26:46 Speaker 04 Just emails, can you imagine? Please, not just the emails.
26:50 Greg Jenner? When I quit Twitter, I downloaded my Twitter archive because I was slightly obsessed with like, this is important, this is my life's work. I'd sent 400,000 tweets. I'd looked at it, it's about 20%, then we're about Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Unbelievably boring man I am, I'm so dull.
27:06 Speaker 04 And imagine if of that 20%, only the 5% is everything that remains of you.
27:10 Greg Jenner? I will be renowned through history as a guy who hated Spurs.
27:14 Speaker 03 I think 2,000 years' time, which is what we're talking, you know, it's 1,700 years' time, the gap between us and Hypatia, there could be an alien who was absolutely obsessed with the phenomenon of 21st century soccer and they would be very pleased about that.
27:29 Speaker 04 And that there was this soccer scholar. You're the Sionisius.
27:32 Speaker 03 His name was Gregory.
27:33 Greg Jenner? At last, the credibility I've craved for so long.
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29:18 Speaker 05 Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter, Alex Warne.
29:39 Speaker 06 I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are an expert here.
30:04 Speaker 05 Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
30:16 Greg Jenner? In the modern world, Hypatia is quite well renowned, so much so that several things have been named after her. So a mini quiz for you, Olga. Which of these things is not named in honour of Hypatia of Alexandria? So we have a crater on the moon, an order of monks, a genus of butterfly, so a type of butterfly species, a font or an asteroid belt. Which of those five is not named after Hypatia?
30:43 Speaker 04 Font or what's the last thing?
30:44 Greg Jenner? Asteroid belt.
30:49 Speaker 04 I'm gonna throw font in.
30:51 Greg Jenner? No, I almost wrote this script in Hypatia font because I was so, it's a joke no one would understand and you wouldn't see.
30:56 Speaker 04 That makes so much sense.
30:58 Greg Jenner? No, there is a Hypatia font.
30:59 Speaker 04 Oh.
31:00 Greg Jenner? There's a Hypatia asteroid belt, there's a Hypatia butterfly, there's a Hypatia crater on the moon. So there's no monks named after her. But there is a novel about her, about a monk visiting her, I think, in the 19th century.
31:09 Speaker 03 Yes, that's the Charles Kingsley one.
31:11 Greg Jenner? That was the one you mentioned, yeah, okay. So she's getting her retrospective acclaim now.
31:15 Speaker 03 Oh, yes.
31:15 Greg Jenner? You know, we are now happy to acknowledge Hypatia is one of the big brains of the ancient world.
31:19 Speaker 03 Well, she's the first woman in STEM.
31:22 Speaker 04 Well, there you go.
31:23 Greg Jenner? Yeah. And across Alexandria, was her big brain recognised at the time? You know, I think we've got the sense that she obviously had an important job. Was she the kind of the go-to maths person?
31:32 Speaker 03 She certainly was the person you would go to with any kind of mathematical or astronomical query.
31:39 Greg Jenner? Right.
31:40 Speaker 03 We'd really know that, though, from the amount of antipathy she generated. Strangely, I mean, she was so hated by the Christians.
31:50 Speaker 04 Haters are my motivators.
31:51 Speaker 03 Yes. She was so hated by the Christians that that implies that they felt she had very considerable authority and influence over
31:59 Greg Jenner? Right.
32:00 Speaker 03 a large portion of the population.
32:01 Greg Jenner? So we can measure her influence by the sort of scale?
32:04 Speaker 03 The antipathy.
32:05 Greg Jenner? Right, that's interesting. It's quite a good metric for influence, isn't it? To sort of, to see how much you're hated.
32:11 Speaker 03 I think so.
32:11 Greg Jenner? To realise how much you're contributing.
32:12 Speaker 04 I think Taylor Swift built a whole career around it. So, yeah, it makes sense to me.
32:16 Greg Jenner? Fascinating, no. Okay, so her reputation clearly, you know, she's revered and respected in certain communities and perhaps starting to acquire her haters in others. Was Hypatia a rare exception in Alexandria in terms of the lives of women? So I know obviously she's rare in terms of women in science at this point, but did women have more rights in Alexandria? Did they have more freedom?
32:36 Speaker 03 They did have some rights and I think she would have been able to inherit property and keep it as her own, for example, if she didn't marry. That sort of economic independence is absolutely crucial, obviously, to being able to operate as you want.
32:51 Greg Jenner? And women could divorce as well, couldn't they?
32:52 Speaker 03 Yes, they could get divorced.
32:54 Greg Jenner? Because ancient Athens, women had almost no rights at all.
32:56 Speaker 03 The position of women in general in ancient Greece, the oppression has been exaggerated.
33:03 Greg Jenner? Right.
33:03 Speaker 03 In that, A, classical Athens was not typical at all. Women were far more oppressed there than they were in almost all other city-states. The second is that if you only assess a civilization by the legal, economic and suffrage rights, then you get no idea about everyday lives. Women had such a fantastic time in ancient religion. They had all these goddesses. They were the high priestesses everywhere. We've only just appointed our first ever Archbishop, woman Archbishop of Canterbury. Compared with the monotheistic religions, you had all these different goddesses to go to.
33:41 Speaker 03 Incredibly homo-social society, that is, you hung out with other women of all ages at riotous women-only festivals.
33:49 Speaker 04 I mean, have you ever visited a convent? That stuff is lit.
33:53 Speaker 03 You have Aphrodite, you go to Aphrodite's temple if you want to get to be sexually attractive. You go to Hera if you're looking after your social status. You go to the Temple of Artemis for your biology. You go to Athena if you're a craftswoman or you're involved in any kind of weaving or anything like that. You've got all your own. Demeter and Persephone is crucial to agriculture. It was wonderful. Having been brought up in a strict Anglican household of the deepest sexism.
34:22 Speaker 03 And being told that girls couldn't sing in choirs because their voices were impure. I would absolutely swap a few things like suffrage, rights to vote for that religious experience and time with other women. One day I will write that book.
34:37 Greg Jenner? Oh, amazing.
34:38 Speaker 04 One hundred percent. You go queen out with the girlinas while the boys about die at war. Can I ask a question about what you said about the antipathy?
34:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:48 Speaker 04 What was the criticism? Like, what is it that they hated about what her writing or her conduct?
34:54 Speaker 03 The Roman Empire is trying to go Christian. And people who taught pagan philosophy, so things like Neoplatonism, which told you to question everything and do scientific explanations for things. So you were going to explain comets as something to do with something that's going on mechanically in the universe, not as a sign from God. This represents an incredible obstacle to converting the population to proper Christianity. So she became a figurehead for like the resistance to the newly converted emperors.
35:38 Speaker 04 Oh, my God. So in a way, her neo-pagan views were more progressive than the Christian ones.
35:42 Speaker 03 Vastly.
35:43 Speaker 04 That's what I'm talking about.
35:44 Speaker 03 And that's why her reception, as I put it, since the early 18th century, it starts with a free thinker called John Tolland, who is an extraordinary man, who's a total feminist, wants women to get educated. He supports the Jews in London. He's an Irishman, but he comes over, an incredible intellectual free thinker, didn't believe really, hated horrible dogmatic religion. So he saw in Hypatia a combination of religious tolerance, free thought. And he believed that women should be educated just as much as men. And it starts off with with a treatise he wrote called Hypatia in seventeen twenty.
36:25 Greg Jenner? Oh, wow.
36:25 Speaker 03 Yeah. And after that, she has been used over and over again as a symbol of free thought, scientific investigation and religious tolerance.
36:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah. And women in STEM, of course.
36:38 Speaker 03 And women, and totally women in STEM. So there are two, two philosophy journals called Hypatia. Dora Russell, Bertrand Russell's wife, wrote books under, under, about her. She is very, very important to women in science and.
36:54 Speaker 04 Her, Elizabeth Holmes, what a, what a fantastic list of women in STEM.
36:59 Speaker 03 I know several women in STEM who call their pets Hypatia.
37:02 Speaker 04 Oh, that's so sweet.
37:03 Greg Jenner? That is a good name for a cat.
37:04 Speaker 03 It's a big cat and dog name.
37:05 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
37:06 Speaker 03 There's also been some very famous racehorses called Hypatia. I don't, I don't know when all this happened. What, why animals? Because she wasn't a zoologist.
37:14 Greg Jenner? I was gonna say, she, she renowned that she loved the tractor, you know, she just was always betting on the Grand National.
37:19 Speaker 03 If you go on, what's like all my cat sites?
37:21 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
37:22 Speaker 03 It's always in the top hundred.
37:23 Greg Jenner? Wow.
37:24 Speaker 04 Wow.
37:24 Greg Jenner? What a legacy.
37:25 Speaker 04 I like that a lot.
37:26 Greg Jenner? Yeah. Okay, let's get back to the, the ancient world or the, or the late antiquity world, wherever we're going to place it. So Hypatia is obviously around in the kind of mid to late three hundreds and Christianity had been arriving in the Roman Empire earlier than that. And it taken sort of sixty, seventy, eighty years to sort of become the official religion and bit of a pushback and then, you know, but in, here we are in Alexandria in Egypt and we've got damage to pagan temples. We've got kind of real physical changes. We've got tensions and we get the arrival of a new person called Cyril. But before Cyril, there's someone else important we should mention.
37:58 Speaker 03 Yes. So between three nine one, when the Sorapen was destroyed and the Nicene Creed was officially set up as, as, as what you have to believe in if you were a Christian. One of the reasons I think that Hypatia was able to survive and carry on teaching for at least another 20 years was that the patriarch, that means the bishop, the Christian bishop of Alexandria, was a guy who was quite sympathetic to her and open-minded called Theophilus.
38:26 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
38:26 Speaker 03 So for 20 years she was under the protection of that bishop and he wasn't going to let all the fanatics close down.
38:35 Greg Jenner? So he's a Christian, but he's quite open-minded and tolerant of her science.
38:38 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And there were plenty of those.
38:39 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
38:40 Speaker 03 There were plenty. The kind of things that were starting up were incredible schisms, arguments, the patristic arguments of the early church fathers that get so laughed at about, you know, how many angels can dance on a pin? Is there a trinity? Is there a triune? Is God a moaner? You know, all that. You know, they're all right in there. And Theophilus apparently wasn't really interested in that sort of doctrinal thing. He was a perfectly good pastoral bishop and he wanted harmony in his city between the Jews, the pagans and the Christians. What happened in 412 is that a very different character got to be the bishop after Theophilus died. And he is called Cyril.
39:23 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
39:23 Speaker 03 He only gets into that position by beating up another guy called Timothias. You know, there's a huge amount of riot.
39:31 Speaker 04 As is the Christian way.
39:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. But Alexandria had actually for several hundred years been known as the riot city. I mean, they do like rioting in Alexandria. So it was almost any excuse for a riot. So there were lots of fights and riots and bloodshed before Cyril even got in. So I think he's already slightly paranoid.
39:53 Greg Jenner? Okay.
39:54 Speaker 03 Before he even gets in and he wants to secure his power base. Things then heat up even further because a new governor appointed by the Roman Empire, who's a secular governor.
40:05 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
40:06 Speaker 03 Comes in, who's actually a Greek. All these people are Greek, even though they're in the Roman, but called Orestes, as in the Greek mythical figure.
40:12 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
40:13 Speaker 03 He just happens to be called Orestes. And that is, it's the face-off between Cyril and Orestes that poor Hypatia is caught.
40:23 Speaker 04 So which one of them is Millwall?
40:27 Speaker 04 That's a question on everybody's minds right now.
40:29 Speaker 03 Yeah. Now, both of these guys were ruthless.
40:34 Speaker 04 And is Arestes tolerant if I pay show or no?
40:37 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
40:38 Speaker 04 Okay, so he's on her side.
40:39 Speaker 03 He's pretending to be a Christian because he's got to, but is actually deeply interested in all the Near Platonism. And there were Christian Near Platonists.
40:47 Greg Jenner? So he's a political appointee, he's governor of Egypt.
40:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:50 Greg Jenner? On behalf of the Roman Empire.
40:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:51 Greg Jenner? He's a Greek. So it's all these sort of different identities.
40:53 Speaker 03 And they're talking Greek. All of their intellectual life will have been conducted in Greek. And the intellectual Jews all knew Greek. That's the language of the intellectual life. Very, very few people are speaking Latin.
41:06 Speaker 04 Much like today.
41:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:09 Speaker 04 Same.
41:09 Greg Jenner? So.
41:10 Speaker 03 So she gets caught in the crossfire.
41:12 Greg Jenner? And we start to get violence in the city and we get Cyril and Arestes, you know, they're starting to be on opposite sides of mob violence.
41:19 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:19 Greg Jenner? Right? And some of this mob violence targets Jews, some of it targets Christians, some of it target pagan, you know, everyone's getting hurt.
41:24 Speaker 03 Exactly.
41:25 Speaker 04 So we're thinking, is it, modern terms, it's like if the mayor of Rome and the Pope?
41:29 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:29 Speaker 04 Had mobs?
41:30 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:30 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
41:30 Speaker 04 Okay.
41:31 Greg Jenner? It's almost, yeah, it's, I guess, governor of Egypt is a sort of bigger job, I suppose. It's kind of, he's ruling a big old chunk of land. But yeah, but the bishop of, yeah, it's.
41:39 Speaker 03 And the Christians were very, very, very anxious to.
41:42 Speaker 04 Sorry, mayor of Los Angeles and Tom Cruise.
41:47 Greg Jenner? A much better analogy, yeah.
41:49 Speaker 03 Yes. Both Arestes and Cyril wanted to be the top guy.
41:53 Greg Jenner? Right.
41:53 Speaker 04 Okay.
41:53 Speaker 03 In Alexandria. And Cyril basically won, but it started off with quarrels about the Jews. Neither of these guys is a Jew.
42:04 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
42:05 Speaker 03 How do we treat the Jews? Arestes is a secular guy who is interested in harmony in his multi-ethnic city. Cyril is persecuting the Jews. Arestes decides to hold a meeting with the Jews where he suggests that they actually quieten down a bit, not be so provocative.
42:23 Greg Jenner? Victim blaming, yeah.
42:24 Speaker 03 Well, a bit. So they used to have these really wild dances on the Sabbath. Arestes suggested at this meeting, they slightly calm them down. Unfortunately, Cyril has spent a spy in.
42:35 Greg Jenner? Oh.
42:36 Speaker 03 Who is a Christian called Herax, who then foments the resentment of the Jews against Arestes. It's that complicated.
42:46 Speaker 04 Oh, wow. Okay.
42:48 Speaker 03 Agile provocateur.
42:49 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
42:50 Speaker 03 He went in as an agile provocateur.
42:52 Greg Jenner? He's undercover.
42:53 Speaker 03 To tell the Jews, who he actually hates, here acts as Cyril. He provokes them into violence. There's a huge riot, some people die. Arrestes then has here acts arrested and tortured in public just to up the ante a little bit. In the theatre, no less.
43:11 Greg Jenner? Okay.
43:12 Speaker 03 Which was a pretty stupid thing to do because that is, as I say, it's escalating.
43:17 Greg Jenner? Oh, yeah.
43:18 Speaker 03 Escalating the conflict. Then there are reprisals and a lot more persecution of Jews. Cyril starts bringing in various different groups of thugs, really. Um, one is his Nietzschean monks. Now, the Nietzschean monks are the most ascetic of all. They're way out in the desert.
43:36 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
43:36 Speaker 03 And they live in the desert on practically nothing except bugs and caterpillars and what drops of water they can squeeze out of palm trees. And they're incredibly religious and aesthetic. So they're really, because they're so deprived, they come in, they're very violent. They come in and join his private army. Then he gets the Parrot Bolani, the people who risk their lives. And they're really weird because they start off as the, a group of Christian paramedics.
44:03 Greg Jenner? Incredible.
44:03 Speaker 03 They are paramedics who were supposed to do things like take old people into old people's homes and take people back from hospitals and protect. But they also serve, that's sort of under Cyril. But they also serve as his private bodyguard, his bouncers.
44:18 Greg Jenner? Wow.
44:19 Speaker 03 His kind of, uh, mafioso thugs.
44:22 Greg Jenner? Those two jobs do not normally go together.
44:24 Speaker 03 It's weird.
44:25 Speaker 04 Well, people don't know, but the entirety of the KGB is trained in first aid.
44:30 Speaker 04 And how not to give it.
44:32 Speaker 03 It's really like that. They're kind of all purpose, uh, private army and.
44:37 Speaker 04 Everything you're describing to me, and it's like, it is true, women are too emotional. Men, men lack that emotion that is needed to lead because all of that has no emotion in it whatsoever.
44:46 Speaker 03 Yes.
44:47 Greg Jenner? Exactly.
44:48 Speaker 03 The exact process we don't understand by which the enmity against Orestes got transferred to Hypatia.
44:55 Speaker 04 Ooh.
44:56 Speaker 03 Yes.
44:56 Speaker 04 Where does she even come into this?
44:58 Greg Jenner? For five minutes you've been talking, we haven't mentioned her once.
45:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm sorry.
45:01 Greg Jenner? But no, but no, it's a good point, like, where is she in all this?
45:05 Speaker 04 Wait, so the Parabolani have something to do with this?
45:07 Speaker 03 Orestes really likes, he likes Neoplatonic philosophy. The kind of Alexandria in his vision is precisely the one where she is going to be this dominant intellectual force and help keep everything open and progressive and the old Alexandria of intellectual culture is not replaced by a fanatical, primitive Christian theocracy.
45:27 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
45:27 Speaker 03 I mean, that is what we're talking. Huge issue. But the hate, people said she had, this is where my Coptic bishop from later on comes in useful, they said she had beguiled him sexually and enchanted the governor of the empire with her witchcraft.
45:45 Speaker 04 Which is literally her doing two plus two. He goes four and he's going, wah!
45:51 Speaker 03 And the hatred for her was so much that it did lead to her being assaulted by the Parabolani.
45:58 Speaker 04 Oh, man.
45:59 Greg Jenner? So the kind of, the paramedics turn into paramilitary?
46:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:03 Greg Jenner? Blimey.
46:04 Speaker 03 Different explanations have been offered, as I say, for exactly how the government got so, the secular government, the administration under Orestes, got so associated with her. But it was.
46:17 Greg Jenner? And there's a monk called Ammonius who tries to kill Orestes.
46:19 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:19 Greg Jenner? And he's sort of, he hurts Orestes but doesn't kill him.
46:22 Speaker 03 He's one of the Neutrons.
46:23 Greg Jenner? Right.
46:24 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:24 Greg Jenner? And he's then captured, tortured, executed.
46:26 Speaker 03 He's an earlier.
46:28 Speaker 04 Poor Neutrons, did we discuss that? I don't think we did.
46:31 Speaker 03 The monks from the desert.
46:32 Greg Jenner? Yeah, the desert monks.
46:33 Speaker 04 Damn, okay, yes, yes, yes.
46:34 Greg Jenner? The caterpillar munchers.
46:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. The desert in Egypt was absolutely full at this time. People were coming from all over the world to become extremely fanatical Christians in the desert.
46:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
46:44 Speaker 03 It was, it was a thing.
46:45 Speaker 04 Burning man, totally. Again, I'm putting into terms people understand.
46:49 Speaker 03 Exactly, it's a thing. So, another guy, Orestes is very heavy-handed.
46:54 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
46:55 Speaker 03 If he had behaved more like Theophilus, who knows how much longer that rather tense détente couldn't have lasted.
47:03 Greg Jenner? Right.
47:03 Speaker 03 But it did for 20 more years under Theophilus. When he was bishop, when Orestes comes in at the same time as Cyril. Chalk and cheese.
47:12 Greg Jenner? Yeah. So they're executing and punishing and torturing their enemies.
47:15 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:16 Greg Jenner? Both, both sides.
47:16 Speaker 03 Both of them.
47:17 Greg Jenner? Yeah, okay, and so.
47:18 Speaker 03 So.
47:19 Speaker 04 So did the Parabolani kill Hypatia?
47:21 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:22 Greg Jenner? Yeah. Yeah, I was, I was gonna say, word of warning to you, Olga, and also to the listener, you know, we have to sort of change gear into some pretty horrible territory here, that the comedy maybe stops for a bit, because this is awful. You know, the film does it, you know, the Rachel Weisz movie does it pretty brutally.
47:36 Speaker 03 The film does do it brutally, but also I, what I really liked was it managed not to be at all voyeuristic.
47:41 Greg Jenner? Sure.
47:42 Speaker 03 There's a whole genre of 19th century paintings of Hypatia being stripped naked and beaten up.
47:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
47:49 Speaker 03 Really revolting Victorian, sort of sadomasochistic pornography, objectifying her. And she's always ridiculously Caucasian looking in these paintings, and this beautiful white body being savaged by rather dark looking sort of coptic Christians. You know, it's sort of racist, it's everything. No, they either arrested her while she was actually teaching, or pulled her out of her chariot, her vehicle, as she was driving to or from her teaching post, and took her to, into a church, had been a temple, I think of Zeus.
48:27 Speaker 03 It had been a temple and had been converted into the cathedral, and killed her in a way that seems to have involved either stoning, or taking down a certain kind of tile, which they called shells, they were like big seashells. And somehow, you know, people even say that they, they, they skinned her. But she, she did die, she had no one to protect her, Herestes just wasn't good enough.
48:54 Greg Jenner? Right.
48:55 Speaker 03 You know, you can blame the guy, I think, if you want to.
48:58 Greg Jenner? So she's caught up in this violence, it's in no way her fault, she's not incited it, she hasn't joined a side, she's just been teaching in her.
49:04 Speaker 03 We have no evidence for that whatsoever, that she was, had any political interest. She, she obviously wanted the multi-ethnic and open society. But it was the ire, the rage that Aristides seems to have managed to get aroused in Cyril and the Christians. Aristides then disappears off the.
49:25 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, what happens in the end?
49:27 Speaker 03 Well, there is no more word of him. He stops being governor. Somebody else comes in as governor and, you know, maybe people said that he had screwed up.
49:36 Greg Jenner? Sure.
49:37 Speaker 03 Maybe he was actually genuinely upset and thought this is no way to, you know, we don't know very much about him, Guy. The one we know most about is Cyril, who went on to be one of the most successful bishops.
49:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
49:48 Speaker 03 And early Christians of all time, was involved in all the most famous theological disputes and was even made a saint.
49:57 Greg Jenner? Yes.
49:58 Speaker 04 Oh, come on. Wait, so this was the beginning of the end, right? So like from this moment on, it became more and more conservatively Christian, right?
50:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:05 Speaker 04 Oh, boy.
50:06 Greg Jenner? Was there a sort of sense of shock that Hypatia, this great intellectual, had been killed in such a disgustingly horrific way? You know, do we get a sense of the empire at large going, hang on, what?
50:16 Speaker 03 What, two or three sources lament it sorely, yes. And these tend to be, again, the sort of Greek intellectuals. Even those who convert to Christianity, very many of them still think the philosophy is wonderful and the science is wonderful. Some people have said that laws about violence and stuff were tightened up in Alexandria, but I can't really see any substantial data to support that.
50:40 Greg Jenner? So Cyril becomes a saint, Ammonius became a martyr saint. So Ammonius was the Nitrian monk who tried to kill Aristides. He became a saint. And then you said that Hypatia becomes a sort of martyr to philosophy later.
50:50 Speaker 03 She's, I think she's a secular saint.
50:52 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
50:52 Speaker 03 She becomes a very important representative for both women in science and free thinking.
50:57 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
50:58 Speaker 03 Both of those were in the John Tolland.
51:00 Greg Jenner? So that's the 18th century.
51:01 Speaker 03 About 1720.
51:02 Greg Jenner? Yeah, amazing.
51:03 Speaker 04 And don't forget virgins.
51:06 Greg Jenner? Patron saint virgins, yeah.
51:07 Speaker 04 There we go.
51:08 Greg Jenner? That's amazing. What a life. I mean, Olga, do you think Hypatia deserves her role as, you know, the first woman in STEM? Are you happy with that title?
51:15 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely.
51:18 Speaker 04 That was just so deeply, deeply sad. I don't have anything.
51:21 Speaker 03 No, I know.
51:22 Greg Jenner? It's an extraordinary life because it's an intellectual life, but it sort of crashes into all these other sort of huge moments in history.
51:30 Speaker 04 And to listen and when in doubt, just throw a used pad at them.
51:34 Speaker 03 She ought to have been in Alexandria, teaching philosophy and maths.
51:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
51:37 Speaker 03 Always, but it was the wrong time.
51:40 Greg Jenner? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we do know her about us. So we do get to celebrate her and that's, you know, it's worth discussing her and, and thank you for that. And yeah, it's a very sad end, but extraordinary life, I think.
51:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. And maybe you, listener, consider renaming your cat.
51:53 Greg Jenner? Yes. The nuance window.
52:00 Greg Jenner? Time now for the nuance window. This is where Olga and I sit silently doing our geometry homework while Professor Edith stands at the front of the class and lectures us with her astrolabe, tells us something we need to know about Hypatia. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Professor Edith.
52:16 Speaker 03 There's something else other than craters on the moon that have been named after Hypatia. And this is the Hypatius stone. The Hypatius stone was discovered in 1996 by an Egyptian geologist. He discovered it in what are called the Libyan glass parts of the Sahara. Now Libyan glass is some sort of strange meteorite type sort of mineral that looks like glass. He was researching that and he came across a small, very, very rough, craggy looking stone, only about 1.3 inches in diameter, tiny little sparkly diamonds in it. And it
52:56 Speaker 03 has been tested now. It's been sent by people in Los Angeles universities and in South Africa, Johannesburg. This stone's mineral makeup is so extraordinary that it means it's almost certainly made, formed before our solar system.
53:17 Speaker 03 It is quite extraordinary. Now, he wanted it, the geologist who found it wanted it called after Hypatia, which is very sweet because as an Egyptian scientist, he saw himself as a descendant. He didn't name it an Arabic name. He named it, you know, this tradition of the Library of Alexandria. But just imagine this tiny stone, and I've seen lots of different pictures of it. Unfortunately, the scientists have cut it into bits, so it's even smaller to examine it. This means that it's more than 4.6 billion years old. It was formed at 198, minus 198 degrees centigrade or colder in a supernova.
53:55 Greg Jenner? That's amazing.
53:57 Speaker 04 Beautiful.
53:58 Speaker 03 Isn't it lovely?
53:58 Speaker 04 She's timeless.
53:59 Speaker 03 Exactly.
53:59 Speaker 04 I feel that.
54:00 Greg Jenner? Hypatia, the eternal idea, the eternal continent in the solar system. That's, I mean, pretty good to be 4. What was it? 4.2 billion?
54:06 Speaker 03 4.6 billion.
54:08 Speaker 04 I think she'd like it too, because she liked stars and stuff. If I have one takeaway, is that she likes all that stuff.
54:15 Speaker 03 But it's kind of union with the one.
54:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:17 Speaker 03 It just came from outer space, it came before our galaxy.
54:21 Greg Jenner? So what do you know now?
54:28 Greg Jenner? It's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Olga to see how much she has learned. And Olga, you are, I mean, what's this expression? Gently, I'm going to call it flustered?
54:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been taking notes, but they make very little sense.
54:43 Greg Jenner? I'm sure they're excellent. They look very comprehensive.
54:46 Speaker 03 And neat.
54:46 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
54:47 Speaker 04 We'll see, we'll see.
54:47 Greg Jenner? Good handwriting.
54:48 Speaker 03 And neat.
54:49 Greg Jenner? We've got 10 questions. We've talked about all these things. Let's see if you can remember some stuff here. Okay. Question one. In which Egyptian city did Hypatia live and work?
54:58 Speaker 04 Alexandria.
54:59 Greg Jenner? There we go. We're up and running. Okay, this is a slightly harder one. Question two. What was the name of Hypatia's mathematician father?
55:05 Speaker 04 Theon.
55:06 Greg Jenner? Oh, very good. Yeah, very good. Which means godly. Question three. Name one thing that is now named after Hypatia.
55:13 Speaker 04 A moon crater.
55:14 Greg Jenner? Yeah, absolutely, or an incredible diamond in the desert. Or butterfly genus, a font, asteroid belt. Hypatia font is very nice, by the way, if you want to use it. Question four, what did Hypatia inherit from her father? What role?
55:27 Speaker 04 Oh, the professor of math at the university?
55:29 Greg Jenner? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. What did you think I meant by inherit?
55:32 Speaker 04 Nose?
55:34 Greg Jenner? She's got his eyes. Question five, what astronomical instrument did Hypatia possibly produce a design for?
55:41 Speaker 04 Astrolobe.
55:42 Greg Jenner? Yeah, astrolobe, yeah.
55:43 Speaker 04 Labe, sorry, not lobe.
55:45 Greg Jenner? Yeah, that's just your handwriting, that's fine. Question six, can you name one area of astronomy or mathematics that Hypatia wrote commentaries on?
55:53 Speaker 04 Arithmetic.
55:54 Greg Jenner? It was, and also conic sections is possibly her.
55:56 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the big one.
55:58 Greg Jenner? The cones, the traffic cones and the ice cream cones. Question seven, what did Hypatia allegedly do when a student claimed that he loved her?
56:05 Speaker 04 She threw a sanitary napkin at him.
56:07 Greg Jenner? She did. Question eight.
56:09 Speaker 04 Slay.
56:10 Greg Jenner? Question eight, what was the name of the philosophical school of thought that Hypatia followed?
56:15 Speaker 04 I have it written here. No, no, no, no, no. Don't you, don't you even, don't you even think. Wait, okay, it was pagan, but it was, oh my God, I literally wrote it down because you kept saying it. Neoplatonist?
56:28 Greg Jenner? Yeah, very good, amazing, well done. Question nine, Hypatia likely practiced which type of religion but maybe didn't actually worship?
56:36 Speaker 04 Pagan?
56:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah, absolutely, and this for a perfect ten. How sadly did Hypatia die?
56:42 Speaker 04 She was attacked ruthlessly by the Parabolani in a converted Zeus temple that was turned into a, not Catholic, Christian cathedral.
56:53 Greg Jenner? I'm, I'm, I'm gonna give you 11 out of 10 because you remember Parabolani.
56:56 Speaker 04 All right.
56:57 Greg Jenner? Incredible, technical recovery on the last one there.
57:00 Speaker 04 You really, really paid attention. I was listening to, yeah, I mean, it's very, very interesting.
57:04 Greg Jenner? I mean, you're a PhD student, of course you're paying attention, you're a big brain. I'm surrounded by very clever people here, but that's amazing. 11 out of 10, Olga, well done.
57:11 Speaker 04 Thank you very much. I had a fantastic, a fantastic teacher.
57:14 Greg Jenner? Yeah, absolutely, as Hypatia was too. Well, thank you so much, Olga.
57:17 Speaker 04 You're a fantastic student.
57:19 Greg Jenner? I'm a really good host, yeah, really good host? No?
57:22 Speaker 03 You're great. You make it all happen.
57:24 Greg Jenner? No, it's fine. Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much, Edith. Listener, if you're in the mood for more ancient philosophers with Edith, check out our episodes on Aristotle and Pythagoras. He's more than just a triangle guy. It's quite the life. And to hear more from Olga, of course, you can listen to our episodes on Ivan the Terrible. He was terrible, by the way. He really was. That's confirmed. Terrible confirmed. Or the episode on vital electricity, which is an absolute hoot. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in history corner. We had the excellent Professor Edith Hall from the University of Durham. Thank you, Edith.
58:05 Speaker 03 Thank you. I had a riot.
58:07 Greg Jenner? Very fitting. And in comedy corner, we had the outstanding Olga Cock. Thank you, Olga.
58:12 Speaker 04 Thank you very, very, very much.
58:13 Greg Jenner? And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we solve another forgotten historical equation. But for now, I'm off to go and beg Rachel Weisz to play me in a movie. Bye. That would be good.
58:27 Greg Jenner? You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Adam Simcox. It was written by Dr Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Gill Huggett. It was produced by Dr Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer, Dr Emma Nagouse, and our executive editor was Philip Sellers.
58:51 Greg Jenner? Greg will be bringing a live version of the You're Dead to Me podcast to theatres around the UK this spring. You can join him in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester. And for more information and ticket details, go to you'redeadtome live dot com. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like Evil Genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, Evil Animals. Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgement on all the creepy-
59:27 Speaker 00 Crawlys and the biggest elephants in the room. Our vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, our bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages. And we're going there. Domestic cats, evil or genius? Pig out on evil animals in the Evil Genius podcast feed, first on BBC Sounds.
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