Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Hypatia of Alexandria (Radio Edit) 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.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
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 Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:13 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.
1:55 Speaker 03 Hello, I'm thrilled to be here.
1:57 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. Thank you so much for having me. 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.
2:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, the thing is, even that was lying. I think maybe half of them are close.
2:34 Greg Jenner? Okay, I was gonna ask you, who's the 12th American president?
2:36 Speaker 04 Oh, fourth.
2:37 Greg Jenner? 12th?
2:38 Speaker 04 Oh, God.
2:39 Greg Jenner? Never mind.
2:39 Speaker 04 John Adams is somewhere in there.
2:41 Greg Jenner? He's quite early, let's be honest.
2:43 Speaker 04 One thing, is he earlier than fourth?
2:45 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
2:45 Speaker 04 Is he second?
2:46 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
2:46 Speaker 04 Oh, boy. This is bad. This is bad. Shut it down.
2:51 Greg Jenner? Okay, you are doing a PhD right now.
2:55 Speaker 04 Yes. Crucially, not in history. I would like your listeners to know.
2:58 Greg Jenner? But you're a woman in STEM, right?
2:59 Speaker 04 Yes.
3:00 Greg Jenner? So...
3:00 Speaker 04 Proudly so.
3:01 Greg Jenner? Good. So have you heard of Hypatia of Alexandria?
3:04 Speaker 04 If I'm being completely honest, I only found out that she was a mathematician, but I want to say 30 seconds ago.
3:11 Speaker 04 This is gonna be a very, very fun episode, if anything, just for me.
3:14 Greg Jenner? So, what do you know?
3:21 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 subject. You might know, from the introduction, like all girls 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...
3:50 Speaker 04 That's really not on brand for you at all.
3:51 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?
4:15 Speaker 03 We are. We're on slightly firmer historical...
4:18 Greg Jenner? You immediately caveated.
4:19 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 Cynesius of Cyrene, who was some kind of student or acolyte of her. Cyrene is 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. And at some point stopped contacting him, but the respect he holds her in is very indicative.
4:57 Greg Jenner? Okay, so Sinestius of Cyrene, what a name. He's a bit of a fanboy. Olga, you are an expert in reply guys.
5:05 Speaker 04 Wow, what a swerve. I like that.
5:07 Greg Jenner? Are you on firm historical territory here? This is the psychology of people who write back?
5:12 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 recontextualizes it. It's not a modern phenomenon. It's been around.
5:34 Greg Jenner? What other sources do we have for Hypatia? We have the letters of her fanboy Sinestius.
5:39 Speaker 03 We've got the biography by Socrates, the scholar, 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 Nicchu, who is a 7th century Coptic bishop. And he wrote a world history, mansplaining history for everybody. And his paragraph on Hypatia is very important because it reflects what people like him thought of her. And that is that she is a seductress, a high-class sex worker who beguiles people with witchcraft. We've got a text that reflects what people were shouting in the street.
6:24 Speaker 04 Then say that when I solve one quadratic equation and all of a sudden I'm a witch. Yeah, yeah, yes.
6:28 Greg Jenner? 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 amazing city of learning?
6:44 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. But you've also, because of the particular point in history, in the 490s, the first really harsh edicts from the new Christian emperors were coming out. 391 is the edict of Theodosius that all pagan temples have to be shut down.
7:23 Greg Jenner? Right.
7:24 Speaker 03 So she comes into the world, she's born between 350 and 370 AD, CE, the exact point as she's reaching adulthood.
7:33 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
7:33 Speaker 03 Where being an old pagan philosopher is beginning to become a very dangerous thing to be.
7:38 Greg Jenner? But she's a pagan, which means she worships multiple gods.
7:41 Speaker 03 Yes, I don't think she did worship multiple gods because she's actually a Neoplatonist pagan. So what happened to a lot-
7:48 Speaker 04 Come on, obviously.
7:49 Greg Jenner? It's very important.
7:50 Speaker 04 You're embarrassing us.
7:51 Greg Jenner? I know, sorry.
7:52 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 faith or prayer life to gods because she believes in this Neoplatonist 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.
8:21 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
8:21 Speaker 04 Oh, my yoga teacher thinks the same.
8:22 Speaker 03 Right. A lot of people do.
8:24 Greg Jenner? So let's talk about her childhood very briefly. You said she's born somewhere in the 350s, 370s. Olga, how do you think a young woman like Hypatia got into maths in the ancient world?
8:34 Speaker 04 Well, she was a pagan, so I guess she started out by counting the gods.
8:38 Greg Jenner? One to 12. What's your inkling? How do you think a young woman gets into math at that point in history?
8:44 Speaker 04 Oh my god, she lets a man explain it to her. Was it part of like a curriculum in school?
8:50 Speaker 03 What she taught actually was part of her university curriculum. No, she's a nepo baby.
8:56 Speaker 04 Of course. I mean, I wasn't gonna say her dad, but we were all thinking it.
8:59 Speaker 03 And her dad is called Theton, Theon, which just means godly. And he is kind of head of the maths department at the library and museum. And 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.
9:41 Speaker 04 Four, four whole women.
9:42 Greg Jenner? Four whole women, count them.
9:44 Speaker 03 That's a lot.
9:44 Speaker 04 We have confirmation of four.
9:47 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.
10:12 Greg Jenner? But Hypatia is effectively treated as a son almost by her dad.
10:15 Speaker 03 I believe so.
10:15 Greg Jenner? And, and he's called Theon. What does Hypatia mean?
10:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, Hypatia is such a weird, that's a sort of Victorian pronunciation.
10:22 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I was gonna say.
10:22 Speaker 03 Hypatia.
10:23 Greg Jenner? Oh.
10:24 Speaker 03 Hypatia. It means the very high, highest up, the summit, the pinnacle of excellence.
10:31 Greg Jenner? Wow.
10:31 Speaker 03 Just the very topmost.
10:32 Speaker 04 No pressure.
10:33 Speaker 03 No pressure. You know, the topmost. It's just from the Greek word hoopso, which means elevation.
10:39 Greg Jenner? That's amazing.
10:40 Speaker 04 I like that a lot.
10:41 Greg Jenner? What does olig mean?
10:42 Speaker 04 I don't want to talk about it. Uh, no, it's actually short for oligarch, so.
10:50 Speaker 04 To be clear, that's a joke.
10:54 Greg Jenner? So we have Hypatia sort of taking on her dad's school job. Like he's, you know, he's the teacher, he's the maths professor of the library of Alexandria. She takes the role on what would be on the course she's teaching.
11:04 Speaker 03 Well, there would be Neoplatonist philosophy.
11:06 Greg Jenner? Sure.
11:07 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 at? Actually by a version of Aristotle's logic, it's kind of a synthesis, a bit of Stoicism in there.
11:19 Greg Jenner? Right.
11:20 Speaker 03 Because the way to achieve union with the one intellectually and psychologically is actually by a mild form of asceticism. You've got to live quite a disciplined life physically, you cannot do self-indulgence. It's got a monastic hint, but it's not actually in any way religious. It's all about the self and self-discipline. Then there would have been maths, there have been Euclidean maths, there have been optics, and there have been astronomy. So basically, all the fields in which you can apply maths.
11:50 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
11:50 Speaker 04 I mean, she sounds busy, she didn't have time to respond to fan mail.
11:52 Speaker 03 They didn't do, they didn't do stats, statistics, because that's a Latin word.
11:56 Greg Jenner? Oh, well, that's Romans for you, isn't it? The Romans, they love data.
12:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
12:01 Speaker 04 No spreadsheets in Alexandria. Confirmed.
12:05 Greg Jenner? Okay, so Hypatia, or how did you pronounce it?
12:08 Speaker 03 Hypatia.
12:09 Greg Jenner? Hypatia. That sounds slightly like you're sort of, I don't know, it feels slightly like you're tripping over it. It's almost like you're sort of falling down a staircase.
12:16 Speaker 03 It's very, it's very pretty and green.
12:17 Greg Jenner? It's beautiful. So Hypatia is mostly teaching men?
12:21 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:22 Greg Jenner? Are there any women in her class?
12:23 Speaker 03 I very much doubt it. We can't, I cannot tell you that for a fact, but usually, there are sources saying that the museon, the museum, which is the, the big library where the teaching goes on, did not admit women.
12:35 Greg Jenner? Right.
12:35 Speaker 03 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.
12:48 Speaker 04 Oh, and she stays that way throughout her entire life?
12:50 Speaker 03 As far as we know, yeah.
12:51 Speaker 04 Oh, my god.
12:52 Greg Jenner? Wow, so she's a virgin and a mathlete. Cliche confirmed. Harsh, sorry, sorry, mathletes. 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?
13:08 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.
13:24 Greg Jenner? Yes, links North Africa, yeah.
13:28 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.
13:38 Greg Jenner? I think.
13:38 Speaker 04 Is this true?
13:39 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. Queen! And said, that's what you're in love with. Like, my physical body.
13:59 Speaker 04 Oh, my God, I love that.
14:00 Speaker 03 What you should be after is the true love of the one ideal form of beauty, not this material copy.
14:08 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.
14:14 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.
14:22 Speaker 04 I bet all the other boys were like, can I have one? I'm telling you.
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16:21 Greg Jenner? She's got her fans and her students sort of seem to really admire her. They do. 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?
16:36 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.
17:06 Speaker 04 Okay, sounds like she was a reply girl.
17:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, but her own contribution seems to have been of development. Again, of somebody else, a guy called Apollonius had written a book on conic sections.
17:17 Greg Jenner? Oh, my favourite.
17:19 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.
17:40 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.
17:55 Speaker 03 No, she was genuinely held to have said something completely original about cones. And she was also said to just be. Really charismatic, brilliant communicator of this stuff.
18:06 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so she's an amazing teacher.
18:07 Speaker 03 Yes.
18:07 Greg Jenner? Right, you know, her students love her.
18:08 Speaker 03 And that is an enormous gift to be able to express very complicated ideas in very simple ways.
18:14 Greg Jenner? Hypatia's quite well renowned, so much so that several things have been named after her. There's a Hypatia asteroid belt, there's a Hypatia butterfly, there's a Hypatia crater on the moon. So she's getting her retrospective acclaim now.
18:25 Speaker 03 Oh, yes.
18:25 Greg Jenner? You know, we are now happy to acknowledge Hypatia as one of the big brains of the ancient world.
18:29 Speaker 03 Well, she's the first woman in STEM. Well, there you go.
18:33 Speaker 04 What was the criticism? What is it that they hated about her writing or her conduct?
18:38 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.
19:14 Speaker 04 Oh, wow.
19:15 Speaker 03 Christianity. So she became a figurehead for the resistance to the newly converted emperors.
19:22 Speaker 04 Oh, my God. So in a way, her neo-pagan views were more progressive than the Christian ones.
19:26 Speaker 03 Vastly.
19:27 Greg Jenner? So Hypatia's obviously around in the mid to late 300s, and Christianity had been arriving in the Roman Empire earlier than that, and it'd taken 60, 70, 80 years to become the official religion and a bit of a pushback. But here we are in Alexandria in Egypt, and we've got damage to pagan temples, we've got 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.
19:53 Speaker 03 Yes. So between 391, when the Sorapen was destroyed, and the Nicene Creed was officially set up 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, Christian bishop of Alexandria, was a guy who was quite sympathetic to her and open-minded, called Theophilus.
20:20 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
20:21 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.
20:30 Greg Jenner? So he's a Christian, but he's quite open-minded, tolerant of her science.
20:33 Speaker 03 And there were plenty of those. What happened in 412 is that a very different character got to be the bishop after Theophilus died, and he is called Cyril. He only gets into that position by beating up another guy called Timothias. You know, there's a huge amount of riot.
20:52 Speaker 04 As is the Christian way.
20:54 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. 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, comes in, who's actually a Greek, all these people are Greek, even though they're in the Roman Empire, called Orestes, as in the Greek mythical figure. He just happens to be called Orestes.
21:36 Speaker 03 And that is, it's the face-off between Cyril and Orestes that poor Hypatia is caught. Both of these guys were ruthless. She gets caught in the crossfire.
21:48 Greg Jenner? And we start to get violence in the city, and we get Cyril and Orestes, you know, they're starting to be on opposite sides of mob violence, 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.
22:00 Speaker 04 So we're thinking, is it modern terms? It's like if the mayor of Rome and the pope had mobs?
22:05 Greg Jenner? Yeah. 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.
22:15 Speaker 03 And the Christians were very, very, very anxious to.
22:17 Speaker 04 Sorry, mayor of Los Angeles and Tom Cruise.
22:22 Greg Jenner? A much better analogy, yeah.
22:24 Speaker 03 Yes, both Orestes and Cyril wanted to be the top guy.
22:28 Greg Jenner? Right.
22:28 Speaker 04 Okay.
22:29 Speaker 03 In Alexandria. And Cyril basically won. Cyril starts bringing in various different groups of thugs, really. One is his Neutran monks. Then he gets the Parabolani, the people who risk their lives. And they're really weird because we'll start off as a group of Christian paramedics.
22:53 Greg Jenner? Right.
22:53 Speaker 04 Incredible.
22:54 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, sort of under Cyril, but they also serve as his private bodyguard, his bouncers.
23:08 Greg Jenner? Wow.
23:09 Speaker 03 His kind of mafioso thugs.
23:12 Greg Jenner? Those two jobs do not normally go together.
23:14 Speaker 03 It's weird.
23:15 Speaker 04 Well, people don't know, but the entirety of the KGB is trained in first aid.
23:20 Speaker 04 And how not to give it.
23:22 Speaker 03 The exact process we don't understand by which the enmity against Orestes got transferred to Hypatia.
23:29 Speaker 04 Ooh.
23:30 Speaker 03 Yes.
23:30 Speaker 04 Where does she even come into this?
23:32 Greg Jenner? For five minutes you've been talking, we haven't mentioned her once.
23:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm sorry.
23:35 Greg Jenner? But no, but no, it's a good point, like, where is she in all this?
23:39 Speaker 04 Does the Parabolani have something to do with this?
23:41 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.
24:01 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
24:01 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.
24:19 Speaker 04 Which is literally her doing two plus two.
24:21 Speaker 03 He calls four and he's going, wah!
24:25 Speaker 03 The hatred for her was so much that it did lead to her being assaulted by the Parabolani.
24:31 Speaker 04 Oh, man.
24:33 Greg Jenner? The kind of the paramedics turn into paramilitary.
24:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:36 Greg Jenner? Blimey.
24:37 Speaker 03 Different explanations have been offered for exactly how the government got so, the secular government under Aristides got so associated with her. But it was.
24:48 Greg Jenner? So they're executing and punishing and torturing their enemies, both sides.
24:52 Speaker 03 Both of them.
24:53 Greg Jenner? Yeah, okay, and so.
24:53 Speaker 03 So.
24:54 Speaker 04 So did the Parabolani kill Hypatia?
24:57 Speaker 03 Yes, they either arrested her while she was actually teaching or pulled her out of her chariot or vehicle as she was driving to or from her teaching post and took her to into a church which had been a temple, I think of Zeus, and had been converted into the cathedral and killed her.
25:18 Greg Jenner? She's caught up in this violence, it's in no way her fault, she's not entitled it, she hasn't joined a side, she's just been teaching in her.
25:24 Speaker 03 We have no evidence for that whatsoever, that she was had any political interest. 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.
25:46 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, what happened in the end?
25:47 Speaker 03 Well, there is no more word of him, he stops being governor, somebody else comes in as governor and maybe people said that he had screwed up.
25:55 Greg Jenner? Sure.
25:56 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, this guy. The one we know most about is Cyril, who went on to be one of the most successful bishops and early Christians of all time, was involved in all the most famous theological disputes and was even made a saint.
26:16 Greg Jenner? Yes.
26:17 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?
26:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:24 Speaker 04 Oh, boy.
26:25 Greg Jenner? So Cyril becomes a saint and then you said that Hypatia becomes a sort of martyr to philosophy later.
26:31 Speaker 03 She's, I think she's a secular saint.
26:33 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
26:33 Speaker 03 She becomes a very important representative for both women in science and free thinking.
26:38 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?
26:46 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely.
26:47 Greg Jenner? Good.
26:48 Speaker 04 That was just so deeply, deeply sad. I don't have anything.
26:52 Greg Jenner? No, I know. But we do know her better, 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.
27:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:08 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 tells us something we need to know about Hypatia. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Professor Edith.
27:21 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
28:02 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. 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, the tradition of the Library of Alexandria. But just imagine this tiny stone, and I've seen lots of different pictures of it. Unfortunately,
28:44 Speaker 03 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.
29:01 Greg Jenner? That's amazing.
29:02 Speaker 04 Beautiful.
29:03 Speaker 03 Isn't it lovely?
29:03 Speaker 04 She's timeless.
29:04 Speaker 03 Exactly. I feel that.
29:06 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?
29:11 Speaker 03 4.6 billion.
29:14 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.
29:20 Speaker 03 But it's kind of union with the one.
29:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:23 Speaker 03 It just came from outer space, it came for our galaxy.
29:27 Greg Jenner? 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.
29:42 Speaker 04 That's confirmed, terrible confirmed.
29:45 Greg Jenner? 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 Your 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 University of Durham. Thank you, Edith. Thank you. I had a riot. Very fitting. And in comedy corner, we had the outstanding Olga Cog. Thank you, Olga.
30:14 Speaker 04 Thank you very, very, very much.
30:15 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.
30:25 Greg Jenner? That would be good.
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