Hypatia of Alexandria: Martyr v. Mythology

[guy]

Despite the author's being a Christian apologist, I do find this article interesting:

 

http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/06/the-perniciously-persistent-myths-of-hypatia-and-the-great-library

 

 

guy also known as gaius

[Viggen]

...while I understands some of his points, I have difficulties when someone arguing about somethning he hasnt seen,

 

...unlike Ursus who watched it and wrote a brilliant review...

 

http://www.unrv.com/book-review/agora-dvd.php

[guy]

Modern accounts of Ancient events are always suspect.

I think the article makes a good point:
 

The estimate in ancient texts varies wildly, between 40,000 scrolls”for the ancient world, an astounding but still plausible number”and 700,000”which is almost certainly impossibly high. And, as of yet, archaeologists have failed to find the remains of any building sufficiently large to have sheltered a collection on either scale.

 
The reliable pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus has his opinion about the library (Roman History, Book 22.16.;12-13).

 

12 There are besides in the city temples pompous with lofty roofs, conspicuous among them the Serapeum, which, though feeble words merely belittle it, yet is so adorned with extensive columned halls, with almost breathing statues, and a great number of other works of art, that next to the Capitolium, with which revered Rome elevates herself to eternity, the whole world beholds nothing more magnificent. 13 In this were invaluable libraries, and the unanimous testimony of ancient records declares that 700,000 books, brought together by the unremitting energy of the Ptolemaïc kings, were burned in the Alexandrine war, when the city was sacked under the dictator Caesar

He would not have failed to mention any great surviving library collection. Remember, Marcellinus was a near-contemporary of Hypatia. He was also a pagan, and certainly no Christian apologist. He would not have failed to mention a flourishing large library in Alexandria (three centuries after Caesar's destruction) if it still, in fact, existed.

Here is Seneca's quote about the library from Seneca's De Tranquillitate Animi (On the tranquility of the mind)  thought to be written during the years 49 to 62 A.D :

 

A student is over-whelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through many. Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria

 

 

The story about Hypatia's tragic death may have been an embellishment by the British writer Edward Gibbon in the late 1700s. Gibbon was someone who could always find fault with Christianity.

(To be continued....)


guy also known as gaius

Edited December 2, 2015 by guy

[guy]

Here's a very intensive assessment of the literary evidence of the Alexandrian library and Hypatia:
 
http://www.bede.org.uk/Library2.htm

 

Hypatia of Alexandria, the female mathematician, has become a romantic heroine, a feminist icon and an archetypal victim of religious intolerance. Charles Kingsley of The Water Babies fame published his novel, Hypatia, in 1853 and it was this that started her modern cult. However the sources for her life are scanty to say the least. Socrates is embarrassed to have to report her murder[80], John of Nikiou revels in it[81] and the Suda[82] gives a few more details that need to be treated with the same caution as everything else in that Byzantine encyclopaedia. The Christian bishop Synesius of Cyrene was a pupil of hers and despite her paganism wrote her adoring letters asking for advice[83]. Modern myths about her include that she was a Librarian of the Great Library and that she worked at the Museum. Neither have any basis in fact or the sources and there is nothing to connect her to the Royal or Serapeum libraries at all.

It can safely be said that the story of Christians destroying the Serapeum library was originated by Edward Gibbon[87] in the late eighteenth century when he read too much into his sources and this story has been repeated ever since. Alexandria Rediscovered by Jean-Yves Empereur, Cosmos by Carl Sagan and From the Holy Mountain by William Dalyrymple are just three recent books to combine this myth with the earlier loss of the Royal Library while even scholars such as Luciano Canfora and Alfred Butler have tried to interpret the evidence to support Gibbon.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited December 1, 2015 by guy

[indianasmith]

I remember once reading a historical novel which attributed the destruction of the Library to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian.  I thought it was an accurate reference until I did a bit of digging and found that there is no evidence that Justinian's armies had anything to do with it.

[guy]

Edward Gibbon's rendition of events:

 

.

Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, (25) was initiated in her father's studies; her learned comments have elucidated the geometry of Apollonius and Diophantus, and she publicly taught, both at Athens and Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher; and Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the gorgeous train of horses and slaves who crowded the door of her academy. A rumor was spread among the Christians, that the daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation of the praefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp cyster shells, (26) and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The just progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted an indelible stain on the character and religion of Cyril of Alexandria

 

 

Powerful and poignant story...but probably apocryphal.

 

 

guy also known as guy

[guy]

We can all agree that Hypatia’s murder was cruel and senseless. We can also agree the destruction of knowledge is a great loss.

 

Popular classicist Bettany Hughes and celebrity scientist Carl Sagan have recounted the poignant and powerful tale of Hypatia’s murder with the destruction of a great library in Serapeum.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, as discussed above, this is a great mythology, exploiting the elderly Hypatia’s tragic and needless death. Added for poignancy is the destruction of the mythical great library in the Serapeum.

 

I am not religious and I have no tolerance for religious zealotry. (I have met several people who have been personally and painfully impacted by the horrific recent religiously-motivated events in San Bernardino, CA. Very sad.)

 

That said, history should not be dependent on Hollywood's or an eighteenth century Englishman’s rendition of events.

Edited June 27, 2017 by guy