SOURCE: "Hypatia" in The Complete Writings of Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Shop, 1908, pp. 51-79.

In the essay below, Hubbard offers an elaborate account of Hypatia's life and thought, stressing her independent mind and spirit as well as her indebtedness to Plato and Plotinus. Throughout, Hubbard uses details of her biography to express his personal antipathy to formal systems of religion.

The father of Hypatia was Theon, a noted mathematician and astronomer of Alexandria.

He would have been regarded as a very great man had he not been cast into the shadow by his daughter. Let male parents beware! At that time, astronomy and astrology were one. Mathematics was useful, not for purposes of civil engineering, but principally in figuring out where a certain soul, born under a given planet, would be at a certain time in the future. No information comes to us about the mother of Hypatia...