SOURCE: "Hypatia," Phoenix, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Autumn, 1965, pp. 214-25.

In the excerpt below, Rist focuses on Hypatia's philosophical position, but he also attempts to separate the legends surrounding her from the accounts given in Socrates's Ecclesiastical History and the Suda. She was more closely aligned with traditional Platonism than with advanced Neoplatonism, he asserts, and her achievements in the field of philosophy have been inflated because of the circumstances of her death.

Presumably for English-speaking readers the trouble began with Gibbon,¹ who knew the tragic end of Hypatia, daughter of Theon, and used his knowledge, as had some of his predecessors in antiquity, to vilify Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. Gibbon's account should be quoted at length, so that its full force may be grasped and the problems of understanding the circumstances of the career and teachings of Hypatia may be clarified. After describing Cyril's various aberrancies as patriarch...