and the citizens joined issue.  Orestes, being attacked by a party of monks as he was peaceably pursuing his way through the streets in his carriage, was succored by the citizens, who came to his relief; and in the affray a monk was taken prisoner, whom the justly exasperated Orestes ordered to be executed.  The sentence was carried into effect, and Cyril caused the name of the would-be murderer to be enrolled among the martyrs.

Hypatia was neither Jew nor Christian; but her love of truth and justice caused her to espouse the side of the persecuted victims of ecclesiastical tyranny.  She had previously been the object of Cyril’s bitter hatred, because her mental attainments were superior to his own.  Now, that hatred was intensified to the highest degree of malignity.  She had openly and boldly censured the conduct of the bishop, and was deemed the friend of Orestes; therefore she must die.  Having committed no crime, she could not be brought before the civil tribunal for condemnation; therefore, as her death had been determined upon, murder was the next resort.

She was surrounded and seized by a mob in the interest of Cyril, as she was one day returning from her school, and hurried into the Caesarian church, where she was brutally murdered, every barbarity being practiced upon her which monks were capable of inventing, even to tearing her limb from limb, and afterward burning her; and Cyril, if indeed he did not sanction the murder by his actual presence while it was being committed, sanctioned the horrid deed by his protection of the perpetrators when the infuriated populace would have avenged her death.

Thus tragic was the end of one of the most highly gifted women the world has ever produced.  She flourished in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius II, in the early part of the fifth century.

The record of the Famous Women of Antiquity might be lengthened out indefinitely:  Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, so famous in Roman history; Octavia, the deeply injured wife of Mark Antony; Eudosia, the wife of Theodosius, with her equally famous sister-in-law, Pulcheria; the Aspasia of Pericles, who is represented by some writers as having composed many of the orations given to the world as those of her husband; the Aspasia of Cyrus, so famous for her gentle modesty and wise counsels; and Marianne, the last and most unfortunate princess of the illustrious line of the Maccabees, and wife of the monster, Herod the Great.  Each of these, to do justice to their merits, or to the transactions which rendered them famous, would require a biography.  The mere mention of their names must suffice just here.  Who has not read or heard of Sappho, the Greek poetess, concerning whose life and moral character there has been so much controversy—­one class of writers condemning in unstinted measure, as all and utterly vile; the other class applauding her as being possessed of every virtue?  Says one of the latter:  “In Sappho, a warm and profound sensibility, virgin purity, feminine softness, and delicacy of sentiment and feeling, were combined with the native probity and simplicity of the Eolian character; and, although endued with a fine perception of the beautiful and brilliant, she preferred genuine conscious rectitude to every other source of human enjoyment.”  It is probable a medium between these two extremes would give the true character of this remarkable woman.