At this time the bishopric of Alexandria was held by one Theophilus.  An ancient temple of Osiris having been given to the Christians of the city for the site of a church, it happened that, in digging the foundation for the new edifice, the obscene symbols of the former worship chanced to be found.  These, with more zeal than modesty, Theophilus exhibited in the market-place to public derision.  With less forbearance than the Christian party showed when it was insulted in the theatre during the Trinitarian dispute, the pagans resorted to violence, and a riot ensued.  They held the Serapion as their headquarters.  Such were the disorder and bloodshed that the emperor had to interfere.  He dispatched a rescript to Alexandria, enjoining the bishop, Theophilus, to destroy the Serapion; and the great library, which had been collected by the Ptolemies, and had escaped the fire of Julius Caesar, was by that fanatic dispersed.

The murder of Hypatia.  The bishopric thus held by Theophilus was in due time occupied by his nephew St. Cyril, who had commended himself to the approval of the Alexandrian congregations as a successful and fashionable preacher.  It was he who had so much to do with the introduction of the worship of the Virgin Mary.  His hold upon the audiences of the giddy city was, however, much weakened by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, but also by her comments on the writings of Apollonius and other geometers.  Each day before her academy stood a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria.  They came to listen to her discourses on those questions which man in all ages has asked, but which never yet have been answered:  “What am I?  Where am I?  What can I know?”

Hypatia and Cyril!  Philosophy and bigotry.  They cannot exist together.  So Cyril felt, and on that feeling he acted.  As Hypatia repaired to her academy, she was assaulted by Cyril’s mob—­a mob of many monks.  Stripped naked in the street, she was dragged into a church, and there killed by the club of Peter the Reader.  The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh was scraped from the bones with shells, and the remnants cast into a fire.  For this frightful crime Cyril was never called to account.  It seemed to be admitted that the end sanctified the means.

So ended Greek philosophy in Alexandria, so came to an untimely close the learning that the Ptolemies had done so much to promote.  The “Daughter Library,” that of the Serapion, had been dispersed.  The fate of Hypatia was a warning to all who would cultivate profane knowledge.  Henceforth there was to be no freedom for human thought.  Every one must think as the ecclesiastical authority ordered him, A.D. 414.  In Athens itself philosophy awaited its doom.  Justinian at length prohibited its teaching, and caused all its schools in that city to be closed.