Reddit reviews Hypatia of Alexandria (Revealing Antiquity)
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Used Book in Good Condition
TIL white people were originally a small tribe of albino outcasts.
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A lot of modern perceptions about the demise of Imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the so-called "Dark Ages" were informed by 18th and 19th century scholarship, much of which was written with an anti-Catholic bias. That bias often led the authors of those histories to "spin" their historical accounts so as to place the maximal amount of blame on the Catholic church. Probably the single most famous example is that of Edward Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which basically blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome and everything that followed it. That's almost certainly the source (even if only indirectly) for Sagan's account.
Since the 18th century, historians have done a great deal of work to reassess those arguments and revise our understanding of the period, but popular perceptions of the the mainlines of European history continue to lag behind. For the most part, the general public still subscribes to something like the Victorian view.
That view has been especially popular with public figures (like Sagan) concerned about the relationship between science, religion and society. Certain popularizers among them have essentially reiterated the mainlines of those Victorian biases, and their authority and popularity has won for those accounts something of a renaissance. The result is basically what you see here (and especially in /r/atheism, which likes to vote this ridiculous image to its front page every so often) -- people taking a very dubious oversimplification of history as indicative of the retrograde effect of religion on the scientific advance of culture.
There's a pretty good essay on the historical roots of that tradition in this collection, if you're interested. It's the one called "The Heirs of La Coterie Holbachique," although, now that I think on it, there's some pretty good material in "The Flattening of Historical Perspective," as well.
Concerning the Library of Alexandria and Hypatia specifically: There's plenty in Sagan's account to suggest that he's depending largely on legendary accounts of Hypatia. For example, it's true that by most accounts "she was a great beauty," but those accounts seem to have been embellished as an appeal to emotion. They've remade Hypatia into a kind of Greek ideal of wisdom, in order to make her murder seem tragic on a historical, rather than personal, level. There's no real evidence to suggest, as Sagan does, that she was killed "because she was a symbol of learning and science," nor because she was a pagan, of which Alexandria had multitudes. Based on the accounts I've read (this one, in particular), there's every reason to suppose that political and socio-economic motives factored more heavily into her murder. I gave a pretty basic break down of the argument for that interpretation here, if you're interested in more detail. In either case, it's overstating things quite a bit to suggest that Hypatia's death was part of a campaign to destroy the learning housed in the Library.
For one thing, the Library itself wasn't destroyed in Hypatia's era. Under an edict of Theodosius, an adjunct to the library, the Serapeum, was destroyed. As a student of the history of religion, I regard that as a major loss, but it probably didn't set science back at all. The reason is that the Serapeum was a temple dedicated to Serapis. It housed an offshoot of the Library's collection, but most serious scholars of antiquity (for example, Walter Burkert in his Ancient Mystery Cults, which see) maintain that the Serapeum housed liturgical texts, not philosophical and scientific texts. I wish those texts were still around so we'd have a better sense of what was involved in ancient religions, but it's going way beyond the realm of reasonable conjecture to liken their destruction to civilization having "undergone some self-inflicted brain surgery." It's unlikely that the plays of Sophocles were housed there, and even if there had been copies of Sophocles in the Serapeum, it's utter balderdash to suppose that there weren't hundreds of thousands of copies elsewhere in the world at the same time.
Portions of the Library at Alexandria were destroyed on four separate occasions. The final destruction of the library occurred in the 7th century, nearly three hundred years after the death of Hypatia. That it was destroyed at all was unfortunate, and it makes for exciting history to focus on those four highly politicized events, but the truth is that the destruction of the learning housed within the Library was a gradual process of dissolution.
The fact of the matter is that documents require constant upkeep and regular replacement to survive. That's why so few documents from antiquity have made it down to the modern era. The collection at Alexandria may have been finished off by one or another inferno, but those works are lost because they weren't better maintained. If they had been, then the destruction of a single library, no matter how well-stocked, wouldn't have mattered. The break down of the Roman Imperial system crippled the infrastructure needed to maintain wide literacy and preserve learning. For centuries after the Sack of Rome, most people were more worried about famine and Germanic invasion to invest much energy in preserving the literary heritage of the Greeks and Romans.
It's a romantic thought to suppose that saving a single library could have hurried along the scientific advance of Western civilization, but even if there had never been a single fire at Alexandria, the ravages of time and the costs of maintaining fragile artifacts would have ensured much the same end.
There's really very very little that we know about Hypatia, an unfortunate consequence of the paucity of sources that have survived. This makes it quite difficult to get a book-length biography together that isn't full of conjecture and outright fiction. There are two books I know of that aren't full of lies and woo:
>As noted above, he was not a pagan and his opposition to Cyril was a purely political struggle for hierarchical supremacy in the city and had nothing much to do with religion. And he was not murdered by anyone, though he did get a stone to the head in a demonstration which in turn sparked the tit-for-tat factional killing that ended with the political assassination of Hypatia.
>
>>"Cyril next began to plot against his other major Pagan opponent in Alexandria, Hypatia. As a woman who represented heretical teachings, including experimental science and pagan religion, she made an easy target."
>
>More fantasy. We have no evidence she did any "experimental science" and there is no reliable evidence that her learning, any "heretical teachings", her paganism or even her gender were factors at all. She seems to have been targeted simply because she was a political ally of Orestes in a factional squabble.
>
>>"He preached that Christ had no female apostles, or teachers. Therefore, female teachers had no place in Christianity. This sermon incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. "
>
>Again, this is straight from the 2009 movie. There is no such preaching even hinted at in the sources.
>
>>"The Dark Ages Begin"
>
>Anything that we could call "the dark ages" began somewhat later and in far off western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Hypatia lived in the Eastern Empire, which lasted for another 1000 years
>
>>"Hypatia’s students fled to Athens."
>
>There is no evidence of them fleeing anywhere.
>
>>"The Neo-Platonism school she headed continued in Alexandria until the Arabs invaded in 642."
>
>So much for her death bringing on a dark age then.
>
>>"When they burned the library of Alexandria, using it as fuel for their baths, the works of Hypatia were destroyed."
>
>The legend of the Caliph Omar burning any library in Alexandria is dated to centuries after his time and is almost certainly nonsense. And the actual Library had ceased to exist before Hypatia was even born anyway, as explained above.
>
>>"Her writings are only known today through the works of others who quoted her "
>
>No they aren't and no they didn't.
>
>>"Cyril, the fanatic Christian who incited her destruction, was made a saint."
>
>At least they managed to get one thing right. These articles about Hypatia are usually riddled with nonsense, but I count at least 26 errors of fact or outright fantasies and inventions in this one. I think this must be some kind of record.
>
>Sources:
>Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (harvard, 1995)
>Edward J. Watts, Hypatia (Oxford, 2017)
>As noted above, he was not a pagan and his opposition to Cyril was a purely political struggle for hierarchical supremacy in the city and had nothing much to do with religion. And he was not murdered by anyone, though he did get a stone to the head in a demonstration which in turn sparked the tit-for-tat factional killing that ended with the political assassination of Hypatia.
>
>>"Cyril next began to plot against his other major Pagan opponent in Alexandria, Hypatia. As a woman who represented heretical teachings, including experimental science and pagan religion, she made an easy target."
>
>More fantasy. We have no evidence she did any "experimental science" and there is no reliable evidence that her learning, any "heretical teachings", her paganism or even her gender were factors at all. She seems to have been targeted simply because she was a political ally of Orestes in a factional squabble.
>
>>"He preached that Christ had no female apostles, or teachers. Therefore, female teachers had no place in Christianity. This sermon incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. "
>
>Again, this is straight from the 2009 movie. There is no such preaching even hinted at in the sources.
>
>>"The Dark Ages Begin"
>
>Anything that we could call "the dark ages" began somewhat later and in far off western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Hypatia lived in the Eastern Empire, which lasted for another 1000 years
>
>>"Hypatia’s students fled to Athens."
>
>There is no evidence of them fleeing anywhere.
>
>>"The Neo-Platonism school she headed continued in Alexandria until the Arabs invaded in 642."
>
>So much for her death bringing on a dark age then.
>
>>"When they burned the library of Alexandria, using it as fuel for their baths, the works of Hypatia were destroyed."
>
>The legend of the Caliph Omar burning any library in Alexandria is dated to centuries after his time and is almost certainly nonsense. And the actual Library had ceased to exist before Hypatia was even born anyway, as explained above.
>
>>"Her writings are only known today through the works of others who quoted her "
>
>No they aren't and no they didn't.
>
>>"Cyril, the fanatic Christian who incited her destruction, was made a saint."
>
>At least they managed to get one thing right. These articles about Hypatia are usually riddled with nonsense, but I count at least 26 errors of fact or outright fantasies and inventions in this one. I think this must be some kind of record.
>
>Sources:
>Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (harvard, 1995)
>Edward J. Watts, Hypatia (Oxford, 2017)
>As noted above, he was not a pagan and his opposition to Cyril was a purely political struggle for hierarchical supremacy in the city and had nothing much to do with religion. And he was not murdered by anyone, though he did get a stone to the head in a demonstration which in turn sparked the tit-for-tat factional killing that ended with the political assassination of Hypatia.
>
>>"Cyril next began to plot against his other major Pagan opponent in Alexandria, Hypatia. As a woman who represented heretical teachings, including experimental science and pagan religion, she made an easy target."
>
>More fantasy. We have no evidence she did any "experimental science" and there is no reliable evidence that her learning, any "heretical teachings", her paganism or even her gender were factors at all. She seems to have been targeted simply because she was a political ally of Orestes in a factional squabble.
>
>>"He preached that Christ had no female apostles, or teachers. Therefore, female teachers had no place in Christianity. This sermon incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. "
>
>Again, this is straight from the 2009 movie. There is no such preaching even hinted at in the sources.
>
>>"The Dark Ages Begin"
>
>Anything that we could call "the dark ages" began somewhat later and in far off western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Hypatia lived in the Eastern Empire, which lasted for another 1000 years
>
>>"Hypatia’s students fled to Athens."
>
>There is no evidence of them fleeing anywhere.
>
>>"The Neo-Platonism school she headed continued in Alexandria until the Arabs invaded in 642."
>
>So much for her death bringing on a dark age then.
>
>>"When they burned the library of Alexandria, using it as fuel for their baths, the works of Hypatia were destroyed."
>
>The legend of the Caliph Omar burning any library in Alexandria is dated to centuries after his time and is almost certainly nonsense. And the actual Library had ceased to exist before Hypatia was even born anyway, as explained above.
>
>>"Her writings are only known today through the works of others who quoted her "
>
>No they aren't and no they didn't.
>
>>"Cyril, the fanatic Christian who incited her destruction, was made a saint."
>
>At least they managed to get one thing right. These articles about Hypatia are usually riddled with nonsense, but I count at least 26 errors of fact or outright fantasies and inventions in this one. I think this must be some kind of record.
>
>Sources:
>Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (harvard, 1995)
>Edward J. Watts, Hypatia (Oxford, 2017)