You're Dead to Me - Hypatia of Alexandria: mathematician, martyr and feminist icon

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in late antique Egypt by Professor Edith Hall and comedian Olga Koch to learn about the life of mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. An important mathematical and astronomical thinker, Hypatia is best known today for her brutal death at the hands of Christian fundamentalists. Born to a well-respected mathematician named Theon in fourth-century Alexandria, Hypatia received an unusually advanced education for a woman, and eventually took over her father’s school. But with the city in which she lived riven by religious and political conflicts during the declining days of the Roman empire, she came to the attention of radical Christians – with fatal consequences. In this episode we explore Hypatia’s trailblazing life as a philosopher and mathematician, and her afterlife as a martyr for intellectual enquiry, and as a certified feminist icon.If you’re a fan of trailblazing women from history, religious conflicts, and the twilight of the Roman empire, you’ll love our episode on Hypatia of Alexandria.If you want more ancient philosophers with Professor Edith Hall, listen to our episodes on Pythagoras and Aristotle. And for more from Olga Koch, check out our episodes on Ivan the Terrible and Vital Electricity.You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Adam Simcox Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life.

And all the bizarre ways people are using. the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we are grabbing our math textbooks and frolicing back to the fourth century to Egypt to learn all about mathematician and philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria. And to help us, we have one terrific teacher and one sublime student in History Corner. She's professor of classics at Durham University. You might have heard her on Natalie Haynes stands up for the classics or Great Lives on BBC Radio 4.

Maybe you've read one of her many books, including Aristotle's Way, how ancient wisdom can change your life and facing down the furies. And you'll know her from our episodes on Pythagoras, The Triangle Guy, and Aristotle. It's Professor Edith Hall. Welcome back, Edith. Hello, I'm thrilled to be here. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, writer and actor. You'll have seen her on Mock the Week, QI, Frankie Boyle's New World Order,

late-night MASH. All you've heard her co-hosting the BBC's Funny Technology Podcast Human Error Maybe you've seen her award nominated stand-up show Olga Koch comes from money. And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes on Ivan the Terrible and vital electricity. It's Olga Koch. Welcome back, Olga. Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to have you here. Olga, previously on the show, you said that your history knowledge is basically all the American presidents, and that's it.

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, even that was lying, I think maybe half of them had been lost. Okay. I was going to ask you, who's the 12th American president? Oh, fourth. 12th? Oh, God. Never mind. John Adams is somewhere in there.

He's quite early, let's be honest. Is he earlier than fourth? Yeah. Is he second? Yeah. Oh, boy. This is bad. This is bad.

Shut it now. Okay. You are doing a PhD right now. Yes. Crucially, not in history. I would like your listeners to know. But you're a woman in STEM, right? Yes.

Proudly so. Good. So, have you heard of Hypatia of Alexandria? If I'm being completely honest, I only found out that she was a mathematics. But I want to say 30 seconds ago. This is going to be a very, very fun episode, if anything, just for me. So, what do you know? Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast, which is the So What Do You Know?

This is where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subjects. You might know from the introduction, like Olga has just discovered, that Hypatia was a philosopher and mathematician. She's a bigger name in recent years, thanks to the 2009 film Agarra, starring Rachel Weiss. but you may also know Hypatia from a 1987 episode of Doctor Who, where she's one of several geniuses kidnapped to build a superbrain. I did not see that episode. I've not seen any episodes of Doctor Who.

But what's the truth? That's really not on brand for you at all. I know. I give off real Doctor Who energy, but I've never seen it. But what's the truth behind the dramatic Hollywood Hypatia? How much of a genius was she really? And what on earth is a conic section? Let's find out.

Right, Professor Edith. When we did our Pythagoras episode, it turned out we couldn't trust anything written about him by anyone. A lot of fun, but not hugely helpful. Are we on firma historical ground with Hypatia of Alexandria? We are on slightly firm. You immediately caveat it. Slightly firmer historical ground,

because we've got two sources that are approximately contemporary with her, as well as one or two that are quite a lot later. So we've actually got some letters by a guy called Sinesius of Cyrene, who was some kind of student or acolyte of her. Sirenees in Libya. So this is, we're talking about the North African Greek intellectual diaspora. He seems she's absolutely adored her, wanted to send her his work and his ideas. She doesn't seem to have answered very much.

Okay, I like her already. At some point, stopped contacting him. But the respect he holds her in is very indicative. And there's another one, a guy called Socrates, who's given this silly surname, Scholasticus, just to distinguish him from that Socrates. I was going to say, not the famous one. And Socrates, the scholar, was actually in Constantinople,

and he wrote a whole chapter about her. So we do have some facts. Unfortunately, one or two of those facts seems to be completely wrong. But we are on much further ground. She really existed, whereas we're not even absolutely sure Pythagoras did. Progress. They're really only, in her case, two ways of looking at it from the ancient sources. Four and against.

Whereas with Pythagoras, we've found many different modalities. Just a bit. Okay, so Sinisius of Cyrene, what a name. He's a bit of a fanboy. Olga, you are an expert in reply guys. Wow, what a swerve. I like that. Are you on firm historical territory here? This is the psychology of people who write back?

I guess so. It's very interesting. So basically, my master's was about reply guys, which are a catch-all slang term for men who, I guess, incessantly respond to women who don't act like they exist. on the internet in a sort of very casual and very, I guess, like, buddy, buddy fashion that's overly familiar. This guy kind of, I mean, recontextualizes it. It's not a modern phenomenon. It's been around. I'm just a very elderly professor of Greek at retirement age, and I actually have quite a lot of very strange man writing to me. Oh, who think that I have enough time to answer. They're usually completely insane theories.

Oh, my God. About the ancient world. Like, they've found out where Atlantis is. Oh, good. Or they've designed the wooden horse of Troy and realized that he couldn't actually fit. You know what I mean? Oh my God. I know exactly what kind of guy I mean. They want me to take them intellectually seriously.

It's very interesting sort of sexual kink. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I could talk about this for hours. That's incredible. Good. We're off to a good start. Because men love explaining history to women,

but you're a professor of history. So it must be so confusing for them. What other sources do we have for hypatia? We have the letters of sort of her fan boy, Sanisius. And we have this. Biography by Socrates, the scholar. There's another guy called Damascus, who wrote a life of another neoplatist in which she has some interesting stuff, really more about the culture of Alexandria, where she grew up.

And we've got the amazingly horrible John of Nikki Yu, who is a 7th century Coptic bishop. Coptic is the language of the more, so we say primitive, I think it's actually a technical term, primitive Christianity in Egypt. And he wrote a world history like you do, mansplaining history for everybody. And his paragraph on Hypatia is very important because it reflects what people like him thought of her. And that is that she is a seductress, a high-class sex worker who beguards people with witchcraft. So we've got a text that reflects what people were shouting in the street. Then say that when I solve one quadratic equation and all of a sudden I'm a witch. Yeah, yeah, yes.

But it's really important because it shows that that particular animus against her had been quite articulately expressed in terms of sexual begarment and magic tricks. And that is presumably why she, oh no, cannot do spoilers. Yeah, don't do spoilers yet because Olga doesn't know. I don't know anything. Yeah, we'll come to the spoilers later. Anyway, John of Nickyoo is the kind of religious person that I have avoided all my life being a vicar's daughter. So, Olga, we haven't got tons on the life of Hypatia.

How would you feel if your future biography was compiled from DMs that you'd sent or people had sent to you and some random guy in Turkey? That's exactly how I'd want to go. Yeah, just leave a fantasy. Yes. She was so good at math, it made people hard. That's what I want. That's the byline of the book, yeah. Before we get to Hypatia.

Astrolabe in your pocket. You're not pleased to say. Marvelous. Right. Before we get to Hypatia herself, let's talk about the world she was born into. We've previously done an episode in the previous series

about the city of Alexandria in Egypt. For Olga's benefit, Edith, can you give us a quick rundown of life in late 4th century, Alexandria, this amazing city of learning? It is a city which has had the very famous library and several other libraries

and museums attached to it. It's a university city. It's still the greatest university in the whole of the Greco-Roman world. But it's multi-ethnic to an extraordinary degree and has had a history of huge liberalism about that. So you've got a massive Jewish population who have very well treated for the most part. I mean, of course, there's lots of times when they were, but they live there. They have had their works translated into Greek from Hebrew. but you've also, because of the particular point in history, in the 490s, the first really harsh edicts from the new Christian emperors were coming out. So the 391 is the edict of Theodosius that all pagan temples have to be shut down.

Right. So she comes into the world. She's born between 350 and 370, AD, CE, the exact point as she's reaching adulthood. where being an old pagan philosopher is beginning to become a very dangerous thing to be. So we have the rise of Christianity. We've got obviously a large Jewish sort of traditional sort of community there.

But she's a pagan, which means she worships multiple gods. Yes, I don't think she did worship multiple gods because she's actually a neo-Platonist pagan. So what happened to a lot... Come on, obviously. It's very important. I'm embarrassing us.

I know, sorry. So while there's a sort of notional acceptance of the pagan, pantheon. I don't think she had any kind of real kind of faith or prayer life to gods because she believes in this neoplatonist model of the universe which

is that all of the physical world that we can see around us. Everything, our bodies, the environment, nature, anything made out of matter is a second rate copy of the eternal oneness of the world of ideas. Yeah. Oh, my yoga

teacher thinks the same. Right. A lot of people do. This was based. basically Plato's model. It's tweaked. There is a god, but the god is oneness, right? This sublime world of ideas in our heads. So I don't think she will have absolutely done some public rituals. She'll have appeared respectable events just as people go to church,

even if they don't believe in religion or they go to the synagogue without actually having a prayer life, as it were. But she's deeply spiritual in terms of feeling in touch with this divine other world of ideas and that actually fits with doing mathematics because math is about these abstract laws that always hold. Yeah. Yeah, that's a question I would have. It's like if a person in Alexandria at the time wanted to study math, how sort of religiously

informed would it be or would they just be completely discreet and separate? It would really be very separate by this time. We had made huge advances in all kinds of areas, not just arithmetic, but in geometry and all kinds of other branches of it. and that was very tied in with her other great interest, which is astronomy. Yeah, and we'll get to that. So let's talk about her childhood very briefly. You said she's born somewhere in the 350th, 370s.

I mean, when we talk about this is like later antiquity, this is the ancient world, but she's like nearly 800 years after Plato. Yeah, well, yeah. It's ancient history to her. Okay, thank you. One of my hobby horses about people's misunderstandings of the classical world, so-called, in broad senses, is it lasted for... a millennium. So you've got Homer, his poems, 800 BC.

In fact, the heroes he's talking about were 1300 BC. Yeah, yeah, late Bronze Age. He's 8th century to 7th century BCE. And I personally, when asked, when do I put an end to the classical world, precisely say 391, it is that edict of Theodosius, where things tipped from being public pagan worship still being okay. to know the Christian sort of closure. But other scholars will put it much later.

They'll say, well, actually, all this sort of philosophy was going on for another 200 years, 300 years, till the Arab conquest. She's actually just on the tail end, as it's all going and crumbling, poor woman. But people were still neoplatonist practicing so for another two centuries afterwards. Olga, how do you think a young woman like Hypatia got into maths in the ancient world? Well, she was a pagan, so I guess she started out by counting the gods. One to 12. What's your inkling?

How do you think a young woman gets into math at that point in history? Oh my God, she lets a man explain it to her. Was it part of like a curriculum in school? What she taught actually was part of her university curriculum. No, she's a Nipo baby. Of course. I mean, I wasn't going to say her dad, but we were all thinking it. And her dad is called Theton, Theon, which just means godly.

and he is kind of head of the maths department at the library and museum. He is the professor of maths in Alexandria. No son is mentioned. We know nothing about any other member of the family. No mother is mentioned. No sister is mentioned. It's highly likely if he only had one kid and it was a girl. There are several instances of this in antiquity

where men kind of politely forgot that there was no Y chromosome and actually trained up the daughter as an apprentice. something that's gone on throughout history. We actually know of four other women who were around in the fourth century, one actually in Alexandria. Four whole women. Four whole women.

That's a lot. We have confirmation of four women. There was a mathematician, a good one, called Pandrosion, which is a beautiful name. It actually means all moist like the morning dew. Then we've got one over at Pergamon, which is the other, the second biggest library, which is on the west coast of Turkey.

We've got somebody else in Athens who's another neoplatanist. So she isn't alone. But Hypatia is effectively treated as a son almost by her dad. I believe so. And he's called Theon. What does Hypatia mean? You've given his name.

Yeah, well Hypatia is such a weird, that's a sort of Victorian pronunciation. Yeah, I was going to say. Hopatia. Oh. Hopatia. It means the very high highest up, The summit, the pinnacle of excellence.

Wow. Just the very topmost. No pressure. You know, the topmost. It's just from the Greek word hoop sauce, which means elevation. That's amazing. I like that a lot. What does Olga mean?

I don't want to talk about it. No, it's actually short for oligarch. To be clear, that's a joke. Okay. She's named the highest summit. The highest summit. Dad expects big things of her, right? Absolutely.

But it's also, you know, in terms of being into astronomy, it's kind of, you know, it's an appropriate name. It's like looking upwards. Nominative discernemines, maybe. So we have, I have Pacia sort of taking on her dad's school job. He's, you know, he's the teacher, he's the math professor of the library of Alexandria. She takes the role on, you know, what is on the syllabus? What would be on the course that she's teaching? Well, there would be neoplatonist philosophy.

Sure. So how do we think about the material world? How do we think about the one, the unity? that will have been introduced actually by a version of Aristotle's logic. So it's kind of a synthesis, a bit of stoicism in there. Because the way to achieve union with the one intellectually and psychologically as actually by a mild form of asceticism. You've got to live quite a disciplined life physically.

You cannot do self-indulgence. No luxuries. Yeah. So it's got a monastic kind of hint, but it's not actually. in any way religious. It's all about the self and self-discipline. Then there will have been maths. There'll have been Euclidean maths. There'll have been optics and there'll have been astronomy. So basically all the fields in which you can apply maths. Yeah. So optics would be light, right? How light moves and bounces off things and so on.

Well, and vision. And vision, of course, yeah. And Euclidean, I mean, Euclid is the great mathematician. He's like the guy. Yes. And trigonometry, geometry. I mean, all these are great words because they were being practiced in antiquity. I mean, she sounds busy. She didn't have time to respond to fan mail, clearly. They didn't do statistics because that's a Latin word. Oh, that's Romans for you, isn't it? The Romans, they love data.

Exactly. No spreadsheets in Alexandria. Confirmed. Okay, so Hypatia or how did you pronounce it? Hopatia. That sounds slightly like your sort of, I don't know, it feels slightly like you're tripping over. It's almost like you're sort of falling down the staircase.

It's very pretty and green. It's beautiful. Okay. So she's a neoplatinist. So we've got the three levels of reality, the soul intelligence and the divine one that might not be that divine. Actual reality isn't real. What?

Yeah. So material reality is not real. Okay. The three levels of soul intelligence and the one. Yeah, it's a poor facsimile of the one. Right. Come on. It's a photocopy of reality.

Okay, fine. Are we living in the Matrix? Is that what you're saying? Am I Neo? Are you Neo? Who's Neo? All right. So Hypatio.

is mostly teaching men? Yes. Are there any women in her class? I very much doubt it. I cannot tell you that for a fact. But usually that our source is saying that the museum, the museum, which is the big library where the teaching goes on, did not admit women. So she seems to be quite exceptional.

And I'm sure that if she'd actually got married, she wouldn't have been allowed in. I think it's this sort of, she's sort of a virgin who doesn't have anything to do with sex. So she's like a pagan high priestess. Oh, and she stays that way throughout her entire life. As far as we know, yeah. Oh, my God.

Wow. So she's a virgin and a matalete. Cleshy, confirmed. Harsh. Sorry, sorry, Mattleet. Olga, how do you imagine the student-teacher relationship going if she's got a class of men who are expecting to learn from men and hear this woman teaching them? Honestly, guys, I don't know. I feel like, first of all, it would stink, okay?

Let's just throw that there. a bunch of young boys in one room, unventilated, that place stunk, I can tell you this much, all right? Also, deodorant had been invented from what I can gather. Yes, links North Africa, yeah. Yeah, so I think it would be a lot of disciplining. And I bet they would all keep falling for her. She would be the only woman in the university,

so they'd be like, I guess you're the one. There's no other chicks. Ding, ding, ding. I think, is it true. Well, there is a story which I'm absolutely sure is apocryphal, but that one student who was so loved Lorne that he kept harassing her to try to get her to go out with him and it said that she threw a soaking sanitary pad at him

and said that's what you're in love with like my physical body. Oh my God, I love that. What you should be after is the true love of the one ideal form of beauty, not this material copy. She probably would have proved her point better if he didn't absolutely love getting a pad thrown at him.

I can guarantee you that. This, okay, this reminds me, my fiancé, was so in love with this history teacher in middle school that when she got married and changed her name, he insisted on still using her maiden name in front of the entire class. Wow. Teenage boys are crazy.

Hot for teacher. It's a powerful pheromone combination, isn't it? Absolutely. This is incredible behavior. It is incredible behavior. So she's got a student who's in love with her. She chucks a sanitary towel at his head. HR surely had words there

because you can't do that, but that's an interesting sort of comeback. I bet all the other boys were like, can I have one? I'm telling you. She's got her fans and her students sort of seem to really admire her. They do. We haven't got her getting married. So she commits herself to her work. That's her life's work.

Yes. Which is interesting. So we now are kind of moving through to her mathematics career. What does she contribute to mathematics? You know, her father had been the great teacher at the school. Does she add new knowledge? Is she as great a mathematician as perhaps Hollywood would like her to be? Probably not that original.

She was an expert expounder of complicated mathematical ideas. She wrote big commentary books. This was the great age of commentaries on Euclid's elements, on a guy called Diophantus who wrote the treatise on arithmetic that everybody did, probably on Ptolemy's Almagest, almost certainly on Archimedes, who was one of the greatest, you know, mechanical engineers. Okay, sounds like she was a replied girl. Yeah.

But her own contribution seems to have been a development, again, of somebody else, a guy called Apollonius had written a book on conic sections. Oh, my favorite. She does seem to have advanced how you measure cones or how cones exist, something to do with cutting through the curving surface that goes around to measure it by doing something. sort of intersection. It's not completely clear. I have tried this with an ice cream cone myself. Well, sometimes it's important that it's the developments in these commentaries actually

make the original work more relevant. Like nobody really cared who Shakespeare was and then 10 things I hate about you came out. And then people sort of started getting it. So I don't think we should have underestimated her contribution. No, she was genuinely held to have said something completely original about cones. And she was also set to just be a really charismatic, brilliant communicator of this stuff. Yeah, so she's an amazing teacher. Yes. You know, her students love her.

And that is an enormous gift to be able to express very complicated ideas in very simple ways. We need to talk about her astrology career. Sorry, astronomy career. She's not on TikTok. She's not a kind of astrology girl. She's an astronomy girl. She's all about the stars and planets and how to measure the heavens. What do we know of this?

work. Very little. Great. I'm sorry. I mean, the fact that she comments on Ptolemy is the most important evidence. I mean, you cannot read Ptolemy's Almagest without knowing an awful lot of stuff. There's also some people have said she invented the astrolabe. Now, we know that's not true, but she could have somehow refined it or the astrolabe.

It's the model of. The astrolabe. Yeah, not astrolabia, if that's what you're thinking. It wasn't thinking about, but I know what you were thinking about. It's a spherical teaching aid to help you understand how the constellations move around the planet. It's very, very advanced. The ancient Greeks were, given that people, some people still think the earth is flat. It's really quite remarkable that they figured out, no.

Okay, but they had an upright, sorry, what am I thinking of? Oh, my God. I'm doing a joke, but I forgot three words that I need to do this joke. Oh, yeah, there wasn't a light pollution so they could actually see the stars in the city, so it's not really, fair. It's not really fair. We can't do that. That's true. We don't see the stars. If we could see the stars, we would also be very smart. Yes.

Well, she almost certainly used one for teaching. She may well have refined it, even though we do now know that it's not true that she actually invented it. But it's just a very beautiful image of this girl boss, as you put it, teaching with her astrolabe. Yeah. And I would like an astronaut. Her fan boy, Sanisius, he sent her a letter at the end of his life saying, could you help me with an asteroid? I'd like an astrolabe. Yes, please could you source me one darling?

Yeah. She's doing commentaries on other earlier writers. Maybe some original research, maybe refining instruments like an astrolabe. She may have written philosophy, but none of it survives. Yes. Some scholars say that we've got about 5% of all of basically what was written in classical antiquity. I suspect it's less than that. I think it's probably near a 1 or 2%.

Because the process of copying out papyrus and then vellum and manuscript and all the rest, it had to be copied out and copied out every century in these monasteries of Byzantium or it wouldn't have survived through to the 15th century to get into print. Well, you'd hope that it was the best 5% right? Because now I'm thinking about what if the 5% that survives me is like all the text messages I've ever sent and they have to extrapolate my stand-up genius from the sort of BRB text messages. It is a really interesting question.

and if only 5% of your sort of life's work could be saved. Just emails. Can you imagine? Please not just the email. When I quit Twitter, I downloaded my Twitter archive because I was slightly obsessed with like, this is important. This is my life's work. I'd sent 400,000 tweets. I looked at it as about 20%

and we're about Tottenham Harts for Football Club. Unbelievable boring, man, I am. I'm so dull. And imagine if of that 20% only the 5% is everything that remains of you. I will be renowned through history He was a guy who hated Spurs. I think 2,000 years' time, which is what we're talking, you know, it's 1,700 years' time,

the gap between us and Hypatia, there could be an alien who was absolutely obsessed with the phenomenon of 21st century soccer. And they would be very pleased about that. And they were like, there was this soccer scholar. You're the Sinezius of Cyrene. At last, the credibility I've craved for so long. This is not the future we were promised.

Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the modern world, Hypatia is quite well-renowned, so much so that several things have been named after her. So a mini-quiz for you, Olga. Which of these things is not named in honour of Hypatia of Alexandria? So we have a crater on the moon, an order of monks, a genus of butterfly, so a type of butterfly species, a font or an asteroid belt. Which of those five is not named after Hypatia? Font or what's the last thing? Asteroid belt. do do do do do do do do do I'm going to throw font in

no I almost wrote this script in Hypatia font because I was so it's a joke no one would understand and you wouldn't see that makes so much sense no there is a Hypatia font there's a Hypatia asteroid belt there's a Hypatia butterfly there's a Hypatia crater on the moon so there's no monks named after her but there is a novel about her about a monk visiting her I think in the 19th century that's the Charles Kingsley one that was the one you mentioned yeah okay so she's getting her retrospective acclaim now

Oh, yes. You know, we are now happy to acknowledge Hypatia is one of the big brains of the ancient world. Well, she's the first woman in STEM. Well, there you go. Yeah. And across Alexandria, was her big brain recognized at the time? You know, I think we've got the sense that she obviously had an important job. Was she the kind of the go-to math person?

She certainly was the person you would go to with any kind of mathematical or astronomical query. Right. We'd really know that, though, from the amount of antipathy she generated. strangely. I mean, she was so hated by the Christians. Haters are my motivators. Yes. She was so hated by the Christians that that implies that they felt she had very considerable authority and influence over a large portion of the population. So we can measure her influence by the sort of scale.

The antipathy. Right, that's interesting. It's quite a good metric for influence, isn't it, to sort of, to see how much you're hated to realize how much you're contributing. I think so I've built a whole career around it. So, yeah, it makes sense to me. That's fascinating, isn't it? Okay, so her reputation clearly, you know,

she's revered and respected in certain communities and perhaps starting to acquire her haters in others. Was Hypatia a rare exception in Alexandria in terms of the lives of women? So I know obviously she's rare in terms of women in science at this point. But did women have more rights in Alexandria? Do they have more freedom? They did have some rights,

and I think she would have been able to inherit property and keep it as her own, for example, if she didn't marry. that sort of economic independence is absolutely crucial, obviously, to being able to operate as you want. And women could divorce as well, couldn't they? Yes, they could get divorced. Because ancient Athens, women had almost no rights at all. The position of women in general in ancient Greece, the oppression has been exaggerated in that a classical Athens was not typical at all.

Women were far more oppressed there than they were in almost all other city states. The second is that if you only assess a civilisation by the legal, economic and suffrage rights, then you get no idea about everyday lives. Women had such a fantastic time in ancient religion. They had all these goddesses. They were the high priestesses everywhere. We've only just appointed our first ever archbishop, woman, Archbishop of Canterbury, compared with the monotheistic religions.

You had all these different goddesses to go to. incredibly homo social society, that is you hung out with other women of all ages at riotous women-only festivals. Oh, yeah. I mean, have you ever visited a convent? That stuff is lit. You have Aphrodite. You go to Aphrodite's temple if you want to get to be sexually attractive.

You go to Heera, if you're looking after your social status. You go to Temple of Artemis for your biology. You go to Athenaeer if you're a craftswoman or you're involved in any kind of weaving or anything like that. You've got all your own, Demeter and Persephone, is crucial to agriculture. It was wonderful, having been brought up in a strict Anglican household of the deepest sexism and being told that girls couldn't sing in choirs because their voices were impure. I would absolutely swap a few things like suffrage rights to vote for that religious experience and time with other women. One day I will write that book.

Oh, amazing. 100%. You go queen out with the girlinas while the boys about die at war. Can I ask a question about what you said about the antipathy? Yeah. What was the criticism? Like what is it that they hated about her writing or her conduct? The Roman Empire is trying to go Christian.

And people who taught pagan philosophy, so things like Neoplatonism, which told you to question everything. and do scientific explanations for things. So you were going to explain comets as something to do with something that's going on mechanically in the universe, not as a sign from God. This represents an incredible obstacle to converting the population to proper Christianity. So she became a figurehead for the resistance to the newly converted emperor. Oh my God. So in a way, her neo-pagan views were more progressive than the Christian one.

Farsely. That's what I'm talking about. And that's why her reception, as I put it, since the early 18th century, it starts with a free thinker called John Toland, who's an extraordinary man, who's a total feminist, wants women to get educated. He supports the Jews in London. He's an Irishman, but he comes over, an incredible intellectual free thinker, didn't believe really in hated horrible dogmatic religion.

So he saw in Hypatia a combination of religious tolerance, free thought, and he believed that women should be educated just as much as men. And it starts off with a treatise he wrote called Hypatia in 1720. Oh, wow. Yeah. And after that, she has been used over and over again as a symbol of free thought, scientific investigation, and religious tolerance.

And women in STEM, of course. And women and totally women in STEM. So there are two philosophy journals called Hypatia. Dora Russell, Bertrand Russell's wife wrote books about her. She is very, very important to women in science. Her, Elizabeth Holmes, what a fantastic list of women in STEM. I know several women in STEM who call their pets Hypatia. Oh, that's so sweet.

That is a good name for cat. Big cat and dog name. Yeah. There's also been some very famous racehorses called Hypatia. I don't know when all this happened. Why animals? Because she wasn't a zoology. I was going to say, is she renowned that she loved the tractor?

You know, she's just always betting on the grand national. If you go on what should I call my cat sites, it's always in the top 100. Wow. Wow. What a legacy. I like that a lot. Yeah. Okay, let's get back to the ancient world or the late antiquity world, wherever we're going to place it.

So Hypatia is obviously around in the kind of mid-to-late. 300 and Christianity had been arriving in the Roman Empire earlier than that and it'd taken 60, 70, 70, 80 years to sort of become the official religion and a bit of a pushback and then, you know, but here we are in Alexandria in Egypt and we've got damage to pagan temples. We've got kind of real physical changes. We've got tensions and we get the arrival of a new person called Cyril, but before Cyril, there's someone else important, we should mention. Yes, so between 391 when the Sorrapan was destroyed and the nice thing. Creed was officially set up as what you have to believe in if you were a Christian.

One of the reasons I think that Hypatia was able to survive and carry on teaching for at least another 20 years was that the patriarch, that means the bishop, the Christian bishop of Alexandria, was a guy who was quite sympathetic to her and open-minded called Theophilus. So for 20 years she was under the protection of that bishop and he wasn't going to let all the fanatics closed down. So he's a Christian, but he's quite open-minded and he's tolerant of a science. And there were plenty of those. Yeah. There were plenty. The kind of things that were starting up were incredible schisms, arguments, the patristic arguments of the early church fathers that get so laughed at about, you know, how many angels can dance on a pin. Is there a trinity? Is there a triune? Is God a moan out? You know, all that. You know, they're all right in there. And Theophilist apparently wasn't really interested in that sort of doctrinal thing.

He was a perfectly good pastoral bishop. And he wanted harmony in his city between the Jews, the pagans and the Christians. What happened in 412 is that a very different character got to be the bishop after Theophilus died. And he is called Cyril. He only gets into that position by beating up another guy called Timotheus. you know, there's a huge amount rioting. As is the Christian way. Yeah. But Alexandria had

actually for several hundred years been known as the riot city. I mean, they do like rioting in Alexandria. So it's almost any excuse for a riot. So there were lots of fights and riots and bloodshed before Cyril even got in. So I think he's already slightly paranoid

before he even gets in. He wants to secure his power base. Things then heat up even further because a new governor appointed by the Roman Empire who's a secular governor comes in who's actually a Greek all these people are Greek even though they're

in the Roman Empire called Arrestes as in the Greek mythical figure. He just happens to be called Arrestes and that is it's the face off between Cyril and Arrestes that poor Hypatia is caught So which one of them is Millwall

I think that's a question on everybody's minds right now Yeah. Now, both of these guys were very, were ruthless. And is Arresti's tolerant if I pay show or no? Absolutely. Okay, so he's on her, so. He's pretending to be a Christian because he's got to, but he's actually deeply interested in all the near Platonism.

And there were Christian near Platonism. So he's a political appointee. He's governor of Egypt. Yeah. On behalf of the Roman Empire. Yeah. He's a Greek. So it's all these sort of different identities.

And they're talking Greek. All of their intellectual life will have been conducted in Greek. And the intellectual Jews, all new Greek, that's the language of the intellectual life. Very, very few people are speaking Latin. Much like today. Yeah. Same. So she gets caught in the crossfire.

And we start to get violence in the city and we get Cyril and Arrestes, you know, they're starting to be on opposite sides of mob violence, right? And some of this mob violence targets Jews, some of it targets Christians, some of it target peg. You know, everyone's getting hurt. Exactly. So we're thinking, is it modern terms? It's like of the mayor of Rome and. the Pope, had moms?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. It's almost, yeah, it's, I guess governor of Egypt is a sort of bigger job, I suppose. It's kind of he's ruling a big old chunk of land. But yeah, but the bishop of, yeah, it's. And the Christians were very, very, very anxious to. Sorry, mayor of Los Angeles and Tom Cruise.

A much better analogy, yeah. Yes. Both Arrestes and Cyril wanted to be the top guy. Right. Okay. In Alexandria. And Cyril basically won. But it started off with quarrels about the Jews.

Neither of these guys is a Jew. How do we treat the Jews? Arrestes is a secular guy who is interested in harmony in his multi-ethnic city. Cyril is persecuting the Jews. Arrestes decides to hold a meeting with the Jews where he suggests that they actually quiet and down a bit, not be so provocative. Victim blaming. Well, a bit. So they used to have these really wild dances on the Sabbath.

Arresti suggested at this meeting they slightly calm them down. Unfortunately, Cyril has spent a spy in who is a Christian called Hirox who then foments the resentment of the Jews against Arrestes. It's that complicated. Oh, wow. Okay.

Ajean provocateur. He went in as an as an ashoom provocateur. He was undercover. To tell the Jews who he actually hates, Ian, Herax and Cyril. It provokes them into violence. There's a huge riot. Some people die.

Arrestes then has Herax arrested and tortured in public, just to up the ante a little bit in the theatre, no less. Which was pretty stupid thing to do because that is, as I say, it's escalating. Escalating the conflict. And there are reprisals and a lot more persecution of Jews. Cyril starts bringing in various different... groups of thugs, really. One is his

Nietzran monks. Now, the Nietzran monks are the most aesthetic of all. They're way out in the desert. And they live in the desert on practically nothing except bugs and caterpillars and what drops of water they can squeeze out of palm trees. And they're incredibly religious and aesthetic. So

they're really, because they're so deprived, they come in, they're very violent, they come in and join his private army. Then he gets the parat, Bolani, the people who risk their lives. They're really weird, because to start off, as a group of Christian paramedics. Incredible.

They are paramedics who were supposed to do things like take old people into old people's own and take people back from hospitals and protect, but they also serve, sort of under Cyril, but they also serve as his private bodyguard, his bouncers,

his kind of mafioso thugs. Those two jobs do not normally go together. It's weird. Well, people don't know, but the entirety of the KGB is trained in first aid. and how not to give it. It's really like that. They're kind of all-purpose private army.

Everything you're describing to me, and it's like, it is true. Women are too emotional. Men lack that emotion that is needed to lead because all of that has no emotion in it whatsoever. Extraordinary. The exact process we don't understand by which the enmity against arrestees got transferred to Hypatia.

Ooh. Yes. Where does she even come into this? minutes you've been talking. We haven't mentioned her one. I'm sorry. But no, but no, it's a good point. Like, where is she in all this? Wait, so the parable-alani have something to do with this? Orestes really likes it. He likes neoplatonic philosophy. The kind of Alexandria and his vision is precisely the one where she is going to be this dominant intellectual force and help keep

everything open and progressive and the old Alexandria of intellectual culture is not replaced by a fanatical, primitive Christian theocracy. Yeah. I mean, that is what we're talking. huge issue. But the hate, people said she had, this is where my Coptic bishop from later on comes in useful, they said she had beguiled him sexually and entranceded the governor of the empire with her witchcraft. Which is literally her doing two plus two. He was four and he's going, whewa! And the hatred for her was so much that it did lead to her being assaulted by the Parabolani. So the kind of the paramedics turn into paramilitary. Yeah.

Limey. Different explanations have been offered, as I say, for exactly how the government got so, the secular government, the administration under Arrestes, got so associated with her. But it was. And there's a monk called Amonius who tries to kill Arrestes. Yes. And he hurts Arrestes but doesn't kill him. He's one of the neutrons.

Right. Yes. And he's then captured, tortured, executed. He's another. Yeah. Are you... Were Nietrans? Did we used to discuss that?

I don't think we did. The monks from the desert. Yeah, the desert monks. Damn. Okay. The caterpillar munches. Yeah. Exactly.

So... The desert in Egypt was absolutely full at this time. People were coming from all over the world to become extremely fanatical Christians in the desert. Yeah. It was a thing. Burning man. Totally. Again, I'm putting into terms we've understood.

Exactly. It's a thing. So another guy, Arrestes, is very heavy-handed. Yeah. If he had behaved more like Theophilus, who knows how much longer that rather tense de Tont couldn't have lasted

but it did for 20 more years under Theophilus. When he was bishop, when Arrestes comes in at the same time of Cyril, chalk and cheese. So they're executing and punishing and torturing their enemies. Yes, both of them.

Yeah, okay, and so... So did the Parabalani kill Hypatia? Yes. Yeah, I was going to say, word of warning to you, Olga and also to listener, you know, we have to sort of change gear into some pretty horrible territory here.

The comedy maybe stops for a bit because this is awful. You know, the film does it, you know, the Rachel Vise movie does it pretty brutally. The film does do it brutally, but also what I really like was it managed not to be at all voyeuristic. Sure. There's a whole genre of 19th century paintings of Hypatia being stripped naked and beaten up. Yeah. Really revolting Victorian sort of sadomasochistic pornography objectifying her. and she's always ridiculously Caucasian looking in these paintings

and this beautiful white body being savaged by rather dark-looking sort of Coptic Christians. You know, it's sort of racist, it's everything. No, they either arrested her while she was actually teaching or pulled her out of her chariot, her vehicle, as she was driving to or from her teaching post and took her into a church which had been a temple, I think, of Zeus. It had been a temple and had been converted into the cathedral and killed her in a way that seems to have involved either stoning or taking down a certain kind of tile, which they called shells. They were like big seashells and somehow, you know, people even say that they skinned her.

But she did die. She had no one to protect her. A rest ease just wasn't good enough. You know, you can blame the guy, I think, if you want to. So she's caught up in this violence. It's in no way her fault. She's not incited it. She hasn't joined aside.

She's just been teaching in her. We have no evidence for that whatsoever that she was, had any political interest. She obviously wanted the multi-ethnic and open society. But it was the ire, the rage that Arrestes seems to have managed to get aroused in Cyril and the Christians. arrest he then disappears off the... Yeah, I was going to say, what happened to the end? Well, there is no more word of him.

He stops being governor. Somebody else comes in as governor and maybe people said that he had screwed up. Maybe he was actually genuinely upset and thought this is no way to... We don't know very much about him's guy. The one we know most about is Cyril, who went on to be one of the most successful bishops

and early Christians of all time, was involved in all the most... famous theological disputes and it was even made a saint. Yes. Oh, come on. Wait, so this was the beginning of the end, right? So, like, from this moment on, it became more and more conservatively Christian, right? Yeah.

Oh, boy. Was there a sort of sense of shock that Hypatia, this great intellectual, had been killed in such a disgustingly horrific way? You know, do we get a sense of the empire at large going, hang on, what? Two or three sources lamented sorely. Yes, and these tend to be, again, the sort of Greek intellectuals. even with those who convert to Christianity, very many of them still think the philosophy is wonderful and the science is wonderful. Some people have said that laws about violence and stuff were tightened up in Alexandria,

but I can't really see any substantial data to support that. So Cyril becomes a saint. Ammonius became a martyr saint. So Ammonius was the Nitrean monk who tried to kill Arrestes. He became a saint. And then you said that Hypatia becomes a sort of martyr to philosophy later. I think she's a secular saint. Yeah. She becomes a very important representative for both women in science and free thinking.

Yeah. Both of those were in the John Tolland. So that's the 18th century. That's 1720. Yeah. Amazing. And don't forget virgins. Patron saying virgins.

Here we go. That's amazing. What a life. I mean, Olga, do you think Hypatia deserves her role as, you know, the first woman in STEM? Are you happy with that title? Yes, absolutely. Good. That was just so deeply, deeply sad.

I don't have anything. No, I know. It's an extraordinary life because it's an intellectual life, but it sort of crashes into all these other sort of huge moments in history. And to listen and when in doubt just throw a used pad at them. She ought to have been in Alexandria

teaching philosophy and maths. Always, but it was the wrong time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we do know her about us, so we do get to celebrate her and that's, you know, it's worth discussing her and thank you for that. And yeah, it's a very sad end, but extraordinary life, I think. Yeah.

And maybe you, listener. Consider renaming your cat. Yes. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Olga and I sit silently doing our geometry homework while Professor Edith stands at the front of the class and lectures us with her astrolabe.

Tell us something we need to know about Hypatia. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Professor Edith. There's something else other than craters on the moon that have been named after Hypatia. And this is the Hypatia stone. The Hypatia stone was discovered

in 1996 by an Egyptian geologist. He discovered it in what are called the Libyan glass parts of the Sahara. Now, Libyan glass is some sort of strange meteorite type, sort of mineral that looks like glass. He was researching that and he came across a small, very, very rough, craggy looking stone, only about 1.3 inches in diameter, tiny little sparkly diamonds in it. And it has been tested now. It's been sent by people in Los Angeles, universities, and in South Africa, Johannesburg. This stone's mineral makeup is so extraordinary that it means it's almost certainly made, formed,

before our solar system. It is quite extraordinary. Now, he wanted it, the geologists who found it, wanted it called after Hypatia, which is very sweet, because as an Egyptian scientist, he saw himself as a descendant. He didn't name it an Arabic name. He named it, this tradition of the Library of Alexandria.

But just imagine this tiny stone, and I've seen lots of different pictures of it. Unfortunately, the scientists have cut it into bits, so it's even smaller to examine it. This means that it's more than 4.6 billion years old. it was formed at 198 minus 198 degrees centigrade or colder in a supernova. That's amazing. Beautiful. She's timeless.

I feel that. High patient the eternal idea, the eternal continent in the solar system. I mean, pretty good to be 4.2 billion. 4.6 billion. I think she'd like it too because she liked stars and stuff. If I have one takeaway, she likes all that stuff.

But it's kind of union with the one. Yeah. Yeah. It came from outer space. Absolutely. It came before our galaxy. So what do you know now? It's time now for this.

What do you know now? This is our quickfire quiz for Olga to see how much she has learned. And Olga, you are, and what's this expression? I'm gently, I'm going to call it flustered. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been taking notes, but they make very little sense. I'm sure they're excellent. They look very comprehensive.

A neat. We'll see. We'll see. We've got ten questions. We've talked about all these things. Let's see if you can remember some stuff here. Okay. Question one.

In which Egyptian city did Hypatia live and work? Alexandria. There we go. We're up and running. Okay, this is a slightly hard one. Question two, what was the name of Hypatia's mathematician father? Theon. Oh, very good.

Yeah, very good. Which means godly. Question three, name one thing that is now named after Hypatia. A moon crater. Yeah, absolutely. Or an incredible diamond in the desert. Or butterfly genus, a font, asteroid belt. Hypatia font is very nice, by the way, if you want to use it.

Question four, what did Hypatia inherit from her father? What role? Oh, the professor of math at the university? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. What did you think I meant by inheriting? No. I don't know. She's got his eyes.

Question five, what astronomical instrument did Hypatia possibly produce a design for? Astrolabe. Yeah, astrolabe, yeah. Lab, sorry, not long. Yeah, that's just your handwriting, that's fine. Question six, can you name one area of a or mathematics that Hypatia wrote commentaries on. Arithmetic.

It was, and also conic sections is possibly her. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the big one. The cones, the traffic cones and the ice cream cones. Question seven, what did Hypatia allegedly do when a student claimed that he loved her? She threw a sanitary napkin at him. She did. Question eight. Slade.

Question eight, what was the name of the philosophical school of thought that Hypatia followed? I have it written here. No, no, no, no, no. Don't you even. Don't you even think. Wait. Okay, it was pagan, but it was, oh my God, I literally wrote it down because you kept saying it. Neo-Platonist?

Yeah, very good. Amazing. Well done. Question nine. Hypatia likely practiced which type of religion but maybe didn't actually worship. Pagan? Yeah, absolutely. And this for a perfect turn, how sadly did Hypatia die?

She was attacked ruthlessly by the Parabolani in a converted Zeus temple. that was turned into a, not Catholic, Christian Cathedral. I'm going to give you 11 out of 10 because you remember Parabiani. All right. Incredible. Technical recovery on the last one there.

You really, really paid attention. I was listening to you. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very interesting. I mean, you're a PhD student. Of course you're paying attention. You're a big brain. I'm surrounded by very clever people here. But that's amazing.

11 out of 10, Olga, well done. Thank you very much. I had a fantastic teacher. Yeah, absolutely. As hypotia was too. Well, thank you so much, Olga. You're a fantastic student? No.

I'm not a really good host, yeah. No, no. You agree. You make it all happen. No, that's fine. Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much, Edith. Listener, if you're in the mood for more ancient philosophers with Edith,

check out our episodes on Aristotle and Pythagoras. He's more than just a triangle guy. It's quite the life. And to hear more from Olga, of course, you can listen to our episodes on Ivan the terrible. He was terrible, by the way. He really was. That's confirmed. Terrible confirmed.

Or the episode on Vital Electricity, which is an absolute hoot. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, I just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the excellent Professor Edith Hall from University of Durham. Thank you, Edith. Thank you, I had a riot. Very fitting. And in Comedy Corner, we had the outstanding Olga Koch. Thank you, very, very much. And to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we solve another forgotten historical

equation. But for now, I'm off to go and beg Rachel Weiss to play me in a movie. Bye! That would be good. Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Adam Simcox. It was written by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Dr. Emma Noghous. And me. The audio producer was Steve Hanke and our production coordinator was Jill Hugget. It was produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer, Dr. Emma Nogus. And our executive editor was Philip Sellers. Greg will be bringing a live version of the You're Dead to Me.

podcast to theatres around the UK this spring. You can join him in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester. And for more information and ticket details, go to your dead to me live.com. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like evil genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, Evil Animals. Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. Are vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, are bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages, and we're going there. Domestic Cats,

evil or genius? Pig out on evil animals in the Evil Genius podcast feed. First on BBC Sounds. This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.