Hypatias Death According To Socrates His

Hypatia of Alexandria
Her Context and Legacy
Edited by
Dawn LaValle Norman and Alex Petkas
Mohr Siebeck
e-offprint for the author with publisher’s permission.

Dawn LaValle Norman, born 1983; 2015 PhD in Classics and Hellenic Studies at
Princeton University; Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University’s Institute for
Religion and Critical Inquiry in Melbourne.
orcid.org / 0000‑0002‑3354‑1298
Alex Petkas, born 1984; 2019 PhD in Classics and Hellenic Studies at Princeton Uni‑
versity; Assistant Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno.
orcid.org / 0000‑0001‑6891‑8908
ISBN 978‑3‑16‑154969‑4 / eISBN 978‑3‑16‑158954‑6

DOI 10.1628 / 978‑3‑16‑158954‑6
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Table of Contents
Introduction: The Timeliness of Hypatia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Dawn LaValle Norman and Alex Petkas
Hypatia and Synesius
1. Hypatia and the Desert: A Late Antique Defense of Classicism . . . . . . 7

Alex Petkas
2. Desire and Despair: Synesius, Hypatia, and No Consolation

of Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Helmut Seng
3. Synesius’ Letters to Hypatia: On the “End” of a Philosopher‑

Friendship and its Timelessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Henriette Harich‑Schwarzbauer
Hypatia in Context
4. Bloody Iuvenalia: Hypatia, Pulcheria Augusta, and the Beginnings

of Cyril of Alexandria’s Episcopate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Walter F. Beers
5. The Shattered Icon: An Alternative Reading of Hypatia’s Killing

(Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15.5 – 7, John of Nikiu, Chron. 84.100 – 103,
and Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 11.23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Mareile Haase
6. The Private Devotions of Intellectual Hellenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

David Frankfurter
7. ‘A Mere Geometer’? Hypatia in the Context of Alexandrian

Neoplatonism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Sebastian Gertz

VIII Table of Contents
Hypatia in her Ancient and Modern Reception
8. Hypatia’s Sisters? Gender and the Triumph of Knowledge

in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Joshua Fincher
9. The Ideal (Bleeding?) Female: Hypatia of Alexandria

and Distorting Patriarchal Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Victoria Leonard
10. Hypatia and her Eighteenth‑Century Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Edward Watts
11. Starring Hypatia: Amenábar’s Agora and the Tropology of Reception 209
Cédric Scheidegger Laemmle
Appendix A: Translation of Primary Sources on Hypatia . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Alex Petkas and Dawn LaValle Norman
Appendix B: Hypatia’s Death According to Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15:

A Textual Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Mareile Haase
Bibliography of Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Bibliography of Secondary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Index
Ancient Authors and Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Appendix B
Hypatia’s Death According to Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15:

A Textual Commentary
Mareile Haase
Socrates’ brief account of Hypatia’s death has met with a variety of interpreta-
tions, many of them predicated upon contradictory views about the actual mean-
ing of the Greek text of Hist. eccl. 7.15. The following commentary, which focuses
on select phrases and words, aims to resolve some of these contradictions.*
Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15.5 – 7
5. Καὶ δὴ συμφρονήσαντες ἄνδρες τὸ φρόνημα ἔνθερμοι, ὧν ἡγεῖτο Πέτρος

τις ἀναγνώστης, ἐπιτηροῦσι τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἐπανιοῦσαν ἐπὶ οἰκίαν ποθέν, καὶ
ἐκ τοῦ δίφρου ἐκβαλόντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ᾗ ἐπώνυμον Καισάριον, συνέλ-
κουσιν, ἀποδύσαντές τε τὴν ἐσθῆτα ὀστράκοις ἀνεῖλον, καὶ μεληδὸν διασπά-
σαντες ἐπὶ τὸν καλούμενον Κιναρῶνα τὰ μέλη συνάραντες πυρὶ κατανήλωσαν.
6. Τοῦτο οὐ μικρὸν μῶμον Κυρίλλῳ καὶ τῇ Ἀλεξανδρέων ἐκκλησίᾳ εἰργάσατο·
ἀλλότριον γὰρ παντελῶς τῶν φρονούντων τὰ Χριστοῦ φόνοι καὶ μάχαι καὶ τὰ
τούτοις παραπλήσια. 7. Καὶ ταῦτα πέπρακται τῷ τετάρτῳ ἔτει τῆς Κυρίλλου
ἐπισκοπῆς ἐν ὑπατείᾳ Ὁνωρίου τὸ δέκατον καὶ Θεοδοσίου τὸ ἕκτον ἐν μηνὶ
Μαρτίῳ νηστειῶν οὐσῶν.
1. συμφρονήσαντες ἄνδρες
As Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer points out, Socrates’ wording implies that
Hypatia’s public assassination was not a spontaneous lynching but had been
planned.1 In further support of her argument, I adduce the sixth-century Latin
translation of Socrates’ text that Epiphanius prepared for Cassiodorus’ Historia
* All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. For Socrates’ account of Hypatia’s death
and my translation of the above passage, see Haase, this volume, Chapter 5.
1
Henriette Harich‑Schwarzbauer, Hypatia: Die spätantiken Quellen, eingeleitet, kommentiert
und interpretiert, Sapheneia 16 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), 204 – 205, 215.

256 Mareile Haase
ecclesiastica tripartita, where conspirantes (11.12.4, ed. Jacob and Hanslik, 644)
leaves no room for a different understanding. Some modern readers assume that
things spiralled out of control after an initial attack intended merely to intimi-
date or harass Hypatia,2 but neither Socrates nor any other source supports such
an interpretation. On the contrary, Damascius likewise depicts Hypatia’s killing
as pre-meditated, and planned by Cyril.3 There is no information in Socrates
on the lead time of the conspiracy; after all, the attack on Hypatia could still
have been regarded as the result of an ad hoc decision on the conspirators’ part.
Yet the respective wording in Socrates and Cassiodorus / Epiphanius excludes
the possibility that the former viewed the assault on Hypatia as purely sponta-
neous or accidental. Of course, this represents Socrates’ viewpoint, rather than
any “factual” course of events.
2. Πέτρος τις ἀναγνώστης

In late antique Egypt and elsewhere, the ἀναγνώστης4, “lector,”5 was a low-rank-
ing member of the clergy, whose task it was to recite and interpret lections from
a pulpit.6 Although minor, the office entailed the important function of commu-
nicating biblical and devotional texts to an assembly that must have been largely
illiterate, even in a major urban setting like Alexandria. One of the lower ranks
within the clerical cursus honorum, the office in some cases led all the way up
2
E. g. Christian Lacombrade, “Hypatia,” RAC 16 (1994): 956 – 967, here 959; Edward J. Watts,
Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher, Women in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017), 115.
3
Damascius, Vita Isidori F *102,32 Zintzen: ἐπιβουλεῦσαι; cf. Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypa-
tia, 279.
4
The ἀναγνώστης / lector and his office: Henri Leclercq, “Lecteur,” DACL 8.1 (1929): 2242 – 69
and John G. Davies, “Deacons, Deaconesses and the Minor Orders in the Patristic Period,”
JEH 14 (1963): 1 – 15, esp. 10 – 14 (sources); Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early
Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 218 – 24
(overview); Valeriy A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Develop-
ment and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries, VC Supplement 102
(Leiden: Brill, 2010), 178 – 81 and Dan Nässelqvist, Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors,
Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1 – 4, NovTSup 163 (Leiden: Brill, 2016),
110 – 16 (in early Christianity); Ewa Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’an-
tiquité tardive, SEAug 52 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1996), 238 – 48 (local
specifics in late antique Egypt); Georg Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger im spätantiken Ägypten
nach den Aussagen der griechischen und koptischen Papyri und Ostraka, APF Beiheft 13 (Munich:
Saur, 2002), 38 n. 248 (documentary texts).
5
The translation “maestro,” “teacher” (Clelia Martínez Maza, Hipatia: la estremecedora his-
toria de la última gran filósofa de la antigüedad y la fascinante ciudad de Alejandría [Madrid: La
Esfera de los Libros, 2009], 316), is misleading.
6
Performative aspects of the lectors’ occupation: William D. Shiell, Reading Acts: The Lec-
tor and the Early Christian Audience, BibInt 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), who assumes continuity
between Greek and Roman rhetorical conventions and an early Christian lector’s performance,
which is debatable.

Appendix B 257
to the mitre: Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril, for instance, began their eccle-
siastical careers as lectors. The ἀναγνώστης was appointed and ordained by the
bishop; hence it seems safe to say that Peter was the bishop’s man.
Since this was a low-ranking position that could lead to higher office, it is an
intriguing possibility (though not an irrevocable conclusion, because some peo-
ple became lectors as adults only, and others remained in the low clerical ranks
for all their lives) to think of Peter as a rather young man. The same may apply
to his co-conspirators, which sheds new light on the “hot spirit” attributed to the
group by Socrates.
According to John of Nikiu (Chron. 79.13), Athanasius appointed Theophi-
lus lector when the latter was a mere child, and the child lector is found in the
Lives of other saints as well. Moving beyond such hagiographic tropes, papal
decrees of the fourth and fifth centuries stipulate that individuals who had been
vowed to an ecclesiastical career from childhood be baptised and become lec-
tors immediately, at a preadolescent age, and not remain in that order beyond
the age of twenty.7 It could be argued that such decrees are normative in charac-
ter since epitaphs from late antique Egypt mention not only lectors who died in
their teens but also some who died in their twenties: to the tomb inscriptions for
lectors from Hermonthis (14 years), Aswan (21 years) and Akhmim (26 years)
recorded by Ewa Wipszycka8 I add another one of unspecified Egyptian prove-
nance, which commemorates a lector who died at age 22 (SB I 2648). Scholars
think that Cyril had been ordained reader of the Church of Alexandria by 403,
when he would have been approximately 25 years of age.9 Outside Egypt, more
than fifty percent of the epitaphs of lectors assembled by Henri Leclercq com-
memorate individuals who died between 13 and 26 years of age.10 In the sixth
century, Justinian’s Novels (123.13) prescribe 18 years as the minimum age for
lectors, which opens up the possibility that lectors younger than 18 were an
(undesirable) historical reality.
The evidence demonstrates that adolescents and young adults often became
lectors. It is thus plausible, even if it must remain conjectural, that Socra-
tes describes a scenario where Hypatia was assassinated by an unruly group
of young clerical hotspurs eager to gain deeper favour with their bishop. This
7
Papal decrees: Paul H. Lafontaine, Les conditions positives de l’accession aux ordres dans la
première législation ecclésiastique, 300 – 492, Publications Sériées de l’Université d’Ottawa 71 (Ot-
tawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1963), 125 – 33; Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme,
242. Further sources mentioning child lectors: Leclercq, “Lecteur”; Lafontaine, Les conditions
positives, 148 – 49; Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 224.
8
Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme, 243.
9
John A. McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Its History, The-
ology, and Texts, VC Supplement 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 5; Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria
(London: Routledge, 2000), 6. Julian the Apostate and Theodoret became lectors at about 14 to
20 years of age: Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 328 n. 61.
10
Leclercq, “Lecteur,” 2247 – 48.

258 Mareile Haase
assumption is further supported by the fact that juvenile delinquents, often from
well-to-do families, formed cliques that constituted a prominent group among
urban perpetrators in late antiquity.11
Many scholars hold that Hypatia was a victim of “mob violence”;12 it is there-
fore worth noting that there is no explicit evidence in Socrates’ text that the
assailants belonged to a Christian “mob”.13 Nor does Socrates mention any
involvement of monks or of Cyril’s strongmen, the parabalani.14 As a lector able
to perform publicly, the leader of the perpetrators in Socrates is more likely
than not to have been part of those literate – though not necessarily highly edu-
cated – echelons of society that were as rare among Christian communities as
they were in contemporary society at large.15
11
Numerous attestations: Jens-Uwe Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität in der Spätantike (Mu-
nich: Beck, 2014), 156 – 65.
12
E. g. McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria, 13 – 14; Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 208 n. 45; John
J. O’Keefe, “Introduction,” in St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1 – 12, trans. Philip R. Amidon
and John J. O’Keefe, FC 118 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 3 – 32,
here 17; Glen W. Bowersock, “Parabalani: A Terrorist Charity in Late Antiquity,” Anabases 12
(2010): 45 – 54, here 45; Johannes Hahn, “Parabalani,” RAC 26 (2014): 924 – 32, here 928; Watts,
Hypatia, 3, 115 – 16, 123 – 25, 154, 183 n. 40. Gemma Beretta, Ipazia d’Alessandria (Rome: Edi-
tori Riuniti / University Press, 22014), 178, 285 opines that Orestes’ and Hypatia’s attackers were
identical. But neither Socrates nor any other sources state that Hypatia was attacked by monks.
Besides, Orestes’ main assailant Ammonius was dead at the time of Hypatia’s killing.
13
Later accounts by Damascius (Vita Isidori F *102,33 – 34 Zintzen: ἐπιθέμενοι πολλοὶ
ἀθρόοι θηριώδεις ἄνθρωποι, “many men in one, beast-like, set upon her”) and John of Nikiu
(Chron. 84.100, Robert H. Charles, trans., The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu, Translated from
Zotenberg’s Ethiopic Text [London: Williams and Norgate, 1916], 102: “And thereafter a multitude
of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter . . .”) mention a group or crowd of attackers,
though no mob and no monks. However, the “crowd” may be a rhetorical device to emphasise
Hypatia’s victimisation in Damascius and underline the attackers’ righteousness in John of Nikiu.
14
Overview over the recent debate: Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 209 – 10, 281 (with bib-
liography); Hahn, “Parabalani.” Harich-Schwarzbauer is rightly hesitant to link Hypatia’s killing
and the parabalani. Contra: e. g. Lacombrade, “Hypatia,” 959; Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexan-
dria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 95 – 96; Richard Klein, “Die Ermordung
der Philosophin Hypatia: Zum Kampf um die politische Macht in Alexandria,” in Roma versa per
aevum: Ausgewählte Schriften zur heidnischen und christlichen Spätantike, ed. Raban von Haehling
and Klaus Scherberich, Spudasmata 74 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999), 72 – 90, here 82 – 83 and n. 31;
Bowersock, “Parabalani.” The fact that the imperial court reduced the number of the parabalani
and eliminated episcopal control over them in 416, only to reintroduce them with increased
numbers in 418, seems to reflect a waxing and waning of the relationship between the imperial
court and Cyril, but there is no explicit evidence that it was linked to the killing of Hypatia.
15
Evidence from late antique Egypt for literate and educated clerics vastly outweighs ev-
idence for illiteracy in ecclesiastical circles; the occasional illiterate cleric should therefore be
considered the exception that proves the rule. Extent of literacy among early Christians: Gamble,
Books and Readers in the Early Church, 2 – 10. Literacy, education and bilingualism among cler-
ics in late antique Egypt: Annick Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’Église d’Égypte au IVe siècle
(328 – 373), CÉFR 216 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996), 662 – 70 (fourth century); Wipszy-
cka, Études sur le christianisme, 107 – 35, esp. 117 – 21 (clerics in general) and 415 – 26 (lectors);
Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger im spätantiken Ägypten, 70 – 75, 250 – 54 with nn. 300 and 305
(lectors and other clerics in the papyri who served as scribes and notaries).

Appendix B 259
3. τὴν ἄνθρωπον
Commentators have not usually highlighted or explained the use of the female
article. It is true that ἡ ἄνθρωπος is sometimes employed in a neutral sense, both
in classical Greek and in church historians contemporary with Socrates.16 But I
suggest that in the present context, Socrates uses the expression “with a sense of
pity”:17 “the poor creature.”
A similar commiserative use of ἡ ἄνθρωπος can be found in Demosthenes’
On the False Embassy. There, an Olynthian captive is stripped of her dress and
whipped at the behest of drunken banqueters when she refuses to recline and
sing – that is, as I interpret the scene, when she refuses to comply with the role of
hetaira, which is forced on her by the banqueters in their humiliating assault on
her sexual respectability. Demosthenes highlights the depravity of his opponent
Aischines by evoking sympathy for the victimised woman. His presentation of
the Olynthian captive as “free and chaste” is positive, which precludes a depre-
ciatory connotation of ἡ ἄνθρωπος in the oration.18
The rather similar context of excessive violence against a defenceless woman
suggests a similar understanding in Socrates. Like Demosthenes, Socrates accen-
tuates the perpetrators’ ruthlessness by evoking empathy for their victim. At the
very outset of the killing episode, the commiserative use of the female article
reveals Socrates’ distant but sympathetic attitude towards Hypatia.
4. ἐκ τοῦ δίφρου ἐκβαλόντες

It is not immediately clear which meaning of δίφρος should apply – “litter /
sedan”, “carriage,” or “seat”?19 Harich-Schwarzbauer translates “Sänfte, point-
ing out that Socrates uses a different word, ὄχημα, for Orestes’ carriage in Hist.
eccl. 7.14.2.20 Dzielska has revived the view that Hypatia was attacked on the
speaker’s chair in her lecture-room. But that interpretation forces Dzielska to
16
Sozomenus, HE 2.7.4; Theodoret, Hist. E. 1.18.4; further examples: PGL 141 s. v. ἄνθρωπος
B.3. A neutral meaning is also chosen in Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ Latin translation of Socrates
(11.12.4, ed. Jacob and Hanslik, 644), where ἡ ἄνθρωπος is rendered as Latin mulier.
17
LSJ 141 – 42 s. v. ἄνθρωπος II, with examples of the neutral, pejorative, and commiserative
use in classical Greek literature. Cf. German “das Mensch” (in contrast to the usual “der Mensch”),
used regionally, with reference to women, commiseratively or with contempt: Günther Dros-
dowski, ed., Duden: Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in acht Bänden (Mannheim:
Duden Verlag, 21994), 5:2241 s. v. Mensch 2.
18
Demosthenes, Fals. leg. 197 and 198. Douglas M. MacDowell, ed., Demosthenes, On the
False Embassy (Oration 19): Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 141 and Harvey Yunis, ed., Demosthenes, Speeches 18 and 19, Translated with
Introduction and Notes, The Oratory of Classical Greece 9 (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2005), 174 translate neutrally “the woman.” In his commentary, MacDowell, Demosthenes, On the
False Embassy, 288 altogether ignores the commiserative connotation of the phrase.
19
LSJ 438 s. v. δίφρος.
20
Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 190, 205.

260 Mareile Haase
discount Socrates’ reliability21 when he says that Hypatia was attacked while
returning home. Dzielska’s argument is inspired by the recent archaeological
discoveries of an architectural complex at Kom el-Dikka, which the excavators
have interpreted as lecture halls.22 Dzielska also follows the translations of John
of Nikiu (Chron. 84.101) by Charles and Zotenberg, whose French rendering
“chaire” implies a (professor’s) chair.23 But the usual Greek word for a teacher’s
chair is θρόνος.24
Besides, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the notion of a
non-movable seat or speaker’s chair, of the kind found at Kom el-Dikka, is at
odds with Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ translation of Socrates (vehiculum, “means
of transportation”: Hist. eccl. tripart. 11.12.4, ed. Jacob and Hanslik, 644). A litter
or sedan chair would have been appropriate for women, and in either case Hypa-
tia is depicted using a means of transportation that was a privilege of the elite.
21
Maria Dzielska, “Once More on Hypatia’s Death,” in Divine Men and Women in the His-
tory and Society of Late Hellenism, ed. Maria Dzielska and Kamilla Twardowska, Byzantina et
Slavica Cracoviensia 7 (Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2013), 65 – 74, here 71 – 72: “Socra-
tes’ account . . . proves that he did not have exact knowledge about the event.” Cf. Maria Dzielska,
“Learned Women in the Alexandrian Scholarship and Society of Late Hellenism,” in What Hap-
pened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?, ed. Mostafa El-Abbadi, Omnia Fathallah and Ismail
Serageldin, Library of the Written Word 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 129 – 47, here 140 – 41. By contrast,
Lacombrade, “Hypatia,” 959 and Martin Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates: Untersuchun-
gen zu Geschichtsdarstellung, Methode und Person, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmenge-
schichte 68 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997) 248 emphasise Socrates’ reliability.
22
Tomasz Derda, Tomasz Markiewicz and Ewa Wipszycka, eds., Alexandria: Auditoria of
Kom el-Dikka and Late Antique Education, JJP Supplement 8 (Warsaw: Taubenschlag Founda-
tion, 2007). It is chronologically difficult to establish a direct link between the Kom el-Dikka
excavations and Hypatia’s death: Adam Łukaszewicz, “Lecture Halls at Kom el-Dikka in Alexan-
dria,” in Divine Men and Women in the History and Society of Late Hellenism, ed. Maria Dzielska
and Kamilla Twardowska, Byzantina et Slavica Cracoviensia 7 (Cracow: Jagiellonian University
Press, 2013), 101 – 12, esp. 110 – 11.
23
Hermann Zotenberg, ed., Chronique de Jean, évêque de Nikiou: texte éthiopien publié et
traduit (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1883), 346: “la trouvèrent assise en chaire.” In Charles’ trans-
lation (The Chronicle of John, 102), the philosopher descends from a “(lofty) chair” before she is
dragged through the streets of Alexandria. Watts, Hypatia, 3, 115 – 16 is undecided as to whether
Hypatia was seized by her killers while teaching or on her way home.
24
LSJ 807 s. v. θρόνος I 4. The (episcopal) θρόνος is connected with teaching in (Pseudo-?)
Chrysostomus, In SS. Petrum apostolum et in Eliam prophetam 2.732 B (PG 50:728). The θρόνος
in late antique educational settings: Grzegorz Majcherek, “The Late Roman Auditoria of Alex-
andria: An Archaeological Overview,” in Alexandria: Auditoria of Kom el-Dikka and Late An-
tique Education, ed. Tomasz Derda, Tomasz Markiewicz and Ewa Wipszycka, JJP Supplement 8
(Warsaw: Taubenschlag Foundation, 2007), 11 – 50, here 38 – 39; Raffaella Cribiore, “Spaces for
Teaching in Late Antiquity,” in ibid., 143 – 50, here 146, 150; Grzegorz Majcherek, “Discovering
Alexandria: Archaeological Update on the Finds from Kom el-Dikka,” in Alexandria and the
North-Western Delta (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, 2010), 75 – 89, here 85
with nn. 47 – 53; Grzegorz Majcherek, “The Auditoria on Kom el-Dikka: A Glimpse of Late An-
tique Education in Alexandria,” in Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Congress of Pa-
pyrology, Ann Arbor 2007, American Studies in Papyrology (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing,
2010), 471 – 84, here 474 with nn. 16 – 18.

Appendix B 261
5. ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ᾗ ἐπώνυμον Καισάριον

Hypatia is killed near the church that takes its name from the Caesareum.25 The
first Christian building project in the city promoted by the emperor, the church
came into use under Athanasius in the mid-fourth century;26 by Cyril’s time it
was the city’s main church.27 The majority of scholars locate that church in the
Caesareum enclosure, formerly Alexandria’s centre of the imperial cult.28 The
Caesareum’s location in the city centre, the convenience of pre-existing struc-
tures, and its splendour and size must have made the complex an appropriate
site for the new church. At the same time, the church’s embeddedness within the
visible remains of a traditional cult complex set it apart.
Begun under Cleopatra VII, the Caesareum was one of the Roman city’s fore-
most sanctuaries and its enclosure included an array of porticoes, gardens and
libraries.29 It served not only as the main centre of the imperial cult in the city
25
Great Church in the Caesareum: Aristide Calderini, “Alexandreia,” in Dizionario dei nomi
geografici e topografici dell’Egitto greco-romano I,1, ed. Aristide Calderini (Cairo: Società reale di
geografia d’Egitto, 1935), 55 – 205, here 171 – 72; Annick Martin, “Les premiers siècles du chris-
tianisme à Alexandrie: essai de topographie religieuse (IIIe – IVe siècles),” RÉAug 30 (1984):
211 – 25, here 217 – 18; Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie, 148 – 49; Annick Martin, “Alexandrie à
l’époque romaine tardive: l’impact du christianisme sur la topographie et les institutions,” in
Alexandrie médiévale 1, ed. Jean-Yves Empereur and Christian Décobert, Études alexandrines 3
(Cairo: Institut français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1998), 9 – 21, here 12 – 15; Annick Martin, “Alex-
andrie: l’investissement chrétien de la ville,” in Les chrétiens dans la ville, ed. Jacques-Olivier
Boudon and Françoise Thélamon (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du
Havre, 2006), 47 – 63, here 53 – 54; Judith S. McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt,
c. 300 B. C. to A. D. 700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 231 – 32, 242, 250, 257 – 58,
406 – 07 n. 25.
26
When the city’s Christian community first demanded permission to convene there for
Easter in 352, they claimed to do so for the purpose of praying for the emperor’s well-being (ἀξι-
ούντων ἐν τῇ μεγάλῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ συνελθεῖν κἀκεῖ πάντας εὔχεσθαι καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς σῆς σωτηρίας:
Athanasius, Apol. Const. 14.5) and thus continued, advertently or not, one of the Hellenic site’s
former functions.
27
Bernd Isele, Kampf um Kirchen: Religiöse Gewalt, heiliger Raum und christliche Topographie
in Alexandria und Konstantinopel (4. Jahrhundert), JAC Ergänzungsband, Kleine Reihe 4 (Mün-
ster: Aschendorff, 2010), 192 and n. 418.
28
Jean Gascou, “Les églises d’Alexandrie: questions de méthode,” in Alexandrie médiévale 1,
ed. Jean-Yves Empereur and Christian Décobert, Études alexandrines 3 (Cairo: Institut français
d’Archéologie Orientale, 1998), 23 – 44, here 32 – 33 is alone in suggesting that the Caesareum
church was in the city’s south, basing this hypothesis on a Coptic homily and on Epiphanius,
Pan. 69.2.2 – 3, ed. Holl, 3:153. Contra: Martin, “Alexandrie: l’investissement chrétien de la ville,”
53 – 54 and n. 34, who interprets Epiphanius as referring to a building within the Caesareum
complex; McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 242 and n. 34, who distinguishes
between the church mentioned by Epiphanius and the Great Church in the Caesareum.
29
Roman Caesareum: Calderini, “Alexandreia,” 118 – 19; Christopher J. Haas, Alexandria
in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1997), 26 and Fig. 4; Friederike Herklotz, Prinzeps und Pharao: Der Kult des Augustus in Ägypten,
Oikumene 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike, 2007), 267 – 72; McKenzie, The Architecture of
Alexandria and Egypt, 149, 177 – 78 and fig. 304 (plan); Stefan Pfeiffer, Der römische Kaiser und
das Land am Nil: Kaiserverehrung und Kaiserkult in Alexandria und Ägypten von Augustus bis

262 Mareile Haase
but also as a visual marker in the cityscape: as one advanced from the inter-
section of Alexandria’s two main streets to the Great Harbour, the Caesareum
would have been the first and most highly visible religious building one encoun-
tered. Similarly, its towering structures must have caught the attention of trav-
elers approaching the harbour by ship. This eye-catching effect was enhanced
by the precinct’s location on an elevation, by its formidable walls, and by the
erection under Augustus of two obelisks from Heliopolis (where they had orig-
inally been erected by Thutmose III), which flanked the sanctuary’s entrance on
its seaward side.30 Their positions show that the orientation of the Caesareum
did not correspond with the Roman street grid but was directed towards the sea.
While the memories of those belonging to Hypatia’s generation or that of
her torturers are not likely to have extended to the time before the building
of a church within the Caesareum enclosure, the name of the church in the
fourth century still evoked the site’s previous function: Athanasius calls it “Great
Church in the Caesareum” (H. Ar. 74.2: ἐν τῇ μεγάλῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ τῇ ἐν τῷ Καισα-
ρείῳ), which is evidence that the building took its designation from its location
within the Caesareum complex.31 In the fifth century, Socrates refers to the Cae-
sareum site with the phrase “the church named Καισάριον”. In the sixth century
Cassiodorus / Epiphanius links the church’s designation to the title or name of
Caesar (ad ecclesiam, quae vocatur Caesaris: Hist. eccl. tripart. 11.12.4, ed. Jacob
and Hanslik, 644). The “Great Church named Caesarion / of Caesarion” was still
known to John of Nikiu, who in the second half of the seventh century linked
it to Julius Caesar and “Little Caesar” or Caesarion, Caesar’s son with Cleo-
patra VII (Chron. 64.10, 84.101, 119.14, 120.12, trans. Charles, The Chronicle of
John, 49, 102, 190, 192).
I argue that the nomenclature is significant because it preserves traces of
Alexandria’s pre-Christian mental map, which continued to conjure the build-
Caracalla (30 v. Chr. – 217 n. Chr.), Historia Einzelschriften 212 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), 237 – 41.
Possible small-scale representations: Hélène Fragaki, Images antiques d’Alexandrie, Ier s. av.
J.-C. – VIIIe s. apr. J.-C., Études alexandrines 20 (Cairo: Institut français d’Archéologie Orientale,
2011), 26 – 27, 83, 88. Excavation in the area: Jean-Yves Empereur, ed., Alexandrie, Césaréum: les
fouilles du Cinéma Majestic, Études alexandrines 38 (Alexandria: Centre d’Études alexandrines,
2017).
30
Twin obelisks: Herklotz, Prinzeps, 223; McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and
Egypt, 399 nn. 14 – 17 (with bibliography). The church was damaged and rebuilt various times
before its eventual destruction by fire in 912, but the obelisks survived on site, thereby marking
the Caesareum’s position within the city, until they were uprooted again in the 1870s, to be re-
erected in London and New York.
31
The church also went by the name of Κυριακόν (“Belonging to the Lord”) and by the short
form Μεγάλη Ἐκκλησία (“Great Church”: Athanasius, H. Ar. 55.2). Nomenclature of the church:
Calderini, “Alexandreia,” 171 – 72; Martin, “Les premiers siècles du christianisme,” 218 nn. 43 and
45; Isele, Kampf um Kirchen, 122 n. 30. Κυριακόν: Martin, “Les premiers siècles du christianisme,”
213 – 14 nn. 16 and 19. McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 240, 242, 406 – 07
n. 25, 449 identifies the Church in the Caesareum with St. Michael’s.

Appendix B 263
ing’s former use at least into the fifth century, when its original function was a
distant memory. For Judith McKenzie, a turning point in the Christianisation
of Alexandria’s topography was the attack on the Serapeum site and subsequent
Christian building activity there, which constituted “the end of the presence of
paganism in the cityscape.”32 I hold that even beyond that turning point the for-
mer function of the church shone through the remapped cityscape by way of its
old name, as in a palimpsest.
The nomenclature of the church thus reflects the partial rebuilding and Chris-
tian reuse of structures within the Caesareum complex. Using as one example
the entrance to the cella of the temple of Bel at Palmyra, left standing after the
attack by the “Islamic State,” Horst Bredekamp highlights the psychological and
emotional impact of the partial destruction of buildings and sites (as opposed to
their radical erasure).33 The ruins of a partially destroyed building permanently
conjure the former integrity of the structure and keep the event of its demoli-
tion alive for the beholder, who may be forced to replay mentally, over and again,
the moment of the attack. Such “calculated partial destruction”34 of a building
or building complex, especially if it is an iconic one, is a strategy to horrify and
humiliate those who the attackers identify with the demolished structure (and
who, I would add, may themselves identify with it).
The partial destruction of Alexandria’s Serapeum complex further illustrates
this strategy. Christian claims notwithstanding, the archaeological evidence
suggests that the Serapeum complex was not razed to the ground in 391 / 92.35
Regarding the much-used notion of the “destruction of the Serapeum,” Judith
McKenzie rightly underlines the need to consider and analyse each of the com-
ponent structures within the Serapeum enclosure individually; its colonnaded
court, for instance, appears to have remained standing into the twelfth cen-
tury, and in the excavated area there is no trace of later building activity inside
that court, although the court may have been re-adapted as an atrium for the
churches built west of it. After the attack, the columns, which remained (partly)
standing and perhaps still sustained sections of the roof, would have made a
visual and emotional impact that we may compare to the impact of the ruins of
Bel’s temple at Palmyra.
32
Judith S. McKenzie, Sheila Gibson and Andres T. Reyes, “Reconstructing the Serapeum in
Alexandria from the Archaeological Evidence,” JRS 94 (2004): 73 – 121, here 113.
33
Horst Bredekamp, Das Beispiel Palmyra (Köln: König, 2016), 4 – 6 and fig. 2. One could also
adduce the Bamiyan Buddhas in their rock-cut niches: the empty niches outline the Buddhas’
silhouettes and thereby powerfully evoke their presence through conspicuous absence.
34
My expression (in German: “kalkulierte Teildestruktion”), which draws on Bredekamp,
Das Beispiel Palmyra, 6: “Diese Art der Teildestruktion könnte einem bewusst eingesetzten
Kalkül folgen.”
35
McKenzie, Gibson and Reyes, “Reconstructing the Serapeum,” 107 – 10; Judith S. McKenzie,
“The Serapeum of Alexandria: Its Destruction and Reconstruction,” JRA 22 (2009): 772 – 82, here
779 – 82; cf. Haase, this volume, Chapter 5.

264 Mareile Haase
I contend that the reuse of (religious and other) buildings has an effect sim-
ilar to that of partial destruction, if that reuse is perceived as part of a group’s
strategy to assert their predominance and to intimidate, and if the memory of
the site’s previous significance is kept alive. In the case of the Caesareum such
memory is upheld by way of placing a major church within a much vaster sacred
compound that might have maintained many of its pre-Christian features. In
addition, the church’s name, which encapsulates the site’s pre-Christian signifi-
cance, becomes another device to maintain the memory of former cultural and
religious valences, albeit for an ever-diminishing knowledgeable audience. Such
memory cultivation by way of nomenclature would have been effective regard-
less of whether it was a calculated result of deliberate naming or a side effect of
ad hoc nomenclature. The nomenclature of the Great Church in the Caesareum
can thus be understood as a technique to permanently and insistently evoke the
Christian appropriation of one of Alexandria’s main centres of traditional reli-
gion. At the same time, the designation kept the site’s pre-Christian past alive.
At the time of its construction, the Great Church in the Caesareum was the
only Alexandrian church built on the site of a former sanctuary of the tradi-
tional deities.36 This aspect may have contributed to its becoming a focal point
of interreligious and intra-religious conflict. In the mid-fourth century, posses-
sion of the site was hotly contested, with supporters of bishops Athanasius and
George and followers of the traditional cults wrestling for predominance.37 Fol-
lowers of the traditional cults looted the church’s furniture including its wooden
altar-table (τράπεζα) in 356 and burnt them “in front of the porch in the Great
Plateia” according to Athanasius.38 In 366, followers of the traditional cults set
flames to the Great Church in the Caesareum, possibly in an attempt to reinstate
the former cult.39 Such associations of conflict and violence must have resonated
with readers of Socrates’ account of Hypatia’s killing and intensified their emo-
tions. Regardless of the actual motives of Hypatia’s attackers, her murder could
be perceived as a further link in a long chain of eruptions of interreligious strife.
“Great Plateia” in Athanasius possibly designates the Roman Forum accord-
ing to McKenzie, who suggests that “the precinct in front of the church extended
to the main east-west street.”40 Attempts at reconstructing the sanctuary’s floor
36
Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 210 – 11; McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and
Egypt, 240, 244.
37
Athanasius, H. Ar. 55 – 6; Festal Letter Index XXXVII, 365, XXXVIII, 366, XL, 368 (ed. Mar-
tin and Albert, 269 and 271 – 73); Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 281 – 86; Isele, Kampf um
Kirchen, 13, 122, 124, 164, 167 – 76, 180, 185 – 92.
38
H. Ar. 56.1: ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ πυλῶνος ἐν τῇ πλατείᾳ τῇ μεγάλῃ.
39
Thus Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt, 75.
40
McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 48, 177, 242, 407 n. 36, and figs. 304
and 400 (maps). Géza Alföldy, Der Obelisk auf dem Petersplatz in Rom: Ein historisches Monu-
ment der Antike, SHAW, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 1990, no. 2 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1990),
38 – 49, and figs. 11 and 12 (followed by Herklotz, Prinzeps, 221 – 23, 270 – 71; Pfeiffer, Der römische

Appendix B 265
area must remain tentative at present.41 But if we accept McKenzie’s view, I con-
tend that it is possible to imagine Hypatia’s killing, according to the scenario
evoked by Socrates, to have happened in the same place where the church’s fur-
niture was burnt: in the open space in front of the porch of the Great Church
in the Caesareum, a site which afforded both sufficient room and publicity, and
seems to overlap with the former Roman forum.
In section 6 below, Christopher Haas’ reading of Hypatia’s death against an
alleged fixed pattern in Roman Alexandria of “ritualistic” executions of “out-
casts and criminals” is refuted. However, I accept his topographical argument
that Hypatia was paraded along the city’s main east-west artery, which corre-
sponds with the decumanus maximus of Roman city planning and is sometimes
dubbed “Via Canopica” in scholarly literature. A conjectural location of her kill-
ing between the Caesareum site and Alexandria’s main east-west street fits well
with Hypatia’s trajectory as suggested by Haas. The main east-west street42 was
part of the original city design and survived into late antiquity. According to
Strabo (17.1.8) and Diodorus Siculus (17.52.3), it was one plethron or c. 30 m
or more wide and c. 7.2 km long and ran from the Nekropolis to the Canopic
Gate. In the Roman period, it was adorned with colonnades, porticoes, fountain
houses, and tetrastyla that marked the main intersections. The street’s ancient
trajectory corresponds to modern Shariya el-Horreya. If one accepts my conjec-
ture, Socrates’ Hypatia would eventually have been dragged northward off the
main street’s course in the direction of the nearby Caesareum complex, to be
killed in front of the porch of the Great Church.
There is yet a further aspect worth considering in connection with the Cae-
sareum as the site of Hypatia’s death, although little attention has been paid
to it in scholarship. While there does not seem to be clear information on the
location within Alexandria of the fifth-century patriarchal residence,43 it has
been suggested that the bishop resided in proximity of the Great Church in the
Kaiser, 239 – 40) believes the Forum Iulium, the Forum Augusti, and the Σεβαστὴ ἀγορά men-
tioned in the written sources to be identical. Doubts: McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria
and Egypt, 177 and nn. 21 – 22.
41
Empereur, Alexandrie, Césaréum, 6 – 9.
42
Main east-west street: Calderini, “Alexandreia,” 83 – 84; McKenzie, The Architecture of Alex-
andria and Egypt, 15, 38 and n. 12, 66 – 67, 75, 174 – 75, 242, 407 n. 36, and figs. 13, 14, 32, 33.
Artist’s reconstruction: Jean-Claude Golvin and Aude Gros de Beler, Voyage en Égypte ancienne
(Arles and Paris: Actes Sud and Errance, 1999), 172. Alexandria’s street grid: McKenzie, The Ar-
chitecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 20 – 24 and fig. 23 (late antique period).
43
Discussion: Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 222 – 23. In the second half of the fourth
century, Alexandria’s bishop resided at the Church of St. Dionysius: Martin, “Les premiers siècles
du christianisme,” 213 – 14, 221; Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie, 144 – 45; Haas, Alexandria in Late
Antiquity, 208, 222 and n. 19; Martin, “Alexandrie: l’investissement chrétien de la ville,” 54; before
that period, at the Church of St. Theonas: Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 209 and n. 64. Epis-
copal residences from the tenth century onward: René-Georges Coquin, “Patriarchal Residences,”
in The Coptic Encyclopedia, vol. 6, ed. Aziz S. Atiya (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 1912 – 13.

266 Mareile Haase
Caesareum.44 If one accepts this suggestion, then according to Socrates’ account

Hypatia was practically laid on Cyril’s doorstep, an aspect that would fit with the
interpretation advanced in section 2 above regarding Peter’s group, their ties to
bishop Cyril, and their potential motives for killing Hypatia.
6. συνέλκουσιν
Christopher Haas, followed by other scholars, interprets the dragging and subse-
quent maltreatment of Hypatia’s body by her assailants against the background
of a fixed pattern in Roman Alexandria of “ritualistic” executions of “outcasts
and criminals” or a “public enemy.”45 This procedure included the parading
and / or dragging of bodies though the streets and their burning outside the city
and supposedly served as a means of ritual purification or expiation. While Haas
references Mary Douglas’ classic study Purity and Danger,46 the application of
anthropological model-building seems less persuasive and even potentially mis-
leading when we consider that the ancient sources (about Alexandrian execu-
tions)47 on which Haas bases his model are entirely silent regarding the matter
of “purity.”
While I do not wish to deny that there are similarities among the public exe-
cutions listed by Haas, there are also differences significant enough to raise the
question as to how fixed a pattern actually existed. In some of the cases cited by
Haas, dragging is a forced and torturous transportation mode;48 in others, it is
44
Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 10, 208 n. 45 remarks on the potential significance of the loca-
tion for Hypatia’s killing. Cf. also Stephen J. Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church
and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity, 1: The Popes of Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo
Press, 2004), 71.
45
Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 87 – 90; followed by Edward J. Watts, “The Murder of
Hypatia: Acceptable or Unacceptable Violence?” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and
Practices, ed. Harold A. Drake (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 333 – 42, here 341; Edward J. Watts,
City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2006), 199; Watts, Hypatia, 116; Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative,”
in The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism,’ ed. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan (Leiden:
Brill, 2011), xv – lxv, here xvi with n. 6.
46
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); cf. Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 397 n. 93.
When Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Mad-
ison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 116 refers to Hypatia’s killing as “a ‘cleansing’ of the
land,” he does not say whether this idea is based on Douglas too, although elsewhere Brown dis-
cusses her as a major influence: cf. Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late
Antiquity, 1971 – 1997,” JECS 6 (1998): 353 – 76, esp. 359 – 63.
47
Collected in Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 397 – 99 nn. 93 – 99. To Haas’ examples I
add St. Mark’s death by dragging according to Acta Marci 7 – 10 (PG 115:167 – 70).
48
Jewish inhabitants of Alexandria: Philo, Flacc. 85; the Christians Metras and Quinta: Eu-
sebius, H. E. 6.41.3 – 4; Christian women: Theodoret, Hist. E. 4.19.

Appendix B 267
a killing method;49 in still others, a derogatory maltreatment of the corpse.50 In

some instances, the victims are led in procession to their execution;51 in others,
they are paraded on camels;52 in still others, the lifeless body, loaded onto or
“riding” a mount, is exposed to the public in a macabre post-mortem parade.53
These techniques of torturing and parading are combined with a variety of grue-
some killing methods so diverse that it is difficult to establish any single “pat-
tern”: stoning, slaying by sword, vivicombustion, flogging or clubbing to death,
crucifixion, beheading, and dispatching to the mines.
A formal link between some (but not all) of the accounts collected by Haas
is provided by expressions, signal phrases of sorts, that connote the city-wide
and public character of the respective spectacles: for instance, “right through the
middle of the agora” (διὰ μέσης ἀγορᾶς: Philo, Flacc. 74) or “through the whole
city” (διὰ πάσης τῆς πόλεως: Eusebius, H. E. 6.41.4; Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 2.8).
However, these and similar expressions also occur widely outside of Haas’
Roman-period Alexandrian examples (some Ptolemaic instances are discussed
in section 7 below). And while I do not wish to exclude Haas’ attractive sug-
gestion that the mental maps that inform literary accounts of Hypatia’s death
feature Alexandria’s main east-west street,54 I find it significant that none of the
signal phrases just mentioned occur in any of these accounts. Considering that
the formal link is missing, and once a serious doubt is cast on the hypothesis
that Hypatia’s death should be read as a ritual purification, we may ask to what
extent the alleged pattern is at all helpful in shedding light on her death. The fact
that Hypatia may have been politically inconvenient to some does not make her
a criminal or a public enemy.
7. ἀποδύσαντές τε τὴν ἐσθῆτα

While the stripping of Hypatia’s clothes in and by itself is not a sexual assault,
it adds sexual and voyeuristic overtones to her humiliation.55 For a pertinent
parallel, one may compare the stripping and beating of the Olynthian captive
woman described by Demosthenes and discussed in section 3 above, where a
sexualised component is evident.
49
Philo, Flacc. 65, 174.
50
Philo, Flacc. 71; bishop Proterius: Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 2.8; Zachariah of Mytilene, Hist.
eccl. 4.2.
51
Philo, Flacc. 74; Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 5.24; a Roman deacon: Theodoret, Hist. E. 4.19.
52
Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 2.5.
53
Bishop George and officials killed together with the bishop: Ammianus Marcellinus
22.11.9 – 10; Historia Acephala 2.8 – 10; see also section 10 below.
54
Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 29 – 31, 81 – 90.
55
Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 206 points out that the divesting of the body also has a
pragmatic aspect. That said, the degrading effect of the gesture is probably prevalent here, partic-
ularly if one holds that Hypatia died by stoning (section 9.b below).

268 Mareile Haase
Dominic Rathbone and Dorothy Thompson suggest that Socrates’ account

is analogous to narratives of the public shaming of prominent females in Ptole-
maic Alexandria.56 These texts merit a closer look, to understand whether they
establish a pertinent comparison. Polybius (15.27 – 30, 15.33) recounts how
in the course of court rivalries and urban unrest following the death of Pto-
lemy IV Philopator in 204 BCE, Danae, a relative of one of the opponents, is
“dragged through the middle of the city” (διὰ μέσου τῆς πόλεως), “unveiled,” and
“imprisoned.” Later on, Oinanthe, mother of the leader of the opposing faction,
is stripped naked and paraded to the stadium on a horse. She, her daughters, and
other relatives are handed over to the mob, who “bit them” (ἔδακνον), “stabbed
them” (ἐκέντουν), “cut out their eyes” (τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐξέκοπτον), and “ripped
their limbs apart” (τὰ μέλη διέσπων). Both Danae and Oinanthe are hauled out
of the Thesmophorion, which adds an aspect of sacrilege to the scene: Oinanthe
had been “seated against the altar” (καθίσασα πρὸς τὸν βωμὸν), that is, on my
interpretation, she was seeking asylum there. A group of young women who had
been reared together with Arsinoe III, Ptolemy IV’s assassinated queen, assume
the role not of victims but of perpetrators as they penetrate the house of the
queen’s murderer Philammon. There, they “killed him as they struck him with
the stones and the cudgels” (τύπτουσαι τοῖς λίθοις καὶ τοῖς ξύλοις ἀπέκτειναν),
and “dragging out Philammon’s wife naked into the street they made away with
her” (τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ Φιλάμμωνος γυμνὴν εἰς τὴν πλατεῖαν ἐξέλκουσαι δι-
έφθειραν).
But to what extent are the Polybian narratives really comparable with Socra-
tes’ account of Hypatia’s killing? Stripping, dragging, ripping apart, and stoning
are motifs that also occur in Socrates. Parading on a mount, imprisoning, bit-
ing, cudgelling, and stabbing are motifs that do not. Conversely, there are close
resemblances (not noted by Rathbone and Thompson) between Polybius and
some Roman-period Alexandrian punishment processions listed by Christo-
pher Haas (for a discussion of which see section 6 above), namely the drag-
ging, parading on a mount, stoning, and cudgelling of the victim, as well as the
emphasis on public location (“through the middle of the city”; “into the street”).
A hitherto unnoted papyrological parallel for female victimisation from
Hypatia’s time that includes beating, stripping, and burning can be found in
P. Oxy. VI 903 (= C. Pap. Jud. III 457d).57 In this document from late fourth-cen-
56
Dominic Rathbone and Dorothy Thompson, “The Killing of Hypatia,” in Women and So-
ciety in Greek and Roman Egypt, ed. Jane Rowlandson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 74 – 75.
57
P. Oxy. VI 903: Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993), 195, 210 – 11, 224 – 25; Dominic Montserrat, Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt
(London: Routledge, 1996), 99 – 100; Ari Z. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal
Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 180 – 81, 273 – 74 no. 123.

Appendix B 269
tury Egypt,58 an abusive husband is accused of detaining some of the couple’s

slaves, his own son, and his wife’s foster-daughters in the house’s basement for a
whole week, beating them severely and torturing the foster-daughters with fire
after having stripped them naked. While the incident described in P. Oxy. VI 903
deals with an intra-household dispute rather than with the public killing of a
high-profile individual, examples of (oftentimes public) stripping of women are
frequent in the papyri.59 However, stripping “is not exclusively a form of vio-
lence directed against women, nor against women by men.”60 Public stripping of
men is recorded, for instance, in fourth-century Kellis and Hermopolis.61 As for
the stripping of prominent males, Cassius Dio (78.4.4) describes a public attack
on Caracalla’s tutor Kilo: “(The soldiers) tore his clothing off and maltreated his
face.”
8. μεληδὸν διασπάσαντες
Silvia Ronchey has interpreted διασπᾶν, which is used by Socrates, Philostor-
gius and Hesychius in the context of Hypatia’s death,62 in a sacrificial sense,63
while Harich-Schwarzbauer has also stressed the mythological connotations
of the σπαραγμός.64 Ronchey and Harich-Schwarzbauer have also pointed out
that the word Damascius employs for Hypatia’s killers (σφαγεῖς, “slayers, butch-
ers”)65 is sometimes used as a technical term to denote the ritual slaughter of
animals. To this discussion I would add ἀναιρεῖν, introduced by both Socrates
58
Date: Jakub Urbanik, “Divorce,” in Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the
Arab Conquest: A Selection of Papyrological Sources in Translation, With Introductions and Com-
mentary, ed. James G. Keenan, Joseph G. Manning and Uri Yiftach-Firanko (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2014), 154 – 75, here 162, 169 – 70.
59
P. Oxy. XXXVI 2758 (Oxyrhynchus, 110 / 12); SB VI 9458 (Tebtynis, second century); P. Flor.
I 59 (225 / 79). Cf. also P. Ryl. II 151.13 – 15 (Euhemeria, 40); SB XVI 12470.15 – 16 (first / second
century); P. Cair. Isid. 63 (Karanis, 297 or later); P. Freib. II 11 (Oxyrhynchus, 336); P. Erl. 36.4
(fifth cent.). Cf. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt, nos. 19, 34 – 35, 72, 79, 89, 102, and 129.
60
Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt, 113.
61
P. Kell. I 23.1 – 15 (353); P. Lips. I 37 (389): Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt, 97 – 98, 104,
123 – 24, nos. 110, 116.
62
Philostorgius, Hist. eccl. 8.9: διασπασθῆναι; Hesychius (Suda IV 644,5 – 6) s. v. ῾Υπατία: δι-
εσπάσθη.
63
Ronchey, Ipazia, 179.
64
Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 208, 215 – 16, 330, 333. Discussion of the motif of σπαραγ-
μός: Haase, this volume, Chapter 5.
65
Σφάζειν and related words as sacrificial terms: LSJ 1737 s. v. σφαγεύς, 1738 s. v. σφάζω II 1;
Jean Casabona, Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en grec: des origines à la fin de l’épo-
que Classique, Publications des Annales de la Faculté des Lettres, Aix-en-Provence n. s. 56 (Aix-
en-Provence: Ophrys, 1966), 155 – 96, 317 – 21. Cf. Folkert T. van Straten, Hierà kalá: Images of
Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece, RGRW 127 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 103 – 14; Fred
S. Naiden, Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman
Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 233, 279 – 80.

270 Mareile Haase
and Damascius in the context of Hypatia’s killing,66 which term is most often
used generically but can also be employed in a technical sense for the sacrificial
victim’s being lifted from the ground before it is killed.67
Section 9 below critiques the view that the ὄστρακα form sharp blades that
could be used like knives to cut Hypatia’s throat.68 However, the suggestion
that animal sacrifice serves as one subtext for some ancient narratives about
Hypatia’s killing is pertinent. The use of sacrificial terminology (which, con-
trary to what Ronchey suggests, was not limited to “pagan” authors) introduces a
semantic layer of ritual slaughter that would have been familiar to most ancient
readers, be they followers of the traditional cults or Christians.69 One should
not, however, utilise that semantic layer in order to (mis-)understand Socrates’
depiction of Hypatia’s death literally as a “human sacrifice,” “performed on the
altar of the Christian god, in one of his churches.”70
One reader who perceived and exploited the potential of the image of “virgin
sacrifice” was Edward Gibbon:
. . . [Thaumasius’] tomb was decorated with the trophies of martyrdom, and [Cyril]
ascended the pulpit to celebrate the magnanimity of an assassin and a rebel. Such honours
might incite the faithful to combat and die under the banners of the saint; and he soon
prompted, or accepted, the sacrifice of a virgin, who professed the religion of the Greeks.71
The motif of virgin sacrifice also implicitly underlies Gibbon’s account of Hypa-
tia’s killing (for which, see section 9a below),72 and it must have contributed
considerably to the allure of his portrait of the philosopher.
At the same time, Gibbon’s text not only conjures up the image of Hypatia’s
sacrifice but also implies that of her martyrdom when he has her die as some-
one “who professed the religion of the Greeks.” The perspective that there exists
an analogy between her killing and the death of Christian martyrs has proven
influential: it underlies, for instance, the title of Michael Deakin’s Hypatia of
Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr and can be found in other studies on
66
Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15.5: ἀνεῖλον; Damascius, Vita Isidori F *102,35 Zintzen: ἀναιροῦσι
τὴν φιλόσοφον.
67
Homer, Od. 3.453; cf. LSJ 106 s. v. ἀναιρέω.
68
As Ronchey, Ipazia, 179, 283, for instance, holds.
69
An explicit analogy of violence against humans and ritual animal slaughter is evoked by
Synesius of Cyrene, Ep. 124, where he laments the sufferings of his native Libya from barbarian
attacks: “daily I see armed enemies and people butchered like sacrificial victims” (ἀποσφαττομέ-
νους ἀνθρώπους ὥσπερ ἱερεῖα).
70
Thus Luciano Canfora, Un mestiere pericoloso: la vita quotidiana dei filosofi greci (Palermo:
Sellerio, 2000), 198: “La scena è quella di un sacrificio umano compiuto per il dio dei Cristiani in
una sua Chiesa”; cf. Beretta, Ipazia, 286.
71
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London 1788),
vol. 4, ch. 47, ed. David P. Womersley (London: Allen Lane, 1994), 2:945.
72
Richard Hamilton, “Gibbon’s Use of Sources in the Portrait of Hypatia,” English Language
Notes 28.2 (1990): 6 – 16.

Appendix B 271
Hypatia.73 This interpretation is problematic: it often remains unclear whether

scholars use the image of martyrdom merely metaphorically, as a stylistic device
to denote a sense of “noble death,” or whether they contend that late antique
accounts of Hypatia’s death and Christian martyrologies share quite specific
motifs. The latter is the case with Rathbone and Thompson, who interpret Soc-
rates’ passage within a literary tradition of Christian martyrologies,74 and with
Ronchey, who wishes to identify in Hypatia’s story a power triangle (the Chris-
tian church – the Roman government – the Jewish communities)75 that in her
opinion usually underlies martyr acts.76
But Hypatia does not die because she refuses to “stray from her religious con-
viction” (deviare a religione) and chooses “excruciating torture” (cruciabiles poe-
nas) and a “death full of glory” (gloriosam mortem), which are the criteria of
Christian martyrdom in Ammianus Marcellinus (22.11.10). Hypatia, in other
words, does not die because she “professed the religion of the Greeks.” Further-
more, while according to Ammianus the cult of martyrs requires bodily relics
(suprema) that can be worshiped, Hypatia’s complete physical elimination effec-
tively forestalls the possibility of her remains posthumously acquiring any sym-
bolic significance. The attribution of martyrdom in a literal sense to Hypatia is
thus the result of modern revisions, interpretations and enhancements of her
story, but even the application of “martyrdom” in a metaphorical sense to Hypa-
tia’s death is misleading.
9. ὀστράκοις ἀνεῖλον
a. Socrates’ ὄστρακα and Gibbon’s Oyster Shells
Since the use of ὄστρακα in Socrates bears on the question of how Hypatia
died, and how Socrates’ description of her death is informed by motifs of statue
destruction,77 the word’s meaning in the rather unusual context of a killing mer-
73
Michael A. B. Deakin, Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr (Amherst: Pro-
metheus Books, 2007). The same idea informs e. g. Antonio Carile, “Giovanni di Nikiu, cronista
bizantino-copto del VII secolo,” in Βυζάντιον: Αφιέρωμα στον Ανδρέα Ν. Στράτο (Athens: Stratos,
1986), 376; Polymnia Athanassiadi, ed., Damascius: The Philosophical History (Athens: Apamea
Cultural Association, 1999), 133 n. 96; Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women’s Life
in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
3
2005), 331 no. 451. Others opine that “there were no pagan martyrs”: Alan Cameron, The Last
Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 13; cf. also Jan W. van Henten, “Mar-
tyrium II,” RAC 24 (2012): 300 – 25, here 304.
74
Rathbone and Thompson, “The Killing of Hypatia,” 74.
75
Ronchey, Ipazia, 181 – 83.
76
Contra: Bart Ehrman, Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early
Christian Polemics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 496 – 502, with n. 39 (bibliography
of the debate).
77
A question explored in Haase, this volume, Chapter 5.

272 Mareile Haase
its a more detailed discussion. According to Liddell, Scott and Jones, ὄστρακον
designates (1) an object made of fired clay such as an earthen vessel or potsherd,
or (2) a shell, particularly “of snails, mussels, cuttle-fishes, tortoises,” but also an
eggshell.78 Robert Beekes has recently refuted the traditional view79 of an anal-
ogous formation of ὄστρακον and ὄστρε(ι)ον “oyster, oyster-shell” which traces
both to a stem ὀστρ-, “bone.” Instead, Beekes suggests that both words are pre-
Greek.80
Socrates’ use of ὄστρακα is unusual. The majority of scholars understand the
ὄστρακα to mean pottery sherds, but many of these scholars leave the method of
killing unspecified.81 Those who are more specific hold that the pottery sherds
were used for cutting the victim’s throat82 or for dismembering or flaying her.83
However, parallels for ὄστρακα as cutting or flaying devices in contexts of tor-
ture and killing are difficult to find. An exception comes from the ninth-century
encomium of Saint Agatha:84
78
LSJ 1264 s. v. ὄστρακον I 1, 2, and 4; II 1 and 2.
79
Cf. Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots,
Fasc. 3 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1974), 833 s. v. “ὄστρακον et ὄστρειον.”
80
Robert Beekes, ed., Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological
Dictionary Series (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 2:1119 – 20 ss.vv. ὄστρακον and ὄστρεον, -ειον.
81
Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, Revealing Antiquity 8 (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1995), 93; Richard Klein, “Die Ermordung der Philosophin Hypatia: Zum
Kampf um die politische Macht in Alexandria,” in Roma versa per aevum: Ausgewählte Schriften
zur heidnischen und christlichen Spätantike, ed. Raban von Haehling and Klaus Scherberich, Spu-
dasmata 74 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999), 72 – 90, here 84; Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy, 71; Pierre
Périchon and Pierre Maraval, eds., Socrate de Constantinople, Histoire Ecclésiastique Livre VII,
Sources chrétiennes 506 (Paris: Le Cerf, 2007), 61; Clelia Martínez Maza, Hipatia: la estremece-
dora historia de la última gran filósofa de la antigüedad y la fascinante ciudad de Alejandría
(Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2009), 316; Ronchey, Ipazia, 59; Silvia Ronchey, “Perché Cirillo
assassinò Ipazia?” in Tolleranza religiosa in età tardoantica, IV – V secolo: atti delle Giornate di stu-
dio sull’età tardoantica, Roma, 26 – 27 maggio 2013, ed. Arnaldo Marcone, Umberto Roberto and
Ignazio Tantillo, Collana di studi umanistici 7 (Cassino: Edizioni Università di Cassino, 2014),
135 – 77, here 150; Hans van Loon, “Violence in the Early Years of Cyril of Alexandria’s Episco-
pate,” in Violence in Ancient Christianity: Victims and Perpetrators, ed. Albert Geljon and Riemer
Roukema, VC Supplement 125 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 108 – 31, here 124.
82
Cf. already John B. Bury, ed., Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire (London: Methuen, 21911), 5:117 n. 26: “ἀνεῖλον means simply killed (by cutting
her throat?), not scraped.”
83
“Pottery fragments” served to “shred” her body: Watts, Hypatia, 3; contrast Watts, Hypatia,
116: “broken roof tiles” were used to dismember Hypatia; further contrast Watts, “The Murder of
Hypatia,” 334 – 35: “her body was torn up, possibly by being dragged through the streets.”
84
Methodius of Constantinople, Encomium in Sanctam Agatham 26, ed. Elpidio Mioni,
“L’encomio di S. Agata di Metodio patriarca di Costantinopoli,” Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950):
58 – 93, here 89: Ὁ τύραννος εἶπεν· “Ὀστράκοις ὀξέσι στρωθεῖσι ἐπ’ἐδάφους, πλῆθός τε ἀνθρά-
κων ἀνάμιξ αὐτοῖς ἐμβάλλοντες, καὶ γυμνῷ τῷ σώματι ἐπὶ τούτων αὐτὴν περισύροντες, ἴδωμεν
εἰ σῴζει αὐτὴν ὁ Χριστὸς αὐτῆς”. I could not find this passage, or any examples of sherds or tiles
used as torture instruments, in the index to Éric Rebillard’s collection of martyr narratives (Éric
Rebillard, ed., Greek and Latin Narratives about the Ancient Martyrs, OECT [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017], 385 – 98).

Appendix B 273
The ruler said: “When keen sherds (ὄστρακα) have been strewn upon the ground, and we
throw into them a mass of coals pell-mell and drag her about upon these with her naked
body, we may see whether her Christ saves her.
However, this text postdates Socrates’ account by several centuries. It is difficult
to fathom how pottery sherds, let alone mollusc shells, could be used as a lethal
cutting device on the human body, and literature on shellfish does not suggest
that they were used for that purpose.85 How then could the idea that Hypa-
tia was cut to death become so successful? The above Byzantine text has been
overlooked by scholarship on Hypatia’s killing and was surely not instrumental
in that process. By contrast, one likely explanation is that this scholarly view
derives at least in part from Edward Gibbon’s potent rendering of the scene,
which draws on Socrates among other ancient sources:86
On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped
naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader,
and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with
sharp oyster shells, (26) and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The just
progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts; but the murder of
Hypatia has imprinted an indelible stain on the character and religion of Cyril of Alex-
andria.87
In his note 26 Gibbon specifies:
Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the sea-beach before the Caesareum. I may
therefore prefer the literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of tegu-
lae, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois. I am ignorant, and the assassins were probably
regardless, whether their victim was yet alive.
In his note Gibbon ponders two meanings of ὄστρακα and rather cautiously
decides in favour of “oyster shells,” without excluding “tiles.” This can be taken
as a clue that he, as readers before and after him, struggled to make sense of
85
August Marx, “Austern,” PW II 2 (1896): 2589 – 92; Robert W. Th. Günther, “The Oyster Cul-
ture of the Ancient Romans,” Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom
n. s. 4 (1897): 360 – 65; August Steier, “Muschel,” PW XVI (1933): 773 – 96; Alfred C. Andrews,
“Oysters as a Food in Greece and Rome,” CJ 43 (1948): 299 – 303; Erika Feucht, “Muschelschalen,”
LÄ 4 (1982): 228 – 30; Annalisa Marzano, Harvesting the Sea: The Exploitation of Marine Resources
in the Roman Mediterranean, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2013), 173 – 97; Jacopo De Grossi Mazzorin, “Consumo e allevamento di ostriche e
mitili in epoca classica e medievale,” in Appunti di archeomalacologia, ed. Alberto Girod (Sesto
Fiorentino: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2015), 153 – 58.
86
Gibbon’s primary sources for the Hypatia episode according to his notes 25 – 27: the Suda,
Hesychius, the Greek Anthology, the letters of Synesius of Cyrene, and Socrates of Constanti-
nople. These are largely identical with the sources named in de Valois’ / Valesius’ commentary in
his 1668 edition of Socrates’ Church History (see n. 89 below). Editions of the Greek Anthology,
the Suda and Synesius in Gibbon’s library: Geoffrey Keynes, ed., The Library of Edward Gibbon:
A Catalogue (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 21980), 138, 260 – 61.
87
Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall, vol. 4, ch. 47, ed. Womersley, 2:945 – 46.

274 Mareile Haase
Socrates’ text. As sometimes happens in the course of the reception of an author,

a statement that Gibbon originally presented with some caution later became
codified and more rigid than he originally intended.
Notwithstanding the testimony of first-century author Xenocrates of Aph-
rodisias, who lists the mouths of the Nile among the best grounds for oysters,88
one has to ask whether it is true that oysters “were plentifully strewed on the sea-
beach” of late antique Alexandria. And there are further problems with Gibbon’s
note. Gibbon refers to Henri de Valois’ 1668 edition of Socrates’ Church History89
and indicates that de Valois rendered ὄστρακα as tegulae, “tiles.” In fact, however,
de Valois, who otherwise does not comment on this particular phrase, renders
ὄστρακον as testa,90 which means “object of burnt clay” (including a vessel and
a brick or tile) but also “fragment of earthenware, shard” or “shell” (of a crus-
tacean).91 Gibbon’s error of remembering tegula (which has the rather more
restricted meaning “roof-tile, tile”92) instead of testa can perhaps be explained by
his reliance on memory when composing his paragraphs.93 Gibbon’s error can
also be taken as further evidence that he wavered with regard to the meaning
of ὄστρακα.
The confusion that is already apparent in Gibbon has been augmented by
more recent misinterpretations of his view on the matter. Some scholars think
that Gibbon describes a flaying, a removal of the skin.94 But he in fact depicts
an excarnation, a removal of the flesh from the bones. Gibbon further wonders
whether this procedure was performed on Hypatia’s body while she was still
alive. However, either method of torture or execution requires special instru-
ments and specialists able to use them.95 The idea that unqualified aggressors
armed with inadequate tools such as mollusc shells could have successfully per-
formed such an operation is hardly persuasive, to say the least.
88
De Alimento ex Aquatilibus 27 ap. Oribas., Collectiones medicae 2.58.96 (CMG VI.1, ed.
Raeder, 53).
89
Henricus Valesius, ed., Socratis Scholastici et Hermiae Sozomeni historia ecclesiastica (Paris:
Antoine Vitré, 1668). William Reading’s augmented edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1720) of de Valois’ work was part of Gibbon’s library: Keynes, The Library of Edward Gib-
bon, 121. The notes from other commentators that Reading included in his translation of de
Valois’ commentary do not bear on Hypatia’s killing.
90
Henricus Valesius, ibid., 352: “. . . et vestibus exutam, testis interemerunt.”
91
OLD 1931 s. v. testa 1a, b; 2a; 3a.
92
OLD 1910 s. v. tegula.
93
For this peculiarity of Gibbon’s compositional technique, see Paul Cartledge, “The En-
lightened Historiography of Edward Gibbon, Esq.: A Bicentennial Celebration,” The Maynooth
Review / Revieú Mhá Nuad 3.2 (1977): 67 – 93, here 85.
94
Note the erroneous translation of Gibbon’s “flesh” as “pelle,” “skin”: Ronchey, Ipazia, 84:
“. . . la pelle le fu strappata dalle ossa con gusci aguzzi di conchiglie . . .” She holds that Hypatia died
by flaying or dismemberment (ibid., 86).
95
Niels Hyldahl and Borge Salomonsen, “Hinrichtung,” RAC 15 (1991): 342 – 65, here 351.

Appendix B 275
It must have suited the purpose of Gibbon’s Enlightenment historiography

and his anti-clerical tendencies96 to depict Hypatia’s aggressors as uncivilised
fanatics conspicuously lacking in the Christian virtue of mercy. Gibbon’s atti-
tude might explain why the Christian perpetrators in his account use exotic
weapons to inflict a type of corporal punishment that was considered archaic
and inhumane in his time. That later scholars adopted Gibbon’s version is proof
of his influence.97
b. An Alternative: Socrates’ ὄστρακα and Stoning

While it is very hard indeed, if not impossible, to find ancient parallels for the
use of ὄστρακα as lethal cutting weapons, parallels for their use as projectiles in
Greek literature exist. This opens up an easier, if less spectacular, solution: I hold
that Socrates describes a stoning.98 My analysis will show that Socrates’ ὄστρακα
are ad hoc weapons typical of urban violence,99 e. g. large sherds of voluminous
and heavy vessels such as storage containers or transport amphorae. Such heavy
sherds would have been suitable for pelting and crushing, but not for cutting
someone to death. If we take into account the basic meaning of ὄστρακον, “an
object made of fired clay,” and if we also consider the cognate words in Patris-
96
Cartledge, “The Enlightened Historiography of Edward Gibbon,” 85 holds that Gibbon’s
examination of Christianity is perhaps the unifying theme of the Decline and Fall. Gibbon’s views
on religion and on Catholic and Protestant Christianities: Cartledge, “The Enlightened Histo-
riography of Edward Gibbon,” esp. 76, 89 – 92; Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through
the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack, and Rodney Stark (Groningen: Barkhuis, 22010), 1 – 24 (with bibliog-
raphy). Wilfried Nippel, “Edward Gibbon, das antike Christentum und die anglikanische Kirche,”
in Wege der Neuzeit: Festschrift für Heinz Schilling, ed. Stefan Ehrenpreis, Ute Lotz-Heumann,
Olaf Mörke and Luise Schorn-Schütte (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007), 241 – 67 portrays a
Gibbon who was less one-dimensionally hostile (but nevertheless occasionally caustic) towards
Christianity and the Church as an institution.
97
E. g. Richard Hoche, “Hypatia, die Tochter Theons,” Philologus 15 (1860): 435 – 74, here 462
n. 105, who thinks that the ὄστρακα were mussel shells.
98
Some have considered a stoning, without proffering a more detailed discussion: Brown,
Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, 116; Lacombrade, “Hypatia,” 959; Rathbone and Thomp-
son, “The Killing of Hypatia,” 75. See already John W. Donaldson, A History of the Literature of
Ancient Greece: From the Foundation of the Socratic Schools to the Taking of Constantinople by
the Turks. Being a Continuation of K. O. Müller’s Work (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1858),
3:351, 352 n. 1.
99
Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 BC to AD 284 (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1974), 66 with n. 30 discusses stoning (λιθοβολία, lapidatio) in the context of urban
violence in the Roman world and assembles some evidence for many major centres. Stoning in
the context of popular justice and interpersonal violence: Garrett G. Fagan, “Violence in Roman
Social Relations,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, ed. Michael
Peachin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 467 – 95, here 468, 479 – 80, 484 – 85. Stoning in
late antiquity: Hyldahl and Salomonsen, “Hinrichtung,” 344; Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität,
70 – 71, 88, 146, 152, 214, 265. Dynamics of urban unrest in late antiquity: ibid., 79 – 93.

276 Mareile Haase
tic literature,100 it is legitimate to include bricks and roof tiles (or fragments
thereof), used as improvised missiles, in the discussion.101
Whether Socrates’ ὄστρακα are understood as (large) potsherds or as roof
tiles is ultimately of little consequence. Crucially, however, there is evidence for
the use of ὄστρακα as effective missiles. Herodian’s testimony (7.12.5) is par-
ticularly revealing: in the civil war at Rome in 238, street-fighters armed with
pottery, stones and tiles (κέραμος, λίθοι, ὄστρακα) manage to severely injure
praetorians. The Historia Augusta mentions tiles and vessels (tegulae; vasa) in
the same context (SHA, Maximus et Balbinus 10). In Lucian’s Dialogues of the
Hetaerae, the ὄστρακα appear together with stones and other ad hoc weapons
used by the untrained but determined aggressor, in humorous contrast with the
real warrior equipment of the trained military: Philostratus the wealthy mer-
chant threatens to throw stones and ὄστρακα at his rival Polemon, a military
man, and his soldiers (Dial. meretr. 9.5). In the memorable opening scene to Pis-
cator, Lucian has Socrates incite his philosopher colleagues to go after and pelt
Parrhesiades, the author’s satiric alter ego whose name evokes Free Speech; the
missiles include stones, earth clods (λίθοι, βῶλοι) and ὄστρακα (Pisc. 1).
Bricks, tiles, or weighty potsherds were easily available in an urban context. In
scenarios of urban unrest, otherwise unarmed people such as slaves or women
are often depicted using improvised weapons such as stones or cudgels.102 In lit-
erature,103 stoning is associated with civil unrest and rioting mobs (which does
not permit the reverse conclusion that stoning was exclusively performed by
mobs and that Hypatia’s attackers were therefore a “mob”, a view refuted in sec-
tion 2 above). The use of roof tiles as weapons in street-fighting, often by oth-
erwise unarmed civilians, is attested throughout classical antiquity, as William
Barry’s study demonstrates.104 Tiles from ancient Greece and Italy examined by
100
PGL 976: ὀστρακάριος (“tile-maker”); ὀστράκινος “of earthenware”; ὀστρακώδης (“testa-
ceous”). Cf. Andrew C. Zenos, trans., The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, NPNF2 2
(Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890), 160 (“murdered her with tiles”) and n. 2:
“ὀστράκοις, lit. ‘oystershells,’ but the word was also applied to brick tiles used on the roofs of
houses.” In classical Greek, κέραμος and κεραμίς are frequently used for “tile” and “tiling”: LSJ
940 s. v.
101
Some regard tiles as the killing weapons, albeit often without clarifying how they were
deployed: e. g. Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a
Saint and of a Heretic, OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47; Alan Cameron, “Hypa-
tia: Life, Death, and Works,” in Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and
Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 185 – 203, here 186. The idea is already pres-
ent in de Valois’ “testis interemerunt.”
102
Tradition has Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, being knocked unconscious by a tile (κεραμίς)
that an older woman hurls from a rooftop during the siege of Argos in 272 BCE: Plutarch,
Pyrrh. 34.2 – 3.
103
E. g. Vergil, Aen. 1.148 – 50.
104
William D. Barry, “Roof Tiles and Urban Violence in the Ancient World,” GRBS 37 (1996):
55 – 74. His rich source collection is based on the search terms κεραμ- and tegul- and omits the
Hypatia episode. Another passage that can be added to Barry’s list is Optatus of Milevis, Contra

Appendix B 277
Barry weigh between 14 and 30 kilograms, enough to seriously harm, cripple, or

kill someone. Barry’s data and calculations refer to terracotta tiles. Tiles made of
stone or marble would have been even deadlier. Jagged edges and keen corners
added to the violent impact of the tiles. They were often held in place on the roof
by their weight alone, which also means that they could, under certain circum-
stances, slip or be removed by hand.105 In the instances assembled by Barry, the
tiles are always thrown, but there are no examples of tile fragments being used
as fatal cutting devices.
Most of the scenarios Barry examines involve combatants throwing tiles from
some height, usually from a roof. But there are literary examples of tiles used
with deadly impact on the ground.106 Alexandrian archaeology, too, illustrates a
variety of ground-level sources for building materials: terracotta tiles covering
not only roofs but also ground structures such as sewage canals; building mate-
rials lying on the ground unused; and depots of various kinds of building mate-
rials apparently assembled for reuse.107 With a view to other potential mean-
ings of ὄστρακον, in Roman Alexandria, as elsewhere in the Roman world, fired
brick was a common building material, particularly for baths and cisterns but
also for other structures. These included the so-called theatre at Kom el-Dikka
and diverse structures in the general area of the Caesareum complex,108 where
Hypatia was killed according to Socrates. The city’s refuse heaps abounded with
potsherds.109 All of these materials would have been readily accessible in late
Roman Alexandria.
Furthermore, literary representations of urban unrest set in Roman Alex-
andria involve stoning. Philo recounts how during the riots of 38 victims were
stoned to death (καταλεύειν) and injured with a tile or (heavy) vessel (κέραμος)
and with branches (κλάδοι).110 Eusebius (H. E. 6.41.3 – 4) relates the stoning of
Parmenianum Donatistam 2.18.1 (written in the 360s), where several deacons are wounded, and
two die, through roof tiles (tegulae) torn from the very basilica of Lemella / Mauritania that the
victims are defending against the Donatist aggressors.
105
Roof tiles “broken or thrown down by the winds”: Vitruvius, De architectura 2.8.18.
106
Plutarch, Apoph. lac. 241 B5.
107
Tile-covered sewage canal: Barbara Tkaczow, Topography of Ancient Alexandria: An Ar-
chaeological Map, Travaux du Centre d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne de l’Académie Polonaise
des Sciences 32 (Warsaw: Zakład Archeologii Śródziemnomorskiej Polskiej Akademii Nauk,
1993), 84 with n. 75. Unused floor slabs and depots of building material: Barbara Tkaczow, Ar-
chitectural Styles of Ancient Alexandria: Elements of Architectural Decoration from Polish Excava-
tions at Kom el-Dikka (1960 – 1993), Alexandrie 8 (Warsaw: Zakład Archeologii Śródziemnomor-
skiej Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2010), 90 – 91 with n. 29.
108
Kom el-Dikka: Tkaczow, Topography of Ancient Alexandria, 85. Caesareum area: ibid.,
131, 136.
109
Archaeological evidence of refuse heaps in late antique Alexandria: Tkaczow, Topography
of Ancient Alexandria, 111 with n. 130, 167 with n. 228; Majcherek, “The Auditoria on Kom el-
Dikka,” 472 with n. 11 (with bibliography).
110
Legatio 127 – 28. In Flacc. 66 and 174, Philo mentions stoning (καταλεύειν), cudgelling,
burning alive, and dragging to death. Discussion of these events: Sandra Gambetti, The Alexan-

278 Mareile Haase
the Christians Metras and Quinta in Alexandria in 249 / 50. In both cases, a series
of previous tortures (beating, tearing, scourging, dragging) culminates in lethal
stoning (καταλιθοβολεῖν; καταλεύειν). According to Theodoret (Hist. E. 4.19),
the envoy sent by Damasus of Rome to Alexandria was maltreated in various
ways and pelted with stones. And for Constantinople Marcellinus Comes notes
“stone throwers” (lapidatores) among the urban troublemakers executed in
523.111
Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ Latin translation of Socrates of Constantinople
provides further support for the assumption that the latter depicted a stoning.
Cassiodorus treats Hypatia’s death in Book 11 of his Historia ecclesiastica tri-
partita, which book relies exclusively on Socrates. The translation was penned
by the scholar Epiphanius, but the overall composition and final revision of
the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita may have been the responsibility of Cas-
siodorus.112 Regarding the account of Hypatia’s death, Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’
text is so close to Socrates that it should be reckoned a translation rather than a
re-working with any claim to originality. However, small deviations from Soc-
rates’ original provide valuable insight into how Cassiodorus / Epiphanius dealt
with ambiguities in Socrates; the example of δίφρος rendered as vehiculum was
discussed in section 4 above. Such deviations reveal the interpretational process
that underlies Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ translation and that is indeed inher-
ent in any translation. The importance which Cassiodorus, author of a work De
orthographia, attached to correct transcription and precise written communica-
tion, his predilection for Greek language and culture,113 and his commitment to
translations from the Greek, which he commissioned and supervised, seem to
drian Riots of 38 C. E. and the Persecution of the Jews: A Historical Reconstruction, JSJ Supplement
135 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), esp. 167 – 93.
111
Cf. Brian Croke, trans., The Chronicle of Marcellinus: A Translation with Commentary,
Byzantina Australiensia 7 (Sydney: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1995), 42.
112
Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ translation of Socrates: Günther C. Hansen, ed., Sokrates, Kir-
chengeschichte, GCS, N. F. 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), xxiv – xxv; Harich-Schwarzbauer,
Hypatia, 217 – 30. On Cassiodorus / Epiphanius as translator more generally, see Ladislas Szyman-
ski, The Translation Procedure of Epiphanius-Cassiodorus in the Historia tripartita, Books 1 and
2 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963); Franz Weissengruber, Epiphanius
Scholasticus als Übersetzer: Zu Cassiodorus-Epiphanius Historia ecclesiastica tripartita, Veröffent-
lichungen der Kommission zur Herausgabe des Corpus der lateinischen Kirchenväter 5, SÖAW,
Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 283 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1972). Division of work between Cas-
siodorus and Epiphanius: Mario Mazza, “La Historia Tripartita di Flavio Magno Aurelio Cas-
siodoro Senatore: metodi e scopo,” in Flavio Aurelio Magno Cassiodoro: atti della settimana di
studi, Cosenza-Squillace, 19 – 24 settembre 1983, ed. Sandro Leanza (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino
Editore, 1986), 210 – 44, esp. 210 – 16; but cf. Franco Cardini, Cassiodoro il Grande: Roma, i barbari
e il monachesimo, Biblioteca di cultura medievale (Milan: Jaca, 2 2017), 94, 149.
113
For which, see Antonio Garzya, “Cassiodoro e la grecità,” in Flavio Aurelio Magno Cas-
siodoro: atti della settimana di studi, Cosenza-Squillace, 19 – 24 settembre 1983, ed. Sandro Leanza
(Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 1986), 118 – 34.

Appendix B 279
preclude that such deviations result from mere accident or carelessness. This is
the account of Hypatia’s death in Cassiodorus / Epiphanius:114
For which reason, men driven by a most violent passion, whose leader was a certain
Peter, a reader, conspired and ambushed the woman as she returned to her place, and,
pulling her down from her vehicle, dragged her to the Church which is called that of
Caesar, and, after they had stripped her of her clothes, killed her with stones (lapidibus
peremerunt). Afterwards, tearing her asunder limb by limb, they completely burned her
by fire in a place that is called Cinarus. This affair stirred up no moderate amount of spite
for Cyril and the Alexandrian Church, for murder and fighting are foreign to Christians.
Now this happened in the fourth year of Cyril’s episcopate, in the tenth consulate of
Honorius and the sixth of Theodosius, in the month of March, while it was Lent.
It is surely significant that Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’ text renders Socrates’
ὀστράκοις ἀνεῖλον by way of Latin lapidibus peremerunt. In the mid-sixth cen-
tury,115 a mere century after Socrates’ text, his Latin translation considers him to
have referred to stoning. As we have seen, this understanding is easily reconcil-
able with the semantics of Socrates’ ὄστρακα and with the literary and archaeo-
logical evidence for stoning. Yet the decision not to provide a more literal trans-
lation of ὄστρακα may point to some puzzlement on Cassiodorus’ / Epiphanius’
part.116 By offering a free but unequivocal rendering of Socrates’ phrase, the
translation disambiguates the meaning of ὄστρακα while retaining the bipartite
structure of the Greek phrase.
Stoning is associated with the primitive and with the forces of Chaos in
Greek cosmogonic myth, where creatures like the Gigantes wield boulders as
weapons against the Olympians. The Neoplatonic writer Eunapius of Sardis,
a contemporary of Hypatia’s, compares the elimination of the cult of Serapis in
Alexandria and Canopus to the Gigantomachy and equates Theophilus’ faction
with the monsters. The implicit allegation is about the disruption of civil and
religious order but also about the attack on the traditional gods (in the form of
114
Cassiodorus, Hist. eccl. tripart. 11.12.4 – 5, ed. Jacob and Hanslik, 644: Quamobrem con-
spirantes viri acerrimo fervore pulsati, quorum dux erat quidam Petrus lector, observaverunt mu-
lierem ad propria remeantem eamque de vehiculo deponentes ad ecclesiam, quae vocatur Caesaris,
traxerunt et vestibus exutam lapidibus peremerunt. Quam postea membratim dilacerantes in loco,
qui dicitur Cinarus, igne concremaverunt. Haec res non mediocrem livorem Cyrillo et Alexandri-
nae concussit ecclesiae; alienae namque sunt a Christianis caedes et pugnae. Haec igitur acta sunt
quarto anno episcopatus Cyrilli, consulatu Honorii decimo et Theodosii sexto, mense Martio, iei-
uniis existentibus.
115
Date in the 540s: Garry W. Trompf, Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retri-
bution (London: Equinox Publishing, 22007), 323; Désirée Scholten, “Cassiodorus’ Historia tri-
partita before the Earliest Extant Manuscripts,” in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval
Europe, ed. Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 34 – 50, here 34.
116
This holds particularly true if one considers Cassiodorus / Epiphanius to be a rather lit-
eral translator; cf. Sebastian P. Brock, “Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity,” GRBS 20
(1979): 69 – 87, here 80 with n. 25.

280 Mareile Haase
their images). In an ironic subversion of conventional historiographic dating

by eponymy, Theophilus himself is pictured “lording it over the Cursed Ones,
some Eurymedon type ‘who once was king over the insolent Gigantes’,”117 with
a quotation from Homer (Od. 7.59). The casting of Theophilus as the Giant king
Eurymedon (“Widely-Ruling”) reveals the juxtaposition of awe and contempt in
which the bishop was held by some of his contemporaries, but it likewise high-
lights the associations stoning evoked in some ancient onlookers and readers.
The stoning of Hypatia – a woman, a divulger of “idololatrous” teachings,
and an alleged magician according to John of Nikiu (Chron. 84.87 – 88) – would
have evoked passages from the Scriptures as well. In the Old Testament, ston-
ing is stipulated as a punishment for various types of sexual misconduct; for
blasphemy (Lev. 24:10 – 23); breaking the Sabbath (Num. 15:32 – 36); being a
medium or an enchanter (ἐγγαστρίμυθος ἢ ἐπαοιδός: Lev. 20:27); and for ido-
lolatry (Lev. 20: 1 – 2; Deut. 13:2 – 12 and 17:2 – 7). In the New Testament, Jesus
prevents the stoning of an adulteress (Jo. 8:3 – 11) and escapes a stoning for blas-
phemy (Jo. 10: 31 – 33; cf. 8:59). The Apostle Paul escapes a stoning at Iconium
and survives another at Lystra (Acts 14: 5 – 7, 19 – 20); Stephen, first martyr of
Christianity, is stoned for alleged blasphemy (Acts 7:58 – 60).118
For Christoph Stenschke, the stoning motif in Luke is a means of character-
ising an undisciplined and fickle non-Christian crowd; for Shelly Matthews, the
stoning of Stephen is linked to a barbarous, un-Roman rabble.119 These seman-
tics are reminiscent of the interpretation proposed here for Eunapius’ depic-
tion of Theophilus as Eurymedon: in very different contexts, stoning is used to
characterise an uncultivated and uncontrolled opponent. These semantic back-
grounds may shed telling light on how Socrates viewed Cyril and his regime.
117
Eunapius, VS 6.11.1 – 2, ed. Giangrande, 38 = 6.107 – 08, ed. Goulet, 39 – 40: . . . Θεοφίλου δὲ
προστατοῦντος τῶν ἐναγῶν, ἀνθρώπου τινὸς Εὐρυμέδοντος “ὅς ποθ’ ὑπερθύμοισι Γιγάντεσσιν
βασίλευεν.” The phrase “Θεοφίλου προστατοῦντος” is part of a list of eponymous dignitaries en-
tailing an extensive time specification: “under the rule of Theodosius, under the episcopate (PGL
1182 s. v. προστασία 2, προστάτης 4) of Theophilus . . ., under the prefecture of Evagrius, under
the military command of Romanus.”
118
Rich comparative evidence for the stoning of Stephen and Paul: Craig S. Keener, ed.,
Acts: An Exegetical Commentary 2. 3:1 – 14:28 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 1453 – 63,
2126 – 29, 2172 – 77.
119
Christoph W. Stenschke, Luke’s Portrait of Gentiles Prior to Their Coming to Faith,
WUNT II 108 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 175 – 77 with n. 342; Shelly Matthews, Perfect
Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2010), esp. 3 – 4, 73, 75 – 77, 169 n. 65, 173 n. 25.

Appendix B 281
10. τοῦτο οὐ μικρὸν μῶμον Κυρίλλῳ καὶ τῇ Ἀλεξανδρέων ἐκκλησίᾳ

εἰργάσατο· . . . ἐν μηνὶ Μαρτίῳ νηστειῶν οὐσῶν
Socrates dates Hypatia’s killing to March 415, shortly before Easter.120 In 415,
Cyril announced Easter for April 11.121 That the assault took place during Lent
further increases its gravity, a fact that Socrates emphasises from the standpoint
of Christian ethics. Violent behaviour is inappropriate for Christians, a view par-
alleled in a fifth-century sermon by abbot Besa of Athripe.122 Unsurprisingly, the
assault on Hypatia contrasts strongly with the (commonplace) moral agenda of
Cyril’s Easter Letters; for the Lenten period in 415, the patriarch recommends,
amongst other things, charity (τῆς εἰς ἀλλήλους ἀγάπης), remembrance of the
maltreated (μνημονεύοντες . . . τῶν κακουχουμένων), “and in general esteem of
all virtues” (καὶ πᾶσαν ἁπαξαπλῶς τιμῶντες ἀρετήν) (Cyril of Alexandria, Epist.
pasch. 2.9).
120
Dating by consulship in Socrates: Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates, 156 – 58. Math-
ematician Ari Belenkiy (“The Novatian ‘Indifferent Canon’ and Pascha in Alexandria in 414:
Hypatia’s Murder Case Reopened,” VChr 70 [2016]: 373 – 400) has recently reconsidered an ear-
lier argument of his, in which he dated Hypatia’s death to 416. He now agrees with the estab-
lished scholarly consensus regarding 415 as the date of her death but continues to hypothesise
that Hypatia was killed because she became involved in Christian controversies about the Easter
computus. However, Cameron, “Hypatia: Life, Death, and Works,” 190, followed by Watts, Hypa-
tia, 157 n. 5, rightly observes that there is no primary evidence that Hypatia ever concerned her-
self with that question. The Easter computus in the early church: Andreas Külzer, “Die Festbriefe
(ἐπιστολαὶ ἑορταστικαί) – eine wenig beachtete Untergattung der byzantinischen Briefliteratur,”
ByzZ 91 (1998): 379 – 90, here 380 – 82; O’Keefe, “Introduction,” esp. 6 – 7; Harald Buchinger, “Pas-
cha,” RAC 26 (2015): 1033 – 77, esp. 1048 – 50, 1060 – 62 (with bibliography). Socrates’ excursus
about the Easter controversy (Hist. eccl. 5.22): Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates, 47 – 48
and n. 109; 222 – 23, 248 – 50, 377 s. v. Ostertermin. Cyril’s calendrical endeavour: Alden A. Moss-
hammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), esp. 65 – 67, 193 – 94.
121
Easter date in 415: Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. pasch. 2.9; cf. Philip R. Amidon and John
J. O’Keefe, trans., St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1 – 12, FC 118 (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2009), 67 n. 72; 237 – 38 (table of Easter dates announced by Cyril’s
Festal Letters). Early history of the Lenten season: Alberto Camplani, “Sull’origine della quaresima
in Egitto,” in Acts of the 5th International Congress of Coptic Studies, Washington, 12 – 15 August
1992, ed. David W. Johnson and Tito Orlandi (Rome: C. I. M., 1993), 2:105 – 21; Martin, Athanase
d’Alexandrie, 156 – 70; Külzer, “Die Festbriefe,” 388 and n. 42; Buchinger, “Pascha,” 1060 – 61.
122
The ethical notion advanced by Socrates (ἀλλότριον γὰρ παντελῶς τῶν φρονούντων τὰ
Χριστοῦ φόνοι καὶ μάχαι καὶ τὰ τούτοις παραπλήσια) is expressed in strikingly similar terms in
Besa’s sermon; cf. Besa, F 41: “To the Dignitaries and People of the Village,” ed. and trans. Karl
Heinz Kuhn, Letters and Sermons of Besa, CSCO 157 – 158 Scriptores Coptici 21 – 22 (Louvain:
Imprimerie Orientaliste L. Durbecq, 1956), 21:129 – 30, 22:123 – 24: “. . . such a thing [i. e. fight-
ing] is not fitting for us, we being Christians, nor again is it pleasing to God, nor is it pleasing
to men . . . For also it is thus written, ‘It is not right for a servant of the Lord to fight.’ For such
things are not for men who say, ‘We are Christians.’” – Τῶν φρονούντων τὰ Χριστοῦ, the “party of
Christ”, is synonymous with οἱ Χριστιανοί, and the expression “οἱ τὰ . . . φρονοῦντες” is frequent
in Socrates according to Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates, 38 – 39, who however translates
more literally (113): “Morde und Kämpfe und dergleichen stehen nämlich denen, die Christus
im Sinn haben, nicht gut an.”

282 Mareile Haase
With a view to the date of Hypatia’s death, “the time of the preparation of
catechumens,” John McGuckin has cautiously suggested that her murder started
as an attempt to force her into conversion; he reads her death as “a grim parody
of the baptismal rite.”123 But this conjecture rests partly on how we interpret the
purpose of stripping Hypatia of her clothes, which can be read differently (as we
have seen in section 7 above) from how McGuckin wishes to understand the rel-
evant passage, and partly on the assumption that Hypatia was killed “within the
very church building.” But neither Socrates’ text nor other late antique sources
verify that Hypatia was dispatched inside the church (for my suggestion regard-
ing the location of her death as implied by Socrates’ account, see section 5 above).
Edward Watts proposes that the slackening of port operations in March
bound the underemployed dockers to Alexandria’s bishop, whose donations
helped support them and provided an incentive for them to participate in the
attack on Hypatia.124 The socio-economic perspective is appealing, but none of
the sources suggests that the desperate unemployed had anything to do with
Hypatia’s death. I hold it as at least as likely that increased visitor influx to the
city on the occasion of the Easter holidays and the heightened excitement (and
excitability) that comes with the celebration of major holidays,125 while possibly
converging with undercurrents of social strain, were decisive in unleashing the
hooliganism described by Socrates.
The phenomenon of major religious festivals attracting violence transcends
cultural and chronological boundaries. David Nirenberg, for example, has stud-
ied instances of Holy Week riots in various cities in fourteenth-century Spain,
where Easter conjured up Christian allegations of deicide against the Jewish
population.126 With due consideration given to the obvious differences, the riots
studied by Nirenberg yield features that are comparable to certain components
of the Hypatia narratives: the tendency for attacks to take place near import-
ant religious buildings; the prevalent and sometimes lethal stone throwing in
which clerics as well as children and adolescents participated; and a connec-
tion between the victims and the civic authorities, which could result in fights
between local Christian clerics and civic elites.
For Roman culture, Jerry Toner proffers examples of how the exuberant
mood of festivals sometimes resulted in rioting and hooliganism, which in
itself could acquire a celebratory air.127 For Roman and late Roman Alexandria
123
McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria, 14.
124
Watts, Hypatia, 16 – 17, 114 – 15 with nn. 33 – 35.
125
Cf. Marc Juergensmeyer, “Religious Terrorism as Performance Violence,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Religion and Violence, ed. Michael Jerryson, Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 280 – 92, here 288 – 89.
126
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 21998), 200 – 30.
127
Jerry P. Toner, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 118.

Appendix B 283
and other urban centres, further examples of rioting and killing in the wake of
major Christian festivals support my view that a similar scenario was under-
lying Socrates’ rendering of Hypatia’s death: According to the fourth-century
Acts of Mark, followers of the traditional cults seized St. Mark, whom the Egyp-
tian Christian tradition claimed as founder and first bishop of the Alexandrian
church, on the occasion of a paschal celebration (which coincided with a festival
of Serapis).128 They dragged him by a rope around his neck through Alexandria’s
streets until he died and attempted to burn his body. In Constantinople in 379,
a group of monastics supported by the urban poor threw stones at Gregory of
Nazianzus and his candidates for baptism when he was about to celebrate Easter
vigil.129 Bishop Proterius was murdered in Alexandria on Maundy Thursday in
March 457. Starting with the Hesychian notice handed down in the Suda,130 his
killing (as well as that of George of Cappadocia in 361 on what today would be
Christmas Eve) has been compared to Hypatia’s death,131 but little attention has
been given to the date.
The fact that imperial amnesties were typically granted at Easter further
underlines the symbolic significance of these holidays. In his study on the
socio-historical and legal aspects of violence and crime in late antiquity, Jens-
Uwe Krause points out that amnesties became institutionalised and in certain
instances covered even serious offences.132 At the juridical level, the State used
128
Acta Marci 7 – 10 (PG 115: 167 – 70); discussion: Birger A. Pearson, “Earliest Christianity in
Egypt: Some Observations,” in Roots of Egyptian Christianity, ed. James E. Goehring and Birger
A. Pearson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 132 – 59, here 137 – 45.
129
Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. 77; discussion: Isele, Kampf um Kirchen, 82 – 90.
130
Hesychius (Suda IV 644,9 – 11) s. v. Ὑπατία.
131
George of Cappadocia’s death: Historia Acephala 2.8 – 10; see also Ammianus Marcellinus
22.11.8 – 10; Epiphanius, Pan. 76.1.1 – 2; Sozomenus, HE 5.7; Socrates, Hist. eccl. 3.2; Philostorgius,
Hist. eccl. 7.2; Chronicon Paschale p. 546 Dindorf. Cf. Matilde Caltabiano, “L’assassinio di Giorgio
di Cappadocia (Alessandria, 361 d. C.),” Quaderni catanesi di studi classici e medievali 7 (1985):
17 – 59; Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie, 536 – 40, 565 – 66; Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity,
280 – 95; Johannes Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt: Studien zu den Auseinandersetzungen
zwischen Christen, Heiden und Juden im Osten des Römischen Reiches (von Konstantin bis Theo-
dosius II.), Klio Beihefte N. F. 8 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 66 – 74; Harold A. Drake, “The
Curious Case of George and the Camel,” in Studies of Religion and Politics in the Early Christian
Centuries, ed. Pauline Allen and David Luckensmeyer, Early Christian Studies 13 (Virginia, QLD:
Centre for Early Christian Studies, 2010), 173 – 93. – Death of Proterius: Liberatus of Carthage,
Breviarium 15; Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 2.8; also Zachariah of Mytilene, Hist. eccl. 4.1 – 2, Theodore
Lector, Hist. eccl. 1.8. Cf. William H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters
in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1972), 154 – 55; Cornelia Horn, Asceticism and Christological Controversy in Fifth-Century
Palestine: The Career of Peter the Iberian, OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 31 – 32
n. 104, 93 n. 209, 95; Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 332.
132
Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 275 – 79; also Jens-Uwe Krause, “Staatliche Gewalt in der
Spätantike: Hinrichtungen,” in Extreme Formen von Gewalt in Bild und Text des Altertums, ed.
Martin Zimmermann, Münchner Studien zur Alten Welt 5 (Munich: Utz, 2009), 321 – 50, here
332 – 34, 344 – 45.

284 Mareile Haase
Easter as an opportunity to interrupt the cycle of violence and counter-violence.

It is conceivable, although not explicitly stated, that Socrates depicts a scenario
where the perpetrators felt safe, hoping for a likely amnesty even for murderers,
and that such an amnesty contributed to the covering up of Hypatia’s murder.
Most scholars agree that the assassins remained exempt from punishment.133
Krause’s study, while it does not discuss Hypatia’s case in any detail,134 may nev-
ertheless furnish useful information regarding the administrative and juridi-
cal mechanisms that would have facilitated such an outcome:135 Krause points
out that there commonly existed a marked discrepancy between the penalty
prescribed by late antique law and the actual punishment. Partly owing to an
unwieldy administrative apparatus but also because of an imperial propensity
for amnesties, failure to punish even grave crimes was a common occurrence.
Besides, it was easy for perpetrators to go into hiding in larger cities. Corrupt
governors further impeded dispensation of imperial justice. This is the very sce-
nario Damascius seems to allude to: “And the Emperor would have been vexed
about this . . ., had not Aedesius been corrupted by bribes.”136 Against the back-
ground of late antique criminal law and jurisdiction the cover-up of Hypatia’s
case, while uncondonable, was in all likelihood far from exceptional.
133
E. g. Ronchey, Ipazia, 63 – 65; Clelia Martínez Maza, “Une victime sans importance? La
mort de la philosophe Hypatie,” in Chrétiens persécuteurs: destructions, exclusions, violences reli-
gieuses au IVe siècle, ed. Marie-Françoise Baslez, Bibliothèque Histoire 460 (Paris: Albin-Michel,
2014), 285 – 310, here 287.
134
Only a brief remark in Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 81.
135
For the following: Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 90 – 93, 206 – 11.
136
Damascius, Vita Isidori F *102,36 – 37 Zintzen: καὶ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἠγανάκτησεν ἐπὶ
τούτῳ <. . .> εἰ μὴ Αἰδέσιος ἐδωροδοκήθη. No official by the name of Aedesius has been identi-
fied in fifth-century Constantinople, but Damascius seems to imply that the imperial measures
were baulked by administrative corruption; cf. Harich-Schwarzbauer, Hypatia, 280.

Hypatias Death According To Socrates His

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Hypatias Death According To Socrates His

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Hypatia of Alexandria

Her Context and Legacy

e-offprint for the author with publisher’s permission.

ISBN 978‑3‑16‑154969‑4 / eISBN 978‑3‑16‑158954‑6

© 2020 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

e-offprint for the author with publisher’s permission.

Introduction: The Timeliness of Hypatia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Hypatia and Synesius

1. Hypatia and the Desert: A Late Antique Defense of Classicism . . . . . . 7

2. Desire and Despair: Synesius, Hypatia, and No Consolation

3. Synesius’ Letters to Hypatia: On the “End” of a Philosopher‑

4. Bloody Iuvenalia: Hypatia, Pulcheria Augusta, and the Beginnings

5. The Shattered Icon: An Alternative Reading of Hypatia’s Killing

6. The Private Devotions of Intellectual Hellenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

7. ‘A Mere Geometer’? Hypatia in the Context of Alexandrian

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Hypatia in her Ancient and Modern Reception

8. Hypatia’s Sisters? Gender and the Triumph of Knowledge

9. The Ideal (Bleeding?) Female: Hypatia of Alexandria

10. Hypatia and her Eighteenth‑Century Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Appendix A: Translation of Primary Sources on Hypatia . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Appendix B: Hypatia’s Death According to Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15:

Bibliography of Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

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