Hypatia

By Hannah Scott-Ravikumar

They cut me with pieces of pottery. Gashing me open, letting the blood gush over me and them as I whimpered. The pain blinded me long before the blood. The pottery cut my voice out before death could. And that was what they wanted, wasn’t it? They wanted me blind and silent.

Hypatia, the meddler, the pagan, the rabble-rouser, the nuisance, finally, dead.

****

I ran a school. Many philosophers converted, caved under the pressure. I did not. Yet they let me be. No one harms a philosopher. No matter their religion, people sought my counsel. Eager minds flocked to me in the streets, breathing in the dust kicked up from their sandals in the hope they could catch my lectures as I walked by markets. Every bench in my classroom was full, my pupils hung onto my every word.

History will tell that my commentaries were wise but broke no new ground. I was a mere woman. I was not innovative. Not original. I had no works of my own. I had just commentaries, building on the hard work of better men. I, a woman of so many words, reduced to writing in the margins.

Tell me, do you know of a man about whom this would be said?

Of course I wrote. Of course I created. Of course many hated me enough to destroy it all.

****

A student proposed to me once. He said he admired my mind. He was in love with me, and he would have no other. He stood in the street, hands clasped as if in prayer, sandals shifting on the rough stone. Other pupils turned away, some with knowing smiles. They knew better.

I reached under my tunic. His eyes froze as if turned to granite. I pulled out my sanitary napkin, stained with blood, and shook it at him. “This is what you love,” I said. “Not me.”

He stepped back, but would not leave the crowd that had gathered, even as some snickered at him. He continued to follow me through town as I resumed my lecture.

I never received another proposal.

****

I calculated the wonder of the gods in the stars. We are one. As I measured, I grew closer to touching their sparkling forms in the wine-dark sky.

Ptolemy was mostly correct, but I know of a more accurate method for astronomical calculations. I expanded on the groundwork he laid, improving it. Innovating it.

What is originality but improvements upon previous ideas?

****

My students complained they could not keep up when I began to speak in equations. I created textbooks for them, parchment written first by my own hand, then copied by my pupils. In my texts, they saw the mathematics swirling in the breeze. When I was on my own, I worked with variables and geometric figures they could not comprehend.

The world is filled with numbers, shapes, variables. All calculable. Even the stars, the planets, the moon, the sun. I knew that one day, we would calculate the power to see them closer.

****

Orestes sought my counsel. He was a large man, broad like Plato, curly black hair, assured stance. He carried himself as a man who neither needed, nor heeded, counsel. Yet I gave it. He was a good man with a willingness to learn. He came often to my home, sitting at my wooden table and leaning on the edge so the table would not tilt.

“For a woman who talks so much, Hypatia, you are quiet,” Orestes told me once.

“Is my voice quiet, or are you simply not listening?” I placed my hand on the table, fingers pressing on a splinter in the wood.

Orestes smiled. “Perhaps a bit of both.”

We were two brilliant minds, listening, teasing, exchanging ideas, learning.

****

The bishop Cyril came to a lecture of mine, following me in the street. He bared his long teeth at me, showed his hatred for me in every scraggly hair of his dark beard. My pupils paid him no heed. I merely acknowledged his presence.

He reached out a hand to grab me. For what purpose, I did not know—or perhaps was not prepared to face. A pupil stopped him; they still remembered the proposal. Defeated, Cyril left, wringing his spindly hands together in anger.

I was closer to Orestes than he. I had power, prestige, wisdom, and I shared it all, for that is the true calling of a philosopher: we share knowledge and give counsel, to better all humankind. Some wish to share all that they have, for no gain, and often by accident gain fame and worshippers. Some wish to hoard information, wealth, and prestige so they may be worshipped out of fear. Cyril was one of these.

I didn’t care for him, his hysterical whining and unhinged shouting. I had not the patience for men who could not hold their tongue and listen.

****

Philosophers were untouchable. Until they came for me.

****

The mob found me in my carriage, travelling home. The faces shouting obscenities at me blended together until I knew only two things about them: they were men. Christian men.

They dragged me to the Kaisarion, the temple they had turned into a church. There, they decided that no matter their god’s opinion on murder, I should die by their hands.

My students stayed in their homes, peering in fright from small windows as they saw pieces of me dragged through the streets where I had lectured. An arm, a foot, a bloody rib.

This was all that remained, the mob leader boasted, of the great Hypatia.

The men burned my inventions, my writings, my books. My students saved what they could, creeping into my lecture hall and my home to retrieve the parchment I had once given them to study.

But they could not share my work, nor could they lecture in public. They knew how far the bishop Cyril would go to silence the sharing of knowledge. They studied in silence, pouring over equations by flickering candlelight.

Orestes fell. Cyril took over. His power was unrivalled.

He had silenced me.

****

My own people forget me as they convert. Dismiss me as a pagan. After all, if I did not believe what they believe, why should they listen?

Four hundred years pass, and Arabic scholars think my surviving work is fit enough to translate. My gods are not theirs. This does not matter to them.

They hear my voice through the rustling of the pages. It is how I survive.

****

Cyril is always shown in portraits with a scroll, the knowledge he tried to destroy.

For my murder, the pope commemorates Cyril as a saint.

****

My students resisted me when I was persistent in my questioning of them. I saw the sweat on their brows, the blood in their cheeks. The more timid sat at the back of the hall, hoping to avoid my gaze. But I found them all.

I did it to force their minds to dig deeper, work harder, explore more. They thought it was torture. Yet they returned every week.

I saw their improvements. How they considered their thoughts, observed their world, analysed their words.

They acknowledged they were better thinkers for it.

Persistence accomplishes far more.

****

Philosophers grow sceptical of those the church has venerated. Cyril of Alexandria? He murdered a brilliant mathematician and philosopher. Why should we admire him for murder?

Voltaire speaks his name in disgust, mine in reverence.

****

I am rustling, like the shores on a calm wind.

Quiet is not silent. Quiet is persistent noise, loud enough to hear, soft enough to ignore. Yet there will come a time that no one can ignore the quietest voice in the room.

I, writing in the margins, have survived the scourge of history. In truth, I am deafening.

Hannah Scott-Ravikumar is an author and former bookseller, Iowa-born and currently based in St Louis and Belfast. When she isn’t writing, studying, or reading, she’s taking pictures of her grumpy nineteen-year-old cat. She is a mentee with the Asian Women Writers’ programme and is currently working towards a master’s in history. You can find her online on Twitter @hsr731, or on Instagram @hannahsrwriter.

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Why we chose this piece: Hannah’s voice is amazing, and the premise of this story is unique and intriguing. She really brings Hypatia to life, and the parting line in each section is a total mic drop.