Was classical Alexandria really this brutal and class-segregated?
Upvote:7
At that time yes. The Roman Empire was weak and receding and the vacuum that created fueled a struggle between groups looking to fill it. Hypatia wasn't just killed by accident being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was targeted and assasinated by Christians involved in a violent three way struggle for control of the city of Alexandria with Jews and Rome.
Hypatia's admirers included Alexandria’s governor, Orestes. Her association with him would eventually lead to her death.
Hypatia's crime was she was smart, and an advisor to the Roman governor of Alexandria Orestes. Orestes was a Christian but he governed independently from the Church's bishop Cyril. When a disagreement arose between the two Cyril tried to assassinate the Roman Governor Orestes but failed. Next the Christians took aim at one of his primary advisor in their struggle, the Philosopher Hypatia. She was met on the streets by christians who dragged her out of her carriage and brutally murdered her within a nearby church.
With Cyril the head of the main religious body of the city and Orestes in charge of the civil government, a fight began over who controlled Alexandria. Orestes was a Christian, but he did not want to cede power to the church. The struggle for power reached its peak following a massacre of Christians by Jewish extremists, when Cyril led a crowd that expelled all Jews from the city and looted their homes and temples. Orestes protested to the Roman government in Constantinople. When Orestes refused Cyril’s attempts at reconciliation, Cyril’s monks tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him.
Hypatia, however, was an easier target. She was a pagan who publicly spoke about a non-Christian philosophy, Neoplatonism, and she was less likely to be protected by guards than the now-prepared Orestes.
In the year 415 or 416, the mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector accosted a woman’s carriage and dragged her from it and into a church, where they stripped her and beat her to death with roofing tiles. They then tore her body apart and burned it. Who was this woman and what was her crime? Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy.
Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar
An avowed paganist in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
More post
- 📝 Why did Paul von Hindenburg wrongly call Adolf Hitler "Bohemian corporal"?
- 📝 Approximately what was the short-term economic loss to Britain as a result of the Revolutionary War being lost?
- 📝 How did the Bolsheviks fund their government?
- 📝 Why didn't battleship Bismarck have more support?
- 📝 Were the names of the 10 months in the ancient Roman Calendar originally named after ordinal numbers?
- 📝 What happened to the French gold at Martinique during WW2
- 📝 How many aircraft participated in each of the three waves against the Yamato?
- 📝 What was the earliest black advocacy for Palestinian rights?
- 📝 Why does English use Roman months, but Germanic days of the week?
- 📝 Does Amnesty International maintain a list of prisoners of conscience?
- 📝 How was Christian intermarriage with the Muslim Turks viewed by the Byzantines?
- 📝 Can you recommend a book on the French Revolution?
- 📝 Did loot from the 4th Crusade turn up in interesting places?
- 📝 When was the first time lower-class people had a reasonable chance of having a fair trial?
- 📝 Marc Bloch's "Feudal Society"; Why do nobles have this vocation?
- 📝 How were ship kills accounted in WWII?
- 📝 What is "quarter column"?
- 📝 Does footage of WWI bombing of London by zeppelins exist?
- 📝 What effect did the execution of Louis XVI have on French foreign policy?
- 📝 Has the USA ever taken unilateral military action?
- 📝 Was there a European country that held a referendum about adopting English in universities?
- 📝 What is the correct English terminology to refer to New Mexico and Texas under Spain, then Mexico?
- 📝 What adaptations allowed left-handers to write left-to-right with dip pens?
- 📝 Was Brown v Board of Education the only major decision that changed educational choice in America?
- 📝 What was the population of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent in 1800 AD?
- 📝 What were the first local currency systems in history?
- 📝 What did the term "Parage" mean in middle ages Langued'oc?
- 📝 When were the heresy laws abolished in England?
- 📝 Why does the Philippines have little fossil deposits?
- 📝 In 1916, did an amputee, invalided out of the French army, get a pension?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Was classical Alexandria really this brutal and class-segregated?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 Was Kaliningrad offered to the Lithuanian SSR; was this offer rejected; and if so, why?
- 📝 Can anyone tell me what this coin was used for, an approximate date and possibly what it’s worth?
- 📝 Was Sofia really demolished by Bulgarians after 1878 and why?
- 📝 Was *Green Eggs and Ham* really banned in China from 1965–1991?
- 📝 Did West Russia really have a rock shortage in WW2? And if so, what was the cause?
- 📝 Did teenagers in the USA in the 1960s and 1950s really engage in dangerous, reckless driving to this extent?
- 📝 Who was Jack Hagler? As amended by chapter 87-24, Laws of Florida, this section shall be known and may be cited as the “Jack Hagler Self Defense Act.”
- 📝 What was this building and what happend to it?
- 📝 Was "Mad Anthony" Wayne of the Continental Army really that cruel like shown in this video?
- 📝 How significant was poetry as mnemonic device in technical / philosophical / scientific texts in classical Rome and Greece?
- 📝 Why China was able to unify and not Europe?
- 📝 Was race really unimportant in the 1660's?
- 📝 Was murdering a slave illegal in American slavery, and if so, what punishments were given for it?
- 📝 Was Switzerland really impossible to invade during WW2?
- 📝 Did Albert Einstein really receive this rejection letter from the University of Bern?
- 📝 When did FDR announce he was running a 3rd time, and was there any outrage?
- 📝 Did active frontiersmen really eat 20,000 calories a day? How does this compare to other highly-active people in recorded history?
- 📝 How and when was the modern company ownership structure invented?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Was slavery really on the way out in the antebellum USA?
- 📝 WW2: Did US marines and soldiers really go into action with unbuckled helmet chin straps?
- 📝 Did this "sledge rigged like a sloop" vehicle ever exist, or was it an invention of Jules Verne?
- 📝 What is the date and original source of this medieval picture?
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 Is there evidence to suggest the "war on drugs" was a cover for class warfare?
- 📝 What coin is this and where is it from? Thai script, Thai arms. Rev: left facing portrait
- 📝 Was a passport needed to travel between UK and France in 1972?
- 📝 When was this photo of Mission Dolores *actually* taken?