HYPATIA (A.D. 370?-415), Neoplatonic philosopher, born in Alexandria, was the daughter of Theon, author of a scholia on Euclid and a commentary on the Almagest, in which it is suggested that he was assisted by Hypatia. Lecturing in her native city, Hypatia ultimately became the recognized head of the Neoplatonic school there (c. 40o). Her remarkable intellectual gifts, eloquence and modesty, combined with her beauty, attracted many pupils. Among these was Synesius, afterwards (c. 41o) bishop of Ptole mais, several of whose letters to her, full of admiration and reverence, are extant. Shortly after the accession of Cyril to the patriarchate of Alexandria in 412, owing to her intimacy with Orestes, the pagan prefect of the city, Hypatia was barbarously murdered (Mar. 415) by a fanatical Christian mob. Socrates (Hist. Eccl. vii. I5) has related how she was torn from her chariot, dragged to the Caesareum (then a Christian church), stripped naked, done to death with oyster-shells and finally burnt.
Hypatia, according to Suidas, wrote commentaries on the Arith metica of Diophantus of Alexandria, on the Conics of Apollonius of Perga and on the astronomical canon (of Ptolemy), which are now lost. Little is known of her philosophical opinions, but she appears to have embraced the intellectual rather than the mystical side of Neoplatonism, and to have been a follower of Plotinus rather than of Porphyry and Iamblichus.
See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca (ed. Harles) , ix. 187 ; John Toland Tetradymus (172o) ; R. Hoche in Philologus (186o) , xv. 435 ; mono graphs by Stephan Wolf (Czernowitz, 1879), H. Ligier (Dijon, i88o) and W. A. Meyer (Heidelberg, 1885), who devotes attention to the relation of Hypatia to the chief representatives of Neoplatonism. The story of Hypatia forms the basis of the historical romance by Charles Kingsley (1853).