A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Hypatia
HYPATIA,
A most beautiful, virtuous,and learned lady of antiquity, daughter of Theon, who governed the Platonic School at Alexandria, the place of her birth and education, in the latter part of the fourth Century. Socrates tells us, that Hypatia "arrived at such a pitch of learning, as very far to exceed all the philosophers of her time." But our notions of her will be prodigiously heightened, when we. consider, that succeeding her father, as she actually did, in the government of the Alexandrian School, she taught out of that chair where Ammonius, Hierocles, and many greet and celebrated philosophers had taught; and this at a time, too, when men of immense learning abounded both at Alexandria and in many other parts of the Roman empire. She was murdered about 415, in consequence of the factions which rent that city, by the followers of St. Cyril.