Professor Edith Hall

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We are on slightly firmer... You immediately caveated.

Slightly firmer historical ground because we've got two sources that are approximately contemporary with her, as well as one or two that are quite a lot later.

So we've actually got some letters by a guy called Sinesius of Cyrene, who was some kind of student or acolyte of hers.

Cyrene is in Libya.

Mm-hmm.

So this is, we're talking about the North African Greek intellectual diaspora.

He seems to have absolutely adored her, wanted to send her his work and his ideas.

She doesn't seem to have answered very much.

Okay, I like her already.

At some point stopped contacting him, but the respect he holds her in is very indicative.

We've got the biography by Socrates, the scholar.

Another guy called Damascus, who wrote A Life of Another Neoplatonist, in which she has some interesting stuff, really more about the culture of Alexandria, where she grew up.

And we've got the amazingly horrible John of NICU, who is a 7th century Coptic Christian.

And he wrote a world history, mansplaining history for everybody.

And his paragraph on Hypatia is very important because it reflects what people like him thought of her.

And that is that she is a seductress, a high class sex worker who beguiles people with witchcraft.

We've got a text that reflects what people were shouting in the street.

It is a city which has had the very famous library and several other libraries and museums attached to it.

It's a university city.