Hypatia, according to Suidas, was the author of com mentaries on the mathematician Diophantus and on the Conics of Apollonius of Perga, and also of an astronomical canon. None of these works have come down to our time; but their titles, combined with expressions in the letters of Synesius, who consulted her about the construction of an astrolabe, would seem to indicate that she devoted herself specially to astronomy and mechanics. Of her philosophical opinions nothing is known, except that they shared the general eclectic features of the Alexandrian NeoPlatonism. A Latin letter to Cyril on behalf of Nestorius, which has sometimes been attributed to her, is undoubtedly spurious. It can be read in Baluze. The story of Hypatia appears in a considerably disguised yet still recognizable form in the legend of St Catherine as recorded in the Roman Breviary (Nov. 25), and still more fully in the Martyrologies (see Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 467 sqqf

The chief source for the little we know about Hypatia is the account given by Socrates (2Γ. E., vii. 15). The article in Suidas, which Gibbon has characterized as “curious and original,” must be received with some caution. It is on his authority that the somewhat doubtful statement is made that she was the wife of Isidoras the philosopher. She is the subject of an epigram by Palladas in the Anthology (ix. 400; ed. Jacobs). See Menage, Hist. Mul. Phil., p. 52; Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., ix. 187 sqq. ; Wernsdorf, op. cit. ; and the exhaustive monograph of Hoche in Philologus, xv. 435 sqq. (1860). An anonymous work entitled Hypatia,· or the history of a most beautiful, most virtuous, most learned, and every way accomplished lady, who was torn to pieces by the clergy of Alexandria to gratify the pride, emulation, and cruelty of their archbishop Cyril, commonly but undeservedly styled Saint Cyril, was published in London in 1720. The history of Hypatia has also been made the basis of an attractive historical romance by Charles Kingsley (1853).