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Just some thoughts on the recent addition/removal of the Hypatia image. WP:PORTRAIT is an essay not a policy or guideline. I don't think that this image should necessarily be right at the top of the article and certainly not in the infobox. But, strictly applied, the essay would banish all the images herein. And how to judge that one image as more egregious than any of the others (dating right up to 1900)? We have none of the woman herself from life, more's the pity. With an appropriate caption, that image would be an appropriate addition. Mcewan (talk) 22:48, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, at least the images in question are actually intended to depict Hypatia, unlike the figure in Raphael's The School of Athens (from the discussion you link) which an urban legend but not good sourcing says is Hypatia; see Talk:The School of Athens/Archives/2020/April#Hypatia. But I don't think "intended to depict Hypatia" is a sufficient criterion to include a generic image of a European woman's head here, especially in view of the debate (see earlier in this talk page) and lack of actual evidence of her ethnicity as African vs European. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
I would like to point out that, although you vehemently object to the usage of fictional portraits in Wikipedia articles, almost every article I have read about any classical figure has used a fictional portrait as the main image.
See, for example: Aristophanes (a bust from a later era), Anaximenes of Miletus, Apollonius of Tyana (a medallion from the fourth century A.D.), Aulus Gellius, Democritus, Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes of Sinope, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Empedocles, Epictetus, Eratosthenes, Galen, Heraclitus, Herodotus (a bust from roughly two centuries after Herodotus's death), Hippocrates, Homer (a bust from roughly 400 years after Homer's death), Iamblichus, Lucian of Samosata, Ovid (a statue from 1887), Plutarch (a modern bust), Pythagoras (a bust from a later era), Sappho (a bust from roughly a century and a half after her death), Thales (a bust from a later era), Virgil (a mosaic from roughly 300 years after his death), and Xenophanes. These are just a few random examples I could think of off the top of my head. There are dozens more. The fact of the matter is that there are only a tiny, minute handful of figures from the entire span of classical antiquity for whom any form of contemporary representation has survived whatsoever.
Since using fictionalized portraits is clearly the norm for articles about figures of classical antiquity, I can find to justifiable reason why one should not be used for this article as well. -Katolophyromai (talk) 01:17, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
It's worth pointing out that we have different editorial policies, guidelines, and essays than the Britannica (including WP:PORTRAIT). That among these are also that the existence of other problematic content is a bad argument for keeping problematic content. That the image in question tells us little or nothing about the actual Hypatia. That by putting an image of a European-looking woman in that lead position, where there is no room for the appropriate disclaimers, we are using Wikipedia's editorial voice to say that Hypatia was European despite her African home. And that we should avoid making any such judgement, as original research. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:35, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I disagree with you on this matter. Using a fictional image depicting Hypatia of Alexandria as European is not making an argument that she was European, nor does it qualify in any way as original research. It is merely showing that people through the ages have imagined her as European, which is a completely different issue entirely. I do understand the point you are making, which is that people may see the picture and assume that it is what Hypatia actually looked like, but, as long as the caption under the image clearly states that the portrayal is fictional, I do not see this as being a major issue.
Obviously, in instances in which a contemporary or near-contemporary portrayal of a historical individual of some kind has survived, it is certainly better to use the contemporary image, but, in instances such as this where no contemporary depictions of any kind at all have survived, it seems perfectly logical to settle for the next best thing: imaginative portraits of what the person might have looked like. Obviously, this is certainly not an ideal situation and, if a contemporary portrait of Hypatia is suddenly discovered, I will be the first to advocate that that portrait be used in this article in the place of the current one, but insofar as our present circumstances are concerned, I see no problem with using the current portrait.
While it is indeed true that the image tells the reader little or nothing about the actual historical figure of Hypatia of Alexandria, the image does help illuminate the literary character of Hypatia. Very little is actually known for certain about the historical Hypatia of Alexandria. As is the case for many historical figures from the ancient world, many of the so-called "records" of her life are, in fact, merely fables and stories invented for literary purposes rather than historical ones. A large portion of the information contained within this article itself is already dedicated to later myths revolving around the literary character of Hypatia envisioned by later generations. Although this image may not necessarily convey to the reader what Hypatia actually looked like, it does demonstrate how later interpreters chose to imagine her, which is, perhaps, the next best thing.
I am new to Wikipedia and I have only been here for about a month, which means that I am certainly in no position to argue about what the terms and protocols are for a situation such as this one, but, as I understand it, the essay you keep citing is not supposed to represent strict rules regarding whether or not a certain portrait ought to be used and is, rather, merely representative of the ideas and opinions of one editor or a group of editors.
I should note that the reason why I am defending the usage of this portrait is simply because I think that it will help improve the quality of the article, which is really the same thing that all of us want. -Katolophyromai (talk) 05:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Decoration is not quality. In this case I strongly agree with what WP:PORTRAIT says: "in most cases such imaginary depictions have no encyclopedic information value, as they cannot convey any actual information to the reader about the subject". I also agree with what it says more specifically about the particular type of image you want to add: "Since they, too, typically carry heavy ideological overtones, reflecting the idealized, heroicized or romanticized way a historical figure or event was seen in a later age, such depictions may not merely be useless for Wikipedia but actually harmful, as they inject a covert POV perspective into an article." The images that are already included later in the article already provide the literary depictions you desire, are much better images for that purpose (although not as lead images), and more to the point can have their context explained at a point in the article where a reader seeing those images can also be expected to see the explanations. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Very well. Since you have clearly been here much longer than I have, I suppose that it is only fitting for me to give in to your better judgement. Since I see that you have already deleted the image, I will not add it back. I still think that the image should be included and I do not see it as causing harm to the article, but I will not continue to argue the point with you any further over this issue. Since you are so greatly opposed to the inclusion of the image, I will see to it that the image will not be included. -Katolophyromai (talk) 15:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Hello, sorry for not commenting here earlier about my removal, and thanks to Katolophyromai for gracefully conceding the point in the meantime. Yes, I made that latest reversal, and for full disclosure, I'm also the author of that WP:PORTRAIT essay that was quoted here. I've seen quite a lot of discussions of this kind here at this article, and to tell you the truth, the essay was partly written with these experiences in mind. Of course, it's only an essay, but you'll understand my personal reasons why I remain opposed to the inclusion are well represented in it. Fut.Perf.☼17:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Although I disagree with your essay, I will admit that it does have a very valid point in arguing that a fictionalized portrait may unintentionally mislead the reader into falsely believing that the image accurately represents what the historical figure actually looked like. -Katolophyromai (talk) 19:48, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
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Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The section purporting to be Socrates Scholasticus' account of Hypatia's death badly needs sourcing to a scholarly secondary source. Most of the section is about some persecution of the Jews, but Socrates does not tie that to the death of Hypatia. You can read it at Chap. 13, Chap. 14, Chap. 15. Hypatia is mentioned only in Chapter 15. It is within reason that a scholar could hypothesise that the events in Chapter 13 are related to the events of Chapter 15, but we are not allowed to make such interpretations. It violates both WP:NOR and WP:PRIMARY. What about the serious events in Chapter 14, which are also about the rift between Cyril and Orestes? I'm also removing "In an early blood libel offered as justification for acts by Cyril depriving Jews of property" which is unsourced editorial commentary not supported by Socrates Scholasticus (and describing every accusation against Jews as a blood libel is childish). Zerotalk23:25, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
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This prose is confusing: "The edict angered Christians as well as Jews. At one such gathering, Hierax, a devout Christian follower of Cyril, read the edict and applauded the new regulations. Many people felt that Hierax was attempting to incite the crowd into sedition. Orestes reacted swiftly and violently out of what Scholasticus suspected was "jealousy [of] the growing power of the bishops…[which] encroached on the jurisdiction of the authorities". He ordered Hierax to be seized and tortured publicly in the theater."
Why would a follower of Cyril applaud Orestes regulations and how would that be seditious? Perhaps it should be "derided the new regulations". -Reagle (talk) 20:26, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
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Please replace link in Note #35 because the current link is broken & marked as such:
^David Engels: Zwischen Philosophie und Religion: Weibliche Intellektuelle in Spätantike und Islam, in: D. Groß (Hg.), Gender schafft Wissen, Wissenschaft Gender. Geschlechtsspezifische Unterscheidungen Rollenzuschreibungen im Wandel der Zeit, Kassel 2009, 97–124.[permanent dead link]
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Latest comment: 6 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Our article writes that the simultaneous equation problem posed by Hypatia "as identified by Heath" was a certain pair of equations which are very easily solved by an algebraic factorization that reduces them to two linear equations in two unknowns. But reading the source for this identification makes clear that (1) the identification was not by Heath, but by the unsigned author of the source, (2) the identification does not actually provide any evidence crediting those equations to Hypatia, but instead merely argues that everything else in Diophantus was not by Hypatia, leaving those two equations as her only possible contribution, (3) the equations are written in an anachronistically modern form and the writer waffles on this issue by using the phrase "in essence", and (4) the purpose of the editorial writer in choosing those two equations as the ones to credit to Hypatia was to belittle her contributions by (implicitly but visible to any mathematician) pointing to their triviality and (explicitly) saying "Hardly, I'm afraid, stuff to raise one's voice about". Is this really fit material to include in our article? I'm not convinced that it is. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:22, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
The equation was added by Peabodybore. I left it there because I assumed it was significant. Just to be clear, I know a considerable amount of information about ancient history, but I am not a mathematician by any means (far from it, in fact), so I am in no position to judge whether or not an equation is noteworthy. I have removed it for now, at least until this dispute is resolved. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:40, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, and thanks for all of the efforts you've been putting into this article. It's already much improved. I would like at some point to see more inclusion of Knorr's work on Hypatia, but maybe for biased reasons (Knorr was one of my teachers) and in any case if you're not comfortable with the mathematical parts then I can wait until it's stable again and try it myself. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:06, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
I tried to follow the simultaneous equation (often they are different) popularly attributed to Hypatia back to the source, and then untangle the Tannery / Heath origin, both are frequently cited, but it is all mangled up. I have come across Knorr's work on Hypatia, but I don’t have access to enough of his work to include it (eg. what sources did he evaluate, or what translations/editions did he work from or compare). see for example https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4612-3690-0_27 . Happy for you to work on the article...
I tried to unmangle the astrolabe sections as well. It appears that because of the available historic sources at the time the letters to Hypatia were regarded as the first reference to the plane astrolabe (in Europe, and based on various translations). Her father’s thesis was "discovered" sometime later, but was hugely influential in the Arabic speaking world. Thus Hypatia and/or her father got credited with inventing the plane astrolabe. In any event. We are now use to the idea of patents and inventions, but historically mathematical concepts and instruments went through rounds of improvements and/or modifications. It would be really great if you can have a look at the article, I was planning to do some work on other articles in the coming days.--Peabodybore (talk) 09:03, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
In a Math Horizonsarticle Hardy Grant says “No source hints that she—or Theon either, come to that—ever produced genuinely new results, and this fact must bear on our final estimate of their stature.” (He particularly recommends Deakin’s book for its treatment of her mathematical work.)—Odysseus147909:55, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
This is a plausible conclusion depending on what editions/translations Grant looked at. On the astrolabe and algebra recent research on Arabic translations come to different conclusions than Tannery and Heath, who only looked at Greek editions available at the time. Euclid's Elements and the Almagest have their own articles, which could reasonably include stuff on the many thinkers who have over the centuries copied and annotated these works. Theon of Alexandria also has his own article which could be extended. He was apparently held in high regard in the centuries after his death, but recent scholars suggest that he added "mistakes" to Elemenst in his attempt to correct "mistakes". Theon and Hypatia would have worked not on the basis of the originals, but hand written copies.--Peabodybore (talk) 11:17, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
Two broken footnote links
Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
We currently have two ambiguous references [78] Deakin, p.22 and [82] Deakin, p.21, without a year. Because they have no year, the wikilink within these references doesn't work. And they're ambiguous: we have two Deakin references, one from 1991 and another from 2007. (Also a 1994 paper in additional reading that we're not using as a reference and whose page range does not include these page numbers.) Which of 1991 and 2007 was intended for these footnotes? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:18, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
The references you are referring to are all for Deakin 1991. I could not find the year on the source, which is why I did not date the sfns. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:26, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
While researching a short new article on Michael A. B. Deakin, one of the biographers cited here, I came across two reviews of his 2007 book that can be seen as warnings on some of our sources (not just this one). The authors of "Re-righting the History of Women in Science" (Math Horizons 2009, JSTOR25678817) write that the book was written in response to "the failure of Dzielska's book to
come to terms with the mathematical and scientific matters" of Hypatia's career. However, they criticize Deakin for a stereotypically-male tendency to focus too much on Hypatia's physical appearance and to idealize her as an icon of feminine mathematics rather than portraying her realistically. And in another review of Deakin's book (Isis 2009, doi:10.1086/593232, JSTOR10.1086/593232) Elizabeth Burns notes that Deakin does a good job of organizing previous scholarship on Hypatia's mathematics, although he does not contribute any new theories to this aspect of the subject. But Burns thinks Deakin relies too heavily on the previous work of Wilbur Knorr, and should have counterbalanced that with the ideas of Alan Cameron in "Isadore of Miletus and Hypatia: On the Editing of Mathematical Texts" (Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1990, [1]). We already cite a co-authored paper by Cameron, but not that one. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:34, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
Her mathematical work
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I think I am done working on the article for now, but I may make more changes later. I would like to eventually nominate this article for GA, but, before I do, I want to make sure it is ready. Since mathematics is not my area of expertise, I know that David Eppstein has already suggested that he might work on the section dealing with her mathematical achievements, and he has already talked about some new sources he wishes to bring in on that subject, so I will step back for now and let him do that, if he is still inclined. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:20, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I would like to do that, at some point, but it involves sources that I don't have immediately at hand (Knorr's book) and don't have online access to. So I don't want to promise that it will happen any time soon. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:50, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
There are many inaccuracies in Alejandro Amenábar's film Agora, but I am not sure why the current Wikipedia article attacks some of them so strongly.
The film is criticized because it "portrays her [Hypatia] as a young woman". Well, Rachel Weisz turned 38 in March 2008, when the principal photography started. It is definitely not young age. Wikipedia itself states that Hypatia was between 44 and 65 when she died. Nothing is certain, which means that filmmakers have quite a broad choice here. To add to that, in the beginning of the movie Theon of Alexandria is still alive. According to his Wikipedia entry, Hypatia's father is thought to die around ten years before her, which means that she should be (again, according to Wikipedia) between 35 and 55 in those sequences. It is not very far from Rachel Weisz's original age. Ergo - Hypatia's age in the film is filmmakers 'choice', not an 'inaccuracy'.
The creator(s) of the current article criticize the film for depicting the "Great Library of Alexandria". But the library in the film seems to be the Serapeum. Serapis is mentioned many times throughout the film. There are scenes in which the pagans pray to him. A huge monument of the deity is destroyed by the Christians upon their raid of the library. The fact that we don't know much about the Serapeum today doesn't prove that the filmmakers are wrong presenting it as an institution that continues the tradition of the original Library of Alexandria. It's a mere simplification. Every historical picture in the history of cinema is made of simplifications, this one is no exception.
My opinion is that we should explain the inaccuracies to the audiences interested in historical details (interested thanks to that they have watched the film!) instead of scolding the filmmakers heavily. Less evaluation please. I would appreciate if someone with historical knowledge can apply some changes in those articles to make it more neutral. Best of all, let's just shorten the whole "explaining the inaccuracies" part of the article. A list (not a treatise) of the inaccuracies should be enough.
Dnaoro (talk) 19:15, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
The reason why this article talks so much about the inaccuracies is because many of the sources on Hypatia's life discuss the inaccuracies in the film in the context of the "modern myth of Hypatia." Edward J. Watts's 2017 biography of Hypatia, for instance, states that the film has impacted modern popular perception of Hypatia more than any other work and Jonathan Theodore's 2016 book The Modern Cultural Myth of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire criticizes the film for promoting a wildly inaccurate, apocalyptic vision of how the Roman Empire collapsed. The part about Hypatia's age in the film was based on one of the sources, which criticized the film for portraying her as a young woman. I have removed that part based on what you have said here.
I wrote the part about the inaccuracies before I actually watched the film, so that is why some of the details about the film were wrong. I watched it a few weeks ago, though, so now I know what actually happens and have corrected the details accordingly. Even though the "library" in the film is indeed the Serapeum, it is still an inaccuracy (and one which is discussed extensively in the sources), because the Serapeum probably did not have any scrolls in it at the time of its destruction, since sources written prior to 391 AD describe its libraries in the past tense, indicating that they no longer existed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:50, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I have checked the article after your changes. They are very good, thank you! Good you watched the film and therefore verified the whole thing. I will add here that I myself liked the film. For sure NOT among my favorites, it's not perfect but not bad either. Even if not accurate, it still feels more authentic that many other peplum films, and for sure is more inspiring. It is more an art film than a blockbuster. I have not read Mr Jonathan Theodore's book, so I don't know where the assumption that it is "intended to criticize contemporary Christian fundamentalism" came from. The criticism is there and is harsh, true, but I perceive it more as a criticism of fundamentalism in general and film's message to be highly ambiguous, a metaphor of today's global conflicts and a broader metaphor the influence History's course has on peoples life. It's hard to deny that Christianity changed (one way or another) a lot in Europe and that it affected minds of the masses. It's also true that the same applies to many other processes, ideas and ideologies; be it democracy, Confucianism, Islam, French, and Industrial Revolutions, Maoism, so on and so forth. I am happy that the film, apart from aesthetic and contemplative pleasures ("feel") gave me inspiration to read more on Hypatia and her times. You can't say that about most "historical" flicks.
(If any wikipedist reads this, hopefully can treat it more as an inspiration to review some articles than as an film review, haha.)
Dnaoro (talk) 20:20, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
GA Review
Latest comment: 6 years ago22 comments2 people in discussion
There is some overlinking: Neoplatonism is linked twice in the first paragraph, for example.
I think "AD" is used too much, without contextual importance. The usage beside her birth/death date establishes that the dates are AD. "BC" is not used in the article so most other mentions of AD could be removed. (Discussion of Christian martyrs in the Middle Ages section uses AD. It is unlikely there would be martyrs for Christianity before it existed.)
Specific pages should be added for references 36 and 37.
Reference 115 mentions that it was not just her murder but also a lack of punishment for the perpetrators that caused a rift between the pagan philosophers and Christians.
The article generally seems to meet the criteria but there may be some other minor issues. I will go through it further and report back if I have more comments. Hrodvarsson (talk) 04:19, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
References 9, 13, 14, 16, 22, 60 and 177 also do not have page numbers.
I have fixed numbers 13, 16 22, and 60 and removed 9 because it was not necessary. Number 177 is a website, so it does not need a page number because it does not have pages. I was using the Google Books editions for all of these and, unfortunately, for some odd reason, the Google Books edition of Charlotte Booth's Hypatia: Mathematician, Philosopher, Mystic (reference #14) does not have any page numbers and, since I do not have a print copy of the book, I cannot give page numbers. The URL to the Google Books edition is in the bibliography, however. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
My apologies for 177, I noticed a couple more missing page numbers and skimmed over the references section looking for others.
The content in the opening is not likely to be challenged and is a summary of the body so references 5 and 7–13 could be moved to the body or removed altogether, though this is not obligatory and is taken case-by-case as stated at WP:LEADCITE so use your own judgment on that. 4 citations for the "she taught philosophy and astronomy" sentence is excessive however. (Reference 6 is an exception as the description of Hypatia as an inventor is challengeable.)
I removed one of the sources that did not have a page number, but I have kept all the others, even though they may be slightly unnecessary, because I generally think it is best to have as many reliable sources as possible. If others find them obtrusive they may remove them. I actually opted to remove the word "inventor" form the first sentence because, while we have record of her studying and building mechanical devices, we do not have any definitive records of her actually inventing any. You could make a case for her as an inventor, but it is a tenuous claim that I do not think belongs in the first sentence. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
On the topic of the first sentence, is "Hellenistic" used as commonly as "Greek" is in the sources? Also, her Britannica entry, written by Deakin, mentions that she "is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists" but there is no specific mention of this in the opening here. Would it be appropriate to have a similar line? Her sex seems to be an important detail regarding her notability.
The word "Hellenistic" has been in that first sentence since long before I came along, but I believe the reason why it says "Hellenistic" and not "Greek" is because the words have two different meanings. While Hypatia was undiubtedly culturally Greek, we have no means of knowing her actual ethnicity and, since she lived almost her whole life in Egypt, it would be difficult to characterize her as an ethnic "Greek." "Hellenistic" is the better term here since it indicates a person of Greek cultural background, but not necessarily Greek ancestry. --Katolophyromai (talk) 10:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
The information that the parabalani were "under the leadership of a lector named Peter" may be undue for the opening. Peter is only briefly mentioned in the body.
I would prefer to keep it because Peter the Lector is the man who led the mob that killed Hypatia and he is highly significant in the debate over who was ultimately responsible for Hypatia's death, because the biggest question revolves around whether Peter and his monks acted alone, or if they acted on Cyril's orders. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
I think a brief line on Cyril's involvement/non-involvement is justified in that case, or more detail if you can find any should be added on Peter in the body. In the current state the opening introduces Peter as though he is a key figure but if the reader is intrigued they find nothing more on him in the body.
I have added two more sentences to the "Early modern period" section focusing on the debates over whether or not Peter the Lector or Cyril was ultimately responsible for Hypatia's murder. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:20, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Regarding "March of 415", I can't find the policy but I believe there is a recommendation to not word dates "[month] of [year]", and instead just use "[month] [year]".
"Graeco-Roman" should not be used if American English spellings such as "romanticized", "fictionalized", etc., are used. I think British English may be more appropriate for this article but it is up to you which one you choose.
I apologize. I did not realize there were two different spellings of the word and I assumed "Graeco-Roman" was the only spelling. I could probably imitate British spelling if I really tried, but I know nothing of British grammar, which apparently has totally different rules regarding commas and conjunctions. I will just correct the word "Graeco-Roman." Unfortunately, I forget where I used it in the article. Could you be more specific? --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
"Damascius claims" should be changed to says, states or some similar verb, per WP:CLAIM.
"The second variety was the more tolerant, intellectual, and less explicitly pagan" is not a great reflection of the source. Watts says "the teaching championed by Hypatia and Theon seems to have the choice of the intellectual establishment of the city" but does not offer a qualitative assessment of which teaching was more/less intellectual. He uses "moderate philosophy ... non-polemical". I think sticking close to the source is better in this case.
"occasional displays of public violence that sometimes occurred in Roman cities". It is redundant to have both occasional and sometimes here.
An en dash should be used for date ranges instead of a hyphen. 414–415 not "414-415".
Sometimes it is [word] century and sometimes it is [number] century, I think there should be consistency in the use of "century" throughout the article.
Supposedly is not needed in "a supposedly "long medieval decline"" as the quote is attributed and "claim" is used.
@Hrodvarsson: I have now fully addressed all of these except for the "Graeco-Roman" gaffe, which I cannot correct right now because I cannot find where I used it in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you so much. I figured there was probably some way to search the article for specific words, but I had no idea what it was. I am not the most tech-savvy person in the world in case you have not figured that out. --Katolophyromai (talk) 08:32, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
I still think the first paragraph should have a similar line to Deakin's "She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists" in Britannica, maybe just use the quote and attribute it to Michael A. B. Deakin.
Thanks. Actually, one more suggestion. Since there is no other notable Hypatia to distinguish this Hypatia from, is there a need to refer to her as "Hypatia of Alexandria" in the first sentence? Also, I think the comma after the parentheses containing her DOB/DOD is misplaced. Hrodvarsson (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Latest comment: 6 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
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The following is incorrect - or partly incorrect/misinterpreted, which might please Umberto Eco! 'In Umberto Eco's 2002 novel Baudolino, Hypatia is a beautiful and intelligent woman with pale skin and blonde hair, whom the main character falls passionately in love with and attempts to seduce,[17] but is surprised to discover that she has goat-legs and is half-satyr.[17]'
Possible rewording: 'In Umberto Eco's 2002 novel Baudolino, the hero falls in love with a half-satyr, half-woman, who is descended from a group of Hypatia's young female disciples who fled after Hypatia's murder. These disciples set up a female-only community who "tried to keep alive what they had learned from their mistress... [living] apart from the world, to rediscover what Hypatia had really said." All the women, who reproduce by "fecundation" with satyrs, are named Hypatia and are collectively known as hypatias.'
Thank you for pointing this out. I was the one who wrote the summary in question. I must unfortunately admit that I have never read Eco's novel and I wrote the summary based on a longer summary in Charlotte Boothe's book Hypatia: Mathematician, Philosopher, Myth, which I, in turn, tried to simplify and shorten. It would seem that I partially misinterpreted Boothe's summary and partially distorted it in the process of trying to condense it. I really appreciate your help in making me aware of my mistake and I have now corrected it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:28, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
" ὀστράκοις ἀνεῖλον"
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
[2] Katolophyromai, the sources you cite give the Greek words for the whole part "killed her with ostraka" (here in the dative plural, "ostrakois"); the ambiguity is only about what is implied by the word "ostraca", because it has two meaning ([3]). "ἀνεῖλον" is a verb ([4]), it is a not a part of a "killing device"; Dzielska writes "killed her with [bits of pottery]" and gives the Greek original for the whole part of the sentence (ὀστράκοις=[with - "bits of pottery" or "oyster shells"] ἀνεῖλον[they killed]) I am not giving an alternative translation of mine, you simply misunderstood what your sources translated, ie they translate the whole "verb+instrument", not only the "killing device".--Phso2 (talk) 08:06, 31 March 2018 (UTC) PS: since you can speak German : it's like writing "She was killed with a knife" ("mit Messer getötet") : it doesn't mean that "knife" is a translation for "mit Messer getötet"
@Phso2: I see. I am sorry. I apologize for the misunderstanding. All my knowledge of ancient Greek is self-taught and I assumed that ostraka always meant "pottery fragments." I did not realize it could have other meanings, so when the sources said the Greek word used could be translated as "roof tiles" or "oyster shells," I assumed that the whole phrase must be the noun and that aneilon must be modifying ostraka in some way. Like I said, I am no expert on Greek linguistics, or at least not yet; I would like to be someday. I wanted to take ancient Greek instead of German, but my school only offers German and Spanish, so I have taken German for the past four years, hoping that it will prepare me for ancient Greek in college. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:39, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The claim that she edited Euclid's "Elements" still needs a stronger sourcing (or in fact should be either removed or deeply reworded). The source is now a vulgarization "written for an audience of middle school and high school students" ([5]), which is not reliable enough for this exceptional claim.
As far as I have read none of the authors dealing specifically with Hypatia argues that she had something to do with Euclid, this seems to be a mere speculation without any substantiated basis. This allegation may come from Margaret Alic's "Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science", a work reviewed as "an Inferno of pseudo- history, which will benefit neither the history of women, nor the history of science"[6], in which she simply states this, without giving any justification.--Phso2 (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
@Phso2: I have now removed all mention of Hypatia having edited Euclid's Elements from the article. I also noticed that the book you mention by Margaret Alic was listed in the "Further reading" section, but was not actually cited anywhere in the article. I have now removed it as unreliable. I have kept the part about Hypatia's father, Theon, having edited the surviving text of Euclid's Elements, which is a known historical fact and which is mentioned by numerous reliable sources, including virtually all biographies of Hypatia. I have, however, moved it to the "Upbringing" section where it is more appropriate. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:59, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
Speaking of source quality, our article relies pretty heavily on sources by Deakin. Maybe we should be more careful about that, in light of the critique of Deakin's idealized view of Hypatia given in JSTOR25678817? "The seemingly inordinate number of references to Hypatia's physical attributes by Deakin will not escape the sensitive female reader, nor will his devotion of several paragraphs to a discussion of feminine napkins." —David Eppstein (talk) 19:04, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
Theon's contributions
Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
The statement about Theon's mathematical work having been deemed by modern standards as essentially "minor",[15] "trivial",[17] and "completely unoriginal" [19] might need better sources. I was unable to verify [15], unable to find "trivial" in the Google Books version of [17] and the "completely unoriginal" quote in [19] is itself a reference to another source, which is listed as "58. Anth. Pal. 11.291: a certain Nicander, if any reliance can be placed in the lemmatist of the Palatinus". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.150.60.30 (talk) 12:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
All the information you are looking for is in the sources and can be found in the Google Books editions of them. I have no idea why you were unable to verify them, because I was able to find all of the quotes easily. Perhaps you were confused by the fact that the books did not directly open up to the pages cited in this particular instance, which is because they are cited many times in this article from many different pages. If you search for the words in question, however, then the relevant passages pop up easily.
Since you could not find the passages from the first two sources, I will quote them here for you. On page 107 of his book Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr, Deakin states: "The almost universally agreed assessment of Theon's achievement is that, in overall terms, he was a minor mathematician." Later on the same page, he clarifies: "He was in his day the foremost mathematician in the Roman Empire, very likely in the world. Even this is not to say that he was a great mathematician as these things are commonly judged... Theon is remembered, more than for anything else, for the role he played in preserving the text of Euclid's major work, the Elements. This is an important part to have played in the history of mathematics. We are very much in Theon's debt; without him we would know less of Euclid's work."
On page 112 of her book Hypatia: Mathematician, Philosopher, Myth, Booth quotes Gerald J. Toomer's evaluation of Theon's work on Euclid's Elements: "They are many but mostly trivial... a very few are corrections of real mistakes in Euclid's text. More are due to Theon's misunderstanding of the original. In some cases he apparently omits what he considers wrong. He makes frequent additions to fill what he considers gaps in Euclid's reasoning, even interpolating whole positions... On the whole his edition can hardly be said to improve on the original, although it may well have fulfilled its purpose of being easier for his students to use." --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:41, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
You are most certainly welcome. I am always glad to help people understand ancient history. (The only problem is that I do not always have time for it!) --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:53, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
"Training program" and upbringing
Latest comment: 6 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion
The whole part about devising "a physical exercise routine involving running, hiking, horseback riding, rowing, and swimming to keep her physically fit.[36] For further study, he sent her to Italy and Athens.[34] In Athens, she studied under Plutarch of Athens and his daughter Asclepigenia." is fictional. No ancient author mentions it, nor does any serious modern biographer. The source is very weak and probably took this from a fictional account, in any case it has not the necessary strength to be relied upon, when more reliable sources don't support this. The whole passage should be replaced by a more cautious assessment, possibly based on Dzielska (p.66), Waithe(p=173) and Hoche (p=441–442), like on the French WP--Phso2 (talk) 15:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
@Phso2: I have removed all the putative information about Hypatia's childhood, as well as all other information in the article that was cited to Lisa Yount, who clearly cannot be trusted for any level of accuracy about anything. The first citation to Lisa Yount was introduced in this revision on 20 December 2017 by the user Peabodybore, who also significantly rewrote most of the contents of the article as it existed at that time. Most of that user's contributions to this page are sourced to general reference encyclopedias. Incidentally, it was this same revision that introduced the story about her being educated in Athens by Plutarch of Athens and Asclepigenia.
I must, unfortunately, admit, however, that the part about the physical exercise routine was introduced by me in this later revision on 24 December 2017, under the clearly erroneous assumption that Yount, who was already cited in the article and whose book is published by InfoBase, a reputable publisher of high school and college-level reference works, could be trusted. I must admit, though, that I was a little skeptical of it from the very beginning, since none of the sources mentioning the supposed "training program" cite any ancient accounts and this sort of minute information about a historical figure's childhood is extremely rare for anyone alive in antiquity except royalty. I apologize for my mistake and will try to be more critical of sources in the future.
The problem of completely fictional "biographical" information published in sources that would otherwise be expected to be reliable seems to be a problem that, so far in my work here at Wikipedia, is exclusively endemic to my work on Hypatia. It seems that, in the absence of reliable information about her early life, even some authors who ought to know better resort to making up elaborate legends and those legends are transmitted into other works. My guess is that all the legends about Hypatia's upbringing that were previously included in this article probably originate from Lynn M. Osen's article about Hypatia in her 1974 book Women in Mathematics. Osen's article, which was written over a decade before Margaret Alic's book was published in 1986 and therefore cannot have absorbed the story from her, lays out the foundations of the "training program" myth, which the later sources (particularly Alic) seem to elaborate on. I have not encountered this problem with any of the other biographies I have worked on. Osen was previously listed in the "Further reading" section of this article, but (thankfully) was not actually cited in it for any information. I have now removed her from the "Further reading" section. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
@Phso2: Following your advice, I have added quite a lot more information about Hypatia's career from Dzielska and Waithe. I have not added any more material from Hoche, since he lived over a century ago and our knowledge of Hypatia has greatly progressed since then, so I would consider him to be mostly outdated at this point. If you have noticed any more inaccuracies, problems, or deficiencies with the article, please be sure to point them out; I am determined to make this article as accurate and comprehensive as possible. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Your intellectual honesty is very laudable, and it is a chance for WP that you work on these subjects. You are right about Osen predating Alic; reading Osen I came across the work she quotes very often, Hubbard's "Little journeys to the homes of great teachers". This is a very instructive reading : Hubbard is so imaginative that he can tell how much Hypatia weighted when 21 years old, and how tall (!). The story about her "training" is also here, among other fanciful inventions (including what is presented as quotes from Hypatia herself).--Phso2 (talk) 18:57, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
@Phso2: This discovery also solves another mystery that I have been trying to work out for years. There is a quote attributed to Hypatia that appears all over the internet; it is on Brainy Quote, Google images, and generally all over the place. It goes:
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth–often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
I immediately knew that Hypatia could not have possibly really said anything like this, for several reasons:
The quote anachronistically assumes the existence of a controversy over teaching religion to children; in Hypatia's time, however, this matter was not controversial at all and was done by virtually everyone without much thought or deliberation. It was only really in the late nineteenth century that teaching religion to children started to become seen by some people as a serious ethical question.
It also anachronistically assumes the existence of a clear distinction between religion and rational thought, a distinction which did not exist until after the Enlightenment. Most of what Hypatia and her fellow Neoplatonists believed about the universe in the fifth century would be chalked up by modern thinkers as "superstition."
The views expressed in the quote do not even remotely match what we know about the actual views of the historical Hypatia. We know from ancient sources, for example, that she was a Neoplatonist who believed that knowledge was a path to a mystical union with the Divine and that she was tolerant, even accepting, of Christians. (Synesius even seems to imply that her teachings were part of what guided him to Christianity!)
All Hypatia's extant writings are technical works dealing with mathematics, where she would not have had reason or occasion to talk about her views on religion.
Nonetheless, I was quite baffled trying to figure out where this egregious misquotation came from. I assumed it was a modern hoax, probably perpetrated by someone on the internet wanting to sound clever by quoting an eloquent soliloquy and attributing it to someone heralded as a "famous scientist." Then, when I clicked on your link, I saw the quote right there, plain as day, in the middle of page 275 of Hubbard's book. Even more interesting, however, are the quotes found on page 273: "All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by any self-respecting person as final" and "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." In Hubbard's book, both of these quotations are presented as lessons from Theon to Hypatia as a little girl, but, on the internet, both of these quotes are widely attributed to Hypatia herself. Indeed, the latter of these two may be even more widely credited to Hypatia than the first quotation I mentioned. Apparently, somewhere along the line, someone misattributed the completely made-up quotations to Hypatia rather than her father, making them doubly misattributed to her!
Reading through Hubbard's work, this explains quite a lot; he seems to have completely fabricated his whole biography and many of the fictional details he describes seem to have been incorporated into later accounts of Hypatia's life by people like Osen, Alic, and Yount, each of whom copied off their predecessors without realizing the information they were copying was nonsense. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:28, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
This is all fascinating and more than a little horrifying. I think we can clearly not consider Osen to be a reliable source, but beyond Alic, how many other sources are corrupted in this way? I've just removed claims sourced by Osen from Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Witch of Agnesi, Jeanne Dumée, Nicole-Reine Lepaute, History of mathematics, and Ring theory, and left a warning on her book's entry in Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists/Bibliography. All of these changes were relatively minor, although in the case of Lepaute our article relied on Osen for an apparently-false claim that she was a member of the French academy (which reliable sources report as not having female full members until 1979). But Osen is also used more significantly in Emmy Noether and Sophie Germain and it will take greater effort to check that those are correct and/or replace the source with something better. Alic is also still used as a source in 16 or so articles; does her book need to be avoided as a source more generally as well? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
I would say that we clearly cannot trust Alic as a reliable source either; if she repeats this kind of made-up nonsense in her article about Hypatia, I see no reason to give her the benefit of the doubt regarding anything else she may have written. On a side note, I have just added information to the "Twentieth century" section of the article about how, somehow, even though Hubbard's book was probably only intended for children, it came to be used as the main source of information about Hypatia, not only by Osen, whose book was originally published by the MIT Press, but also by the Fordham University medieval history course!
Thankfully, however, I think that, as far as this article in particular is concerned, it seems we can probably rest fairly easily; I have looked through all the main sources cited in the article and all of them appear to be free of contamination. Watts, Dzielska, and Booth all give long histories of the development of myths and legends surrounding Hypatia in the modern era at the beginnings of their books before delving into the real history, based on actual ancient accounts. In fact, Booth and Deakin explicitly mention Hubbard's biography and the works derived from it, dismissing them as complete fiction. Deakin even castigates Osen specifically. All the sources that seem to have fallen prey to Hubbard, Osen, Alic, and their ilk seem to be standard reference works on the history of mathematics or history of women in science, written by general writers and editors; scholarly sources and specific reference works dealing with classical history in particular seem to all stick closely to the ancient sources and, as far as I can detect, bear no trace of influence from the more imaginative writings on this subject. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:13, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Ok... I think the part about Moses and his wife operating a medical clinic in Egypt clearly and utterly forswears any remote credibility she might have ever had as a historian. We clearly should not be citing her as a source for anything. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
All this illustrates the tendency to "fill the gap" when militant authors have to describe a symbolic character which is supposed to support their point of view, are frustrated by the scarcity of historical sources and thus are prone to repeat uncritically or reelaborate everything that can add water to their mill...Transform pure speculations or fiction into hypothesis, hypothesis into known facts etc etc. For the defence of these authors of the 70's, it is much easier nowadays to check the actual sources than in their times, when no one could actually control the various erroneous references to the Souda oy Synesius letters e.g. Everything becomes much simpler when one actually read the letter of Synesius about the "hydroscope", which is the origin of much pseudo-history about her or they together inventing various instruments.--Phso2 (talk) 08:51, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
First Council of Constantinople?
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have been running through the article searching for mistakes and I just found this really bizarre, obvious error stating that the emissaries that the Alexandrian Council sent to Constantinople after Hypatia's death went to the First Council of Constantinople. That clearly cannot be accurate since the council happened in 381 AD, over thirty years before Hypatia died. I checked the source and, sure enough, Watts does not say anything about the First Council of Constantinople; he only says that the Alexandrian Council sent emissaries to Constantinople. The story takes another twist when it turns out I was the one who introduced that error in an edit made on 22 December 2017. I have no idea what I was thinking when I made that blunder; perhaps I just remembered that the First Council of Constantinople happened around this time and, in light of that fact, misread what Watts wrote when he was talking about the Alexandria [city] council. Who knows? In any case, I was clearly wrong and I have now corrected the error. I will continue searching for more errors in the coming days. My reading abilities when I worked on this article must have been seriously confused, because, as the discussions above reveal, this is not the first time I have made a mistake like this. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:01, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
"Hypatia schoolmistress"
Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
The "Neoplatonic school" was a school of thought, not a formalized teaching institution (like the Chicago school of economics is not a Faculty of Economics, the Chicago school (architecture) is not a place to learn architecture and Antoni Zygmund was not the headmaster of the Chicago school (mathematical analysis)); the claim that she "became the director of the school in 400" is just a distorsion of the information from the Souda that she "floruit" in the time of Arcadius. The references of the sentence are 1)another fancy biography - fortunately not written by a scholar - ("Encyclopedia of World Scientists", which tells us that Synesius credited her for having invented a device to see underwater!, because its author has not actually read Synesius) and 2)another one - unfortunately belonging to a book which is supposed to aim at scholarchip ("Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers", which tells us that according to the Suda she became head of the school in 400 at the age of 31 because the authors of the article (N. and J. Pasachoff) have not actually read the Suda). That Hypatia belonged to the "Neoplatonic school of thought" seems granted, that she has students/disciples is granted, that she actually runned a "Neoplatonic University of Alexandria" in which she had formerly a career as appointed teacher is anachronistic and imaginary.
More seriously, there seems to exist a scholarly debate about the material conditions of her teaching (as a stipendied teacher, paid from public funds? As a private or free-speaking teacher? As both?), I have found some sources but not enough to formulate smthg in the article yet--Phso2 (talk) 19:52, 22 May 2018 (UTC) (PS sorry if my English is sometimes broken or Frenchized, I'm here just because the French article was translated from this one)
@Phso2: I have removed the part about her being the "director" of the school. That particular piece of misinformation was added on 20 December 2017 by our old friend Peabodybore in this edit right here. Even the previous wording of the passage, however, before Peabodybore came along, seemed to strongly imply the existence of a literal school. The revision directly before Peabodybore's first edit reads: "Around 400, she became head of the Neoplatonist School in Alexandria..." This wording was perhaps slightly less overtly misleading. Obviously, no one can be the "director" of a school of thought, but a person can, in fact, be the "head" (as in the foremost thinker) of a school of thought. Nonetheless, the way the passage is worded still makes it sound to the reader as though it is describing a literal university with paid professors and faculty. That wording was in the article for years; I cannot find when it was first added, but it was long before I started editing here. It may even go back to the earliest days of Wikipedia.
I will admit, this was another instance in which, the first time I read the part about her being appointed "director," I was skeptical, because I had always assumed that the Alexandrian School was just a school of thought, but, since there were reliable sources supporting the statement, I figured that I must have been wrong and that the Alexandrian School was really more organized than I had realized. I suppose I was right the first time and should have known better than to believe it just because there were two encyclopedias saying it was true. I am proud of the fact that I did catch this statement that Theon was a scholar at the Mouseion, which is based on an actual statement from the Suda explicitly calling him a "man of the Mouseion," but, as Edward J. Watts makes very clear, both in his book about scholars in late-antique Alexandria and in his biography of Hypatia, the institution Theon operated cannot have been the famous Hellenistic Mouseion, whose membership had ceased in the 260s and no longer existed by the time Theon was alive. Watts concludes it must have been a different, later institution named after the original Mouseion: "a reconstituted version of the Hellenistic original." --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:21, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
FWIW the first appearance of this claim appears to have been in February 2006, uncited: “It is rather remarkable that Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400 AD.” At the time Theon was rather anachronistically described as “the last fellow of the Muesum“. Also possibly worth noting is that the article continued to state, as it had for some time before, that she taught in her own home as opposed to the Museum. Theon as “last fellow“ was changed to “last man” in November 2007, but was promoted to “director of the Library“ shortly afterward, before disappearing (temporarily) from the article except in quotations. The mention of her teaching from home was also removed near the end of that November.—Odysseus147923:45, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
The current lead still states "She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy" which could easily be misread as stating that the school existed as an official organization that she directed. Perhaps it should be reworded? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:01, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Persecution??
Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
@Anomalous+0: You wrote in your edit summary: "...at that point she was accused of Satanic/magical practices, which undoubtedly inflamed the Christian mob that murdered her. Surely murder is the ultimate form of persecution, no?"
The evidence for Hypatia being accused of "Satanic/magical practices" is rather dubious, at least in my view. Socrates Scholasticus, who was one of Hypatia's contemporaries and who is our most reliable source on Hypatia's death, mentions nothing that would associate Hypatia with either magic or Satanism and, in fact, portrays her death as essentially a brutal political assassination motivated by false rumors claiming that Hypatia was exacerbating the conflict between Cyril and Orestes. Philostorgius, who was also one of Hypatia's contemporaries, mentions nothing about Satanism or magic either, although his account of Hypatia's death is preserved only in epitome. Damascius, a pagan philosopher writing around fifty to a hundred years after Hypatia's death, once again, mentions nothing about Satanism or magic; instead, he portrays her murder as motivated by Cyril's personal jealousy. The first time we hear anything about black magic or Satanism is from John of Nikiû, who was writing over 200 years after Hypatia's death. The cultural environment in which John of Nikiû lived was also very different from that of Hypatia's own time, since, by his time, paganism was mostly eradicated and, due to lack of contact with actual pagans, it is reasonable to think John may have been relying more on general stereotypes about "pagans" of his own time rather than specific traditions regarding Hypatia.
As for whether murder is the "ultimate form of persecution", Merriam-Webster defines "persecution" as "to harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict; specifically : to cause to suffer because of belief." We have no evidence that Hypatia was harassed or punished leading up to her death; in fact, she was in quite a position of power as a close advisor of the prefect himself. Then, as I described above, all our earliest sources essentially portray Hypatia's murder as politically motivated, so, if we can call Hypatia's murder "persecution," we should equally be able to apply it to the murder of Julius Caesar or Abraham Lincoln and conclude that they were "persecuted" as well. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:22, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@Katolophyromai: I am happy to defer to the judgement of other, more knowledgable editors, such as yourself, on this issue. However, it would probably be salutary to amend or modify the wording of the following passages, so as not to leave a perhaps misleading impression of the circumstances surrounding her murder:
"Traces of other rumors that spread among the Christian populace of Alexandria may be found in the writings of the seventh-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû,[42] who alleges in his Chronicle that Hypatia had engaged in satanic practices and had intentionally hampered the church's influence over Orestes:[78][79][80]
And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honoured her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic."
Katolophyromai, Julius Caesar was not murdered by a mob of republicans, Abraham Lincoln was not murdered by a mob of Confederate sympathisers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.28.138.60 (talk) 15:56, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Belenkiy Hypothesis
Latest comment: 5 years ago16 comments8 people in discussion
The user https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Katolophyromai has made some very wonderful edits to the page! I wonder whether it would be good however to add back the text about the Belenkiy Hypothesis that Hypatia was murdered while making astronomical observations to set the time of Easter. Here's what I wrote on the user's talk page. I'm hoping the text is added back, since it really does contribute to the world's knowledge of Hypatia.
Thanks for all your work! As a fellow Wikipedian, I'm writing to see more information about this section that you edited out of the Hypatia article. The reason you gave was "This seems very fringe and speculative. Also, none of the other sources mention anything about it, even to refute it, as far as I am currently aware. Berenkiy is also a mathematician, not a historian, so I question whether the role of astronomy in the politics of early fifth-century AD Alexandria is really an area in which he is qualified to speak as an expert." I don't know but to me that seems to be an ad hominem attack on mathematicians and your edit is in violation of NPOV. I refer you to the notion of "strong inference" for why it would be important to present several plausible hypotheses when a question is being explored. The reasons you cite for removing Belenkiy's hypothesis are: (1) your impression that the position is speculative; (2) an absence of other scholars engaging with Belenkiy's hypothesis; (3) Belenkiy being a mathematician. In response, please note that (1) all the hypotheses regarding Hypatia's death are speculations; (2) Belenkiy's contributions are recent, and some scholars may have engaged with the hypothesis he presents, though I don't know of any either, notwithstanding that the hypothesis that she was making astronomical observations to help fix the date of Easter seems to me a much better match to her location of death and the detail of the high chair, as well as a real reason for discord—as the date of celebration would impact the perceived legitimacy of various factions—in fact a better speculation than jealousy since it takes more facts into account; and (3) being a mathematician doesn't disqualify someone from publishing in the academic literature on the history of science or the history of math, as Belenkiy as done. In short, the Belenkiy hypothesis is a critical piece to the discussion about her death, and it is a disservice to the community to have removed it, and also violates NPOV. What thoughts? Again, thank you for your work!!
Here's the text that had been edited out:
Ari Belenkiy describes Hypatia's astronomical work as pivotal for the politics of the region, focusing on controversies related to observations of the equinox and the timing of festivals, ultimately serving to highlight errors in Ptolemy's work and the need for independent observation. In two consecutive works (2010, 2016) Belenkiy proposed an astronomical-calendrical paradigm for Hypatia's murder. Comparing two principal sources on Hypatia, of Socrates Scholasticus and Philostorgius, Belenkiy suggests that Hypatia carried out equinoctial observations in 414-415, initiated on the request of governor Orestes. This could have been the litmus test of who was right in the conflicts over the 414 Easter day waged by Cyril, the Bishop of the Alexandrian Church, with the local Jewish and Novatian communities. Hypatia's success in establishing the correct day of the vernal equinox could undermine the Alexandrian Church's authority in the timing of Easter, as it used equinoctial computations based on Ptolemy's Syntaxis (Almagest).[1][2]101.53.37.52 (talk) 08:20, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@101.53.37.52: Please allow me to elucidate my reasons for why I removed that paragraph. You are mostly correct when you say "all the hypotheses regarding Hypatia's death are speculations," since, obviously, the only way to actually find out what happened for certain would be to build a time machine and go back and see what really happened. As far as I know at least, no one has ever managed to do that. However, it does not follow from that premise that all explanations are equally speculative. Some explanations are more speculative than others. The problem with Belenkiy's explanation is that he makes claims that are completely unsupported by any textual evidence and then attempts to construe the ancient texts to support those claims, rather than basing his hypothesis on the ancient texts. Belenkiy finishes the article with the following conclusions:
Being invited to conduct the observations, Hypatia followed Hipparchus’ method of determining the time of the vernal equinox with a meridian quadrant and equatorial ring. For that, she had to perform three sets of observations—the first two in June and December of 414. In mid-March 415 Hypatia began making the final set of observations to establish the time of the vernal equinox. Rumors circulated in the city that she had found faults in the astronomy bible—Syntaxis—and would refute the date favored by the Alexandrian Church. This would have had both immediate and far reaching consequences for Bishop Cyril and the Alexandrian Church. Alarmed by such a possibility, a clique of Cyril’s zealots waylaid and murdered her. Since she was still performing the observations, the murder occurred either on or just prior to the day of the vernal equinox, March 20. Instead of erring in determining the time of the vernal equinox due to ignorance of the atmospheric refraction of sunlight, as I suggested earlier, Hypatia moved astronomy one step further, challenging the authority of Syntaxis by correcting Ptolemy’s value for the geographical latitude of Alexandria and possibly for the tropical year, and thus allowing more precise calculations of the sun’s position for future astronomers.
Where is the textual evidence for all these bold claims? There is absolutely none. Belenkiy is basically writing historical fiction at this point. He provides about as much convincing argument as the plot of the movie Agora. Belenkiy does not even try to explain why none of the ancient sources mention anything about Hypatia's supposed involvement in studying the date of the vernal equinox. Instead, he merely rejects the ancient accounts as "incomplete." This is especially puzzling, since Socrates Scholasticus writes at length about the problems and conflicts plaguing the Alexandrian church during this period, including a great deal of information about disputes over the date of the vernal equinox, yet he never says anything that would link Hypatia to a dispute over the date of the vernal equinox. As for Socrates Scholasticus's supposed mention of the "high chair" that Belenkiy uses as the lynchpin of his argument, all English translations of Socrates Scholasticus translate this word (δίφρον in ancient Greek) as "carriage." Belenkiy himself admits in his first footnote that he cannot actually read ancient Greek and that all his translations were conducted with the aid of an unnamed "professional translator." His acknowledgements section references scholars who aided him with German, Latin, and Ge'ez translations, but none with ancient Greek, which is the language that all the most important primary sources, including Socrates Scholasticus, are written in.
You argue above that "Belenkiy's contributions are recent, and some scholars may have engaged with the hypothesis he presents, though I don't know of any either." The fact that a piece was recently published and scholars may not have had a chance to comment on it, however, is not justification for including it in the article, since if that is indeed the case, then we should wait until scholars have had a chance to comment on the hypothesis before including it in the article. Furthermore, Belenkiy's article was published in 2016, which was two years ago. Since that article was published, not one, but two academic biographies of Hypatia have been published: Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher by Edward J. Watts (published in 2017 by the Oxford University Press) and Hypatia: Mathematician, Philosopher, Myth by Charlotte Booth (published in 2017). Neither of those biographies even take notice of Belenkiy's hypothesis. If scholars have not taken notice of it by now, I doubt they are going to do so any time soon.
Finally, you appear to have misunderstood my objections to Belenkiy's background. I was not making "an ad hominem attack on mathematicians." What I was trying to say is that Belenkiy is writing way outside his field here. Mathematics and ancient history are vastly different fields that rely on drastically different kinds of evidence and therefore use drastically different methods. Unfortunately, there are many excellent and widely respected scientists and mathematicians who have tried to write about history and failed catastrophically. Hypatia has been a particularly troublesome case of this; Carl Sagan tried to retell the story of Hypatia in his television series Cosmos and ended up claiming that the Christians murdered her for studying the texts at the Library of Alexandria and that, after she died, the Christians destroyed the Library. That is complete garbage on every level; whatever remained of the declining and underfunded Library of Alexandria was almost certainly destroyed in 272, over a century before Hypatia was even born, during an attack by the emperor Aurelian or perhaps even earlier. None of the ancient sources mention anything about Hypatia in association with the Library of Alexandria, except for a brief reference in the Souda to her father having been "a man of the Mouseion," which Watts interprets to probably mean that he ran a school named after the Hellenistic Mouseion that once housed the Library. This is just one example of non-historians trying to write about history and making huge mistakes. Belenkiy's credibility here is also seriously undercut by the fact that he cites the book Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science by Margaret Alic multiple times, a work which is discussed extensively in the conversations above as "an Inferno of pseudo-history" that relied heavily on Elbert Hubbard's completely fictional book about Hypatia written by for Victorian schoolchildren.
I am not saying that mathematicians cannot write about history; Michael A. B. Deakin, one of the sources cited in this article, is a mathematician and, despite a few rather peculiar arguments here and there (such as his frankly bizarre interpretation of Damascius's story of Hypatia driving off a suitor with her bloody menstrual rags), he generally did relatively well in terms of overall accuracy and, unlike many other writers, was able to recognize Alic's book as complete pseudohistory. In light of the other problems with Belenkiy's article, however, the fact that he is not historian or a classicist and that he has no background in history should send up red flags regarding his expertise on this subject. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Wonderful for your response Katolophyromai! I am very pleased to have the chance to share thoughts with you and explore both the Belenkiy Hypothesis and whether it should be included in the Hypatia page, including a strong rationale for either inclusion or exclusion. Let me see whether I understand your points by restating them, and perhaps you will clarify in response.
The first point (1) that you make is about Belenkiy's scholarship, and assert that his hypothesis is completely unsupported in the literature from the period. The second point (2) that you make is that Belenkiy's historical scholarship is poor, that "he makes claims that are completely unsupported by any textual evidence and then attempts to construe the ancient texts to support those claims, rather than basing his hypothesis on the ancient texts." The third point (3) that you make is that Belenkiy's Hypothesis is unimportant as evidenced by neither of the two recent biographies that have come out related to Hypatia's life refer to it, nor does any other work that you know of. The fourth point (4) that you make is that your assertion about Belenkiy being a mathematician and not a historian is more about the lack of his skill in history, rather than a prejudice against mathematicians. Let me address these points individually.
Regarding Belenkiy's scholarship: There are three explicit references to Hypatia as an astronomer among ancients (one by contemporary, Philostorgius, two other by Hesychius of 6th century and Suda of 10th century), Moreover, Hesychius connects her death directly to her "profound wisdom in Astronomy". To assert that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is completely unsupported by the literature is an odd choice. In fact it has more support in the literature in the form of Hesychius than any other hypothesis about her death.
Regarding Belenkiy's weakness in historical method: I am glad you put up a quote from Belenkiy's work, since it is useful to make clear an issue that I see in his scholarship. His work suffers from a lack of use of the subjunctive mood. I can see how someone could read this and say that it is akin to historical fiction. The writing style is indeed one of conjuring an image of events and the language involved is clear and concrete. Yet the writing is a hypothesis, and a reader understands that the work itself is constructed in this fashion to give the reader a clear idea of what the hypothesis is. You have claimed that this carries along with it an additional flaw, that it appears as though the hypothesis has sprung ex nihilo from the mind of Belenkiy, and now he looks for support for it in the literature. Though you may claim this to be his process, there is no indication that this is his actual process of history. We have no information about how he conducts his historical research. Indeed, there is support for the observation and calculation of astronomical events for the purpose of religious observance in the ancient literature, and it is not insignificant. Likewise, the strife that can arise from different sects' calendrical observances conflicting has strong support in the broader body of ancient literature. Yet to infer from this anything about Belenkiy's process of writing history and assert that it did not arise from reading the text itself is to overreach. We simply do not know what his process is. I imagine that as a scholar of Hypatia he has read the extant texts several times (though in translation) and that his hypothesis arose during some point in his study, but to criticize him for how he writes up his hypothesis is one of stylistic rather than substantive weight. I agree that his writing is of a certain style that is more concrete than other texts but nonetheless it is difficult to find any evidence for your assertion. Thus it strikes a reader as a violation of NPOV.
Regarding whether Belenkiy's hypothesis is unimportant and not engaged in the literature: I have found that Alan Cameron mentioned Belenkiy's 2010 paper in his 2016 book. So did Watts in 2017. They were dismissive of his conclusions, yet they do engage with his work. A further point is that Watts' 2017 work only addresses Belenkiy's 2010 paper and not the 2016 paper, thus showing that in truth two years is not enough time for a full assessment of the impact of his scholarship. It also shows that Belenkiy's hypothesis is a part of the scholarship around Hypatia.
Regarding the final point of excluding Belenkiy's work because he is a mathematician and not a historian: Again this is a matter of stylistic preference rather than substance, and in violation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy.
You have put an immense amount of time and energy into rewriting this article and it is a wonderful thing you have done. Notwithstanding, the scholastic record and Wikipedia policy support including the Belenkiy Hypothesis in the Hypatia article and I would like to ask you to undo your edit removing it. Your edit was in violation of NPOV though made in good faith.
A final point: The Belenkiy Hypothesis is interesting. That she may have been murdered because of her scientific skill that had been put into use by one faction and that threatened another strikes a chord with the reader as plausible and telling. That none of us has a time machine is a pity.101.53.37.52 (talk) 03:47, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
@101.53.37.52: I apologize for the fact that I was not aware that Watts mentioned Belenkiy; I suppose I must have either missed that part of the book or forgotten about it, since I did most of the work on this article nearly a year ago and have returned to the sources only sporadically since then. However, the fact that all the sources you have found that mention Belenkiy dismiss his hypothesis is a good reason to conclude that it does not belong in the article or, if it does belong in the article, it deserves only a brief mention, followed by Cameron and Watts's criticisms.
Also, I should point out that you seem to have misunderstood my main criticism of Belenkiy's hypothesis, which is that his conclusions are not supported by any historical texts. You wrote: "There are three explicit references to Hypatia as an astronomer among ancients (one by contemporary, Philostorgius, two other by Hesychius of 6th century and Suda of 10th century), Moreover, Hesychius connects her death directly to her "profound wisdom in Astronomy". To assert that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is completely unsupported by the literature is an odd choice. In fact it has more support in the literature in the form of Hesychius than any other hypothesis about her death." Yes, there are plenty of references to Hypatia having been an astronomer and, yes, there were sometimes disputes over the date of Easter in the early church that could be quite divisive, but neither of those premises in any way supports the conclusion that Orestes enlisted Hypatia's help to try to determine the date of Easter and that she was murdered because her dates did not match those favored by the Alexandrian church, because, quite simply, there are no ancient sources that say anything at all about Hypatia having been involved in a controversy over the date of Easter or even her taking measurements of the vernal equinox. Using the same kind of speculative reasoning, someone could just as well claim that, because Hypatia is described as having been a great astronomer, she therefore clearly must have proved that the sun is the center of the solar system over a thousand years before Copernicus, even though there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that claim. This is a bit like Russell's teapot. Could she have been murdered because she was calculating the date of the vernal equinox? Sure, there is no reason why she could not have. Is there any evidence that she was? No. None whatsoever.
As for your repeated accusations of me violating WP:NPOV, I think you are misunderstanding what WP:NPOV says. It does not say that all hypotheses on the subject whatsoever should be presented in the article, but rather all hypotheses with significant scholarly support. If the only two authors we know of who have discussed Belenkiy's hypothesis have rejected it and it has not garnered significant popular attention, then that is good reason to believe that it probably does not warrant inclusion in the article. Granted, we do discuss a large number of highly speculative hypotheses regarding Hypatia in the "Legacy" section, but those are all ones that have received lots of attention at the popular level or been extremely influential in other ways. I would be willing to restore a brief mention of Belenkiy to the article if you can provide a source that indicates that at least one reputable scholar other than Belenkiy himself supports it. As for your argument that the Belenkiy hypothesis is interesting, you may want to read WP:INTERESTING and WP:ILIKEIT, which state that the material we cover is not determined by whether it is interesting or whether people like it, but rather by whether it is content that warrants encyclopedic coverage. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:53, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I think Katolophyromai has justly summarized the situation: we have an author (not specialized in the field - but this is not per se derogatory) making a speculative theory based on mere hypothesis, and therefore not formally disprovable nor provable, that failed (till now - this can evolve) to have received a wide coverage (only two brief dismissive mentions). Accordind to Wikipedia:RSUW we should wait till this theory gains wider coverage (if it does so) until it is included here. --Phso2 (talk) 09:37, 28 October 2018 (UTC) (Besides, it is obvious that even though is is presented as a theory by its author, his various vivid and precise (and imagined) descriptions are doomed to be taken as plain established historical fact and presented accordingly by popular or credulous authors, as was the case for Hubbard's novel or Amenabar's movie, and WP is not supposed to add water to the wheel)
Thank you again for the chance to correspond Katolophyromai and for the cogent discourse, and also to Phso2 for joining in. If I may be a little less formal at this point and just add some information to the discussion, I hope it will not distract from the forward motion of it.
Cameron doesn’t actually offer any criticism of Belenkiy’s hypothesis, except to ask “But why would Hypatia be involved in such an arduous political situation?" And there are two reasonable answers to this criticism, namely she could have been paid to do the work, or that she wanted to be of assistance to her friend Orestes. Watts doesn’t add to this, so it’s not clear what their criticism or criticisms are.
There are also two additional supports for Belenkiy’s hypothesis that are relevant and challenge the view that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is speculation of the sort you are describing. First, the Belenkiy Hypothesis is consistent with the astronomy described in Ptolemy’s Syntaxis. The observations that Belenkiy describes are the ones that naturally would have been made by someone well-versed in astronomy and in the Syntaxis and the Handy Tables. And Hypatia and Theon were well-versed, since they had worked on editing Ptolemy's Syntaxis and the Handy Tables. Thus there is indirect textual support for the hypothesis. The assertion that it is speculative of the worst sort is unwarranted. Thus, again, the edit in question was in violation of NPOV, though meant in good faith. The basis for the edit simply was unfamiliarity with the sources.
Second, the story of Sabbatius, a Jewish convert to the Novation sect, highlights that there was a potential threat to celebrate two Easters in Alexandria on different dates. The dynamics of the conflict itself, as Socrates Scholasticus describes, began as Cyril oppresses the Novatians and then grows into a conflict of Cyril against the Jews. The difference in practice includes a difference in dates of observation of the respective Spring holidays, so again there is indirect evidence from the text linking the conflict to tensions arising from setting the date of Easter. Again, the edit was made without full knowledge of the sources involved, and in effect was a violation of NPOV. The assertion that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is somehow speculative of a sort that would add water to the wheel is actually not supported by the literature.
Please consider whether you are comfortable to add back the text. I have given enough information such that a reasonable reader would conclude that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is not as you (and I) had earlier described it. There is engagement from the community, and it is not wildly speculative. Now that you have further information, I hope that you will feel confident in adding back a description of it.
Since your writing style is clear, I hope that you would consider taking on the task. It would be an aid to the reader. What further thoughts? Thanks for the discussion!101.53.37.52 (talk) 10:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
It has been more than 10 days with no response from Katolophyromai nor from Phso2. Let me develop the rationale further for considering that editing out the Belenkiy Hypothesis is a violation of NPOV and ought to be reverted. The structure of this rationale will be as follows: (1) I'll provide an example from one other source that supports the Belenkiy Hypothesis, since Katolophyromai had requested this as a condition for adding back the relevant text; (2) I'll provide some examples from the article as well as from the section that are of the type of speculation that Katolophyromai decries though yet remain, and also examples that are not entirely speculative, thus demonstrating that the edit in question creates an editorial bias and is a violation of NPOV; (3) I'll highlight the types of publications that might be considered more reliable than others, e.g. academic publications versus popular literature.
First, I have found an example of an author including the Hypatia Hypothesis in their work. It was formerly in the Hypatia page but was edited out by Katolophyromai on 03:32, 22 December 2017.
In 2016 the play Hypatia's Math had its premiere at the Flagstaff Festival of Science and workshop performances at the Strand Theater in Baltimore at the Maryland STEM Festival. The structure of the play is similar to the histories presented by Deakin and Belenkiy.[1]
The rationale given for removing this text was that it was either "trivial" or "from an unreliable source" yet it is easily verifiable that the play was included in the Flagstaff Festival of Science. Whether it is trivial or not is germane, as it does make use of the Belenkiy Hypothesis. There is no set guide to judge the triviality of a play, but I do note that the play was also performed at the Maryland STEM Festival that year; perhaps it is not trivial. And indeed the play includes the Belenkiy Hypothesis, thus meeting the bar that Katolophyromai had set for inclusion of the Belenkiy Hypothesis in the Hypatia article he has done major work in editing. https://www.broadwayworld.com/baltimore/article/Spotlighters-Theatre-to-Bring-New-Ancient-Play-Reading-to-2016-Maryland-STEM-Festival-20161109
Second, there are both types of speculations (broad vs. plausible) currently in both the Hypatia page and in the section on her Death. A broad speculation might be seen here: "Theon's school was exclusive, highly prestigious, and doctrinally conservative.[18]" Though the text is cited, there is no way for Watts to have concluded this directly. It is a broad speculation and not within the realm of plausibility because there is no evidence for it either from direct or indirect sources. Likewise: "Theon rejected the teachings of Iamblichus[18] and may have taken pride in teaching a pure, Plotinian Neoplatonism.[18]" Again this (i.e. taking pride in teaching Plotinian Neoplanatonism) is a broad speculation by Watts, and lacking in direct evidence, yet it remains in the article.
Likewise, there are some broad speculations included in the section on Hypatia's Death, e.g.: "Modern historians still debate whether and to what extent Cyril may have been involved in the incident.[89] Many historians consider it likely that he at least had some prior knowledge of the murder,[89]but a minority argue that he was totally uninvolved.[89]" Again, despite being cited, neither the historians cited nor the text itself adds to the discourse with fruitful information to assert plausibility. Here is another example: "Theophilus tolerated Hypatia's school and seems to have regarded Hypatia as his ally.[21][71][68]" Though cited, it is speculative and there is no historical indication of its plausibility. And another: "Theophilus also permitted Hypatia herself to establish close relationships with the Roman prefects and other prominent political leaders.[68]" These are broad speculations and could be treated in the text differently.
But there is another category of speculation that is present. In the section on Hypatia's Death specifically, there are numerous examples of speculations that are plausible and of the type that the Belenkiy Hypothesis belongs to. Here is one: "According to Watts, this was in line with the traditional manner in which Alexandrians carried the bodies of the "vilest criminals" outside the city limits to cremate them as a way of symbolically purifying the city.[104][105]" Like the Belenkiy Hypothesis, Watts includes a hypothesis that has historical precedence as a plausible speculation. Further: "Although Socrates Scholasticus never explicitly identifies Hypatia's murderers, they are commonly assumed to have been members of the parabalani.[106] Christopher Haas disputes this identification, arguing that the murderers were more likely "a crowd of Alexandrian laymen".[107]" It is a reasonable inclusion, and an example of plausible speculation that helps the reader. For Katolophyromai to edit out the Belenkiy Hypothesis on the grounds that it is speculation is an example of editorial bias, and a violation of NPOV, though done in good faith.
Third, I would like to discuss briefly the nature of the publications in which the Belenkiy Hypothesis appears. Both citations for the text on the Belenkiy Hypothesis that was deleted by Katolophyromai are academic journals. This type of publication involves both peer review as well as editorial support. One can consider that for each publication, there were three peer reviewers as well as an editor who considered that the article in question had merit and that their conclusions are supported. This is a stronger standard than what is done for popular or trade publications, and thus to consider them as fringe is a bit confusing. Likewise, the fact that the Belenkiy Hypothesis appears in academic journals strongly suggests that editing out the Belenkiy Hypothesis introduces editorial bias into the page.
In the above treatment, I have tried to present a clear case for why inclusion of the Belenkiy Hypothesis is warranted in the section on Hypatia's Death. A reasonable editor would conclude that removing it was in violation of NPOV since it introduces editorial bias into the article. I have given an example where the Belenkiy Hypothesis is taken up in another work favorably. I have given several examples of the type of plausible speculation that the Belenkiy Hypothesis is based on appear in the current Hypatia webpage, as well as examples that are more broadly speculative than the Belenkiy Hypothesis. I have also highlighted that the type of publication where the Belenkiy Hypothesis appears is well-regarded and not a fringe source. I await additional comments.101.53.37.52 (talk) 07:29, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
First of all, see below regarding the play, because there is currently no reason to believe that it is notable either, since it has apparently had only one full production and a workshop production.
Regarding the material that is currently in the article, first see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. If you would like us to be more skeptical of speculative theories, that is one thing, but arguing that inclusion of theories that you consider speculative is grounds for including other speculative theories is not valid. Second of all, most of the theories that you consider "broad speculation and not within the realm of plausibility" are not such at all. I agree that Watts's statements about the nature of Hypatia's school are somewhat speculative, but they are not nearly as speculative or implausible as you think, because they are based on careful analysis of the works that Hypatia is known to have written commentaries on and the Neoplatonic teachings in Synesius's letters.
I agree with you completely that the statement "Modern historians still debate whether and to what extent Cyril may have been involved in the incident. Many historians consider it likely that he at least had some prior knowledge of the murder, but a minority argue that he was totally uninvolved." is too broad and speculative, especially since the source for that statement is a general one on Christianity in the late Roman Empire that is not primarily focused on Hypatia in particular and the sources that are focused primarily on Hypatia do not make any mention of debate over whether or not Cyril had "prior knowledge." I have now removed it from the article with this edit.
On the other hand, the statement "Theophilus tolerated Hypatia's school and seems to have regarded Hypatia as his ally" is solidly grounded on the fact that Theophilus appointed two of Hypatia's students as bishops and, in the case of Synesius in particular, Theophilus did so knowing full well that Synesius believed in the Neoplatonic teaching of the preexistence of the soul, as evidenced by mention of this knowledge in Synesius's letters. Clearly, if Theophilus was appointing Hypatia's students as bishops and allowing them to hold those positions while still believing things she had taught them that did not sit well with Christian orthodoxy, he must not have regarded her as an enemy. This exact same very reasonable conclusion is not just found in Watts, but also, if I remember correctly, in several of the other biographies of Hypatia cited here.
The statement "Theophilus also permitted Hypatia herself to establish close relationships with the Roman prefects and other prominent political leaders" is likewise solidly grounded on the fact that Socrates Scholasticus states that Hypatia had established close relations with Alexandrian political elites. Clearly, if she was establishing these relationships, Theophilus was either not doing anything to stop her from it or at least not doing a good job of trying to stop her. Given, however, his appointments of her students as bishops and the fact that Synesius gushes at length about his love and admiration for both Hypatia and Theophilus in his letters, as though there was no conflict between them, the former option seems by far the more likely.
Finally, just because something was published in an academic journal does not mean it is accepted by most or even a significant number of scholars. Journals publish speculative theories all the time. Getting your hypothesis published in an academic journal is only the first step of it gaining academic credibility. Next you have to actually convince scholars that it is correct. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response Katolophyromai and for your efforts to make Wikipedia usable and wonderful. I appreciate the engagement. Let me point out a few things related to our discussion here in the talk page, but first let me address what seems to be your primary point at this time, namely whether or not the Belenkiy Hypothesis is notable. This is germane, as if it is not notable, then there is no reason to assert editorial bias nor violation of NPOV.
You had first asserted that the Belenkiy Hypothesis was not taken up by any scholars, and then I had found reference to it in Watts and Cameron. You had suggested that if it could be found that a reputable scholar has supported the hypothesis, you would agree that its inclusion is warranted. I found a play that includes the hypothesis, and you suggest that this is perhaps not notable either so not supportive enough. At this point I was perhaps convinced that you were correct. I decided to look at the two articles wherein Belenkiy has stated his hypothesis, and see how they were cited, and what their impact has been via the Altmetric website. I figured if there were no citations listed and that Altmetric gave it a score that was not in the top 50% I would concede the point, and suggest that indeed the hypothesis might not be notable and your edit is correct.
Notwithstanding, the 2010 article "An Astronomical Murder?" had been cited three times according to Google Scholar. One is a self-citation, so one could count two citations. One is Watts, and the other is this year, a Russian scholar. You may see the Google Scholar page here.
The 2010 article by Belenkiy also has an Altmetric page. It has a score that is "in the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric" and thus a reasonable reader would consider that the Belenkiy Hypothesis meets the standard of notability.
I had mentioned previously the examples of two types of speculations in the article. The Belenkiy Hypothesis is most closely related to the type of speculation that is plausible in that it has textual support in other documents. The example I gave of a reasonable, plausible speculation that is included in the article is the following: "According to Watts, this was in line with the traditional manner in which Alexandrians carried the bodies of the "vilest criminals" outside the city limits to cremate them as a way of symbolically purifying the city.[104][105]" It takes extant text and deduces some historical context from it.
For the Belenkiy Hypothesis: There is support of the Belenkiy Hypothesis in the form of Hypatia having been an astronomer, her death having been attributed by Hesychius to her "profound wisdom in astronomy," the having more than passing familiarity with Ptolemy's Syntaxis on which the techniques of observation described in the Belenkiy Hypothesis are described, and in the historical basis for calendrical disputes leading to religious strife. All of these place the Belenkiy Hypothesis within the category of plausible speculation, much like Watts' plausible speculation that her body being carried outside the city limits was as a sign of disrespect for her and of symbolically purifying the city. Such plausible speculations are valuable to the history so long as they are described as they are, i.e. qualified as plausible speculations.
I have demonstrated that removing the Belenkiy Hypothesis is a violation of NPOV as it introduces editorial bias into the article. When it was thought that the Belenkiy Hypothesis was wildly speculative, I was happy to show that it falls into the category of plausible speculations that are consistent with the editorial practice of the article. When it was thought that the Belenkiy Hypothesis was not notable, I was happy to show that it is notable, having been cited by other scholars of repute and having made an impact as seen on the Altmetric website. Am I wrong? Is there something yet missing? Please advise! Thank you!101.53.37.52 (talk) 07:00, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
You still have not supplied an academic source written by a reputable scholar other than Belenkiy himself arguing in support of the hypothesis. There is a difference between an article being cited and its hypothesis being supported, since a source may be cited for the purpose of its thesis being dismissed, which is precisely what Watts does with Belenkiy. You keep comparing the Belenkiy hypothesis with Watts' interpretation of Hypatia being carried out of the city to be burned, but there really is not any valid comparison here. The ancient sources directly say point blank that Hypatia was carried out of the city to be burned and we have other ancient sources that attest to this having been a common Alexandrian custom for dealing with the bodies of the worst of criminals. Watts is not trying to argue that any events happened that are not in the historical record; in this instance, he merely takes the events that are described in the sources and puts them in historical context. That is not even real speculation; it is just putting events in historical context. Belenkiy, on the other hand, argues for a whole host of events that we have no record of at all. We have no mention in ancient texts of Hypatia being involved in a dispute over the Easter calendar, nor indeed do we have evidence to suggest that she was murdered while making observations of the vernal equinox.
Given the level of persistence with which you are pursuing this, as well as your awareness of Belenkiy's more obscure publications (e.g. a letter he wrote to the editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society in July of last year), I am beginning to strongly suspect that you are either Belenkiy himself or someone who has some kind of personal relationship with him. Also, the fact that you were aware that the Belenkiy hypothesis was mentioned here previously seems to indicate to me that you may have been the one who added that part originally. If this is the case and you indeed have some kind of relationship with Belenkiy, you should disclose this information per the section WP:DISCLOSE of WP:COI. --Katolophyromai (talk) 06:51, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your concern Katolophyromai. I have logged in and you can see that I am not Belenkiy, and I also assert that I do not have any personal relationship with him nor any conflict of interest. You are welcome to search the internet if you like, but I don't imagine there is anything to find. I'm not being paid by Belenkiy, for example. I've never met him and don't have any kind of personal or other relationship with him that could generate a conflict of interest. I am simply another editor interested in Hypatia and her page here on Wikipedia being the best it can be. I really have met your objections, and I'm not sure what more I can do. The link above shows two citations for Belenkiy's work, and though one of those (Watts) is critical of it, the other (Russian) scholar is not. Likewise, the Belenkiy Hypothesis is not in that category of speculation which you rightly decry. It is less speculative than, for example, the hypothesis that her death was caused by "political jealousy," notwithstanding that Socrates Scholasticus is the one making that hypothesis. There is no reason not to include a note saying that the Belenkiy Hypothesis does not have direct support from any primary sources, yet not to include the Belenkiy Hypothesis when it is a plausible explanation that has support and is impactful (as seen from the Altmetric score of the article) is a violation of NPOV for introducing editorial bias. Note also to Kuru: the edits I have made to this Talk page are in good faith and not meant to disrupt any consensus-building. Each one has added new information to the exchange. I am unsure of how these edits could be construed as "Disruptive editing: long term disruptive editing from this range" but it seems that my editing without logging in has been blocked and so I would like to understand more about what the block means and whether it is possible for Kuru to unblock, though perhaps that all is in error. I am not sure. Please advise? And Katolophyromai please consider whether there is another objection you may have? Thanks! Daniel Helman (talk) 05:08, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
@Daniel Helman: There block impacting your IP was not targeting you - I've never looked at this conversation. There is no block currently applied the IP you were previously using, or on that range; presumably it switched and you're using a different one that I cannot see. You can share that new IP and I'd be happy to evaluate the range block, or you can simply continue to edit logged in. If you feel the IP address is sensitive, please use WP:UTRS. Kuru(talk)12:22, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
@Daniel Helman: Repeating the exact same argument over and over ad nauseam is not going to make that argument any more effective. Moreover, your claim that the Belenkiy hypothesis is "less speculative" than the idea that Hypatia's death was caused by political jealousy is flatly untrue. No ancient writer mentions anything about Hypatia being involved in a controversy over the date of the Easter festival. On the other hand, however, Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary of Hypatia who definitely knew people living in Alexandria at the time, directly states that she was killed as a result of political rivalry, a view which is independently supported by Damascius, writing around a generation later. In fact, all of the earliest writers who report on the cause of Hypatia's murder attribute it to her involvement in the political feud between Cyril and Orestes.
As I have already stated above, what I asking for to demonstrate the notability of Belenkiy's hypothesis was a paper written by a reputable scholar, other than Belenkiy himself, arguing in favor of it. There is a tremendous difference between citing Belenkiy and agreeing with him. Now, we both know that Watts cites Belenkiy but dismisses him, which brings the possible scholars arguing in favor of the Belenkiy hypothesis down to just the Russian scholar. I cannot read Russian and, judging by the fact that you do not seem to know the author of this paper's name, I am guessing you probably cannot read it either. Now, in order for this paper to count for anything, we would need to establish three things: 1) The author of the paper is not Belenkiy. 2) The author of the paper is a reputable scholar. 3) The author of the paper argues in favor of Belenkiy's hypothesis. Please do not return here until you can demonstrate all three of these things. If you can demonstrate all three of these things, I will restore a brief mention of the Belenkiy hypothesis to the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 22:56, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
The Russian paper has an English abstract at the end and you can easily copy-paste short portions of the text in Google Translate to get a rough translation. AstroLynx (talk) 09:57, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Dear Katolophyromai and AstroLynx (thanks for chiming in!)—sorry for the delay in answering! I searched on the email of the Russian paper and found the author's name in Roman letters to be I.V. Zaitseva (or Zaytseva) who has a PhD in history. Thus the author is (1) not Belenkiy, and (2) a reputable scholar. You can see another paper by her here.
For (3): I have confirmed (both with my rudimentary Russian skills and via Google Translate) that Zaitzeva does not include the Belenkiy Hypothesis in the paper to dismiss it, but rather includes it as an additional source of information about Hypatia's death. Thanks! 36.84.227.201 (talk) 11:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
NPOV still seems to be an issue with how the Belenkiy Hypothesis is included. A neutral reader would be more dismissive of the Belenkiy Hypothesis after reading the section than the argument itself warrants. Notably, the rationale for killing Hypatia is missing from the current treatment: She may have been killed while she was making observations which would potentially undermine Cyril's authority. Showing that the official date of the Easter celebration was wrong would have increased public contempt for Cyril. This adds to rather than diminishes the narrative in the section on Hypatia's death. Currently the text reads like the Belenkiy hypothesis is out of left field.2605:E000:1529:82D5:E4CA:90AC:CD38:D2D7 (talk) 18:13, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Another portrait
Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
@Tracklan2: There are a number of serious problems with that portrait. First of all, I am pretty sure that it is not really supposed to depict Hypatia at all, because it shows her with a halo and the style of the painting is highly characteristic of Eastern Orthodox icons of Christian saints. I have no idea why someone would choose to portray Hypatia with a halo and the painting makes infinitely more sense if we assume this is an Eastern Orthodox icon that someone has misinterpreted as a painting of Hypatia. My guess is that that painting is probably an icon of Saint Catharine of Alexandria, a legendary Christian martyr said to have lived during the early fourth century, whose story many scholars believe may have been partially based on the murder of Hypatia. (We have a photograph in the article of a much better and much older icon of Saint Catherine from Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, where it was painted sometime in the second half of the first millennium AD.)
Furthermore, I have serious doubts about the reliability of the sources cited to support the identification of this painting as a portrait of Hypatia. The website that the image on the commons came from also has an image of one of the Fayum mummy portraits, which predate Hypatia by at least three hundred years and come from an entirely different part of Egypt, located hundreds of miles south of where Hypatia actually lived, and yet the website identifies it as a portrait of her, which is ridiculous and impossible. The source you cite above, Black Women in Antiquity, sends up red flags from its very title in relation to Hypatia, because we do not have any ancient sources that say or even remotely seem to imply that she was what we today would describe as "black." In fact, historical sources say very little about her physical appearance. She hypothetically could have been what we would call "black," but there is no reason to suppose that she was. Since she lived in Alexandria, a city in the northernmost part of Egypt on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, she most likely had an olive Mediterranean skin tone, like most other people in Lower Egypt.
There are, however, a number of other serious problems with that painting as well. For one thing, no one knows what Hypatia really looked like, so even if we assume that the painting is supposed to represent Hypatia (which I am pretty sure it is not), that would mean that, like all other "portraits" of Hypatia, it is fictional. We established a consensus long ago that fictional portraits do not belong in the infobox of this article. Another problem is that it is not a famous or notable depiction; we do not appear to know who painted it and it is never mentioned in any of the sources cited in this article, even though they discuss other portrayals of Hypatia, such as the painting by William Charles Mitchell, the photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, and the portrait by Jules Maurice Gaspard, extensively. In fact, if you search for Hypatia's name in Google images, that image does not even show up at all. Putting it as the main image for this article would simply be undue. Furthermore, the artistic quality of the painting is... well, rather unexceptional to say the least. All in all, I do not think it is suited to be the main image, or even in this article at all unless we can establish with absolute certainty that it is supposed to be a painting of Hypatia and that it possesses significant encyclopedic notability. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
In addition to everything Katolophyromai quite rightly said, we also have no reliable indication the image is "public domain" as claimed, so we can't keep it anyway. Fut.Perf.☼22:35, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
As above. There's no good reason to believe that this image is a depiction of Hypatia, or any less biased if it is intended as an image of her than any of the images we already have. We certainly would at least need a better provenance indicating which category of image from WP:PORTRAIT it is supposed to fall into. The caption on commons is also worrisome, speaking as it does about depicting her Egyptian ancestry. What Egyptian ancestry? We don't actually know anything about her ethnicity. For all we know she could have been purely Greek. So this is bad for the same reasons as the images depicting her as Greek are bad: it makes assumptions for which we have no evidence. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:09, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Edits to the "Twenty-first century" section
Latest comment: 6 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
There are four works that were edited out of the "Twenty-first century" section by Katolophyromai that seem to have been made in error. These two works of fiction were removed on 03:32, 22 December 2017.
Remembering Hypatia: A Novel of Ancient Egypt by Brian Trent,;[2]
Heresy: the Life of Pelagius (2012) by David Lovejoy, which includes Hypatia's death as well as a portrait of Synesius[3]
Likewise this play was removed in the same edit.
In 2016 the play Hypatia's Math had its premiere at the Flagstaff Festival of Science and workshop performances at the Strand Theater in Baltimore at the Maryland STEM Festival. The structure of the play is similar to the histories presented by Deakin and Belenkiy.[4]
The rationale given by Katolophyromai was that these are either "trivial" or "cited to probably unreliable sources" notwithstanding that the sources are standard, e.g. worldcat, or easily verifiable. It is unclear what standard Katolophyromai is using to assert triviality. I would be interested in reading some comments related to this.
Likewise, the following was edited out of the Twenty-first century section on 19:48, 24 December 2017.
There is currently a petition to establish an annual festival commemorating Hypatia on March 20, based on that date as perhaps the date of her death—killed while making observations of the vernal equinox. This argument is described in academic work by Ari Belenkiy who is based in Vancouver, and the petition is to the Canadian government.[5]
The rationale that Katolophyromai gives is "This addition seems to be here only for promotional purposes; unless the holiday is actually created, the petition is not noteworthy." This seems to have been a capricious edit, and I am curious to hear opinions related to this. Thanks!101.53.37.52 (talk) 07:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I agree with these removals and their explanation. You're going to need much more substantive references than the ones you supply (and ones that are more independent from their topics) to justify the inclusion of this material. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks to David Eppstein for your kind and helpful thoughts. I've searched out and found additional references that seem more substantive in order to support inclusion of this material to make the section stronger.
For Remembering Hypatia: A Novel of Ancient Egypt by Brian Trent
For another play that had been listed previously in the section: In the 2013 play False Assumptions by Lawrence Aronovitch, Hypatia is portrayed as one of three ghosts observing the life of Marie Curie.
The books, plays and petition above are all items that had been included in the section Twenty-first century and were edited out. Are these additional works important to the section to show more strongly the influence of Hypatia in popular culture? Further comments welcome!101.53.37.52 (talk) 15:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
The daily kos, purpose of Christmas web site, goodreads, and a letter to the editor of the Notices are certainly not reliable sources, and the Ottawa Sun source doesn't even mention Hypatia by name. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:40, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) See WP:INPOPULARCULTURE, WP:FANCRUFT, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and WP:N. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of popular culture trivia and we only write about pop culture appearances when they have significantly altered popular perception of the subject of the article on a societal level and are described as such in reliable, scholarly sources. Neither of the two works of fiction that were removed are mentioned in any of the biographies of Hypatia cited in this article, despite the fact that Dzielska, Watts, and Booth all talk about Hypatia's popular culture influence at great length. The play is not mentioned in any of them either. Plus, it was only given one full production at a science festival and a workshop production. That is not encyclopedically notable.
Likewise, False Assumptions is not mentioned in any of the Hypatia biographies and it sounds like she only appears as a supporting character in it anyway. As for the petition, as I said in my edit summary, it would only be notable if a country actually adopted it and made a national holiday in honor of Hypatia. Do you realize how many petitions there are out there for new national holidays in various countries around the world? Thousands, if not millions. The vast majority of them are insignificant and have no realistic chance of actually becoming holidays. I see no evidence that this one is any different, especially since every single reference you have provided arguing for Hypatia Day has been written by Ari Belenkiy. It seems like this is just his personal pet project that only a few other people are on board with. (In fact, you are arguing so much in favor of Ari Belenkiy's hypothesis that I am almost beginning to suspect you might be Ari Belenkiy.)
Furthermore, the vast majority of the sources you list above are considered reliable sources by Wikipedia's standards. The Daily Kos is a blog conglomeration whose articles are self-published and do not exactly have a reputation for accuracy. Thepurposeofchristmas.net is a self-published personal blog written by a non-expert. Goodreads.com is a book review site whose reviews are all self-published and written by non-experts. The Ottawa Sun is a tabloid. The last source you cite is just a letter by Ari Belenkiy to the editor. Those letters just give people's opinions. They do not go through peer review, nor does the letter do anything at all to establish notability for Belenkiy's efforts to create a national Hypatia Day. The only two that might perhaps be reliable are Broadwayworld.com, which appears to be a news website dealing with theatrical productions across the country, and the Arizona Daily Sun which is a daily newspaper, but even these do not establish notability because Wikipedia is not a newspaper. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion
I am tired of all this arguing over the Belenkiy hypothesis, so, with this edit, I have added one brief sentence about the hypothesis to the end of the "Murder" section, followed by another brief sentence noting that both Alan Cameron and Edward J. Watts reject the hypothesis as entirely baseless, since there are no ancient texts that support any part of it. I really hope this resolves our dispute here and that we will be able to move on from this. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:22, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Katolophyromai. Sure! Notwithstanding, I made the following edit to preserve NPOV and added the revision comment "Added in Zaytseva reference to provide balance and avoid violation of NPOV."
while historian Irina V. Zaytseva includes the Belenkiy Hypothesis in her work.[1]
which David Eppstein has undone with the comment "Undid revision 872784635 by 101.53.37.52 (talk) content-free, and we do not need "balance" for fringe theories, we need perspective" This edit by David Eppstein is in violation of NPOV and it seems to have been made intentionally in bad faith considering that he has been following this discussion on the Talk page. Zaytseva is a historian unconnected to Belenkiy, and to prevent her scholarly voice is arbitrary. The hypothesis isn't a fringe theory. Introducing editorial bias into an article is a violation of NPOV. I wonder whether David Eppstein would consent to reverting his edit, or provide an additional rationale for keeping it. Thanks!101.53.37.52 (talk) 07:09, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Say something about Zaytseva's opinion of Belenkiy's work, if you can find a clear description of what her opinion is. But a bare "someone cited someone else" factoid is useless and almost meaningless without a description of what that citation was intended to mean. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:32, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
I thoroughly agree with David Eppstein here. A sentence merely saying that Zaytseva cites Belenkiy's paper and mentions his hypothesis is entirely meaningless and undue. Unless we can establish that Zaytseva has a unique and encyclopedically notable perspective on the hypothesis that is directly relevant to this article, there is no reason to mention her with respect to it. We are already giving this whole fringe theory way more coverage than it frankly deserves. In Watts's whole book about Hypatia, Belenkiy is only briefly mentioned once in passing in a single endnote and promptly dismissed. He is not even mentioned in the main text of the biography. We clearly do not need to tally up every single publication that happens to cites Belenkiy. Doing so would clearly violate WP:NPOV, because it would be giving Belenkiy ludicrously undue coverage, entirely disproportionate to the scholarly prominence of his hypothesis (or lack thereof). --Katolophyromai (talk) 08:47, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you David Eppstein and Katolophyromai for your opinions. Let me be brief. To address Katolophyromai's assertion, I would like to reprint what Watts has written and what Katolophyomai has used to justify this sentence and includes as a citation: "Classical scholars Alan Cameron and Edward J. Watts both dismiss this hypothesis, noting that there is absolutely no evidence in any ancient text to support any part of the hypothesis." Here are Watts words.
“The date of 415 is based on Socrates Scholasticus and accepted by most modern scholars (e.g., M. Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, trans. F. Lyra [Cambridge, MA, 1995], 93; C. Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity [Baltimore, 1997], 307–16). It has recently been argued (by Ari Belenkiy, “An Astronomical Murder?,” Astronomy and Geophysics 51.2 [2010], 9–13) that the date of her murder was instead in March 416, and that her death was caused by an argument about the date of Easter in 417. As A. Cameron (“Hypatia: Life, Death, and Works,” in Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy [Oxford, 2016], 185–203, at 190) has shown, though, there is absolutely no evidence that Hypatia was ever interested in calculating the date of Easter or interacting with Christian officials concerned about this.” p. 157
Now I would like to reprint what Cameron has written and that Katolophyromai includes as a citation for the sentence above.
“A central element in the modern Hypatia myth is that she was the last great mathematician of the ancient world.[36] An article in the journal Astronomy and Geophysics for 2010 under the title “An Astronomical Murder” argues, at the cost of moving the year of her death to 416, that Hypatia was killed because she embarrassed the Alexandrian church by proving that their date for Easter was wrong.[37] But why should it ever have crossed her mind to enter what must have seemed to her a pointless as well as dangerous Christian controversy?” p. 190
You'll notice that Watts assertion is a bad reading of Cameron. Cameron does not "show" that there is no evidence. Thus Watts is demonstrably unreliable. Likewise Cameron is simply suggesting criticism but does not make any claim with supporting evidence. I agree with David Eppstein in that I don't see that Zaytseva has done anything other than include a reference to Belenkiy's work. The implication is that she finds its importance warrants inclusion, but there is nothing more than this. Notwithstanding, the current treatment of the Hypatia page here does indeed violate NPOV. Watts and Cameron are not definitive, and the page currently gives the impression that they are. Please weigh in if you like? How can I read the Watts and Cameron in a different way? Watts clearly misstates Cameron, and Cameron doesn't provide anything solid to go on as a critique. I have also written an email to Zaytseva (since David Eppstein wants to know her opinion) and perhaps she will add to this thread to weigh in. Thanks! 101.53.37.52 (talk) 17:07, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
See WP:CANVASSING and WP:OR. If Zaytseva's perspective on the hypothesis is not clear from her paper, we cannot email her to find out what she thinks of it, because that would violate WP:OR. Everything that we write here on Wikipedia is supposed to be a summary of already-published information. As we have both stated many times before, a scholar merely citing Belenkiy proves absolutely nothing and there is no reason to mention a mere citation of him. We have already included a paragraph about the hypothesis. That is everything you wanted. Is that no longer good enough? --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Seriously, 101.*, this here needs to stop. What you are doing on this page is what we on Wikipedia call beating a dead horse. It's getting disruptive now. You've taken up the time and goodwill of several highly experienced editors more than enough. Please accept that consensus is against you and move on. Fut.Perf.☼20:25, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
"The discordance between the type of person Hypatia was and the brutal way in which she died explains that initial shock that many people felt at her murder... She was a philosopher who engaged in public life in order to make her city and her fellow citizens better. Historically, such individuals had been exempt from the sorts of displays of intimidation and violence that sometimes accompanied political gridlock in Roman cities. The metastasis of violence her death represented would have seemed as profoundly dangerous and destabilizing to people in Alexandria and Constantinople as the urban riots in the spring and summer of 1968 seemed to people in the United States."
Throughout the entire passage, Watts never even uses the word "Christian" and he is clearly talking about how the bloody murder of a philosopher—regardless of by whom—would have been seen as shocking and a sign of the breakdown of the most basic social norms. Adding the word "Christian" changed the meaning of the sentence by shifting the emphasis from Hypatia's own identity and the bloody nature of her death to the identity of her murderers, which is not what this sentence was supposed to be about, nor is it a subject that is addressed in the particular passage from the source that is cited to support this sentence. —Katolophyromai (talk) 04:16, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
Oh, OK, very good, that's different of course. Thanks for your cogent reply. I don't have access to the source, but you do, so fine. I'm just generally leery of changes in passages without changing the source... these are often enough editors wanting to add their interpretation of an event, not realizing that, by not changing the source, they are putting their interpretation into the source's mouth. However, that's not the case here, so apologies, and carry on. Herostratus (talk) 11:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Catholicism =/= Christianity
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
@216.221.43.157: You are correct that Hypatia has certainly become "a symbol of opposition to Christianity" today, but she was "a symbol of opposition to Catholicism" in particular for much longer than she has been a symbol of opposition to Christianity in general. For instance, the novel about Hypatia in the nineteenth century was Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia; Or, New Foes with an Old Face. Kingsley was a devout Protestant, but he was strongly anti-Catholic. The novel itself is militantly anti-Catholic in tone, but not anti-Christian. Most of the other modern portrayals of Hypatia from before the twentieth century are similarly strongly anti-Catholic, but not necessarily anti-Christian. —Katolophyromai (talk) 00:09, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
A mathematician is not reliable for these claims
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Michael A. B. Deakin is cited in a paragraph for some weird theory about Hypatia's virginity, but he is a mathematician, so is it really in the readers' best interest to bring this up when it is (1) immediately discredited and (2) not based on any expert knowledge in fields such as... anthropology? human physiology? etc. Elizium23 (talk) 03:15, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
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