battle for
the old gods.

About the year 370, to Theon, a noted astronomer and mathematician of
Alexandria, a daughter was born, to whom he gave the name Hypatia. The
child very early exhibited extraordinary intellectual endowments, and
Theon himself took charge of her education. She rapidly mastered his own
favorite subjects of mathematics and astronomy, and the most celebrated
teachers of the day were called in to give her instruction in the
various branches of rhetoric and philosophy. All the ancient
philosophical systems were pursued by the devoted and zealous maiden,
and the prevailing system of the time, that of Neo-platonism, appealed
especially to her spirit.

As she attained to womanhood, Hypatia united with the charm of
extraordinary beauty all the rarest traits of spirit and character. She
became the object of flattering regard on the part of the cultured; the
common people reverenced her as a superior being, and even the
Christians respected her learning and her demeanor. Hypatia was worthy
of all the admiration that she excited. Amid the widespread corruption
of the age, she lived as spotless as a vestal. The philosophy she
professed preserved her from pollution and inspired her with the love of
beauty, truth, and goodness.

With her intense devotion to the gods of her fathers, with her
extraordinary endowments and wide learning, with her preeminent virtues
and the charm of her whole personality, this celebrated maiden appeared
to the pagan world as a higher being sent by the gods to defend the
ancient faith against the subverting teachings of the Christians,--a
herald, who with the weapons of exalted wisdom and moral sublimity
should win the victory and restore the worship of the gods to its former
splendor. This was also the ambition of the virgin philosopher.

Hypatia's early womanhood was passed in the period when hostility to
paganism reached its height. She was barely twenty-one when Theodosius
I. issued an edict commanding the destruction of heathen temples and
images at Alexandria, and from this time the patriarchs of the city
endeavored to exercise both spiritual and temporal authority and to root
out every vestige of paganism.

Against such an opposition Hypatia sought to contend. Her weapons were
not carnal, but intellectual. By a spread of the knowledge of Greek
philosophy and literature, she sought to quicken the sensibilities of
the people and to reawaken a reverence for the Greek gods.