Two—
Synesius of Cyrene
I—
Family
Synesius was born to an old and wealthy local family of Cyrene in the province of Pentapolis perhaps a year or two before A.D. 370.[1] He received his basic education at home, which he followed up in the 390s with several years of study at Alexandria under the celebrated mathematician and philosopher Hypatia, to whom he remained devoted throughout his life. His letters show his lifelong active involvement in the local affairs of Cyrenaica. In particular, he interrupted his philosophical studies for three years to go on an embassy to Constantinople, attempting to secure a reduction of taxes for Pentapolis. While there he became embroiled in national politics—the subject of this book.
The two works he wrote during his embassy, the De regno , an essay on kingship cast into the form of an address to the emperor, and the De providentia , a political allegory in the form of the Egyptian myth of Typhos and Osiris, have long been regarded as our best evidence for the current politics of the Eastern capital. This evidence has traditionally been interpreted on the assumption that Synesius was a pagan at the time of his embassy and only converted to Christianity several years later. J. Bregman's recent study, for example, rests on two axioms—that the Cyrenean local aristocracy was necessarily pagan and that Synesius's great intellectual quest and achievement lay in reconciling Neoplatonism and Christianity.[2]
Yet while the aristocracies of Athens and Rome continued to be substantially pagan into the late fourth century,[3] we are not entitled to make the same assumption about Cyrene. This question has been treated at length in Denis Roques's recent book Synésios de Cyrène et la Cyrénaïque du Bas-Empire (Paris 1987)—unfortunately making the opposite assumption: that already by the age of Diocletian paganism had ceased to be an effective force at Pentapolis. Roques gives little indication of the extent to which his confident conclusions are based on the argument from silence—and usually the silence of the same writer, our only literary source for early fifth-century Cyrene: Synesius himself.[4]
For example, while it is true enough that Synesius was apparently more worried as bishop by heretics than by pagans,[5] this was an attitude shared by countless other fourth- and fifth-century Christians. To quote only one example, after his spectacular conversion in mid-fourth-century Rome, the former pagan professor Marius Victorinus devoted the rest of his life to attacking Arianism.[6] Anyone who inferred from his silence that paganism was a spent force in late fourth-century Rome would be making a grave error. The destruction of pagan temples in Cyrene vividly attested by their charred remains cannot (Roques claims) be dated as late as the Theodosian age because Synesius does not mention it. But before becoming a bishop he does not mention Christianity either. Nor is it because such things were a dead issue that he does not
[2] Bregman 1982, chap. 1, gives a full account of earlier views on Synesius's alleged passage from paganism to Christianity. On Bregman, see particularly W. Liebeschuetz, JHS 104 (1984): 222–23; D. Roques, REG 95 (1982): 461–67; and G. Fowden, CP 80 (1985): 281–85.
[3] For Rome see A. Cameron's forthcoming study The Last Pagans of Rome ; for Athens, the assumption is based more on the argument from silence (the absence of Christian sources) than is usually recognized: see Fowden 1990, 496f.; Chuvin 1990, passim.
[4] "Notre seule et unique source," as Roques himself concedes (1987, 18).
[5] Roques 1987, 318.
[6] P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris 1971), passim.
mention them in De regno .[7] Why should he? They were not relevant to his purpose. Roques has it both ways here. In another context, he dismisses what Synesius does say in De regno , namely, that Cyrene was a city in decline. Or take another of Roques's confident assertions: "De lhistoire[*] du paganisme au IIIe siècle ni les textes, ni les inscriptions, ni les monuments ne gardent le souvenir."[8] This claim may seem less significant when it is realized that the same is true of the history of Christianity in third-century Pentapolis. It is true that Pentapolis was already rich in bishoprics by the early fourth century;[9] on the other hand "the overwhelming majority of the known churches in . . . Cyrenaica are of the sixth century."[10] Roques naturally appeals to C. Lepelley's magisterial demonstration that the cities of late Roman North Africa were more prosperous than is usually thought. But it is the incomparably richer documentation from the North African cities—literary, epigraphic, and archaeological—that allows such a picture to be drawn. And even so it is not a simple picture. We now know that Christianity made early strides in North Africa and that there were a great many churches and bishoprics by the fourth century.[11] Lepelley has been able to document a sharp decline in public works on pagan temples, statues, and the like.[12] But we also know that there was a vigorous pagan resistance well into the fifth century.[13]
Roques may be right. There may have been very few pagans left in late fourth-century Pentapolis. But the evidence he cites comes nowhere near establishing even a probability. "Rien nindique[*] " gets us nowhere when there is no evidence either way. It would be satisfying to be able to set Synesius in the context of the Cyrenean society of his age. In the absence of evidence all we can do is treat him as representative of that society, while remaining uncomfortably aware that so eccentric a figure cannot be anything of the sort.
But if we cannot locate Synesius's peers, perhaps we can at least find
[7] Roques 1987, 321.
[8] Roques's dismissal of the facts about Cyrene stated in De regno: "Ces déclarations, tenues dans un discours officiel, sont exagérées . . . . La 'ruine' de la Cyrénaïque du IV siècle, savere[*] ainsi, à bien comprendre Synésios, non matérielle, mais exclusivement spirituelle" (1987, 31–32); for his confident assertion, quoted, 1987, 318.
[9] A. H. M. Jones, Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces , 2d ed. (Oxford 1971), 498 n. 17; Roques 1987, 317–41.
[10] J. B. Ward-Perkins, "Recent Work and Problems in Libya," Actas del VIII Congreso Internacional de Arqueologia Cristiana, Barcelona, 4–11 Octubre 1969 1 (Barcelona and Rome 1972), 232–33.
[11] W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church , 3d ed. (Oxford 1985).
[12] Les cités de lAfrique[*] romaine au Bas-Empire , vol. 1 (Paris 1979), 345f.
[13] "La suppression autoritaire de lexercise[*] public du paganisme nempechait[*] nullement de nombreux Africains du lui rester fidèles" (Lepelley 1979, 355f.).
his house. An elegant townhouse has been excavated in the center of Cyrene, with a central peristyle surrounded by columns.[14] No coins later than Constantius II (337–61) have been found there, suggesting that it was destroyed in the earthquake that ravaged Cyrene in 365.[15] Yet a series of mosaic inscriptions makes it clear that the owners were Christian.[16]
One of these inscriptions mentions a certain Hesychius, a Libyarch. Another inscription from the area commemorates the same man as a ktistes , that is to say, a major civic benefactor. R. G. Goodchild and Joyce Reynolds identified him with a correspondent of Synesius who was governor of Libya early in the fifth century,[17] but this prominence comes much too late for him to have been the owner of a house destroyed in 365.[18] It might be added that in Ep. 93 Synesius says that he and his friend Hesychius were brought together by "holy geometry," that is to say, in the lecture room of Hypatia.[19] If Synesius first met Hesychius as a student in Alexandria, this implies that he had not met him earlier; namely, that he was not (as often assumed) a native Cyrenean.[20] A much more attractive identification has recently been suggested by W. Leibeschuetz: Synesius's own father Hesychius.[21]
Synesius's seventh hymn (= 8), a prayer for his whole family, commends himself, his brother, his two sisters, and, as he sums up, "the entire house of the Hesychidai to the protection of the deity" (31). It follows that their father was called Hesychius.[22] The inference is strengthened by the fact that Synesius called his own firstborn Hesychius.[23] It is clear that Synesius came from one of the few local families with the wealth to hold the expensive honor of the Libyarchy and own such a
[14] R. G. Goodchild, Kyrene und Apollonia (Zurich 1971), 89–90, with plates 31–32.
[15] Goodchild 1971, 44–45, 89.
[16] For the inscriptions, see Joyce Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959): 100–101; JTS 11 (1960): 286–87 (= SEG XVII, 745–46).
[17] Synesius says that his office was "new in both name and function" (Ep. 93), whence Roques argues that he was a defensor civitatis , and so probably Cyrenean. But the defensor was not new in the early fifth century (Jones 1964a, 144–45), and PLRE II.553 offers a much more satisfactory explanation.
[18] So already PLRE II.553.
[20] Although Lacombrade describes Hesychius as "issu comme Synésios dune[*] des plus nobles familles de la Pentapole" (1951a, 50–51; so too Roques 1987, 206), nothing in the only letter to mention him justifies the assumption.
[21] Liebeschuetz 1985b, 159. This identification is still possible even if, as some believe (S. Stucchi, Larchitettura[*] cirenaica [Rome 1975], 490; Roques 1987, 211), the Hesychius inscriptions date from after, rather than before, the quake of 365.
[22] So first P. Maas, Philologus 72 (1913): 451 (= Kleine Schriften [Munich 1973], 175).
[23] PLRE II.553, no. 4.
house. We may doubt whether there were two men called Hesychius answering to this description in impoverished mid–fourth-century Cyrene.[24] Very probably the house was Synesius's father's, and he abandoned it after the destruction of the earthquake in favor of an estate more in the country. The dates would fit nicely: Synesius could just have been born in the house.
Synesius's seventh hymn begins with ten lines on his beloved younger brother Evoptius,[25] recently and unexpectedly recovered from a serious illness. The next two lines have been seriously misinterpreted in the past. The MSS present
This text appears to mean "And may you keep safe my sister and the [her?, my?] pair of children." It poses several problems. First, Synesius had two sisters. No one since 1907 has hesitated to print Wilamowitz's correction
[24] Roques (1987, passim and esp. 15–52), with considerable exaggeration, attempts to expose as a "myth" the traditional picture of Synesius's Cyrene as a city in decline.
[25] Not his older brother, as sometimes supposed: rightly Roques 1987, 131.
[26] Roques (1989, 37–45) reaches his usual overly precise dates for the births of Synesius's three children (mid-November 404; early September 405).
[27] Cf. too Lacombrade 1951a, 269–70.
ious prayer to the deity on behalf of those that remained to him. Instead he links them with two sisters who were evidently less close to him than his brother. Furthermore, he continues with a prayer for his wife that deserves quotation:
Beneath your hand protect also[28] the partner of my marriage bed, free of illness and harm, faithful, of one mind with me. Keep my wife in ignorance of clandestine associations. May she keep my bed holy, unsullied, pious, inaccessible to unlawful desires.
This is a decidedly curious prayer for a man to make on behalf of a woman married to him for ten years and the mother of three sons. It seems rather the prayer one would make (if at all) at the beginning of a marriage. Most men set great store on having a son, especially men like Synesius who are very conscious of a family line stretching back over the centuries. It is hard to believe that Synesius devoted ten lines to his brother, nine to his wife, and only one to his two surviving sons, without even a word for his poor dead firstborn. Nor is there any obvious reason for him to link his sons to his two sisters rather than to his own wife.
Ch. Lacombrade suggested that the children are those of Synesius's sisters. One, whose name is unknown, was married to a certain Amelius and had a daughter; the other, Stratonice, was at any rate married.[29] For Lacombrade, they had a pair of children between them: "Mes deux soeurs et leurs deux enfants, protège-les." But even supposing that Synesius's sisters did have two children between them, the expression is curiously artificial. Moreover, it raises the question of why Synesius should have mentioned his sister's children but not Evoptius's son Dioscurius,[30] who actually lived with Synesius ca. 405 and of whom he was very fond (Ep. 53 = 55 Garzya [hereafter G]).
A simple repunctuation solves all problems. Remove the stops at the end of lines 30 and 32; add stops at the end of lines 31 and 36:
[28] This translation presupposes the new punctuation of the entire passage proposed below.
[29] Lacombrade 1956, 67–72; 1978a, 91 n. 2.
[30] Given wrongly as Dioscorus in PLRE II.367, no. 1.
[31]
Guard my two sisters, and the whole house of the children of Hesychius. Beneath your hand protect also the partner of my marriage bed, free of illness and harm, faithful, of one mind with me. Keep my wife in ignorance of clandestine associations. May she keep my bed holy, unsullied, pious, inaccessible to unlawful desires.
Those problematic children have now vanished. Or rather, it is Synesius himself and his three siblings who together make up the children of Hesychius. Having disposed of the house of Hesychius, Synesius then moves on to his own house, which at this stage consists only of himself and his wife. In fact the poem was surely written for the occasion of his marriage. Synesius presumably married during his second long stay in Alexandria, for he notes that the patriarch Theophilus presided at the ceremony (Ep. 105). The assumption that Synesius did not leave Constantinople till late 402, during an earthquake hitherto assigned to that year, would date the marriage to 403/4. But both the quake and Synesius's departure must be moved back to the autumn of 400, so that 402 or even 401 is equally possible.[32]
Modern readers have always stressed the strong Neoplatonic coloring of all Synesius's hymns as evidence of his pagan leanings.[33] In this connection, and especially given the early date for Hymn 7 , it is noteworthy that though it lacks any specifically Christian language or doctrine, the poem is unmistakably Christian (cf. line 5, "illustrious scion of a virgin").
II—
Conversion?
From 404/5 on, Synesius seems to have lived more or less continuously on his beloved estates, devoting his leisure to philosophy but when necessary taking an active role in repelling the barbarians whose attacks were to plague Cyrenaica almost every year. In 410 he was sud-
[32] Cameron 1987, 346–47.
[33] See section III below.
denly offered the bishopric of Ptolemais.[34] After deliberating for six months, he eventually agreed, and as he had feared, he was at once overwhelmed with the responsibilities of his new office. The man who preferred to spend his days in philosophic contemplation was obliged to end them fighting corrupt governors, barbarians, and heresy. These various struggles lost him many of his former friends, and he seems to have died, in or soon after 412, a sad and lonely man.[35]
The evidence discussed so far suggests that Synesius was born a Christian. But it has never commanded the same attention as the famous Ep. 105 in which he airs the three problems that caused him to hesitate about the bishopric: the origin of the soul, the eventual destruction (but not the creation) of the world, and the resurrection. To Bregman, as to most scholars before him, these doubts have suggested that Synesius did not accept fundamental Christian doctrine: therefore he was a pagan. His close association with the pagan philosopher Hypatia has also weighed heavily in this reckoning. But in the words of H.-I. Marrou, Synesius's concerns are "precisely the problems to which the Christian thinkers who followed Synesius in the Alexandrian tradition of Neoplatonism were to devote their most important works."[36] Synesius did not positively disbelieve in the resurrection: rather, he remarked, "As for the resurrection such as common belief admits it , I see here an ineffable mystery, and I am far from sharing the views of the vulgar crowd on the subject." Synesius would not be the last good Christian to have qualms about literal belief in the resurrection. And as a serious academic philosopher, he feared that in a public airing the untrained intellects of the common people could only confuse ineffable mysteries.
But the point at issue is not whether Synesius was a good Christian before he became a bishop, but whether he was ever a pagan. It is important not to let his theological doubts obscure the important evidence of what the letter does not say. For example, there is no suggestion that Synesius's doubts might disqualify him from being considered a Chris-
[34] For the controversy about the date, see Liebeschuetz 1986b, 180–83; and Barnes 1986b, 33 (supporting 407); for a further argument in favor of 410, see appendix 3. The latest study, Roques 1989 (26; cf. 47–64), dates Synesius's election to the beginning of Lent in 411 because Ep. 14 refers to Lent and displays new "Christian charity" toward the horse thief Synesius arraigned in Ep. 6. Roques thus violates his own principles (cf. 14) by subjectively assessing "Christian" language as a basis for chronology, and quite ignores the more important change in Synesius's circumstances: in Ep. 6 he was frustrated by attempts to catch a thief, and in Ep. 14 the thief was in his control and crying penitently for mercy.
[35] Roques 1989, 247.
[36] Marrou 1963, 147–48.
tian, just from being a bishop. It is also significant, as Marrou pointed out, that he does not raise the objection that he had not been baptized.[37]
Synesius was very close to his brother, to whom he addressed more of his letters than to anyone else. It is in these if anywhere that we might have expected to find some hint of the "conversion" that is so much discussed in the modern literature; "yet there is no trace in his very personal works of any crisis or change in his faith; he did not go through the spiritual turmoils of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo."[38] It is not surprising that it should have been to his brother that Synesius addressed the fullest statement of his doubts. But it is also significant in a different way that it was to his brother that he addressed what was obviously intended to be an open letter to the entire Christian community. Evoptius must have been a respected member of that community. Indeed, he may well be the Evoptius who was bishop of Ptolemais in 431, having succeeded to the see on his brother's untimely death.[39] The brothers would have been raised as Christians together.[40]
Synesius's theological objections have always attracted attention, but it is important not to overlook the rest of the letter. To start with, it is above all things as frank a statement of Synesius's doubts as could well be imagined. He lays down the terms on which he will accept the see. He will not preach on dogmas he does not believe. He refuses once and for all to separate from his wife.[41] He would rather not give up his hunt-
[37] Marrou 1952, 477; on the question of Synesius's baptism, see below, section III.
[38] Young 1983, 170.
[39] Lacombrade 1951a, 19–20; PLRE II.422.
[40] Synesius in Ep. 8 to Evoptius emphasizes that they were "born of the same parents, brought up together and have had our education in common. Everything has combined to unite us in every way." Seeck (1894, 465), followed by Lacombrade (1951a, 17 n. 32) disputes the address of Ep. 8 "to his brother" because Synesius describes their common parentage in a negative conditional clause. But the sentence permits reading it as contrary to fact ("even if we had not been born of the same parents . . .") as easily as the simple condition Seeck presumes ("even if we were not born . . ."), and no other individual to whom Synesius is so closely bound appears in the letters. Roques (1989, 164) rightly accepts it.
[41] Oddly enough, it is commonly assumed (e.g., Grützmacher 1913, 137–38; Lacombrade 1951a, 225; Tinnefeld 1975, 167; Roques 1987, 315, "sans aucune doute") that Synesius must have had to yield on this point. Yet in the Eastern church it was quite normal for bishops to continue to live with their wives, though opinion differed about whether they might decently still procreate children: J. Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church , bk. 4, chap. 5; Jones 1964a, 927–29; cf. too P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York 1988), 292–93. According to Socrates (HE 5.22), writing in 450, celibacy among the episcopate of the Eastern church in his day, though common, was entirely voluntary. Certainly, "no eastern council enjoined continence on the clergy" (Jones 1964a, 928). Socrates noted: "There have been many bishops who have had children by their lawful wives dur-ing their episcopate," remarking with surprise on his discovery that in Thessaly a cleric was liable to be degraded if he slept with his wife—an innovation, he adds, of the novelist Heliodorus when bishop of Tricca. Of course, the mere fact that Synesius made this stipulation reveals him well aware of the moral pressure; but it also reveals him determined to defy it. If Theophilus wanted Synesius to accept his offer, he had to accept Synesius's terms. It is true, as Grützmacher observes, that Synesius does not mention his wife after becoming bishop; but with the exception of Hymn 7 neither does he mention her before.
ing either, but this he will do if it is the will of God. He repeats, "I will never conceal my beliefs." Having stated these terms, he concludes that the patriarch must either now "leave me to lead my own life and philosophize" or else "leave himself no grounds on which hereafter to sit in judgment over me." The episcopate would mean a profound and permanent change in Synesius's life; it was a role for which he knew he was ill qualified and had little enthusiasm. It was essential to make the electors absolutely clear just how ill qualified he was. Nothing could have been worse than to accept first and have his qualifications called into question afterwards.
If Synesius had only recently abandoned paganism or was still unbaptized, this was the moment to say so, either in this letter or in his hardly less important but less quoted letter of acceptance to the elders of Ptolemais (Ep. 11). It deserves to be quoted in full:
I was unable, for all my strength, to prevail against you and to decline the bishopric, and this in spite of all my machinations; nor is it to your will that I have now yielded. Rather was it a divine force that brought about the delay then, as it has caused my acceptance now. I would rather have died many deaths than have taken over this religious office, for I did not consider my powers equal to the burden. But now that God has accomplished, not what I asked, but what he willed,[42] I pray that he who has been the shepherd of my life[43] may also become the defender of his charge. How shall I, who have devoted my youth to philosophic leisure and to the idle contemplation of abstract being, and have only mingled as much in the cares of the world as to be able to acquit myself of the duties to the life of the body and to show myself a citizen—how, I say, shall I ever be equal to a life of daily routine? Again, if I deliver myself over to a host of practical matters, shall I ever be able to apply myself to the fair things of the mind that may be gathered in happy leisure only? Without all this, would life be worth living to me, and to all those who resemble me? I, for one, know not, but to God they say all things are possible, even impossible things [Matt. 19.26]. Do you therefore lift up your hands in prayer to God on my behalf, and give orders both to the people in the town and to as many as inhabit the fields or frequent the village churches to offer prayers for us alike in private and
[42] Perhaps meant to suggest Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane: Matt. 26.39; Mark 14.36; Luke 22.42.
[43] A common biblical and homiletic image.
in the congregation. If I am not forsaken by God, I shall then know that this office of priesthood is not a decline from the realms of philosophy, but on the contrary, a step upwards to them.
Here too Synesius makes no attempt to conceal his doubts and openly admits that his past has been devoted to philosophy. On the traditional interpretation of his intellectual development, philosophy was first a barrier and finally a bridge to Christianity: it was a stage through which he passed. His spiritual history has generally been cast into the mold of the conversion to, and then from, philosophy that Augustine so fully describes for himself. Synesius's prayer that "He who has been the shepherd of my life may become also the defender of his charge" could have been the perfect opening to thank God for guiding his steps even when they were following the paths of unrighteousness. Yet neither of these two letters gives any such impression. In Ep . 105 he tells Theophilus that if not appointed he will return to his philosophy, and Ep . 11 concludes with the hope that the priesthood will not be a descent from philosophy but an ascent to it. That this was more than a literary flourish is proved by the fact that he repeats the idea in an evidently slightly earlier letter to his old friend Olympius, a fellow student of Hypatia:
I call to witness that divinity whom both philosophy and friendship honor, that I should have preferred many deaths to the priesthood. But God has imposed upon me not what I desired but what He wished. I pray Him, therefore, who has been the giver of my life, to be its protector also, so that this office may not seem to me a descent from the realm of philosophy, but rather a step upwards to it.[44]
The only difference is that here he actually prays to God to make his bishopric an ascent to philosophy. In conclusion he tells Olympius:
If possible, I shall perform my duties[45] with the aid of philosophy; but if they cannot be reconciled with my convictions and way of life, what else can I do but set sail straightaway for glorious Greece?
It was not so much the conflict for his soul between Christianity and philosophy that worried Synesius as the demands of episcopal duties on his time and energy.[46] Numerous passages in the letters and elsewhere show how much he valued the leisure required to pursue philosophy.[47]
[44] Ep . 96; on Olympius see PLRE II.800–801. It is clear from the way Synesius describes his acceptance of the bishopric that Olympius is a Christian, a point not made in the PLRE entry. Synesius was not Hypatia's only Christian pupil.
[45] . Perhaps an allusion to Soph. Ant . 267.
[46] . On the reference to Greece, see p. 56 and appendix 3.
[47] . See Runia 1976, 193–208.
As Liebeschuetz has recently put it,
beneath the formulated objections we can recognize a deep unwillingness to take on the full-time, life-consuming professionalism of the bishop's office. Men of the highest social rank were not accustomed to full-time, life-long careers . . . . The fabric of Synesius's life was woven out of study and recreation, the latter provided by sociability and hunting. Study of philosophy to raise his soul from defilement to purity through knowledge and understanding was the real centre of his life.[48]
Synesius makes the point quite explicitly in a public address read before his congregation in 412, his famous denunciation of the rascally governor Andronicus: "A philosophical priest needs leisure.[49] I do not condemn bishops who are occupied with practical matters, but, knowing that I am barely capable of one, I admire those who can do both" (Ep . 57 = 41G). Later on in the same speech he says that he will not attempt to court popularity as a bishop just as he never used to court popularity when a philosopher.[50] In another of the letters from his episcopate he proudly styles himself a "philosopher-priest" (Ep . 62). He was even to go down in Christian legend as "Synesius the philosopher."[51]
In short, it seems clear that Synesius made no attempt to abandon either his philosophy or his pose as a philosopher when he became bishop. It is in this context that we must interpret the passage that has often been held to prove that he was brought up a pagan:[52]
Above all, pray for me, for you will be praying for a man abandoned by all, deserted, and in need of such support. I shrink from asking of God anything for myself. All things are turning out quite contrary to my desires, on account of my rash presumption. A sinful man, brought up outside the Church (
), following a different way of life (), I grasped at the altars of God.[53]
Taken by themselves, the italicized words might indeed suggest that Synesius was brought up a pagan. But in the context another meaning is not only possible but virtually certain. This, the longest and most passionate of all Synesius's letters, is addressed to Theophilus and is concerned with a disputed election to a minor episcopate within his juris-
[48] Liebeschuetz 1986b, 185.
[51] John Moschus Prat. spir . 195 (PG 66.1043f.).
[52] According to Nicolosi (1959, 13), who cites this passage, "è certo che Sinesio fu educato nel paganesimo"; cf. Bayless (1977, 149): "It is quite clear that he was raised as a pagan"; Bayless cites Ep . 66 (= 67G), discussed below.
[53] Ep . 67 fin . (= 66G, p. 121, 1ff.).
diction that was not only absorbing all his energies during a period of illness but also bringing him considerable unpopularity. It would have been entirely irrelevant for him to close this very detailed report with a lament for his pagan past.
This interpretation is strongly supported by the parallel protest in the preceding letter, also addressed to Theophilus and also concerned with a controversial episcopal election: "For my part (
[54] For "way of life" see LSJ, s.v. II.4.
[55] The three Cappadocian Fathers are a well-documented example of the education of bishops in the period; see the useful summary in Young 1983, 92–122. "The great majority of the higher clergy, the urban deacons and priests and the bishops, were drawn from the middle classes, professional men, officials, and above all curiales " (Jones 1964a, 923–24). Most will have followed the traditional rhetorical training, often under pagan teachers, even if few went on to the schools of philosophy. Gregory Nazianzen attests that he and Basil once made a pact to share a "life of philosophy" together (Ep . 1).
[56] Roques (1987, 302) independently reached the same interpretation of this passage, appositely citing the following remark by Ambrose, made in similar circumstances: "non in ecclesia nutritus sum, non edomitus e puero" (De paen . 2.72 [PL 16.514]).
[57] So, for example, Bayless 1977.
lowing sentence (which opens with a
When recapitulating the antecedents of the schism in the second letter, Synesius makes a revealing admission. The people of Palaebisca deposed their bishop Orion on the grounds of senility, arguing that his feebleness "was a reproach in the eyes of those who consider that the episcopate should be activist, a champion in human affairs."[58] When the people of Ptolemais asked Synesius to be their bishop, they knew that he was more at home with Plato than the Gospels. But they remembered his services as ambassador and his connections at court. They knew they would not be getting a theologian or canon lawyer for their new bishop; what they wanted, in Synesius's own words, was an "energetic champion."
Other passages that have been thought to betray pagan sympathies may also be explained quite otherwise. For example, an early letter, Ep . 143 to Herculian, has sometimes been cited as proof that Synesius was afraid of prosecution for magic practices: "You have not kept your promise, my dear friend, the promise that you made to me that you would not reveal those things that ought to remain hidden. I have just listened to people who have come from you. They remembered some expressions and begged me to reveal the meaning to them." Then comes the key passage, which for the moment we may leave in the original:
[59] Lacombrade 1951a, 62.
[60] Fitzgerald 1930, 237.
We have only to read on to see that it is not forbidden secrets that are at issue, but merely Synesius's disapproval of talking about philosophy in front of laymen. He goes on to quote Lysis the Pythagorean:
"To explain philosophy to the mob," as Lysis says in his somewhat Dorian dialect, "is only to awaken amongst men a great contempt for things divine." How often have I met, time and time again, people who, because they had rashly listened to some stately little phrases, refused to believe themselves the laymen that they really were! Full of vanity, they sullied sacred dogmas by pretending to teach what they had never succeeded in learning."[62]
It might be added that if Synesius were really afraid of prosecution for magic, he would not have confided his fears to a letter in the first place. Letters often went astray, and those of a celebrity like Synesius were particularly likely to be intercepted and passed around for all to enjoy."[63]
According to Bregman, Synesius never "finally underwent a total conversion to orthodox Christianity through Christ."[64] At heart he always remained a Neoplatonist. It is a conventional, but false, antithesis. Christian Neoplatonists certainly existed. Besides such spectacular cases as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, several fifth- and sixth-century professors of philosophy at Alexandria were Christians.[65] Whether they were orthodox Christians is an entirely different matter. Even when he was a bishop, the classics tripped off Synesius's tongue more readily than the scriptures, and it is hard to believe that he ever read much theology. It is probably true, as Bregman neatly put it, that "he accepted Christian dogma to the extent that it was compatible with philosophy. He did not attempt to use philosophy in order to prove the rational va-
[61] See Lampe, s.v. B.I, in addition to LSJ.
[62] Ep . 143, p. 250.10–17 Garzya; for quotation of Lysis, cf. Diogenes Laertius 8.421. R. Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci , 601; cf. Diels-Kranz, Vorsokr . I , 421.
[63] For examples from Synesius's own experience alone see Pando 1940, 65.
[64] Bregman 1982, 178.
[65] Westerink 1962, xii-xxv.
lidity of Christian doctrine."[66] But it is nonetheless a fundamental error to confuse belief with orthodox belief. In the fifth century, as in many later ages, there were many who knew little of scripture and less of theology but believed fervently in the message of Christ crucified. Had not Jesus himself said, "Only believe"? It would be fascinating if we could trace the conversion of an intellectual like Synesius, an Eastern counterpart to the well-documented spiritual odyssey of Augustine. Historians of philosophy and dogma will find interesting matter in Bregman's analysis of Synesius's thought. But to the social historian it is more interesting and perhaps more important to discover that a man of Synesius's background, education, and attitudes was in fact born and raised a Christian.
III—
Baptism
Synesius's writings include eight poems composed at various points over the course of his life, cast in the form of hymns. In ancient generic terms the hymn was simply a personal meditation addressing God. It need not be designed for use in public worship like Ambrose's, nor need it even be metrical: the emperor Julian, for example, wrote hymns in prose. Synesius's hymns testify that the Neoplatonism of his youthful education remained fundamental to his thought throughout his life. Nicolaus Terzaghi assumed that they should reflect an increasing commitment to Christianity and concomitant turning away from philosophy. He deduced their order of composition accordingly and so arranged them in his edition: 1–2 still pagan; 3–5 Christian; 6–8 explicitly Christian work composed by Synesius as bishop.[67] Bregman too took it for granted that Synesius's shifting religious convictions could be read directly from the successive poems in this sequence. The validity of the sequence itself he never argued or examined. But even if the long and philosophical 1–2 are earlier than the short and Christian 6–8, it by no means follows that Synesius did not believe in Christianity when he wrote 1–2 or that he had abandoned philosophy when he wrote 6–8. And we have already seen that the Christian 7 is in any case early (see section I above). As A. J. Festugière has observed, "on ne constate dans les hymnes aucune évolution profonde, comme il serait naturel de la part dun[*] païen devenu, à un certain moment, chrétien."[68] It is true that
[66] Bregman 1982, 161.
[67] See his edition, xvii-xix.
[68] REG 58 (1945): 269, a long review (268–77) of Terzaghi's first edition of the hymns (1939), apparently unknown to Bregman. Compare too Ch. Vellay's conclusion (Etudes sur les Hymnes de Synésius de Cyrène [Grenoble 1904], 30–31): "La pensée na[*] point de variationsensible ni de développement marqué; la forme et les idées naccusent[*] point de long intervalles de composition; tout est un, dans linspiration[*] et lexpression[*] ." There are of course differences between one hymn and another, but only prejudice finds it necessary to diagnose them all as conscious development, "intellectual bridges" carefully constructed between Neoplatonism and Christianity.
Christ is not named in 1–2. But then he is only named once in all the acknowledged Christian hymns (3.5). The name Jesus also appears only once (6.4). The third person of the Trinity, as Festugière notes, is always designated pnoia , never by the proper Christian term pneuma. Hymn 8 deals not merely with the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, but also with Christ's noncanonical descent to Hell. And yet there is not a single technical or familiar Christian term in the poem. The Savior is addressed by none of his familiar names or epithets, but as "son of the Virgin of Solyma" (
If this is what the "Christian" hymns are like, how pagan are the "pagan" hymns? The most important is Hymn 1, a long, complex poem full of motifs from the Chaldaean Oracles. The fact that it begins with an apostrophe to the "king of the gods" (8) should no longer seem too significant in the light of references to a plurality of gods in the otherwise manifestly Christian 8. The truth is that for all its Neoplatonic language Hymn 1 is a deeply Christian poem, more deeply than has hitherto been realized. It was written on Synesius's return to Cyrene after his long stay in Constantinople. But the widely held view that he was continually revising and expanding the poem has made it hard to exploit its biographical data with any confidence.[72] But this revision is an unnecessary and implausible hypothesis.
It has been universally agreed since Wilamowitz that two passages
[69] H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire , ed. M. Tardieu, 2d ed. (Paris 1978).
[70] Cameron 1970a, 205–7.
[71] Lacombrade 1978a, 84.
[72] So already Wilamowitz 1907, 282 ("durch zahlreiche Zusätze erweitert") and 293–94.
date from Synesius's episcopate, 44ff. and 359ff. After an opening address to the deity, Synesius states:
I have come to your dwelling place, to your bosom.[73] Now to your august rites (
), to your holy shrines have I come as a suppliant. Now to the summit of high mountains have I come as a suppliant, now to the great ravine of desert Libya have I come, to her southern border that no godless blast of wind sullies.
According to Fitzgerald and Terzaghi, followed by Bregman (among others), the rites here mentioned are pagan mysteries. So too, they claim, in the reference to Synesius's stay in Constantinople at 449ff.:
As many temples (
) as were built for your holy rites (), O King, to all these I went, prostrate, a suppliant, wetting the ground with the dew of my eyes, for fear that my journey might be in vain, praying to the gods.
But they allow themselves to be misled by Synesius's classicizing terminology. Not only is it highly improbable that there were numerous pagan temples at Constantinople in the fifth century; it should also be noted that pagans did not need to go to their temples to pray or to be initiated into mystery rites. Nor, if Synesius really did undergo pagan initiations in Constantinople, would he have referred to them so openly. By this time such rituals were unquestionably illegal. It is particularly unlikely that he would have referred to pagan initiations so positively, not to say emotionally, if he had been a Christian at the time he wrote the poem. That question aside, however, the repeated word teletephoria , in an equivalent metrical formula, must bear the same sense in both passages—as Festugière rightly insisted, a Christian sense.
What now of the allegation that 44ff. is a later addition? Festugière remarks:
Comment, dans ce mouvement de joie queprouve[*] le poète à être revenu, loin de la grande ville bruyante, à son beau domaine cyrénéen, comment peut-il dire, tout aussitôt: "Maintenant, me voici arrivé, suppliant, aux temples sacrés de tes saints rites"? En quoi cela le changeait-il de Constantinople où se trouvaient, partout, des
bâtis() du Dieu chrétien? Comme la[*] marqué Wilamowitz,[74] Synésius ne peut parler ainsi que sil[*] a une raison particulière de mentionner les mystères chrétiens de Cyrène, cest-a-dire[*] s'il est déjà membre officiel de lEglise[*] cyrénéenne, s'il est évêque de cette Église.[75]
[74] "So konnte erst der Bischof reden" (Wilamowitz 1907, 293).
[75] Festugière 1945, 273.
But Synesius has not in fact previously spoken of the Libyan countryside, nor is any contrast implied with the noise of Constantinople. Nor is there any reason why the vague term teletephoria should imply an official connection with the Cyrenean church. The same word cannot imply any such connection to the Constantinopolitan church at 449ff., the one passage in the poem that cannot possibly be a later interpolation. Wilamowitz and Festugière made the same objection to 359ff.:
Behold now my soul, feeble and exhausted in your Libya, at your holy rituals (
), singing to you in holy prayer.
Festugière claimed that since hierapolos is a ritual term that "designates a priest of superior rank," these lines must have been added after Synesius himself became a bishop. But why should Synesius be using a technical term of paganism to refer to a technical term of Christianity?[76] The phrase as a whole is just a variation on the metrically equivalent
Taking 44ff. and 359ff. together, one might ask why should Synesius have interpolated these two references to his episcopate? If the critics are right to find these passages so glaringly intrusive and inconsistent with the "original" context, why did Synesius put them there? Why did he spoil his poem with such crude and irrelevant additions? Since, alone among Synesius's hymns, 1 is clearly anchored to a precise date and context, his return from Constantinople to Cyrene, pointers to a quite different date and context would be especially misleading and disruptive.
What then are the "holy rites" to which Synesius so pointedly refers? The key is provided by two further passages, first 536–43:
To help me on the holy path that leads to you, give me as a token your seal, and chase from my life and my prayers the deadly demons of matter.[77]
And next 619–35:
Now at last let my suppliant soul bear the seal of the father (
), a terror to hostile demons, who dart aloft from deep lurking places of the earth to breathe godless impulses upon mortals; and let this be a sign () to your pure ministers, who throughout the depths of the glorious universe are key-bearers to the fiery ascents.
[76] The more so since Synesius "professe lhorreur[*] du terme exacte" (Lacombrade 1951a, 33).
By the year 400 the word sphragis , "seal," had become the standard term for Christian baptism.[78] Yet students of Synesius have been curiously reluctant to admit this sense in these two passages. According to Lacombrade, for instance, the first sphragis is merely a synonym for synthema , a Chaldaean term for the password the soul has to remember in order to return to its sources in heaven.[79] Bregman found the Christian reference a "minor mystery of the hymns" and likewise chose to look for Chaldaean or Orphic sources.[80] In particular, he identified the repeated synthemata with occult symbols used by theurgists. But this takes us a long way from the word sphragis , and none of these pagan associations give any real point to the context in either Synesius passage.
On the other side stands the host of passages listed in Lampe's Patristic Lexicon under the rubric "seal given to Christians in baptism, considered as distinguishing mark of Christ's flock, and also as protection against evil, demonic powers ." Lampe also lists another host of passages under the less specialized rubric "sign of cross as distinguishing mark of Christians and safeguard against demons ." In both passages from Synesius the sphragis is specifically and emphatically stated to frighten evil demons. It may well be that there is some Chaldaean influence too. For example, the first set of demons is associated with matter, and the passage goes on to pray that Synesius's spirit may be kept
Baptism is a very specific and special element in the Christian experience, something that happens only once. Not only does Synesius mention it twice in quick succession; the very next stanza announces the poet's repentance (
I repent of this life of clay. Away, eyesores of godless mortals, dominations of cities. Away, sweet infatuations, grace that is no grace, by which the beguiled soul is held fast in bondage to earth.
[79] . Lacombrade 1978a, 58 n. 2. Oracles Chaldaïques frags. 2 and 108–9 Des Places.
[80] . Bregman 1982, 91. It is in fact neither mysterious nor minor. Compare too Terzaghi's (1939) note ad loc.: "sphragis, potius gnostica quam Christiana."
[81] . Des Places 1971, 39.
He is paraphrasing the rite of baptism: he renounces worldly pomp and the temptations of the flesh. And what follows, for all its Chaldaean coloring, can likewise be interpreted as the Christian soul yearning for cleansing through baptism:
Kindle, O King, the lights that lead aloft, giving to me light wings. Cut the knot, loose the grip of the twin desires by which artful Nature bends down souls to the earth. Grant me to escape the destiny of the body and to spring swiftly even to your courts, to your bosom, whence flows forth the fountain of the soul.
Just because Chaldaean doctrine was important to the pagan Neoplatonists of Athens, it does not follow that the doctrine itself was irredeemably pagan. There was no reason why a philosophical Christian should find any serious problem in adapting the Chaldaean account of the descent and return of the soul to his faith.
The stanzas preceding the first mention of sphragis describe Synesius's long stay in Constantinople. This passage has often been exploited for the poet's biography, but less attention has been paid to its role in the structure of the poem. It is not at all a casual reminiscence. It begins:
This debt (
), O Lord of the mighty universe, I came to pay (, future participle) from Thrace, where I spent three years.
What "debt" did he come from Constantinople to Cyrene to pay? Not the tax remissions he had already won for Cyrene in Constantinople. At 496f. he begged the deity to preserve these benefits for the Libyans during the long stretch of time. He might expect gratitude when he got home, but there was no financial debt that he himself had yet to pay there. At 70–71 Synesius pictures his soul "rendering the hymn that is your due" (
We venture to suggest a new solution. Synesius had earlier vowed that if, with God's help, he accomplished his mission in Constantinople and got safely back to Cyrene, he would be baptized there. This would explain the joy with which he returned to those problematic Libyan tele-tephoriai and hierepoliai . It was not just the beloved countryside of home to which he was returning, but to baptism in a beloved church in that countryside. Such a hypothesis would at once make sense of the poem as a whole, rendering unnecessary all the supposed additions and expansions. Though repetitious and rambling, the poem has a simple basic
structure: the poet has returned home to fulfill the vow he made in Constantinople.[82]
The only possible objection is that, according to the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius (1.15), published in 594, Synesius was not yet baptized when offered the episcopate. This is one of a series of capsule biographies of literary men inserted into the opening chapters of Evagrius's History , all superficial and full of errors, none detectably based on independent biographical information.[83] For example, his reference to "Claudian and Cyrus the poets" (1.19) treats them as Christian writers even though both, if not actually pagans, wrote purely secular work. Claudian is even dated to the wrong reign.[84] Synesius too is dated to the wrong reign: the De regno is said to have been addressed to Theodosius.[85] It is also alleged that he was offered the episcopate despite his refusal to believe in the resurrection, in the confidence that belief could not fail to follow in so virtuous a man; "and they were not deceived in their hope." There is of course no evidence that Synesius changed his mind in the short period left to him, and it is intrinsically most improbable.
We cannot have much confidence in Evagrius's otherwise unsupported claim that Synesius had not been baptized. On the other hand, as already noted, the three letters that describe Synesius's hesitations in such detail say nothing of baptism. Synesius's reluctant elevation is often compared to the reluctant elevation of the unbaptized Ambrose to the see of Milan. Yet Ambrose's baptism plays a well-documented and central role in his consecration.[86] Baptism was more than a mere formality. Synesius's failure even to mention so fundamental a point surely suggests that he had in fact been baptized; if he fulfilled the intention announced in Hymn 1, he presumably undertook the rite on his return to Cyrene in the spring of 401.[87] The poem suggests a serious decision, only made after long and solemn reflection during his lonely and unhappy years at Constantinople:
[82] According to Roques (1987, 306), "rien ne soppose[*] " the idea that he was baptized in Alexandria by Theophilus. Nothing except the only evidence we have.
[83] See Allen 1981, 72, 86–90.
[84] Cameron 1970a, 11–12.
[85] Possibly Theodosius II, Arcadius's son, rather than his father; but even so the error is patent.
[86] F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose , vol. 1 (Oxford 1935), 66–68.
[87] See below and Cameron 1987, 348–49.
Now at last let my suppliant soul
bear the seal of the father.
IV—
Orthodoxy
Given the lack of evidence that Synesius was ever a pagan, in particular the conspicuous absence of any reference in Synesius's own writings to anything resembling a conversion, there is no reason to resist the natural implication of all these texts: that Synesius had always been a Christian, however conventional and uninterested in doctrine or theology.
None other than the patriarch Theophilus married him (Ep. 105). It has often been claimed that this fact need prove no more than that his wife came from a Christian family. Yet it is not easy to believe that the patriarch of Alexandria would marry a pagan, even if the bride was a Christian. As Marrou has pointed out, Synesius's remark, made before he became bishop, that the wedding was solemnized by the "sacred hand" of Theophilus suggests that he himself viewed it as a religious occasion, that is to say that he was a Christian at the time.[88]
Several other texts also, on the most natural interpretation, betray an unself-consciously Christian viewpoint. Perhaps the most telling is De providentia 90C, describing how the wicked Typhos [= Caesarius] "wholeheartedly despised all wisdom, both Egyptian wisdom and such foreign
[88] Marrou 1952, 477.
[89] These identifications with Caesarius and Aurelian will be justified in detail later.
mean secular, as opposed to Christian, learning. The usage is particularly common in the Cappadocian Fathers and John Chrysostom and is bound to have been familiar to Synesius's audience. Though often used defiantly or slightingly, the formula could also be applied neutrally or even as a compliment: Christians could be praised for their mastery of secular culture. It was perhaps instinctively as much as appropriately that Valesius translated
As usual in De providentia , Egyptian stands for Roman, but with an additional nuance: as was to become standard usage in the Byzantine period, Roman is in effect identified with Christian.[91] While it is only Osiris who is credited with studying "foreign wisdom," Typhos despises both pagan and Christian learning alike. So the passage serves two purposes. Not only is Typhos denounced as a boor, but the stage is set for the later allegation that he was also a heretic, too sympathetic to Arianism (121B). This is why it is made clear that Osiris studied only as much "foreign wisdom" as his father thought fit.[92] It is significant that a man like Synesius, whose own commitment to Hellenic culture was unqualified, was so careful to qualify the culture of his patron Aurelian. The explanation is obvious: it would not have been appropriate to praise so pious a Christian for unqualified devotion to pagan culture. Under
[91] On the use of "Roman" to designate the Byzantine state (though without stressing the religious aspect), see J. Jüthner, Hellenen und Barbaren (Leipzig 1923), 108f.
[92] The passage has nothing to do with Aurelian's actual father, Taurus, who was in fact an Arian; Synesius uses the philosopher-king of his myth as a validating stamp on the activities he endorses.
the circumstances, the best way to handle the motif was to praise him for his proficiency in both cultures—making it clear which was secondary. This was to become standard practice in the Byzantine age. To quote only one example, Theodoret praised a bishop for "possessing both sorts of knowledge, secular and divine" (
There are also a couple of other passages that may now be given a more comfortable Christian interpretation.[94] First, there is this exclamation in De regno 29A of (probably) 398: "There is nothing more striking to watch or hear than an emperor raising his hands before his people, worshipping his and their common father. It is only proper for the deity to delight in the praises of a pious ruler devoted to his service and to have an ineffable relationship with him." Lacombrade will not allow that these are the words of a Christian, on the grounds that Christian and pagan ruler theory were indistinguishable. But when the speaker is addressing Christians on the subject of a Christian emperor praying to the God of the Christians, Synesius must at any rate have expected his words to be taken in a Christian sense. To be sure they are cloaked in Neoplatonic turns of phrase,[95] but even as a bishop Synesius never renounced his Neoplatonism.
It is a grave error to judge the tone and language of Synesius's writings by the yardstick of a John Chrysostom or a Gregory Nazianzen. It is not an error that contemporaries made—or the Christian generations that followed. It was precisely for their style and philosophy that the Byzantines who preserved Synesius's writings admired them. The great fourteenth-century statesman Theodore Metochites wrote an essay on Synesius, admiring him as a philosopher with a sense of style.[96] His pupil Nicephorus Gregoras produced an elaborate commentary on the De insomniis ,[97] as well as a work on the construction of an astrolabe in imitation of Synesius. Even the essay on baldness inspired a Byzantine
[93] Haeret. fab. compendium, PG 83.396A.
[94] For one or two less certain such passages, see Roques 1987, 309–10.
[96] N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (London 1983), 262.
[97] PG 149.521–642; Lacombrade 1951a, 31; Hunger 1978, 1:463.
reply.[98] Synesius's letters were much admired as stylistic models in the favorite Byzantine genre of epistolography.[99] Antonio Garzya enumerated no fewer than 260 manuscripts of Synesius's letters, almost all of the fourteenth century and later.[100] Many have explanatory scholia, some by the greatest scholars of the age—Manuel Moschopulos, Thomas Magister, and Maximus Planudes. The De providentia is described in the tenth-century Suda lexicon as "an amazing book in Hellenic style." Synesius himself was remembered in Byzantine hagiography as "Synesius the philosopher."[101] That age at least saw nothing incongruous in Synesius's intellectual leanings—and certainly nothing hostile to Christianity.
Lay Christians were under no obligation to write on Christian subjects in Christian language. Even De providentia and De insomniis could easily have been written by a Christian; they were certainly read and admired by the Christian Byzantines. In fact, for all its bizarre Egyptian and Neoplatonic coloring, De providentia shows itself not only Christian, but orthodox. According to 121B Typhos "scythianized in his belief about God": that is to say, he sympathized with Arians. At 114D a god foretells to the character who represents Synesius himself that Typhos will fall "when those who are now in power attempt to tamper with our religious rituals." The sequel makes it clear that this is an allusion to Gaïnas's demand for an Arian church inside Constantinople, probably supported by the prefect Caesarius: "Not long afterwards there arose a false piece of religious observance, a counterfeit ritual like a counterfeit coin—something ancient law bars from the cities, shutting the impiety outside the gates, beyond the walls" (115B).[102] It might be objected that even a pagan would have appreciated the significance and importance of Gaïnas's demand, but why should a pagan have gone so far as to retroject an "ancient law" against heresy into Pharaonic Egypt? In reality, the current law to which he alludes dated from as recently as 381.[103] It is not as if this were the only evidence for Synesius's attitude to Arianism. J. C. Pando has drawn attention to "the bitter tone in which Synesius speaks of heretics and the strenuous action he took against them" when bishop.[104]Ep. 5 (= 4G) is a passionate denunciation of "those who have
[98] Fitzgerald 1930, 2:436–37, 394–96.
[99] See the preface to A. Garzya's edition and his numerous preliminary studies, collected in his Storia e interpretazione di testi bizantini (London 1974), chaps. 21–28; Hunger 1978, 2:215f.; G. Karlsson, Idéologic et cérémonial dans lepistolographie[*] byzantine (Uppsala 1962), 23f., 114f.
[100] Reprinted in Garzya 1974; and see too his edition of the letters (1979).
[101] John Moschus Prat.spir. 195.
[102] See further below, p. 327.
[103] Socr. HE 5.10.
[104] Pando 1940, 150.
taken up the godless heresy of Eunomius"; they are trying to "sully the Church," and "false teachers are spreading their nets for the souls of weaker brethren." Ep. 67 (=4 66G) to Theophilus likewise refers with horror to the "godless days of the Arians" and to the bad old days of Valens "when the influence of heresy was powerful."[105] Pando found this hostility so surprising, so different from Synesius's usual "attitude toward religious belief," that he was confident that it sprang "not so much from doctrinal zeal, as from a hatred of social unrest."[106] Bregman rejects out of hand the possibility that Synesius had "become orthodox," and takes it for granted that his persecution of heretics was insincere, undertaken purely for political reasons.[107] It may be that we should not attach too much personal significance to Synesius's public policies as bishop. On the other hand, it is also possible that he imbibed such attitudes from an orthodox Christian upbringing and took them perfectly seriously.
According to one recent account, "not warped by religion or partisanship like so many others . . ., Synesius just sailed along in his well-adjusted, even-tempered way."[108] There is a false syllogism here: paganism was tolerant; Synesius was a Hellene (and therefore a pagan at heart, a subsidiary invalid deduction); therefore Synesius was tolerant. But tolerance was a scarce commodity by the second half of the fourth century, conspicuously lacking, for example, in that genuinely religious Hellene Julian. Synesius's letters reveal a generally attractive and humane personality, but De regno is a paradigm of racial bigotry, and De providentia a classic of political partisanship woven out of lies, half-truths, and personal abuse. Synesius was not simply a latter-day Xenophon who somehow ended his days as a bishop. Such a freak would indeed baffle explanation. If we are actually to understand Synesius as he was, we must not blind ourselves to his darker side.
V—
Hypatia
What then is the basis for the widespread modern conviction that Synesius was born and raised a pagan? To be sure, this is what Photius says ("a former Hellene devoted to philosophy"), but what was his evidence? As it happens, we can make an educated guess: nothing more than the passage of Evagrius already discussed. Synesius is Cod. 26 in Photius's Bibliotheca , Evagrius Cod. 29, both very brief notices (pp. 5–6
[105] Respectively, p. 112. 19G and p. 108.7–10G, cf. too Ep. 45 (= 44G), with Pando 1940, 150–52; and Bettini 1938, 33–35.
[106] Pando 1940, 150.
[107] Bregman 1982, 171–74.
[108] T. B. Jones 1978, 96.
Bekker). That is to say, almost certainly Photius had both books on his table at the same time as he wrote.[109] It is significant that Evagrius makes no such explicit statement. He says merely that Synesius was a man of letters (logios ), so distinguished a philosopher "that he was admired by such Christians as judge what they see impartially"; they persuaded him to submit to baptism and become a bishop, although he had not yet accepted the doctrine of the resurrection. Anyone who compares the two notices carefully will at once see that Photius makes all the same points as Evagrius, merely embellishing a little on the question of the resurrection from his own reading, as he notes, of Synesius's letter to Theophilus. His claim that Synesius was a "former Hellene" is no more than a misunderstanding of Evagrius's portentous periphrasis for baptism (
In fact, modern opinions rest on little more than Synesius's dedication to Neoplatonism, coupled with the fact that he studied in the school of the pagan Hypatia. Her grisly end (lynched by monks) inevitably casts her in the role of pagan martyr, suggesting in turn a powerful pagan influence on the impressionable youth of Alexandria.[111] Since Synesius continued to speak of Hypatia in the warmest terms throughout his life, we are justified in assuming that she exercised a considerable influence on his development. It will therefore be worth discovering what we can about this remarkable woman, whose real achievements have unfortunately been overshadowed by her savage end.
Our biographical knowledge of Hypatia comes in the main from just three sources: the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, written ca. 450; the Life of his predecessor Isidore, written early in the sixth century by Damascius, the last scholarch of the Academy in Athens; and the Chronicle of the seventh-century Coptic bishop John of Nikiu. The first two form the basis of all modern accounts, but John of Nikiu has hitherto been almost entirely ignored.[112] Yet he preserves important details other-
[109] Or at any rate his notes from both books. We are not entitled to assume that Photius actually owned all the books he describes or that he had access to them all at any one time.
[110] Photius's account of Evagrius is similarly based on no more than superficial inference from the text: W. T. Treadgold, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius (Washington, D.C. 1980), 59.
[111] So, for example, Kingsley's Hypatia, "a Greek philosopher who looks, and, alas, behaves, as if she had stepped off a Greek vase" (Susan Chitty, The Beast and the Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley [New York 1975], 152). Mary Ellen Waithe's chapter on Hypatia in her History of Women Philosophers , vol. 1, Ancient Women Philosophers, 600B.C. –500 A.D. (1987), 169–95, is a careless compilation, full of errors and exaggerated claims. Maria Dzielska will soon be publishing a comprehensive study of Hypatia's life and influence.
[112] Not quoted at all, for example, in the standard account by Rist (1965) or Chuvin (1990, 85–90).
wise unattested and, above all, is the only source to tell the story from the point of view of the patriarch Cyril.[113]
Socrates and Damascius pose a rather curious problem. We might expect to find the ecclesiastical historian and the pagan philosopher disagreeing in their assessment of Hypatia. And so they do. But it is Socrates who is favorable, and Damascius, fellow pagan and fellow philosopher, who is hostile. Indeed, the extent and source of his hostility have not been appreciated, and as a consequence some details in his account of Hypatia have been misunderstood.
We may begin with a simple illustration. According to Damascius, the Athenian scholarch Isidore, his own teacher, excelled Hypatia "not only as a man excels a woman, but also as a real philosopher excels a mere geometrician."[114] In the light of this remark, we may turn a little more cautiously to Damascius's claim that she "taught publicly (
He also describes her as wearing the tribon , the "rough cloak which was virtually the uniform of the Cynic preachers and their monastic successors." On this basis scholars have not hesitated to classify Hypatia's philosophical teaching (about which we know absolutely nothing) as "the Platonism of the Cynic preacher."[118] A recent monograph on Alex-
[113] Properly emphasized in a forthcoming monograph on late Roman Alexandria by Christopher Haas, to which I am much indebted. For a good account of John and his sources, see A. Carile, "Giovanni di Nikius, cronista bizantino-copto del vii secolo," Felix Ravenna 4, ser. 1 (1981): 103–55. John seems to have written a little before 700 and to have drawn on all three of the early Byzantine chronicle sources known to us (Malalas, John of Antioch, Paschal Chronicler), though in earlier and fuller redactions. He also used Coptic sources now lost (particularly evident in his account of Hypatia). Unfortunately the only text we have is a seventeenth-century Ethiopic translation made from an Arabic translation; the standard edition (English only) is that of R. H. Charles (London 1916), though the commentary (Ethiopic and French) in Zotenberg (Paris 1883) remains useful.
[114] C. Zintzen, Damascii vitae Isidori reliquiae (Hildesheim 1967), 218 (Epit. Phot. 164).
[115] Zintzen 1967, 70 (frag. 102).
[116] Lacombrade 1961a, 44; Marrou 1963, 134; Rist 1965, 220; Shanzer 1985, 65; Chuvin 1990, 85.
[117] E. Évrard, REG 90 (1977): 69–74; M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, in L. Brisson, M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, R. Goulet, and D. O'Brien, Porphyre: Laviede Plotin , vol. 1 (Paris 1982), 245–46.
[118] Rist 1965, 220–21 (both quotes); on the Cynic "uniform," M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, ANRW II.36.4 (1990): 2738–39.
andrian Neoplatonism pigeonholes her as "stoico-cynic."[119] But how seriously is this remark to be taken? If Hypatia really wore the tribon , it is remarkable that her adoring pupil Synesius, in a letter to none other than Hypatia herself (Ep. 154), refers slightingly to criticisms of his own work by those who wear the tribon .
One more example. The most famous (if not the most attractive) story told of Hypatia is how she discouraged unwelcome attentions from a student by throwing a used sanitary napkin at him, saying: "This is what you are in love with, young man, nothing that is beautiful." The poor youth was shocked out of his infatuation. It has often been observed that this story "shows the Neoplatonist philosopher acting in a way that would far better have befitted the Cynic."[120] A recent paper, after assembling parallels in the behavior of Cynic females, nonetheless goes on to accept the story as true, although told by a hostile source who goes on to refer to what he calls an "ignorant" alternative version, according to which Hypatia cured the student of his passion through music.[121] Because of the "ignorant," R. Asmus and C. Zintzen thought the music version a "Christian calumny,"[122] but, far from being a calumny, it shows Hypatia in a far more sympathetic light. Damascius dismissed it on the strange ground that "knowledge of music had by then long disappeared." Presumably this is to be explained in the light of his account of the musical researches of Isidore's teacher Asclepiodotus,[123] according to whom the first of the three types of musical harmony (enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic) had fallen out of use entirely.[124] But the
[119] Aujoulat 1986, 6; see too Chuvin 1990, 86.
[120] D. Shanzer, "Merely a Cynic Gesture?" Riv. di fil. 113 (1985): 62; R. Asmus, "Hypatia in Tradition und Dichtung," Studien zur Vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte 7 (1907): 16.
[121] C. Zintzen, Damascii vitae Isidori reliquiae (Hildesheim 1967), 76–79; cf. R. Asmus, Das Leben des Philosophen Isidores von Damaskios aus Damaskos (Leipzig 1911), 31–32. Shanzer (1985) shows no interest in the source of the story and does not mention Damascius.
[122] Asmus 1911, 14, followed by Zintzen 1967 ad loc. John Toland, author of an inflammatory pamphlet entitled Hypatia, or the History of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned and every way accomplished Lady, who was torn to pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria to gratify the Pride, Emulation and Cruelty of their Archbishop commonly but undeservedly stiled St. Cyril , part 3 of Tetradymus (London 1720), dismissed this version on the grounds that music was "rather an incentive to Love, than an antidote against it" (123). Toland gives a most moving, and not unscholarly, account of "poor Hypatia's tragedy," but it is obvious that he picked the theme to attack the established church of his day. This is sufficiently proved by the publication of a reply the following year by one Thomas Lewis, under the no less provocative title The History of Hypatia, a most impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria: In defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy from the Aspersions of Mr. Toland . Hypatia's name is blackened to save the good name of the clergy of eighteenth-century London.
[123] Epit. Phot. 127 (p. 170.13f. Zintzen).
[124] So too Macrobius Comm. in Cic. somn. Scip. 2.4.13; for the three types see too Proclus In Tim. 2.168.14f.
others had not, and this version finds strong support in the remark of an independent Egyptian source, John of Nikiu, that Hypatia devoted much of her time to music.[125] It also presents her behaving in a way better befitting a Platonist.[126] Plato himself was keenly interested in music,[127] and Iamblichus had stressed its therapeutic value in his Life of Pythagoras.[128]
One recent account noted that as "a philosopher himself, Damascius accurately characterized the teaching of Hypatia."[129] On the contrary, I would suggest that the similarities between Hypatia and what another scholar has called "her Cynic sisters" were invented, rather than simply reported, by Damascius.[130] A critical reading of Damascius's account of Hypatia suggests that he systematically represented her as no more than a street-corner philosophical huckster, a latter-day Cynic. He draws a vivid and coherent picture. But is it true? Modern historians of philosophy classify her teaching as Cynic, either not noticing or not thinking it relevant that Damascius was referring to her behavior . At least one of his claims can be shown from an earlier and more reliable source to be distinctly misleading. His remark that Hypatia paraded through the city teaching philosophy to all comers implies an old-fashioned Cynic haranguing passersby. But according to Socrates, it was from her carriage that the monks grabbed her. Street philosophers do not drive around town in their carriages.[131]
Cynic techniques would be uncharacteristic in a late antique Platonist. Cynics had never got on with Platonists.[132] It should be enough to refer to the one genuine Cynic mentioned by Damascius, Salustius of Emesa, who mocked everyone, walked the streets barefoot, and tried to
[125] Quoted in full below, pp. 59–60.
[126] Shanzer argues that Hypatia was in fact quoting Plotinus on noetic beauty "in order to bring [the student] to his senses." She claims: "For Plotinus the menstrual flow is seen not as an object of horror or disgust, but neutrally (Enn. 2, 9) as a metaphor for the generative substrate, and almost positively (Enn. 5, 8) as something that by giving life might impart beauty" (1985, 66). But how can any of this be related to the throwing of the sanitary napkin, which must have been intended, as it was construed by both the student and the Neoplatonist Damascius, who tells the story, as a disgusting, deterrent gesture?
[127] D. H. Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato's Academy (Oxford 1987), 130–57.
[129] Chuvin 1990, 167 n. 34.
[131] Nor do they usually teach mathematics and astronomy, Hypatia's specialities.
[132] See M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, "Le cynisme à lepoque[*] impériale," ANRW II.36.4 (1990): 2720–2833, who observes, "Tout comme dans le cynisme ancien, Cyniques et Platoniciens sous lEmpire[*] ne faisaient pas bon ménage" (2814).
dissuade young men from devoting their lives to philosophy, thereby earning the hostility of Proclus.[133] Damascius's attempt to tar Hypatia with the same brush is not only improbable in itself: more important, nothing could be more unlike the conception of philosophy entertained by her pupil Synesius.
Our other sources for Hypatia's teaching—Synesius and what can be reconstructed of her published work—tell a very different story. First, what we can glean about her publications. It has long been customary to lament the disappearance of Hypatia's writings, but such regret may be premature, in more senses than one. She is credited by her entry in the Suda with "a commentary on Diophantus, the Astronomical Canon , and a commentary on the Conica of Apollonius":[134] commentaries, that is, on the Arithmetica of Diophantus of Alexandria (second or third century A.D .) and the Conic Sections of Apollonius of Perge (third century B.C .).[135] The central item on the list is more of a puzzle. Following Paul Tannery, most critics have inserted an
Hypatia's father, Theon, is credited with not one but two commentaries on the Handy Tables in addition to his thirteen-book commentary on the Almagest itself. Tannery suggested that one of the commentaries was in fact by Hypatia.[138] We now have critical editions of one and part of the other, and it is established by their prefaces and by cross-references between them that Theon did indeed write both himself, first the "large commentary" in five books, and then the much-simplified
[133] PLRE II. 972–73; Goulet-Cazé 1990, 2814–16.
[135] Waithe's claim (1987, 176f.) that the commentary on Diophantus survives is based on a misunderstanding of Tannery.
[136] Mémoires scientifiques , vol. 2 (Paris 1912), 77.
[138] Diophanti Alexandrini opera , vol. 2 (Leipzig 1895), viii.
"small commentary" in one book.[139] It is impossible to believe that Hypatia added a third. Furthermore, the word order is against Tannery's insertion. In the text as transmitted the word "commentary" appears at both beginning and end of the list, implying that it is only the first and last items on which Hypatia wrote commentaries. If it had been all three, we might have expected to find "commentaries" (in the plural) once only, whether at the beginning or end of the list: "commentaries on A, B, and C." The middle item is surely just the title of her book: Astronomical Canon .
The Handy Tables themselves do not survive in Ptolemy's original edition, but in a version in modern times widely attributed to Theon. But the attribution is not attested by any MS,[140] nor does Theon himself refer to any such edition or redaction in either of his commentaries. On the contrary, the improbable way he explains some of Ptolemy's calculations in those commentaries proves conclusively that he cannot have checked the figures.[141] On the basis of the unemended Suda entry, we are surely entitled to infer that it was Hypatia who actually edited the text, no doubt under Theon's guidance and encouragement.[142]
In support, we may turn to the much-discussed subtitle to book 3 of Theon's commentary on the Almagest:
Commentary by Theon of Alexandria on Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest , edition revised by my daughter Hypatia, the philosopher.
It has always been assumed that it was Theon's commentary that Hypatia revised. Theon's editor A. Rome looked, in vain, for linguistic differences between book 3 and the other books.[143] A speculative recent study by W. Knorr claims to detect contradictions between book 3 and other
[139] J. Mogenet and A. Tihon, Le 'Grand Commentaire' de Théon dAlexandrie[*] aux Tables Faciles de Ptolémée , vol. 1, Studi e testi 315 (Rome 1985), 69 and 220.
[140] Neugebauer 1975, 968; cf. 977; there exists only the unsatisfactory edition by N. Halma in three volumes (1822–25). For a list of MSS, J. L. Heiberg, Ptolemaei opera astronomica minora , vol. 2 (1907), cxci–cciii.
[141] A. Tihon, "Théon dAlexandrie[*] et les Tables Faciles de Ptolémée," Archives internationales dhistoire[*] des sciences 35 (1985): 119.
[142] So already Usener, in Mommsen, Chron.Min. III (1898), 362: "patre auctore ac duce Hypatiam tabulas manuales retractasse . . . inutile est quaerere et semper intra domesticos Theonis parietes abditum erit, quae fuerint filiae in tabulis retractandis partes."
[143] A. Rome, Commentaires de Pappus et de Théon d'Alexandrie sur lAlmageste[*] , vol. 3, Studi e testi 106 (Rome 1943), cxvi–cxxi.
books, implying additions of substance by Hypatia.[144] But the solution is provided by the headings to books 1 and 2 that do not mention Hypatia:
Commentary by Theon of Alexandria on Book I (II) of Ptolemy's Almagest , his own edition.
According to Rome, this is "the original edition, in contrast to Hypatia's."[145] But we might naturally assume that when writing books 1–2 Theon had not yet written book 3, much less seen it revised by Hypatia. And while it at least makes sense to speak of a commentary of Theon in an edition revised by Hypatia, it is nonsense to speak of a commentary of Theon in his own edition.[146] In the ordinary way, one's own books are always in one's own edition. It is too self-evident to be worth stating at all. There is an exact parallel in the headings to the works of an early sixth-century commentator on the same sort of texts, Eutocius of Ascalon. First, in the headings to the two books of his commentary on Archimedes, De sphaera et cylindro , Eutocius refers in exactly the same terms to an "edition checked by my teacher, Isidore of Miletus the engineer" (
[144] Wilbur R. Knorr, Textual Studies in Ancient and Medieval Geometry (Boston 1989), 753–803.
[145] Rome 1936, 317 n. 1.
[146] Both these points are argued at greater length in Cameron 1990.
[147] F in Heiberg's first edition of 1888, A in his second of 1915 (III . 48.26; cf. 224.7, 260.10).
[148] Cameron 1990, 103–27.
[149] II . 168, 290, 314, 354 Heiberg.
mentary Eutocius refers to his edition of the text quite explicitly. In the preface to book 4 he distinguishes between his
This provides the key to the identical distinction between
The possibility that he might have produced an edition of the Almagest to accompany his commentary was aired long ago by his latest modern editor, J. L. Heiberg, on the basis of alleged interpolations in one family of MSS.[153] The headings to books 1–3 contain explicit allusions to such an edition, hitherto overlooked. But it was only the first two books that Theon himself edited. At that point in the long task that lay ahead of him he enlisted his daughter's assistance, and they divided the labor between them, Theon compiling the commentary and Hypatia editing the text. Theon went on to compile the large and small commentaries on the Handy Tables , and during his labors he may well have come to feel the need for a new edition of the text. If so, to whom is he more likely to have entrusted the task than Hypatia? She would already have covered much of the ground when editing the Almagest . Such editions would not,
[150] Rome 1936, 492.6–8 (translation by T. L. Heath).
[151] G. J. Toomer, Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13 (1976): 322; cf. K. Ziegler, "Theon 15," RE 5.A.2 (1934): 2078–79; for the details, J. L. Heiberg, Euclidis opera , vol. 5 (Leipzig 1888), xxivf., li-lxxvi; T. Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements , vol. 1, 2d ed. (London 1926), 46–63.
[152] Toomer 1976, 322–23; Ziegler 1934, 2078–79; H. Menge, Euclidis opera . 6: xxxii-xlix; 7:xlix-l; J. L. Heiberg, Literargeschichtliche Studien über Euclid (Leipzig 1882), 129–48.
[153] Ptolemaei opera astronomies minora , vol. 2 (Leipzig 1907), cxxvi. But D, in Heiberg's eyes the most interpolated MS, has been substantially rehabilitated by G. J. Toomer (1984, 3).
of course, have been based on systematic collation of MSS; their purpose, like Theon's Euclid, was largely pedagogical. Far from Hypatia's works being entirely lost, we may have more than 1,000 pages of Greek edited by her. The "large number of interpolations" recently detected in the Almagest by G. J. Toomer may in the main be Hypatia's work.[154]
In fact we can go farther still. Of the thirteen original books of Diophantus's Arithmetica , only six survive in Greek. Tannery suggested that this was because Hypatia's commentary stopped with book 6 and that the rest was found too difficult to read without such assistance.[155] But we now know that at least another four books survived to be translated into Arabic ca. 860. An Arabic MS has recently been found containing books numbered 4–7, which seem to follow the Greek books numbered 1–3. More interesting still, the Arabic text is an expanded version of Diophantus's text, incorporating verifications of his demonstrations, alternative resolutions, and interpolated problems.[156] Clearly the purpose was to make a difficult text easier to follow. Either the translator incorporated into his text material from an elementary exegetical commentary or the text he translated had already been amplified in this way. Either way, the obvious candidate for this amplified Greek original, as J. Sesiano, the first editor of the text, was quick to point out, is Hypatia, Diophantus's only known ancient commentator. Knorr raised what he engagingly conceded to be the "sentimental" objection that identifying Hypatia "via stylistic comparisons of the Arabic and Greek texts would thus isolate an essentially trivial mind. This is in direct conflict with ancient testimonies of Hypatia's high caliber as a philosopher and mathematician."[157] Nonetheless, it may be that Hypatia's work on Diophantus was, if not trivial, elementary, exegetical rather than critical, designed for the use of elementary students. Theon's Almagest commentary was, as its preface concedes, no more than a redaction of his lecture notes.[158]
The same may have been true of Hypatia's commentary on Apollonius. A century later Eutocius of Ascalon produced another com-
[154] Ptolemy's Almagest (London 1984), 5, 683.
[155] Mémoires scientifiques , vol. 2 (Paris 1912), 73–90. As he pointed out, much the same happened with the Conica of Apollonius, where only the four books edited and commented on in the sixth century by Eutocius survive. On Eutocius's editorial method, see Cameron 1990.
[156] J. Sesiano, Books IV to VII of Diophantus's Arithmetica in the Arabic Translation Attributed to Qusta ibn Luqa (New York 1982), 48–57; 68–73; R. Rashed, Diophante: Les Arithmétiques III-IV (Paris 1984).
[157] American Mathematical Monthly 92 (1985): 152. Rashed's contemptuous dismissal of the suggestion (Diophante III [1984], lxii, note) is simply part of a personal attack on Sesiano: see G. J. Toomer, Revue des questions scientifiques 156 (1985): 237–41.
[158] G. J. Toomer, Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13 (1976): 321; Neugebauer (1975, 968) refers to the "dullness and pomposity of these school treatises," quoting A. Rome's verdict that "nous plaignons les étudiants."
mentary on Apollonius's Conica , "mostly of a trivial nature, and, unlike his commentary on Archimedes, providing almost nothing of historical value."[159] Working as he was so soon after Hypatia and, like her, in Alexandria, Eutocius must have known and read her work. The presumption is that, like her work on Diophantus, Hypatia's commentary on Apollonius mainly consisted of simple exegesis.
It may be, then, that so far from having to lament the loss of Hypatia's published writings, we are in fact in a position to form a rather accurate impression of them. The more extravagant expectations are certainly dashed. It seems clear that, like her father, she spent much of her time teaching mathematics and astronomy. There is no record of any philosophical publications of any kind. But we do not need to leave it there. We might bear in mind that even today academic publications do not tell us all we might like to know about a professor's teaching. Hypatia's publications certainly do not explain her reputation, beginning with the veneration in which she was held by her student Synesius.
So let us see what we can learn from Synesius. John Rist has argued that Hypatia was a very old-fashioned Platonist, "not an exponent of the philosophy of either Plotinus or Iamblichus,"[160] mainly on the grounds that Synesius quotes Plotinus and Porphyry less often than he does Plato and Aristotle.[161] But this is a highly misleading inference. All Neoplatonists quote Plato more often than Plotinus and Porphyry. After all, they claimed to be Platonists. The recent book by N. Aujoulat takes a similar position, underlining Hypatia's concentration on the exact sciences.[162]
This view squares nicely with the traditional view of the nature of Alexandrian Neoplatonism during Synesius's lifetime. It used to be assumed that the Alexandrians taught a rather old-fashioned Platonism in the early fifth century.[163] Hierocles, a generation younger than Synesius,
[159] G. J. Toomer, Apollonius, Conics Books V to VII: The Arabic Translation of the Lost Greek Original in the Version of the Banu Musa , vol. 1 (New York 1990), xvi. For a list of the earlier texts read and cited by Eutocius, see J. L. Heiberg, "Über Eutokios," Jahrbücher für classische Philologie , Suppl. 11 (1880): 363–71; Heiberg concludes that he was "ein sehr fleiáiger Sammler von weit ausgedehnter Belesenheit" (363); see also Bulmer-Thomas 1971, 489–91.
[160] J. M. Rist, "Hypatia," Phoenix 19 (1965): 219; so too E. Évrard, REG 90 (1977): 69 ("professait un néoplatonisme primitif"); Chuvin 1990, 85. More cautiously, Lacombrade argued only that Iamblichus played a smaller part in her teaching than Porphyry (1951a, 49).
[161] Rist 1965, 276–77, relying on the statistics assembled rather amateurishly long ago by Fitzgerald (1926, 16): 126 quotations from Plato, 20 from Aristotle, 9 from Plotinus, and 3 from Porphyry.
[162] Aujoulat 1986, 6.
[163] From K. Praechter, "Christlich-neuplatonische Beziehungen," BZ 21 (1912): 1–27 (cf. RE 8.2.1481) to T. Kobusch, Studien zur Philosophie des Hierokles von Alexandrien: Untersuchungen zum christlichen Neuplatonismus (Munich 1976).
is held to have been closer to Middle Platonism than to Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. But I. Hadot has recently challenged this long-established view, at least in the case of Hierocles, arguing that there was no real difference between the teachings of Alexandria and Athens.[164] Hierocles was just as indebted to Iamblichus and the Chaldaean Oracles as to the school of Plutarch.[165]
Perhaps Hypatia was not so old-fashioned either. If Rist had looked at Synesius a little more carefully, he would have found evidence hard to reconcile with this view. The defining feature of Synesius's Neoplatonism (as we have already seen) is his enthusiasm for the so-called Chaldaean Oracles, a collection purporting to be divine revelations in hexameter verse composed or edited by an otherwise unknown Julian the Chaldaean in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[166] They were rediscovered and given a Platonizing interpretation by Porphyry, followed by Iamblichus and further elaborated by Plutarch, Syrianus, and Proclus at Athens. It was the theurgy that was based on the Oracles that formed the most esoteric part of Athenian Neoplatonism.[167] Synesius directly quotes them by name four times in his work on dream divination, and there are countless echoes in his hymns.[168] Who initiated Synesius into these secrets? Who can it have been but his only known guru, Hypatia?
Where and with whom did Hypatia study philosophy? The usual assumption that she studied mathematics and astronomy with her father seems reasonable enough. But Theon was no philosopher. We are fortunate in having a fairly detailed account of the successors to Iamblichus in Eunapius's Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists . As Robert J. Penella's useful recent study has underlined, the only philosophers active in his own lifetime that Eunapius included are those who carried on the Iamblichan tradition, with its emphasis on theurgy and the Chaldaean Oracles.[169] This is surely the principal reason he ignores Themistius; not just because he was perceived as a collaborator with Christian emperors, but because he stood outside the Iamblichan tradition—indeed was perhaps openly contemptuous of it.[170] Perhaps the strangest name on Eu-
[164] Le problème du Néoplatonisme alexandrin: Hieroclès et Simplicius (Paris 1978); and see too now Noël Aujoulat, Le Néoplatonisme alexandrin: Hieroclès d'Alexandrie , Philosophia antiqua 45 (Leiden 1986).
[165] I. Hadot 1978, 70–71.
[166] Even his date is uncertain: see G. Fowden, Historia 36 (1987): 90–95.
[167] The standard work is H. Lewy, The Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy , 2d ed. (Paris 1978), with the edition of E. Des Places, Oracles Chaldaïques (Paris 1971).
[168] As first shown in detail by W. Theiler (1942).
[169] R. J. Penella, Greek Philosophers and Sophists in the Fourth CenturyA.D. : Studies in Eunapius of Sardis (Liverpool 1990), 39–78, 134–37.
[170] Or . 23, 295B (ii.90.10f. Downey-Norman); cf. Dagron 1968, 43–44; Cracco Ruggini 1972, 63, 72.
napius's list is Sosipatra of Pergamum, who is said to have been taught by two mysterious strangers. Since they are expressly described as being "initiates of the Chaldaean wisdom,"[171] it seems clear that Sosipatra stood in this tradition. Her son Antoninus, who inherited his mother's gift of clairvoyance, traveled to Alexandria and then taught Platonic philosophy at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, dying shortly before the destruction of the Serapeum in 391, which he had foretold.[172] Penella has made an interesting suggestion about this part of Eunapius's book:
Did the Sardian Eunapius have Hypatia in mind in writing his full and flattering sketch of Sosipatra, intending her to be understood as an Asianic answer to Alexandria's female sage? The admirer of the theurgic Sosipatra will not have been well disposed towards the strongly rational bent in Hypatia's philosophy. And he will not have failed to appreciate the irony in the fact that Sosipatra's son Antoninus throve as a teacher of philosophy in Egypt . . . during Hypatia's own lifetime.[173]
But "rational bent" apart, Antoninus and Hypatia can hardly have been teaching in Egypt at the same time. The conventional date of ca. 370 assigned for Hypatia's birth is probably too early,[174] but she must surely have still been a student when Antoninus died ca. 390. Eunapius does not mention her because he had not yet heard of her when writing his book in the mid-390s.[175] Indeed, it is tempting to conjecture that it was precisely with Antoninus that she studied. He is certainly the only representative of the lamblichan tradition known to have taught in the neighborhood of Alexandria in Hypatia's lifetime. It is extraordinary that Antoninus is not so much as mentioned in any of the three recent books on early fifth-century Alexandrian Neoplatonism.[176] It is true that Hypatia's younger contemporary Hierocles (born ca. 390)[177] expressly ascribes his initiation in the lamblichan tradition to Plutarch of Athens.[178] But al-
[171] Eunap. VS 468, with Pack 1952, 203.
[172] Eunap. VS 471–73.
[173] Penella 1990, 61–62.
[174] Penella 1984, 126–28.
[176] Namely, Kobusch 1976; I. Hadot 1978; Aujoulat 1986.
[177] Aujoulat 1986, 6.
though he later taught at Alexandria, there is no evidence where he was born or brought up, and consequently no basis for claiming that such an initiation was not available at Alexandria during Hypatia's lifetime. Indeed, it evidently was, since it is Hypatia whom Synesius credits with his own initiation.
Synesius undoubtedly took an interest in what would now be called the occult. Hypatia's father, Theon, wrote books "on signs and the examination of birds and the croaking of ravens,"[179] and "commentaries on the books of Hermes Trismegistus and Orpheus," in addition to a substantial body of unexotic mathematical and astronomical work.[180] The standard work on Theon assumes that these items have been transferred by error from the bibliography of some other Theon.[181] A sober commentator like Hypatia's father could not have wasted his time on such nonsense. But there is in fact a link with Synesius here. Synesius wrote a book on dream divination, which drew heavily on the Chaldaean Oracles. When in the course of that work he had occasion to comment on the superiority of dream divination over bird divination, he revealed himself remarkably well informed about the technicalities of the latter.[182] Synesius also shows knowledge of Hermetic writings.[183]
Did he dabble in yet murkier arts? Several manuscripts ascribe to him a brief alchemical text,[184] in the form of a commentary on the Physica et mystica of Ps.-Democritus (in fact, Bolus of Mendes), the basic text of Greek alchemy.[185] Some have ruled out even the possibility that one so devoted to Hellenism and the exact sciences could stoop to a barbarian pseudoscience,[186] but these are anachronistic categories: this distinction
[180] Malalas, p. 343B = p. 186 Aus.
[181] G. J. Toomer, Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13 (1976): 323, who does not cite the commentaries on the Hermetica.
[183] As shown in detail below, chapter 7, section 6.
[184] Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs , vol. 2, ed. M. Berthelot and C.-E. Ruelle (Paris 1888), 56–69.
[185] On this mysterious figure, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972), 440–43; Festugière 1950, 224–38.
was not made by late antique Hellenism. Synesius's De insomniis is extant. Theon's occult interests are securely enough attested. At least two other Alexandrian philosophers also are credited with alchemical writings, Olympiodorus and Stephanus.[187]
The commentary ascribed to Synesius is no better. It is not really a commentary, since it explains none of the arcane notions or terms with which its text abounds; it is simply a dialogue, addressed to "Dioscoros the priest of Great Sarapis in Alexandria," in which the master communicates arcane lore to his pupil. Synesius is represented saying things like "Have you not heard the saying of Hermes that 'wax is white and wax is yellow?'"[188] Dioscoros thanks him effusively for every such pearl. Neither Synesius nor Olympiodorus wrote these absurd productions, but we should not, with Lacombrade, for example, suppose that Synesius the alchemist was an earlier homonym, innocently confused with the Cyrenean.[189] He is given Synesius's own regular style "Synesius the philosopher,"[190] and the dedication to Dioscoros situates him in Alexandria some time before the destruction of the Serapeum in (probably) 391.[191]
[187] On both see Fowden 1986, 178–79; Wolska-Conus 1989, 15. The commentary on Zosimus of Panopolis ascribed to Olympiodorus (II.69–106 Berthelot-Ruelle) can hardly be genuine. As Westerink has observed, it is hard to believe that a man who devoted his life to explaining texts could have brought himself to write a work that "explains nothing at all" (The Greek Commentaries on Plato's Phaedo [Amsterdam 1976], 22–23).
[188] II.62.4 Berthelot-Ruelle.
[189] Lacombrade 1951a, 64–71; against, Fowden 1986, 178.
[191] Fowden 1978, 69–71; Schwartz 1966, 110; King 1960, 104–5; Seeck 1913, 534–35. The extant antipagan law of 16 June 391 (Cod. Theod. 16.10.11) is addressed, exceptionally (Seeck 1919, 7.16), to both Evagrius the Augustal prefect and Romanus the count of Egypt, both named in connection with the destruction of the Serapeum by Sozomen (HE 7.15.5) and Eunapius (VS 472: Euetius and Romanus). If this law is in fact the imperial command mentioned in Sozomen's account, then the destruction of the Serapeum must have taken place soon after its arrival. Since it was issued in Aquileia, we should allow up to a month for transit. The early fifth-century illustrated chronicle from Alexandria P. Goleniscev (A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, Eine Alexandrinische Weltchronik , Denkschrift der k. Akad. der Wiss. in Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl. 51.2 [1905], 69–73) dates the destruction to 392, apparently its final entry. But although its date and provenance might seem to invest this chronicle with formidable authority, of the eight events it dates between 384 and 392 (the extant fragment), only two are correct. There are even problems with its prefects of Egypt, apparently due to the chronicler's inability to harmonize his three dating systems: consuls, prefects of Egypt, and era of Diocletian (see the full discussion in C. Vandersleyen, Chronologie des préfets dEgypte[*] de 284 à 395 [Brussels 1962], 169–81). If the destruction took place as late as September 391, it may be that the chronicler simply confused the new indiction with the new consuls of 392. None of the studies cited above have exploited the evidence of Palladas, despite Ch. Lacombrade, Pallas 1 (1953): 23; R. Keydell, BZ 50 (1957): 1; A. Cameron, JRS 55 (1965): 21–28. According to Jones 1964a, 168 n. 77 (III.32), the date of the law has no bearing on the destruction "and might be earlier or later than it."
A further significant detail is that in section 6 Synesius the alchemist gives an uncharacteristically clear and precise description of an apparatus for distilling mercury. The description is illustrated by equally clear line drawings preserved in at least three MSS.[192] According to M. Berthelot, writing in 1888, "cest[*] un appareil qui est encore en usage aujourdhui[*] ." Zosimus of Panopolis, who seems to have lived at the beginning of the fourth century, wrote a work On Furnaces which is unfortunately lost, but confessed in the surviving introduction that he could do no better than "the ancients."[193] It is generally accepted that the alembic described by Synesius the alchemist was a new development of his age, a natural consequence of the growing interest in chemical experiment that was the essence of alchemy. Significantly, Synesius of Cyrene stands out among his contemporaries for his interest in scientific apparatus. His De dono describes how he himself, following Hypatia's instructions, designed the astrolabe of which he gives so detailed a description.[194] And another letter begs Hypatia, as a matter of urgency, to send him a "hydroscope."[195] The remarkably precise description he appends shows that he means what is now called a hydrometer, an instrument for measuring the specific gravity of liquids. The man who ascribed the commentary on Ps.-Democritus to "Synesius the philosopher" knew what he was doing; it is a deliberate forgery.[196] Whether or not the real Synesius concerned himself with alchemy in any way, he was a man well known for his interest in scientific apparatus, here, as in his Neoplatonism, a true pupil of Hypatia.
The interest in Hermetica and bird divination might seem to point to Theon rather than Hypatia. Is it possible that Synesius actually studied with Theon? Surely not. Since Synesius nowhere mentions Theon, we may reasonably assume that he was dead by the time Synesius knew
[192] I.164–65 Berthelot-Ruelle; see too the discussion in H. Kopp, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie (Braunschweig 1869), 217–39.
[194] On the various problems in Synesius's description, see Neugebauer 1949, 248–51.
[196] In which case "Dioscoros the priest of great Serapis in Alexandria" may also be a forgery, a piece of local color designed to fix the writer at the right place and time (Zosimus of Panopolis claims that various arcane records were kept in the temples, "especially the Serapeum" [On the Letter Omega 10 Ruelle = 8 Jackson]). It may after all turn out for the best that he was left out of PLRE I. It follows that the commentary of Ps.-Synesius may be of much later date than hitherto supposed. It is quoted by Ps.-Olympiodorus (II.90.20; 102.10 Berthelot-Ruelle), but what does that prove?
Hypatia. The latest datable reference in Theon's commentaries is to 377, and Synesius can hardly have entered Hypatia's classroom before ca. 390. The most natural explanation is that Hypatia, here as elsewhere, followed in her father's footsteps, teaching the same subjects, recommending her father's books to her own pupils. A fascinating hint of this has recently been published in the form of a marginal note in a MS of Theon's large commentary on the Handy Tables: "of Synesius the philosopher."[197] Presumably the MS in question derives from a copy that once belonged to Synesius. Unfortunately there are no scholia of any substance that can be attributed to Synesius.
Another nice illustration is Synesius's letter about the astrolabe. It was Hypatia, he claims, who taught him how to make it (De dono 311A). No doubt it was. But here too she was following in Theon's footsteps, for it was Theon who wrote the basic work in the field, his treatise On the Small Astrolabe .[198]
Synesius and Theon make an interesting pair; both devoted to the exact sciences and yet also curious about divination and the occult. And yet they probably never met. In the case of the exact sciences we can be confident that the missing link was Hypatia. It is surely natural to assume that she played the same role in the case of divination and the Hermetica. Theon also commented on Orphic writings. What more natural than that his daughter, with her more philosophical bent, should have been drawn to the Chaldaean Oracles?
Listen to the way Synesius speaks of Hypatia's philosophical teaching. In a letter to a fellow student he says: "We have seen with our own eyes, we have heard with our own ears the lady who rightfully presides over the mysteries (
[197] J. Mogenet and A. Tihon, Lantiquite[*] classique 50 (1981): 530–34, and (incorporating a suggestion by Neugebauer) in the 'Grand Commentaire' de Théon, vol. 1 (1985), 75–77. Another scholion places the MS in Apamea by 462 (1985, 73). By a curious coincidence the main text in the MS is none other than the pre-Theonic version of Euclid's Elements .
[198] Lost, but in its main lines reconstructed from Philoponus and two Arabic works by Neugebauer 1949, 240–56; cf. too Neugebauer 1975, 872–79 and G. J. Toomer, Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13 (1976), 323. Because Theon's treatise "contained a systematic discussion of the theory of the astrolabe and its application, far superior to the disorganized and utterly insufficient presentation we find in Synesius" (Neugebauer 1975, 873), Neugebauer suggests that Synesius wrote before Theon. But Synesius's very incompetence may be sufficient explanation, and whenever Theon actually wrote his treatise, it is hard to believe that he learned from his daughter and her pupils.
This might be Eunapius singing the praises of Sosipatra. It would not be surprising if it was from the teacher he describes in such terms that Synesius had derived both his knowledge of the Chaldaean Oracles and more generally his conception of philosophy as an esoteric mystery, not to be discussed with uninitiates or mentioned in a letter that might fall into their hands (Ep . 137, 143).
When he refers to her instruction in the exact sciences, it is in the same ecstatic terms, "holy geometry" or "divine geometry" (Ep . 93), treating it, not as a basic skill, but as a propaideutic to philosophy.[199] As he put it elsewhere, "astronomy itself is a venerable science and might become a stepping-stone to something more august, a science that I think is a convenient passage to mystic theology, for the happy body of heaven has matter underneath it, and its motion has seemed to the leaders in philosophy to be an imitation of mind" (De dono 310C–311A). But it was above all as a philosopher that he revered Hypatia. His letters to her are headed either "Hypatia the philosopher" or just
So some at least of Hypatia's classes must have been just as esoteric as those of Plutarch and Syrianus at Athens. Why then did Damascius so misrepresent her? He may simply have been misled by her lack of metaphysical publications. On the other hand, he may have been responding polemically to the famous letter Synesius wrote to his brother from Athens in 410,[200] lamenting its sad decline:
Athens no longer has anything sublime except the country's famous names . . . . Today Egypt has received and cherishes the fruitful wisdom of Hypatia. Athens was formerly the home of wise men: today the beekeepers alone bring it honor. Such is the case with that pair of Plutarchean sophists who draw the young to their lecture room not by the fame of their eloquence, but by pots of honey from Hymettus.[201]
The "pair of Plutarcheans" he mentions in Ep . 136 must be Plutarch son of Nestorius (d. 431/34), the Athenian who reestablished Athens as the center of philosophical study in the early decades of the fifth century,[202] and his disciple and successor Syrianus. Garzya's edition prints
[199] This was a well-established view: H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de leducation[*] dans lantiquite[*] , 6th ed. (Paris 1965), 276–77. Proclus lectured regularly on Euclid, and his successor Marinus on both Euclid and Ptolemy, and the tradition was no less firmly maintained among the philosophers of Alexandria in the school of Ammonius: Neugebauer 1975, 1036–45.
[200] On the date see appendix 3.
[201] Ep . 136.
[202] PLRE I.708 and II.1051; see too H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink, Proclus: Théologie platonicienne , vol. 1 (Paris 1968), xxvif.
[203] There is another example a few sentences later, and compare the attacks on professional teachers in the Dion (see section VI below).
[204] H. Rabe, ed., Syriani in Hermogenem commentaria , 2 vols. (Leipzig 1913).
Rist inferred that "Synesius . . . had come to feel some distaste for philosophy which differed from that traditionally taught at Alexandria." But this is to take Synesius's jocular tone altogether too seriously—and if Hadot's argument about Hierocles extends to the previous generation, the teaching of the two schools may not have differed greatly in any case. From Synesius's point of view, we need read no more into the letter than the partisanship of the loyal disciple of Hypatia. But if Damascius came across the letter during his research for the Life of Isidore , he is bound to have been scandalized at Synesius's flippant exaltation of Hypatia over his own revered predecessors, and it would not be surprising if he had avenged the insult.[207]
For all their inevitable differences of style and emphasis, Hypatia and Plutarch may in fact have taught much the same form of Neoplatonism, emphasizing lamblichus and the Chaldaean Oracles. They were also both pagans. And yet this is surely where the atmosphere of the two schools differed most. Hypatia's paganism has always seemed the strongest argument for assuming that Synesius too was a pagan in his younger days. But when he became a bishop he neither turned against her nor tried to convert her; he continued to treat her with the same awe and affection as before. There were many pagan teachers in the largely Christian cities of the late fourth- and early fifth-century Greek world. Libanius and Themistius are only the most famous such names; many more are chronicled in Eunapius's Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists .
In Athens it was different. The school of Plutarch and Proclus and Damascius was to remain one of the last bastions of paganism in the Roman world. The philosophers themselves were strict observers of the ancient cults, and their teaching was often bitterly anti-Christian.[208] Clearly there was no such aggressively pagan atmosphere in Hypatia's classroom.[209] Indeed, every identifiable student of Hypatia was a Christian. There is no sign that her paganism worried Synesius at all. This may seem an improbable claim when we reflect on her murder at the hands of a Christian mob, but that was many years later, in a situation deliberately exacerbated by an unscrupulous patriarch. We have already seen
[207] It may be significant that (on our admittedly fragmentary evidence) Damascius did not include Synesius in his book; Photius might have been expected to quote an excerpt relating to Synesius. Not only did Synesius insult the Athenian school. As we shall see, he prided himself on being a more genuine philosopher than the professional pedants, and in addition was a Christian who ended his days as a bishop. One way to deal with such an upstart would have been polemic, something in which Damascius certainly excelled. Instead he opted for a contemptuous silence.
[208] Cameron 1969; Chuvin 1990, 102f., 135f.
[209] "Her coterie should not be mistaken for a hotbed of pagan agitators" (Chuvin 1990, 85).
that Synesius never took the slightest steps to conceal his devotion to philosophy, even as a bishop.
Hypatia's murder in 415 is more of a problem than is generally appreciated. There is no suggestion that her paganism played a role in the detailed and circumstantial account of Socrates.[210] Socrates sets the murder in its political context and suggests a purely political motive. The question of how to handle a long series of riots between Jews and Christians in Alexandria brought the prefect Orestes into conflict with the patriarch Cyril. A band of Nitrian monks came into the city to support Cyril and on one occasion wounded Orestes with a rock. The man who did it was arrested and tortured to death, which was perceived as a setback for Cyril, who nonetheless treated the death as a martyrdom. On another occasion monks killed Hypatia, believing that she was influencing Orestes to persist in his feud with Cyril. For Rist, this was sufficient explanation; there was no evidence that Hypatia "exploited her power to forward the political position of neoplatonism," and accordingly no reason to believe that her paganism played any part in her killing.[211]
But the first proposition does not imply the second. However circumspect Hypatia's pagan activities, they may still have been noticed and found objectionable by the Christian community, or at any rate by a vocal minority thereof. That this was indeed the case is shown by John of Nikiu. John's account does not so much contradict Socrates' as complement it, revealing what Socrates (perhaps deliberately) left out. For Socrates had his own axe to grind. Cyril was the great enemy of the church of Constantinople, where Socrates lived. The killing of Hypatia was a stick to beat Cyril with; better to portray her as the innocent victim of a savage murder than as a dangerous pagan who might be held to deserve such a fate. John gives us a glimpse of the other point of view.
According to John, Hypatia was a sorceress, who "beguiled many people through her satanic wiles." Socrates merely reports that the monks accused Orestes of being a pagan, which he denied. We might be tempted to guess that it was his association with Hypatia that had prompted the accusation, but Socrates does not make any such connection. Compare now the very different emphasis in John's account: "The governor of the city honored her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom . . . . And he not only did this, but he drew many believers to her,
[210] HE 7.13–15, in essentials followed in the full recent account of Chuvin (1990, 86–90).
[211] Rist 1965, 223.
and he himself received the unbelievers at his house."[212] We do not need to believe all of this to see that Orestes was indeed compromised by his relationship with Hypatia.
It is fascinating to see how the most innocent interests were turned against her. John complains that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music." Now the astrolabe was a scientific instrument, not even associated with what we would now call astrology rather than astronomy. Nonetheless, there are facts behind these silly slanders. Like her father, Hypatia was interested in astrolabes; it was she who taught Synesius how to make one. And the reference to musical instruments recalls (and supports) the alternative version of how she cured her lovesick student. Given her mathematical expertise, we might guess that she experimented with harmonics and that her activities were interpreted as some sort of magic ritual.
Hypatia was a highly visible pagan, very active in Alexandrian public life. According to Damascius, all Alexandria "doted on her and worshipped her";[213] the new governor would always make Hypatia's house his first port of call. When Archbishop Cyril was passing one day, he caught sight of "the gorgeous train of horses and slaves who crowded the door of her academy," and on asking whose house occasioned such a stir, was told, to his indignation (envy, claimed Damascius): "That is the house of the philosopher Hypatia."[214] This influence she exercised in the traditional way. A concrete example may be given, in the form of a letter from Synesius written only two years before her death. After lamenting his own declining influence, Synesius continues as follows:
You are still powerful (
) and long may you continue to make use of that power (). See that all those who honor you, both private individuals and magistrates (), do what they can so that Nicaeus and Philolaus, excellent young men and kinsmen of mine, recover their property.[215]
Socrates confirms her connections among the governing class. In order to explain how her "frequent meetings" with Orestes were misunderstood by "the people of the Church," he makes clear that she met regularly with magistrates (
[212] Chronicle 87, pp. 100–101 Charles; the sentence omitted is corrupt, apparently mentioning one visit to church.
[214] Frag. 102, p. 79.14–23 Zintzen.
[215] Ep. 81, p. 147 G.
mundane political favors, rather than to undermine his faith, that she met with Orestes. If Orestes missed church a couple of times and entertained the odd pagan at his home, we may be sure that this had little to do with Hypatia. But it is easy to see how the Nitrian monks could have been persuaded otherwise.
There is also a more obvious factor, one so obvious that it is easy to overlook: her sex. The rising tide of Christian asceticism had brought about some drastic changes in the public position of women during Hypatia's lifetime. On the one hand, Christianity allowed women new scope and new status. On the other, the insistence on submissiveness increasingly circumscribed their public activity.[216] The much-traveled grandes dames of the age, like the two Melanias, were always accompanied by large bands of fellow virgins.[217] Another Egyptian of the age, Isidore of Pelusium, reports the drastic steps a virtuous Christian girl took to discourage a would-be lover. She shaved her head completely, wiped a mixture of ashes and water all over her face, and then addressed him in much the same terms as Hypatia had her admirer: "Is this the ugliness you are in love with?"[218]
It was not just that Hypatia was a conspicuous pagan who liked to play an active role in Alexandrian public life. She was a woman, and (by all accounts) an attractive woman, who was often to be seen walking or driving around the streets of Alexandria and conversing with men as equals. When Orestes called at her house, there could be only one explanation. He was bewitched—or worse.
Cyril was probably not much concerned with the fact that all she taught most of her students was elementary mathematics. It was not right that a pagan, a single woman at that, should be so popular and influential. The fact that she had well-known Christian pupils like Synesius could be turned against her. This was a sorceress, casting her spell on good Christians, even bishops. It was a disgrace that prominent pagans should continue to enjoy such respectability twenty-five years after Cyril's predecessor Theophilus had destroyed the great Serapeum of Alexandria. It was with this event that an illustrated Alexandrian chronicle concludes: on its final page we see the portrait of Theophilus
[216] On this paradox, Elizabeth Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith (Lewiston 1986), 175–208; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley 1990), 108–33.
[217] Palladius Lausiac History 41.2, 46.1 and 5, 61.6.
triumphant, with another scene representing dark-robed monks destroying the Serapeum.[219] Having only recently stepped into Theophilus's shoes, Cyril badly needed a spectacular success of his own to establish him as undisputed champion of the Egyptian church. In quick succession he had turned his violent hands on heretics (Novatians) and Jews. Orestes had thwarted his attack on the Jews, but with Hypatia Cyril hit the jackpot. On Hypatia's death, according to John of Nikiu, "all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him 'the new Theophilus'; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city."[220]
Hypatia's murder was the consequence of a complex of factors that had little to do with her religious beliefs, teaching, or standing in the Alexandrian community during the quarter-century of her friendship with Synesius.
VI—
The Dion
For all his enthusiasm for the Chaldaean Oracles and his talk of "ineffable mysteries," Synesius's was essentially a cultural rather than a religious Hellenism. The focus of his interest is amply demonstrated by his Dion; or, On Living by His Example . The importance of this essay is still insufficiently appreciated, even after the excellent commentary by K. Treu.[221] The introduction lays down the lines on which study of Dio has proceeded to this day. Synesius claims against Philostratus that Dio's career fell into two stages: he was simply a sophist till his exile, and then converted to philosophy. Most students of Dio now reject this claim,[222] perhaps wrongly.[223] Synesius had read works of Dio we do not have.[224] It is true, as C. P. Jones says, that Synesius's "main concern was with himself rather than Dio,"[225] but since he did not himself undergo either a midlife conversion to philosophy or any sort of conversion to Christianity, Dio's conversion is no part of the personal parallel. Synesius's own works do not fall into two periods. As Ep. 154 reveals, he laid himself open to accusations of triviality, from contemporary as from modern
[219] A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, Eine Alexandrinische Weltchronik , Denkschrift Wien 51.2 (1905), 66–73; Tafel VI verso.
[220] Chronicle 84.103.
[221] Treu 1958; cf. Garzya 1973; Tinnefeld 1975.
[222] E.g., J. L. Moles, JHS 98 (1978): 79–100; C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (1978), 11–12 and passim.
[223] See a forthcoming paper by Oswyn Murray.
[224] In addition, there is internal evidence that the corpus of Dio's works as it has come down to us is severely mutilated: Highet 1983, 74–99.
[225] Cf. A. Momigliano, Quinto contributo (1975), 966; and C. P. Jones 1978, 12.
critics,[226] with works like On Baldness , a reply to a sophistic trifle by Dio called On Hair , and the book on hunting that eventually led him to write the Dion . But he does not suggest that they were works of his youth, still less written before his eyes were opened to philosophy. On the contrary, his object, as Jones rightly put it, was to show "that rhetorical and literary gifts are not incompatible with philosophy." For this end, there was no real objection to the view of Philostratus he rejects, namely that Dio was "a sophist and philosopher in one."[227] There is thus no need to believe that he twisted the facts to support his thesis. In any case, his historical approach, his criticism of Philostratus, and his insistence that Dio's oeuvre cannot be understood unless read in chronological sequence all deserve a mention in any history of ancient literary criticism.[228]
The body of the Dion is not further concerned with Dio, except insofar as he serves Synesius as the supreme model of a serious philosopher with an elegant, graceful style. It is in the main a polemic against philosophers and, apparently, monks. Its occasion is clarified by a letter to Hypatia (Ep. 154) that supplies more explicit details. According to the letter, Synesius is defending himself against criticisms from two groups, those in white tribones and those in black. Libanius and Eunapius regularly single out black robes in their invectives on monks,[229] and Synesius himself wrote a letter to a philosophical friend who had become a monk, suggesting that a white tribonion might have been more appropriate than the black one he has heard that John is wearing (Ep. 147). Since Dion 13–15 is an attack on professional teachers, it looks as if Synesius's two groups of critics are, respectively, professional philosophers and Christian monks.
Synesius tells Hypatia he had written a book on hunting that was much admired by "certain young men who cared for Hellenism and grace" (
[226] "Not so much a philosopher . . . as a rhetorician" (Marrou 1963, 130).
[227] C. P. Jones 1978, 11.
[228] Yet there is not a word, for example, in the standard works of J. F. Dalton[*] , Roman Literary Theory and Criticism: A Study in Tendencies (London 1931) or G. M. A. Grube (1965).
[229] Lib. Or. 30.8; Eunap. VS 6.11.7, p. 39.18 Giangrande; frag. 55 Mueller = 48.2.17 Blockley.
[230] Synesius modestly claims that the book on hunting "escaped from my house without my knowledge" (Ep. 154); whether or not he had formally published it, the work was clearly going round the literary circles of Alexandria. For the date and place, Treu 1958, 3–4. The date may now be advanced by up to two years (402/3 rather than 404/5), following the advancement of Synesius's stay in Constantinople, for which see below, chapter 3, section III.
[231] As Treu (1958, 64) observes, "antique" does not here imply archaic style in the modern sense, but "as good as the ancients."
One group of critics maintained that he was
sinning against philosophy by my knowledge of fine phrases and rhythm, and because I ventured an opinion on Homer and the figures of the rhetoricians . . . . In the eyes of such persons, one must hate literature in order to be a philosopher (
) and concern oneself exclusively with heavenly things. They contemplate the intelligible, but for me it is not allowed, because I take time off to purify my tongue and sweeten my wit.
There is something strange about this criticism. Why should anyone object to style? The real objection must have been that he was nothing but a stylist, not a real philosopher at all. However this may be, Synesius naturally has little trouble in lecturing such imperceptive critics on the importance of style.
More interesting are the objections of what the letter describes as the "dark-robed" critics, or "barbarians," as they are called in the Dion . The fairly detailed description of basket-weaving fanatics in Dion 45C–46D certainly seems to fit the desert communities of Nitria and Scetis, as Treu argues. They are styled barbarians, not because Synesius is hostile to them (the chapter is in fact remarkably sympathetic) but partly because they were Copts and partly because, by their rejection of all literary culture, they were so clearly not Hellenes.[232]
Synesius does not by any means condemn their dedication to manual labor but finds it excessive; he concludes that the barbarian is more determined than the Hellene, for he will never give up any enterprise once begun (46D). The Hellene, by contrast, is refined and has more moderation in his makeup, and so is more likely to yield. The study of literature and even the sciences, he continues, is an excellent preparation for the mind:
They brighten the eye within us and clear away the rheum and thoroughly arouse it and accustom it by degrees to the objects of vision so that it may some day take courage to face a more august spectacle still and not blink at once when facing the sun. Thus the Hellene trains his perceptions by his pleasures and even out of sport derives advantage for his most important objective.
It would be hard to imagine a more eloquent account of the use of classical culture for the Christian. "But," he goes on, "those who tread the path deemed to be of adamant [i.e., the monks], though some certainly reach the goal, they seem to me scarcely to have traveled a path at all, for
[232] On Synesius's definition of Hellene, see below, pp. 66–68.
how is a path possible where there is no gradual progress, where there is no first step and second step—in fact no order at all" (47D). Once more, Synesius does not claim that the rigorism of the monks is futile. What he objects to is its lack of rational method. They simply leap, like a man possessed (48A). He concludes this section with the remarkable claim that monks and philosophers are really striving for the same goal, the only difference being that philosophers fortify themselves with years of careful preparation. The monks fortify their virtues by habit rather than reason (49D). For example, they abstain from sexual intercourse for its own sake, "thus making the smallest thing of the greatest importance, for they imagine that the preparation is the goal." Synesius does not, of course, mean that abstinence is unimportant, but that it is merely a means to the end of self-discipline. The monks confuse means and end.
The letter gives a less sympathetic account of the dark-robed critics, whose boldness is only excelled by their ignorance and who are readier than anyone to deliver a harangue on God. Whenever you meet them, he observes, you have to listen to their "unsyllogistic syllogisms": presumably Synesius means that their theological discourse does not follow the rules of logic. They want Synesius to be their pupil, claiming that in no time he will be bolder than anyone on the subject of God, able to hold forth night and day without stopping. But Copts who spent their days making baskets (46B) are not likely to have wanted Synesius to be their pupil; nor would they have been distressed by his excursion into belles lettres. For the attitude of Nitrian monks to philosophers it is enough to think of the fate of Hypatia. The answer is perhaps that the letter attempts to dramatize the very different pressures that Synesius, as a would-be philosopher, was experiencing in Alexandria. These pressures somehow came to a head in the publication of his belles lettres. His serious-minded friends in both camps felt that he was frittering away his talents and training. The Christians who were trying to capture his talents for the faith cannot have been illiterate Coptic basket makers. They were men like Theophilus, who eventually succeeded.
By the same token we must not look for too much precision on the other side either. Marrou, for example, argues that Synesius's philosophical critics represent "Neoplatonism corrupted by the superstitious pagan belief in theurgy, . . . an Alexandrian criticism of contemporary Athens." But if the Dion really were a debate between theurgy and monasticism, why is it, as Marrou himself emphasized, that "the discussion is never conducted in religious terms"?[233] It is on very different grounds
[233] Marrou 1963, 145.
that Synesius criticizes at least some of these people; "some philosophical writers," he notes, "might be called grammarians, men who combine and separate syllables well enough but never succeed in bringing to birth anything of their own" (56B–C). This description does not suggest theurgists. And in his conclusion he positively boasts that he never bothered to correct the text of the books in the library of which he was so proud: the man of letters attacks textual critics as a philosopher (59D–60A). Just as the men in black robes are not just monks, so too the men in white are not just philosophers but professional pedants of every sort. It was simply to obtain a sharper antithesis that the letter to Hypatia focuses on the contrasting colors.
As for Synesius's Hellenism, it is common knowledge that by the second half of the fourth century the word "Hellene" had come to be the standard Greek word for "pagan." To start with, it was an exclusively Christian usage, but by the time of Julian more aggressive pagans began defiantly to call themselves Hellenes. It is unnecessary to cite examples, since the usage of almost any Christian writer will suffice.[234] One important consequence to which contemporaries were more alert than moderns, who tend to see everything in terms of Christian-pagan conflict, is that the centuries-old cultural connotations of the word were thus effectively rendered unusable.[235] Some pagans were quite happy with this narrowing connotation of the word. For instance, more than half the examples in Julian clearly refer to pagans or paganism,[236] and perhaps only two to Hellenism in the cultural sense.[237] Indeed, by his infamous edict banning Christians from teaching the pagan classics, Julian did much to accelerate the identification of pagan culture and cult.
Many contemporaries regretted this identification, Christians and pagans alike. Particularly striking is the bitter invective of Gregory Nazianzen, who was particularly outraged by Julian's ban on Christian teachers: "First of all, he dishonestly changed the meaning of the word to belief, as though to speak Greek was a religious, rather than a linguistic,
[236] See the index to J. Bidez and F. Cumont, luliani epistulae leges poematia (Paris 1922), 302 (hereafter Bidez-Cumont).
affair. This was his excuse for banning us from literature, as though we were stealing the goods of another."[238] Later on he waxed more indignant still: "Do you own Hellenism (
We do not know Libanius's reaction to Julian's edict, but it is possible to trace a significant shift in his concept of Hellenism. In his earlier letters, cultural connotations still predominate. Festugière has drawn attention to a number of passages where Libanius uses
Themistius by contrast never uses "Hellene" in the sense "pagan." For Themistius, the word continued to have cultural, rather than religious, connotations.[244] He is always speaking of the value of philosophy, which for him seems to boil down, as G. Downey well put it, to "an eclectic synthesis of the classical tradition."[245]
Synesius was heavily influenced by Themistius, and it is clear from the Dion that his definition was likewise cultural rather than religious. Writing as he was a generation later than Themistius, Synesius could not have failed to be familiar with the now-standard sense of Hellene/pagan, so it is the more significant that he so conspicuously sidesteps it. The key passage (42B) states:
[238] Or. 4.5, p. 92, ed. J. Bernardi, Sources Chrétiennes 309 (Paris 1983) (PG 35.536A). Though, as R. R. Ruether (1969, 64) justly observes, he "never develops at length an unequivocal justification for Christian acculturation in the classical milieu."
[239] Or. 4.107, p. 258 Bernardi (PG 35.643C).
[240] Ep. 347.2, 411.4, 357.1.
[241] Or. 43.18.
[242] Ep. 75.4, 1120.2; Festugière 1959, 222.
[243] Or. 42.8; cf. Festugière 1959, 229f.
[245] Downey 1955a, 306.
In my opinion the philosopher must not be of bad character in any way,[246] or uncultivated,[247] but initiated into the secrets of the Graces[248] and a Hellene in the full sense of the word, that is to say, able to associate with men on the basis of a knowledge of all worthwhile literature.
"Pagan" was only one sense of the word, a sense in which Synesius clearly has no interest here. This emphasis on civilized behavior corresponds exactly to the use of "Hellenic" in Libanius just discussed. Synesius roundly condemns its opposite a few pages later: the philosopher who despises literature will "associate with men in a vulgar way (
In his correspondence Synesius uses the word a number of times, always in a cultural rather than a religious sense. For example, Ep. 1 asks his Constantinopolitan friend Nicander to "share" his On Baldness "with the Hellenes," undoubtedly people in Constantinople "who appreciate and cultivate the classical culture of the Hellenic paideia ."[251] There is nothing significantly pagan about the book, and Synesius himself regretfully confesses to Nicander that he cannot really count it as a work of philosophy but likes it just the same. He writes to the poet Theotimus that Anthemius's fame will live in Theotimus's works "so long as Hellenes exist" (Ep. 49 = 51G). When he receives a letter from Pylaemenes, he summons a "gathering of the Hellenes in Libya" (Ep. 101, p. 169.7G).[252] When asking Hypatia's opinion about the Dion , he undertakes to suppress it if she judges it not "worthy of Hellenic ears" (
More important still, whereas Themistius's rather similarly defined Hellenism had in effect ignored Christianity, the Dion is a work that explicitly sets out to weigh pagan and Christian criticisms of Synesius's
[246] Compare Cato's famous definition of the orator as "vir bonus dicendi peritus."
[248] Not merely "gracious conduct" (Fitzgerald).
[250] Cf. 44D and 54A.
[251] Runia 1976, 165 n. 67.
[252] But much the same phrase in Ep. 148 init. seems to have an ethnic rather than a cultural connotation.
work. Themistius too speaks often of critics, both philosophers and sophists.[253] Like Synesius, Themistius firmly and proudly sat on the fence in this age-old battle. But Synesius explicitly took a third set of criticisms into account, the attempts of the Christians to bring him into their camp. Synesius declined the invitation, no less politely and no less firmly than he rejected the criticisms of the philosophers and sophists and grammarians. Synesius had no intention of serving any masters but the Muses.
An important corollary seems to follow. The criticisms of the Christian community are less clearly defined than the others, but they are presented as if essentially similar in kind. There is, for example, no suggestion that they involved pressure to convert from paganism first. Synesius criticizes them for their dogmatism on the subject of God, but not for being mistaken. He does not suggest that he must resist their overtures because he does not share their religion. As for the philosophers, sophists, and grammarians, nothing is said of their religious views, but this need not imply that he approves of them as fellow pagans; after all, by 400 by no means all sophists and grammarians were pagans. Synesius is at least as critical of their narrowness in their own field as he is of the Christians. To all appearances he considers and rejects the criticisms of both sides on the same basis. Yet if he had been a pagan at the time, how could he have considered Christian objections in the same way as those of philosophers, sophists, and grammarians? And why should Christians have been as disturbed as pagans by a pagan's preoccupation with belles lettres? How could they have expected him to write on Christian topics? The implication is that Synesius was a Christian when he wrote the Dion .
One other passage in the Dion points to the same conclusion. At 39B Synesius describes how Dio mentions the Essenes somewhere, adding that they lived by the Dead Sea in the middle of Palestine "not far from Sodom itself." The Essenes are represented as a happy, self-sufficient community, and the point of the emphatic "itself" is obviously the juxtaposition of the virtuous Essenes and the archetypally wicked Sodomites. Sodom is occasionally mentioned by pagan authors,[254] but simply as a spectacular natural disaster, not as an example of sin duly punished. Only a Jew or a Christian would have been struck by the paradoxical juxtaposition of Essenes and Sodomites. Dio may have mentioned Sodom, but the emphasis can have been added only by the Christian Synesius.
[253] Dagron 1968, 42f.
[254] Tac. Hist. 5.7 (unnamed); Strabo 16.44.