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Flow Down Like Silver Hypatia of Alexandria Ki Longfellow Books

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Flow Down Like Silver Hypatia of Alexandria Ki Longfellow Books

This is the first book I've ever read on Hypathia, and would say that I would have to agree with both the good reviews and the bad. If you are the kind of person who likes romance novels, this has a lot of that kind of story-telling in it. Along the way, you'll learn a lot about what it was like to be alive at the end of Rome and the beginning of the 1000 year Dark Ages. If you like historical fact more than fiction, then you might try, as I will, one of the other books out there that focus on the accomplishments of the woman and her influences. While this book is fictional, it lacks some of the character depth and plot of say, Julie Christie Johnson's work, "In Another Life" which uses a mystical element wrapped around a historical framework to teach us alot about the 1300s.

The sad truth is that we know more about this woman through her reflection in the writings of others. Her work has been pretty much lost. I found myself wondering how much an outlier was Hypathia. Was she somewhat typical of upper crust Roman women? Or was she truly extraordinary because of what she accomplished? While in Alexandria she may have been the only woman philosopher/mathematician, was there any others like her anywhere in Rome's long history? That's what I mean by saying that I'll likely read another, more purely historical overview.

Overall, it's an interesting read, but I had a hard time keeping myself reading it as I got 2/3rds of the way through. Might be a good summer read for a history buff.


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Flow Down Like Silver Hypatia of Alexandria Ki Longfellow Books Reviews

As a work of historical fiction, I would give this novel 1 star for historical plausibility and 5 stars for fictional writing ... hence the overall 3 star score. (I'm guessing Ki Longfellow might well feel the same way, in reverse order, about my novel, Caesar's Temple ~ The Life and Turbulent Times of Hypatia of Alexandria.) Among historical figures, Hypatia is unique in many ways, not the least of which is that very little is known about her. She is the only woman ever widely recognized as the foremost mathematician of her age (something that says more about male dominated society than female mathematicians), she was the daughter of Theon, last in a long line of Museum Professors that began with Euclid, and [spoiler alert] she was brutally murdered for, through no fault of her own, putting a face on late 4th century Secular Hellenism. From that and little more, both Longfellow and I have, to paraphrase Nathaniel Hawthorne, attempted to restore flesh to long dead bones and attribute character to resurrected personalities. Where we part ways is in attention to historical detail. By representing Theon as the Librarian of Alexandria, Longfellow either doesn't know or doesn't care that the Museum and Library of Alexandria were different institutions. Although (correctly) claiming her to be Greek, Longfellow laces Hypatia's thoughts and remarks with ancient Egyptian mythology -- to the near total exclusion of the usual Olympians. While imagining Bishop Augustine of Hippo to have been a personal acquaintance of Hypatia and frequent visitor to Alexandria can be excused as literary license, having him stop over in Alexandria "on his way" from Rome to Hippo may help to explain why the book's only map is a plan of ancient Alexandria. Finally, inferring the existence of a mother for the historical Archbishop Cyril is something both of us have done. Inventing a mother "who is said to keep virgins, both male and female, in order to watch them deflowered in the most unspeakable ways" strikes me as the kind of excessive overreach that can only bring discredit on a story that deserves a more careful telling.
In 313CE, the emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, which legalized the practice of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Inside of a century, the Christians turned-the-tables on their Pagan tormentors and began to relish the opportunity to persecute anyone who didn't believe as they did. 102 years > the Edict of Milan, the Christians committed one of their most ignominious sins of all time they murdered Hypatia of Alexandria.

This is not exactly a "spoiler alert" as most people who would be inclined to read this novel would be familiar with Hypatia. For those who are not, Hypatia was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, literary critic and teacher. She was what I would call the last "curator" of the library of Alexandria (before it was burned to the ground by a Christian mob, that is).

The present book focuses on her life, picking up @ the moment-in-time that the library was vanquished by an act of madness. Non-Christian texts were viewed as a threat and therefore needed to be burned. In doing so, the followers of Christ massacred a great many people & also set the world back 1,000 yrs. It would not be until the Italian Renaissance that the denizens of the globe would re-discover what had been lost in the fire @ Alexandria.

The book is told from multiple points of view. Some of the characters, like Hypatia, are historical, while others are fictional. The book delves into an in-depth inquiry into who Hypatia could have been (the primary sources on her life tend to be sketchy). It is said that Hypatia had the form of Aphrodite & the spirit of Plato, and both of these traits shine through the pages of this novel.

For a reference on the convoluted rigmarole of the politics of the late Roman empire (made all the more recondite given the fact that the empire was split in half), I would recommend The Roman Emperors A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome 318 B.C. - A.D. 476. For those who want to know more about Hypatia, I would recommend Cosmos,Hypatia of Alexandria (Revealing Antiquity),Agora and Anita's Legacy.

Of all of the vile acts committed by humans during what Hegel called the "slaughter bench of history," the murder of Hypatia is one of the most iconic & perhaps symbolic. It was, in fact, a way in which the world "chose" to plummet into the Dark Ages less than a century > her death. You burn down the greatest intellectual reservoir in the world & you kill one of the greatest human beings who ever lived and.....well.....that's what happens.
This is the first book I've ever read on Hypathia, and would say that I would have to agree with both the good reviews and the bad. If you are the kind of person who likes romance novels, this has a lot of that kind of story-telling in it. Along the way, you'll learn a lot about what it was like to be alive at the end of Rome and the beginning of the 1000 year Dark Ages. If you like historical fact more than fiction, then you might try, as I will, one of the other books out there that focus on the accomplishments of the woman and her influences. While this book is fictional, it lacks some of the character depth and plot of say, Julie Christie Johnson's work, "In Another Life" which uses a mystical element wrapped around a historical framework to teach us alot about the 1300s.

The sad truth is that we know more about this woman through her reflection in the writings of others. Her work has been pretty much lost. I found myself wondering how much an outlier was Hypathia. Was she somewhat typical of upper crust Roman women? Or was she truly extraordinary because of what she accomplished? While in Alexandria she may have been the only woman philosopher/mathematician, was there any others like her anywhere in Rome's long history? That's what I mean by saying that I'll likely read another, more purely historical overview.

Overall, it's an interesting read, but I had a hard time keeping myself reading it as I got 2/3rds of the way through. Might be a good summer read for a history buff.