Immersing Hypatia into her world of competing philosophers, jockeying bishops and local potentates, loyal students and rival monks, Watts restores the brilliant mathematician and philosophical leader, a woman all but submerged under the mask her violent death created. In the process, he also evokes the fabric of cosmopolitan late Roman Alexandria, a city in which Christians and others coexisted despite tensions that could and did erupt into moments of spectacular violence.
The Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Chair and Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, Edward Watts studies the intellectual and religious history of the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires. He is the author of three prize-winning books and the editor of three edited volumes. This is his first of two upcoming works for OUP.