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This chapter discusses Cyril's early episcopacy, including his polemical confrontation with Jews, pagans, and Arians. By these polemics, Cyril forged his distinctly Alexandrian vision of Christianity, which favoured simple, repeatable formulations of the creed. During this time, too, Cyril borrowed Athanasius' anti-Arian discourse which Cyril made relevant once again in his later controversy with Nestorius. The first section of this chapter discusses Cyril's election and the Novatians. The second section looks at Theophilus' actions against the Tall Brothers and John Chrysostom. The third section considers Cyril's conflict with the Alexandrian Jews. The fourth section examines the murder of the renowned pagan and neo-Platonist philosopher Hypatia. The fifth section considers the lingering problem of Arianism.

This chapter examines who the Greek mathematicians were by taking an imaginary group picture taken at a conference of ancient Greek mathematicians — a conference held in heaven, so that everyone is present, from classical times down to late antiquity. For this purpose, a mathematician is defined as one who has written down an original mathematical demonstration, no matter in what context. Two well-documented women in this group are Hypatia and Pandrosion. It is probably relevant that both of these examples are from late Alexandria, a place and a time where many old barriers were brought down. In general ancient women did not live strictly according to the expectation of either classical society or modern scholarship, and they were not always ‘silent’. The Greek mathematicians did not have faculties and conferences, a fact reflected by their form of presentation and ultimately by the contents of their mathematics.

The first part of this chapter explores the ecclesiastical and intellectual causes of the Alexandrian Christian community's movement away from the philosophically influenced Christian intellectual circle. The second part of this chapter examines Alexandrian pagan schools and the role they played in the education of Christians in the second half of the fourth century. Two major strains of Platonic philosophical interpretation contested with one another in later fourth-century Alexandria. These include the Platonism developed by Plotinus and Porphyry and the theurgically influenced interpretation of Iamblichus. The chapter also presents an account of the career of Hypatia, a highly erudite woman who succeeded her father in heading the school which he founded. With its emphasis upon contemplation, Hypatia's training worked in typically Plotinian fashion. In her school, Christian students did not need to worry about their convictions conflicting with their training.

In the past, independent Christian teachers would have raised challenges to such a strongly pagan curriculum, and the ideas of the Iamblichan teachers would have been attacked in Christian intellectual circles. By the mid-fifth century, however, such circles and their leaders do not seem to have existed in their traditional form. Furthermore, after the negative reactions to the murder of Hypatia, the Alexandrian church had shown little interest in the teachings of Neoplatonic philosophers. Because of this, the conflict between Christianity and Iamblichan teaching was a quiet one. Ultimately, the situation erupted in a violent confrontation that came to involve not only teachers and students but the entire Alexandrian Christian community. This chapter discusses the new breed of Athenian-trained professors teaching in Alexandrian schools, as well as the religious environment within these schools.

Alongside these social and political readings of the period from the fourth to the seventh century there was also a religious one. The religious reaction to the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution was spearheaded by Chateaubriand, whose novel about the Christian persecutions of the early fourth century Les Martyrs was a source of inspiration for a subsequent generation of writers, about all Ozanam, in a number of works on the early Middle Ages, and Montalembert, in his study of monasticism. Following on from the work of Ozanam, the Prince de Broglie wrote a history of the fourth century which prompted major debates with Guéranger, one of the key figures in the Benedictine revival. The Church of the Age of Persecution was also picked up in England in debates between liberal Anglicans like Kingsley and members of the Oxford Movement, like Newman.

With its 156 letters Synesius’s collection is modest in size when compared with other late antique collections, and there is no doubt that the extant letters are only a fraction of the letters that Synesius wrote in the course of his lifetime. As usual, the letters are not ordered chronologically, but key proposographical dossiers are easily identified. Among the forty recipients addressed in the collection, pride of place goes to Synesius’s brother Evoptius, who received a total of forty-one. An anonymous compiler – perhaps his brother Evoptius or another figure close to Synesius – seems to have organized and published Synesius’s letters along with his other works during the second half of the fifth century or early in the sixth century. The traditional stance on Synesius’s epistolary collection characterizes it as a chaotic assemblage, but the existence of thematic currents such as legal concerns, the responsibilities of the nobility, and epistolary style) can be traced.

Sosipatra’s life helps us to understand important facets of elite women’s lives in the late ancient world in general. The wealth of both Christian and non-Christian women allowed them a range of opportunities for being cultural and intellectual leaders. However, by the end of the fourth century, non-Christian women had to be more careful about their philosophical views and their leadership activities, as we see in the case of Hypatia of Alexandria. Similarly, diversity in Christian theologizing was also subject to critique and persecution. Sosipatra is one of the last female Platonists we have record of from the ancient world.

Hypatia has been regarded historically as a pagan martyr, a great mathematician murdered by Christians, provoked by her outspokenness and jealous of her brilliance. The chapter, however, places what is known of her learning and her public utterances (mostly from Christian sources) in the context of fifth-century Alexandria. It discusses the role of women in late antique society and identifies the few women philosophers. It describes the preparation of texts of ancient mathematical classics, especially Ptolemy’s Almagest, in late antiquity. Hypatia’s father and tutor, Theon, prepared a commentary on the Almagest to which Hypatia may have contributed, and the influence of father and daughter on Synesius, later a Christian bishop, is discussed. Hypatia’s death, brutal as it was, arose out of the anti-Jewish riots of 415 and the feud between patriarch Cyril of Alexandria and the governor Orestes.