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- Damascius’ quote on the difference between Isidore and Hypatia is taken from Damascius, Vita Isidori fr. *164, p. 218 Zintzen = Photius, Bibl., vol. VI, p. 38, 13–15 Henry = fr. 106A, p. 253 Athanassiadi (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, p. 248).
- On scientific initiation as presupposition of all philosophy and “the messy border between mathematics and philosophy” in Neoplatonic schools see Watts 2017, pp. 31–35; on this matter see also O’Meara; see also below, chapter “Synesius, Hypatia, and Philosophia,” Appendix ad loc. The most recent, most accurate, and most reliable assessment of the scientific personality of Hypatia, her mathematical attainments, and what we can reconstruct of them is in Deakin 2007, pp. 87–113 (presentation of the works attributed to Hypatia by the sources and their evaluation) and 189–196 (notes); pp. 115–133 (mathematical considerations) and 196–202 (notes). See also Lacombrade 2001, pp. 404–409. Hypatia’s contribution as editor of the annotated Almagest (and not the revisor of her father’s commentary, as previously thought) is argued in Cameron 1990; see also Cameron 2016c, pp. 190–194, which refutes and rectifies the theories formulated by Rome 1943, pp. cxvii–cxxi; by Anne Tihon in Mogenet–Tihon, I, p. 221; and by Knorr, pp. 756 ff. Finally, see the conclusions of Deakin 2007, pp. 91–94 and his notes on pp. 189–190. A fleeting mention of Hypatia’s scholarly commitment is in Herrin, p. 25. Theon’s inscriptio (Ἐκδόσεως παραγνοσθείσης τῇ φιλοσόφῳ θυγατρί μου Ὑπατίᾳ) can be read in Rome 1943, p. 807, 4–5; see Deakin 2007, pp. 91 and 109 (in which it is considered “the action of a proud father: suppressing his own work in favour of a manifest improvement by his daughter”).
- On the other works of Hypatia, and in particular on the interpretation of the passage in Suidas (taken from Hesychius of Miletus) in which there is a mention of the Astronomical Canon, see Tannery 1880, p. 199; Deakin 2007, pp. 95–101 and notes on pp. 190–192.
- See contra Krischer, who from a passage in Ep. 4 by Synesius sees possible innovative elements in the speculations of Theon and Hypatia, which return a century later in the work of John Philoponus. Watts 2017, pp. 29–31, provides a rather questionable assessment of what he calls Hypatia’s “projects,” namely her few witnessed or alleged works, and in particular of her first “editorial project,” namely the above-mentioned paragnosis of the third book of the Almagest, whose text, according to the inscriptio handed down to us by the main witness of the manuscript tradition, Hypatia reconstructed, as we have seen, so as to enable her father to write a commentary on it. According to Alan Cameron, this work by Hypatia was probably a sort of proto-critical edition, produced through the collation of multiple manuscripts. Yet the inscriptio does not seem enough to conclude, like Watts does, that Hypatia also reconstructed the text of the following ten books (4–13) of the Almagest. This idea, which is first cautiously presented by Watts as a hypothesis, is later presented as a fact (“Hypatia’s edition of Books 3–13 of the Almagest was no simple project […] Her work brought readers closer to truth. This meant that Hypatia and her contemporaries would have understood her edition to be a quite significant scholarly contribution,” p. 31).
- The latter, on the basis of stylistic features, suggests that Hypatia contributed also to the edition of Archimedes’ Measurement of a Circle, handed down to us mainly in Latin version, and, in some form, to an anonymous treatise On the Isoperimetric Figures, as well as to a brief geometric work, the De Curvis Superficibus: see Knorr, chapter 11. In 19th-century America, Hypatia’s popularity amongst scientists was reawakened by the versatile and popular chemist and physiologist J.W. Draper, who described her with fervidly neo-Enlightenment accents in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (Draper, pp. 238–244). The lost works of Hypatia, abusively appropriated by the masculine culture, are sought – and even found – in the embarrassing chapter Hypatia of Alexandria in Waithe, pp. 176–192. A “Hypatian System” (as the precursor of the Copernican one) is mentioned, although in a non-scientific setting, by a book admired and widely distributed: Ferretti, p. 37 (on which see also also below, chapter “The Martyrdom of Hypatia,” Appendix ad loc.). For the recent speculations on Hypatia by misinformed and misinforming mathematicians and historians of science see for example Whitfield, in which the analysis is reduced to the simplistic and bizarre idea that Damascius was “anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia’s death,” and therefore blamed the Christians and the bishop Cyril; a version that would become official after the incorporation of the account by Damascius “in the Byzantine lexicon-encyclopedia known as the Suda.” See also Oser, p. 27; Ogilvie; L. Grinstein–Campbell; and the interventions of Richeson, Waerden, Jacobacci, and Perl, quoted in Dzielska 1995, p. 25 and nn. ad loc.
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