Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria Read Online Free PDF Page A

feet.   “What is it?”
    Waving his arms so that his bedding falls away, he wails, “What have I done?   What have I said?   What fate awaits my children as it waited for their mother?   Damara, poor Damara!”   And with that he has snatched once more at his bedding, this time throwing it not only over his face but over his head.
    Lais is rounding his bed, coming towards me, and as she does, she commands, “Jone.   Fetch a bowl of hot water.   And a root of valerian.   A large root.   Minkah!   Bring your sleeping mat.   Father should not be alone.”
    Minkah is off on the instant.   As is Jone.
    And now it is me to whom Lais speaks, but quietly so that Father does not hear.   “He has spoken her name aloud, Miw.”
    What Lais means is that on the day of our mother’s death, a deaf mute was found in the garden.   He asked nothing of us.   He ate nothing.   He did nothing.   At the end of three days and three nights, he was gone.   Father declared it an omen that Mother would have us remember her only with silence.   As for the three days and three nights, Father quoted Nicomachus of Gerasa who declared the triad the form of completion.
    “Father forgets himself.   He is ill but we shall make him better.”
    Lais nods.   “And the astrologer?”
    Here, too, I know what she means.   She asks what I think of Beato of Sais with all his sighing, as well as what he calls my “destiny.”
    “Did you see what was in his box?”
    If my sister is not diverted, she pretends to be.

Hypatia

    How to explain Lais?   Beauty is not enough, for many are beautiful.   Graceful, yes, but grace can be found in others.   The sweetness of her voice enchants, and the tenderness of her concern for all who meet her is felt by the hardest heart.   But no, it is not that which can be seen or heard of Lais that matters, though what can be seen and heard is lovely beyond anything written of the seventh Cleopatra or of Nefertiti, even of Helen held captive by love in Troy.   It is that which resides within Lais that cannot be held or touched or, by most, if any, understood.
    My sister is made of air.   She is a poet of pure ecstasy.   To read what she writes shames me for all my gifts.
    Father, who thinks me sage as do his students, knows nothing of the mysteries if he does not know Lais.   And he, like they, do not.   None mention her trances; all are embarrassed by them.   As for me, I long to learn where she goes, for if not “here,” where then is she?   I think if I desire anything, I desire this: to know what Lais knows.
    ~
    Sitting at table this evening, there are only my sisters and me and Paniwi.   There is also Jone’s book for Jone has ever a book no matter the circumstance.   Throughout the past few days she reads The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius Platonicus.
    Four days and four nights have passed and still the streets cry out with rage and with pain.   Those who attack, attack from faith, not from “knowing.”   They know nothing, as Socrates could have proved to them, but have faith what they do not know is so.   This faith in the proclamation of others is so strong, as is the faith of those who defend, that both sides would die for what they do not know they do not know.   It is piteous.   It is pathetic.   It is distressing beyond the work of Palladas which is full of bitterness and gall.
    The Serapeum has not yet fallen, but is besieged on all sides.   By order of Bishop Theophilus, what happens here, happens as well in Canopus, a city sited a day’s ride away at the marshy mouth of the Canopic Nile—their temples also burn.
    As good as his word, Father will not leave his room.   Beato of Sais said that Father knew his course.   If so, his course is no course at all.   He lies in his bed.   And there, he has informed us, he will stay until the Council of the Ogdoad appears before him so that Set, who is the god of disorder, can explain why such as the Christian Emperor