Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria by Ki Longfellow

from the beginning. ’   Sublime!”
    “Tell me then, Augustine, if you believe as did Philo, that matter is ordered by God’s thought, would that not mean evil exists in the thoughts of God?”
    For this I receive only a startled eye.   “Why,” he asks, “is this house not marked in any way?”
    “That it remains and is tended, marks it.”
    I think Augustine torn between body and soul.   And I, torn between mind and soul, almost understand him.   In the belief that body hinders the soul, he denies the body, and so is tormented.   In torment, he finds his “evil,” and tries to escape it by defining and redefining it.   His self-set task becomes an obsession.   For me, evil has begun to blur.   This, I think, the doing of Lais.   For all I call evil, she calls experience.   For all I lament, she calls adventure.   Beyond generous, beyond accepting, her generous accepting infuriates by stealing away my righteousness.   Angered by this or saddened by that, I do as any—find voice in righteousness.   Yet truly, righteousness is not a gift but a curse.   To believe one is right is to believe another wrong.   If the other is wrong, then one has the right to “correct” him.   Correction comes in many guises, and most I would call “evil.”
    Because he would see the great lighthouse and because he would see where Pompey Magnus, seeking asylum from the last of the Ptolemies, was cut down as an ill-fated gift to Caesar, we walk across the Heptastadion.   Alexander’s causeway, seven times the length of a Greek stadium, links the Island of Pharos with Alexandria on which sits the village of Pharos.
    Augustine takes it all in at a glance, saying, “The pirates of Pharos are much like the burgers of Hippo: uneducated, filthy, smelly, and loud.”
    “Do the people of Hippo steal?   Do they stare and talk behind quick hands?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then I should no more wish to see Hippo than I would wish to remain here.”
    Where before I received a startled eye, now I receive one stern.   “Who do you teach, Hypatia?   Would you not say that the need of these exceeds all others?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “The needs of my family come before all.”
    “These are your family.”
    “There are those who are worthy and those who are not.   All of nature teaches us this.”
    I have displeased him.   Augustine turns his idealistic face away.   Would he have me lie and call all men and all women equal?   I do not speak of status or wealth or comeliness.   I speak of intelligence.   Few can reason.   Fewer reason well.   Genius is as rare as a mermaid.   I have never seen a mermaid and every genius I have ever known, I know from books.   “The shadows lengthen, Augustine.   My family awaits me.”

    At the southern end of the Heptastadion, within sight of the Alexandrian docks lying to the right and to the left, we are stopped by the raising of the platform to allow a grain ship bound for Rome to pass through from the Royal Harbor into the Eunostos Harbor, and here we come on a most terrible sight.
    A small crowd, one gathered only by happenstance, is also stopped on their way into the city.
    A man is being beaten with cudgels.   Already he is down to his knees, his hands covering his head, blood streaming down from both head and hands.   Who beats him?   Three!   And each a fearsome thing with teeth bared as a dog’s teeth.   A fourth, huge as a bear, stands between us and the blooded man.   Behind us, the people watch, terrified, huddled together as a flock of goats before lions.   They would help, but how?   They would not help.   I have no knife, but should I have, I would be no match for the bear of a man.   I can think of none who would be a match.   Augustine has no knife or cudgel.   He has no stick or stone.   But he walks forward shouting, “Stop this!   You will kill him!”
    Not one pays the slightest mind.   The poor thing, a merchant by the look of him, is now