Akademik

(c. 370–415)

Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, and the author of commentaries on the mathematicians Diophantus and Apollonius. She was educated under Plutarch the younger, and lived in Alexandria as an influential teacher, becoming the head of her father's academy. The source of knowledge of her life is the collection of letters of one of her pupils, Synesius of Cyrene. She was murdered when Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, had a Christian mob drag her to a church, where his monks scoriated her with oyster shells; according to the historian Gibbon the event shocked even contemporary Christian opinion. Cyril was later canonized.