I'm feeling restless...

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Blue
Jump to navigation Jump to search

None of my beeswax, naturally, but I'm skittish around folks who choose Classical Greek (or Roman, for that matter) names for themselves. Is your choice based on a fondness for mathematics, or a looming sense that you may meet an untimely end at the hands of a religious book-burning mob?

Sprocket J Cogswell (talk)06:00, 8 February 2011

The mob who killed Hypatia were a witch-burning (or witch-skinning, as it happened) mob, not a book-burning one; they thought she had hexed the prefect of Alexandria into not attending church.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX06:07, 8 February 2011

Right, none of the Christian community had anything to do with looting the library. Messy end, whatever the immediate motive.

Sprocket J Cogswell (talk)06:16, 8 February 2011

The Serapeum was destroyed in 391; Hypatia did not die until 415.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX06:22, 8 February 2011

So the witch-stoning faction had nothing to do with any prior heretical book-burning cell? Cool, they were astute revolutionaries then.

Sprocket J Cogswell (talk)06:33, 8 February 2011
 
 
 

She was a rather impressive female figure for her time. The film makes her out as an atheist, which would be great but as far as the historical record shows, she was probably a pagan.

I don't know. ... any suggestions?

Blue (is useful)06:09, 8 February 2011

If you want to don the mask of a leading figure, then power to you. Just saying, I wouldn't choose Archimedes nor Demosthenes for my own handle.

Sprocket J Cogswell (talk)06:36, 8 February 2011

To this dyed-in-the-wool hard polytheist, neo-Platonism, of which Hypatia was an adherent, does not seem all that far from atheism.

In the old days, almost everyone was named after heroes or big-shots of some sort; in pagan Scandinavia, people used to prefix their names with "Thor" in bids for that God's protection.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX06:42, 8 February 2011

In the olden days, when I was about eight or nine, living in the Near East, there was a neighbor kid named Aristotle. We called him Dealie, because when his mom would call him into the house it sounded like she was hollering, "Aristo DEALIE!!"

Sprocket J Cogswell (talk)07:01, 8 February 2011
 
 

Well, anyway, I don't think I'll change it, the impulse is gone.

Blue (is useful)18:02, 8 February 2011

It wouldn't have been a "quiet" change anyway, since you mentioned it here.

Scarlet A.pngmoral18:17, 8 February 2011

Yes, that, and how much I'd shit all over recent changes with all my subpages.

Blue (is useful)22:32, 8 February 2011