I'm feeling restless...

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Blue
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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.pngnarchist18:17, 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