Gerald Everett Jones Writer-Producer

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Excerpt from "Hypatia of Alexandria" by Gerald Everett Jones

Hypatia’s Speech, End of Act One

[She has just learned that there will be rioting in the streets tonight, led by Cyril, Archibishop of Alexandria, and his band of fanatical monks, the Parabolani. Although her life is in danger, she resolves to deliver her usual lesson in mathematics.]

LIGHTS UP on

(HYPATIA, who stands CENTER STAGE FRONT, facing the audience. She plays to us as though we were her students. As a prop, she has a large cone, made of parchment. Behind her is a chalk board, which she uses to illustrate her talk.)

HYPATIA: Today's subject is conic sections, slices of a cone. A cone — you should be able to remember this — a dunce cap? By passing planes through the cone, various geometric shapes are generated at the intersections. Cut on the horizontal, perpendicular to the axis, we have a circle. Cut at a slight angle, we have an ellipse. Increase the angle a bit more, a parabola.

(Draws on the board) Let us consider the parabola. Where do we find it in nature?

(No response) Come, now. Parse the word. Para — for, bola — throwing. For throwing. What shape is described when you throw a ball into the air? Certainly, a parabola. What shape is described when a furious mob hurls paving stones at the heads of innocent people? Parabolas, all of them. And what form is etched in the ether when a flaming projectile is hurled from a Roman catapult? You know the answer.

Why, then, do we study the parabola? Do we wish to excel at sports? By improving our aim, can we succeed in smashing more heads than our poorly educated opponents?

Or perhaps we can draw a comfortable income advising generals how to better position their weapons of war?

We study the parabola — indeed all geometric shapes — because they are perfect forms. We see these forms reproduced in our earthly lives because everything in the world of our senses is shaped by ideal forms. And where do these forms exist? In the mind of God.

Our world, and our lives, follow the shapes of God's thoughts. There is nothing we are or have which does not come from God — the shape of the ball, the shape of its flight. Also from God, because from us, the paving stone and the catapult.

Why do we study any idea? We wish to understand the mind of God. Where is God, you ask? Study the rock in its flight.

God is perfect. God is good. The shape of the parabola is perfect, therefore it is good. If I throw a rock, is it, then, good? God ordained the natural law which causes the flight of the rock to describe the form. God created the rock and God created you. But God does not decide to throw the rock. You do. And only your children's children will know whether that was good.

BLACKOUT

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