SOURCE: Pettersen, Alvyn. “Introduction: Athanasius's Life and Times.” In Athanasius, pp. 1-18. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995.

In the following excerpt, Pettersen discusses the history of the city of Alexandria and how its politics influenced the work of Athanasius.

Alexandria was ‘the crossroads of the world, serving it as a marketplace serves a single city’. To a degree these words of the early second-century Dio Chrysostom¹ were still true in the very early fourth century. Alexandria certainly was still a place rich in ideas, culture and commerce. Power and prestige might be found there. Hence it acted as a magnet, attracting both rich and poor. In this cosmopolitan city, brimming with stimuli and overflowing with opportunities, Athanasius (c. 296-373) mainly lived and worked.

The picture of Alexandria as a city whose streets were paved with gold and of Athanasius as one living in an ideal time is, however, only partially...