Athanasius | Alvyn Pettersen (essay date 1995)
Alvyn Pettersen (essay date 1995)
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...
[The entire page is 7752 words long]
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