John Chrysostom was born into a city - Antioch - whose wealth and status rivalled those of the other prominent urban centres of the late Roman world - Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. Situated at the nexus of the trade route from the far east to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and the land route from Egypt through to Constantinople and the west, it enjoyed the availability of a broad range of produce, goods and services as well as providing hospitality for a large volume of visitors.
The Games lasted for forty-five days, with contests held for the first thirty days at venues within the city itself and for the last fifteen days at the stadium up in the suburb of Daphne. The magister militum per Orientem or MMO general in control of military operations in the east , the comes Orientis administrator of the civil diocese of Oriens , and consularis Syriae governor of Syria had their residences and offices in the city and were more or less permanent fixtures.
On the ecclesiastical front, the status of the Antioch see in the east was comparable with that of Alexandria. In consequence, the city not infrequently hosted synods of various degrees of importance, which demanded the presence of a greater or lesser number of bishops and accompanying clergy. At the same time the burgeoning cult of the saints and martyrs and the growing status of Jerusalem and the monastic communities of Egypt and Syria meant that an increasing volume of tourists from the west passed through Antioch, staying in Antioch for anything from a day to a week to a year while reprovisioning or detouring to visit Syrian ascetics or sampling the local martyr shrines.
These factors ensured that Antioch was usually bustling with life and that the dynamics of the population were constantly changing. That the citizens of Antioch felt that they had good reason to be proud of their city and its ordinarily elevated and pleasurable lifestyle is reflected in the devastation felt by them at the removal of its status as a metropolis following the riots in On the statues hom.
On Col. In other homilies of this same series the closure of the baths, theatres and hippodrome, and the marked emptiness of the shops and market-place in the aftermath of the riots are likewise clearly a cause for anguish. In "On the statues hom. Indeed Daphne, with its mild climate, its shady groves, its entertainment venues, its abundant water supply, its renowned temples of Apollo and Zeus and the much-frequented Jewish healing shrine the cave of Matrona , would alone have been sufficient cause for Antioch's fame and status throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean.
