Palmyra, an important city located in an…

The charismatic Christian Platonist Origen has spent the period from 218 to 230 in Alexandria, where he has produced a great body of writings, among them the Hexapla, the first attempt to establish a critical text of the Old Testament; his commentaries on Matthew and John, which establish him as the Christian church’s first important biblical scholar; the De Principiis (or Peri Archon), a dogmatic treatise on God and the world; and the Contra Celsum, in which he refutes paganism.

Dionysius of Alexandria, a renowned young theologian, mounts a vigorous opposition to the Sabellianist heresy, denying the reality of the three persons of the Trinity.

His detractors accuse him of tritheism, belief in three gods.

Origen, on a return visit to Palestine in 230, is ordained a priest by the bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea, whereupon Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, excommunicates him, strips him of his priesthood, and orders him into exile.

The decay of the Roman Empire in the third century gradually affects the administration of Egypt.

Roman bureaucracy becomes overcentralized and poorly managed.

The number of qualified applicants for administrative positions is sharply reduced by Roman civil war, pestilence, and conflict among claimants to imperial power.

Emperor Diocletian, seeing Christianity as a threat to Roman state religion and thus to the unity of the empire, launches a violent persecution of Christians.

He issues a decree in 303 ordering all churches demolished, all sacred books burned, and all Christians who are not officials made slaves.

The decree is carried out for three years, a period known as the "Era of Martyrs."

The lives of many Egyptian Christians are spared only because more workers are needed in the porphyry quarries and emerald mines that are worked by Egyptian Christians as "convict labor."

A renaissance of imperial authority and effectiveness takes place under Emperor Diocletian.

The partition of the Roman Empire into eastern and western segments begins during his reign (284-305).

Diocletian inaugurates drastic political and fiscal reforms and seeks to simplify imperial administration.

The administrative unity of Egypt is destroyed under Diocletian by his transforming Egypt from one province into three.

Emperor Constantine I (324-337) establishes Christianity as the official religion of the empire in 312; his Edict of Milan establishes freedom of worship in 313.

As ruler of both the eastern and western parts of the empire, he establishes his capital in 330 at Byzantium, renamed New Rome and soon known as Constantinople (present-day Istanbul).

Egypt is governed from Constantinople as part of the Eastern Roman (called by historians Byzantine) Empire.

Egypt is largely a Christian country by the middle of the fourth century.

The ecumenical Council of Nicea in 324 had established the patriarchate of Alexandria as second only to that of Rome; its jurisdiction extends over Egypt and Libya.

The patriarchate has a profound influence on the early development of the Christian church because it helps to clarify belief and to formulate dogmas.

The number of Egyptian bishops in 333 is estimated at nearly one hundred.

Dionysius of Alexandria, born to a wealthy pagan family here, has spent most of his life reading books and carefully studying the traditions of heretics.

After having converted to Christianity at a mature age, he had joined the Catechetical School of Alexandria and been a student of Origen and Heraclas.

Dionysius later became leader of the school and presbyter of the Christian church, in 231 succeeding Heraclas.

He had in 248 succeeded the deceased Heraclas as Bishop of Alexandria.

Dionysius in his later writings describes the period during which the city of Alexandria is subject to the legal persecution instituted by Decius against Christians.

The many extreme horrors faced by Alexandrians during the persecution had included death by stoning, the gouging of eyes, and being dragged through the streets as well as being burnt alive.

Dionysius himself had been captured during the persecution, but was later freed by a mob of Christian passersby and fled into the desert.

Diophantus of Alexandria introduces an algebraic symbolism that uses an abbreviation for the unknown.

He is the first Hellenistic mathematician to frankly recognize fractions as numbers.

In his influential work on the theory of numbers, called Arithmetica, he presents a collection of problems giving numerical solutions of determinate equations (those with a unique solution), and indeterminate equations. (The method for solving the latter comes to be known as Diophantine analysis.)

Diophantus determines general solutions to equations in several unknowns, such as x(2) + y(2) = z(2)—where solutions can be determined by x = 2pq; y = p(2) - q(2); z = p(2) + q(2).

The solutions to higher-order Diophantine equations prove to be more elusive, however, and will remain so for centuries.

The findings and works of Diophantus will influence mathematics greatly and cause many other questions to arise, of which the most famous is Fermat's Last Theorem.

Zenobia is in de facto control of the all-important Egyptian grain supply on which Rome so depends.

The stance of the Roman empire towards Palmyrene authority in Egypt and the east in general will be debated by historians: Aurelian's acceptance of Palmyrene rule in Egypt may be inferred from the Oxyrhynchus papyri, which are dated by the regnal years of the emperor and Vabalathus.

Although it is extremely unlikely that Aurelian would have accepted such power-sharing, he was unable to act due to crises in the west.

It will be suggested that his apparent condoning of Zenobia's actions may have been a ruse to give the queen a false sense of security to buy time to prepare for war.

In any case, it appears that Aurelian's apparent tolerance is to secure and ensure the continuation of the supply of Egyptian grain to Rome; as it is not recorded that the supply had been cut after the invasion, and the grain had reached Rome in 270 as usual.

An expedition simultaneous with Aurelian's expedition against the Palmyrenes had reached Egypt in May 272, and by early June, Alexandria is recaptured by the Romans, followed by the rest of Egypt by the third week of June.

Zenobia seems to have withdrawn the bulk of the Palmyrene army from Egypt to focus on Syria, which, if lost, would have meant the end of Palmyra.