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. …
[During John Chrysostom's life], every four years more than a thousand athletes would flood into the city for the staging of the Olympic Games. 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 387 (On the statues hom. 17; cf. On Col. hom. 7). 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. 17" John highlights, along with the status of the city and the abundance of the available merchandise, its many fine buildings, the facility with which its inhabitants frequent the streets and market-places until late in the evening, the colonnaded streets and the charms of Daphne with its sacred grove of cypresses and its numerous springs. 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. Many of Antioch's wealthier inhabitants had villas in the suburb and repaired there for the summer.
Beyond being wealthy, enjoying high status and offering a sophisticated and enviable lifestyle, Antioch was also a city of religious pluralism. Christians, 'pagans' and Jews mingled in relatively large numbers, while Christianity itself offered a number of alternative versions and factions. One such group, encountered at Constantinople also, is labelled by John as the Anomoeans - that is, those who claim that Christ is 'not like' the Father, in opposition to the Nicene assertion that Christ is homoousios, namely 'of one substance' with, the Father. Aetius, one of the two leaders of the movement, was a native of Antioch.
With regard to the Jewish community at Antioch itself, the adherents of Judaism and their practices and cultic sites were prominent and unavoidable. Not only did the Jews appropriate the market-place every year at Yom Kippur, on which occasion they danced barefoot as part of their ritual, but there existed a synagogue within the city in the quarter known as Kerateion. A second synagogue was situated in Daphne, as too was the already mentioned cave of Matrona. The latter most probably contained the bones of the Maccabean martyrs (Vinson 1994: 180-184), which would have added to its reputation and widespread attraction. Again, the prominence and attractiveness of the Jewish festivals which occurred throughout autumn is a factor highlighted by John in Adv. Iudaeos or. 1.
Antioch was in addition a thoroughly Hellenised city. The statues of Tyche, the deified Trajan and various Graeco-Roman gods and godesses were distributed throughout its public spaces. In Daphne, although the burnt out shell of the once famous temple of Apollo ominously greeted the visitor as they approached from Antioch (De s. Babyla), the temple of Zeus and other long-significant pagan sites remained and continued to be frequented in association with the traditional festivals. The civic calendar was imbued with the festivals of Poseidon, Artemis, Calliope, Adonis, Demeter and Dionysis (Liebeschuetz 1972: 230-231). Every four years, when the Olympic athletes processed up to Daphne after thirty days of competition in Antioch, the traditional rituals continued to be perfomed by the alytarch and other officials, although it is possible that the focus of attention had by this time been transferred from Zeus to Heracles (Downey 1961: 440-441). Daphne was also the site at which there was held in summer a seven-day-long festival, possibly associated with Apollo (Theod., HE 3.10). If this is the same festival for which John expects that many of his listeners will depart on the day following the feast day of St Julian (In s. Julianum), then it offered as an attraction banquets, companies of male dancers and erotic songs with the kind of lyrics that had the potential to cause embarrassment.
Modified from section One of the Introduction to W. Mayer and P. Allen, John Chrysostom (The Early Church Fathers) London: Routledge, 2000.