made up of pagans, Jews, heretics and inconsistent Christians, every vice which characterised an age of disintegration was intensified. The Antiochenes’ love for the foulness of the theatre and the barbarities of the racecourse is a sufficient index of their character. Such were the people to whom Chrysostom preached either in the ‘Great Church’ or in the ‘Church of the Apostles’ at least twice a week1, sometimes on several successive days; such the people who came in crowds to listen open-mouthed