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Updated: May 21, 2025
A large number, perhaps the majority, consisted of rough, simple, almost illiterate men, like Spyridion the shepherd, Potammon the hermit, Acesius the puritan, who held their faith earnestly and sincerely, but without conscious knowledge of the grounds on which they maintained it, incapable of arguing themselves, or of entering into the arguments of their opponents.
Ten years had passed since the still unrivalled assembly at Nicæa, and the veterans of the last great persecution must have been deeply moved at their meeting once again in this world. The stately ceremonial suited Maximus and Eusebius much better than the noisy scene at Tyre, and may for the moment have soothed the swelling indignation of Potammon and Paphnutius.
From Egypt came Alexander of Alexandria with his young deacon Athanasius, and the Coptic confessors Paphnutius and Potammon, each with an eye seared out, came from cities farther up the Nile. All these were resolute enemies of Arianism; its only Egyptian supporters were two bishops from the edge of the western desert. Syria was less unequally divided.
From Neocæsarea, a border fortress on the Euphrates, came its confessor bishop, Paul, who, like Paphnutius and Potammon, had suffered in the persecutions, but more recently under Licinius. His hands were paralyzed by the scorching of the muscles of all the fingers with red-hot iron.
One was Potammon, bishop of Heracleopolis, far up the Nile; the other, Paphnutius, bishop of the Upper Thebaid. Both are famous for the austerity of their lives. Potammon that is, "dedicated to Ammon" had himself visited the hermit Antony; Paphnutius that is, "dedicated to his God" had been brought up in a hermitage. Both, too, had suffered in the persecutions.
Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of persecution, and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing to an idol.
Athanasius was not accused of heresy, but, with more plausibility, of episcopal tyranny. His friends replied with reckless violence. Potammon aimed a bitter and unrighteous taunt at Eusebius of Cæsarea. 'You and I were once in prison for the faith. I lost an eye: how did you escape? Athanasius might perhaps have been crushed if his enemies had kept up a decent semblance of truth and fairness.
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