After his death things improved. The harsh ungenerous Republic that he had typified passed into Imperial Rome, who, despite her moments of madness, brought happiness to the Mediterranean world for two hundred years. Alexandria had her share of this happiness. Her new problem—riots between Greeks and Jews—was solved at the expense of the latter; she gained fresh trade by the improved connections with India (Trajan A.D. 115, recut the Red Sea Canal); she was visited by a series of appreciative Emperors on their way to the antiquities of Upper Egypt.
In about A.D. 250 she, with the rest of the Empire, reentered trouble. The human race, as if not designed to enjoy happiness, had slipped into a mood of envy and discontent. Barbarians attacked the frontiers of the Empire, while within were revolts and mutinies. The difficulties of the Emperors were complicated by a religious problem. They had, for political reasons, been emphasising their own divinity—a divinity that Egypt herself had taught them: it seemed to them that it would be a binding force against savagery and schism. They therefore directed that everyone should worship them. Who could have expected a protest, and a protest from Alexandria?
RAMLEH (Nicopolis): p. 165. STATUE OF EMPEROR (Marcus Aurelius): Museum, Room 12. Imperial Coins: Museum, Room 2. CERTIFICATES TO ROMAN SOLDIERS: Museum, Room 6.
According to the tradition of the Egyptian Church, Christianity was introduced into Alexandria by St. Mark, who in A.D. 45 converted a Jewish shoemaker named Annianus, and who in 62 was martyred for protesting against the worship of Serapis. There is no means of checking this tradition; the origins of the movement were unfashionable and obscure, and the authorities took little notice of it until it disobeyed their regulations. Its doctrines were confounded partly with the Judaism from which they had sprung, partly with the other creeds of the city. A letter ascribed to the emperor Hadrian (in Alexandria 134) says “Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis,” showing how indistinct was the impression that the successors of St. Mark had made. The letter continues “As a race of men they are seditious, vain, and spiteful; as a body, wealthy and prosperous, of whom nobody lives in idleness. Some blow glass, some make paper, and others linen. Their one God is nothing peculiar; Christians, Jews, and all nations worship him. I wish this body of men was better behaved.”