Heresies tend to thrive on the periphery of a regime rather than in the halls of power. Early Christianity came to center itself around the city of Rome, but major challenges to orthodoxy, like the Gnosticism of Roman Egypt and Nestorianism of Assyria, developed along the Empire’s neglected fringes. Provinces farther away from the imperial capital were more likely to suffer from administrative neglect, and relationships with the Church grew more attenuated over time. In the twilight years of Rome—at the height of its decadence—it was the Arian heresy, with roots in Alexandria, that was championed by the Goths and Vandals as they overran the Western Empire.
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