By the time Origen was writing there was a small body of apologies written in Greek by such figures as Justin in Rome, Athenagoras in Athens, Melito in Sardis in Asia Minor, Theophilus in Antioch, and Clement, Origen’s predecessor, in Alexandria, and in Latin by Tertullian of Carthage. But Origen towers over all earlier writers, not only for the brilliance of his arguments, but also for the strategy he adopted in responding to critics of Christianity.
