From there it spread to other places, where local churches sprang up, led by their bishop, and priests (elders) and deacons. As time passed, the churches in smaller towns would look to those in the big cities for leadership, and by the fourth century there were five leading churches: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These five are known to church historians as the "pentarchy", and their bishops were known as "patriarchs". In addition, the bishops of Alexandria and Rome had the title "pope".
This is a very simplified description of a process that took several centuries, and varied in different places, but it shaped the Orthodox understanding of the Church.
For the first three centuries most Christians lived in the Roman Empire, and were often persecuted by the imperial government. In the third century persecuted Christians fled as refugees to the deserts of Egypt and Syria, and some of them stayed in the desert, even when the persecution eased off. They stayed to live a life of prayer, often as solitary hermits, though some formed communities. St Antony (c251-356) and St Pachomius (290-346) of Egypt organised these hermits and communities, and as a result of their efforts, Christian monasticism was born. You can find more information about monasticism and the monastic life by clicking on this link.
In the 5th century there was a serious schism in the Church. Some people in Egypt did not accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451), and for a while there were two rival factions in the Church, each seeking to get its own candidate elected as Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria. Eventually, in the 6th century, they split, and in Alexandria there is a Greek Orthodox Patriarch (Petros VII) and a Coptic Orthodox Patriarch (Shenouda III).
For the first 300 years of the Christian Church, the Church was often persecuted in the Roman Empire. In AD 313, however, the emperor Constantine established religious toleration, following a period of severe persecution under Diocletian. He was hailed as a liberator by the Christians, and is revered as a saint. From the end of the fourth century onwards, the emperors were all Christians, and Christianity became the most-favoured religion, and in the 5th century it became the only permitted religion in the Roman Empire. For Christians, 300 years of persecution was followed by 300 years of peace, but in the 7th century the African and most of the Asian provinces of the Roman empire were conquered by Muslim Arabs. As a result of this Christians in the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem found themselves under Muslim rule, and were treated as second-class citizens.
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