From this point Athanasius was driven as a fugitive over the whole world, and no place remained safe for him to hide in. Tribunes, prefects, counts, and the army itself were set in motion by imperial edicts to search him out. Rewards were offered to informers, if anyone should bring him in alive—or if that could not be done, at least the head of Athanasius. Thus with all the might of the empire men strove in vain against him whom God was aiding. Meanwhile it is reported that for six continuous years he lay hidden in the pit of a waterless cistern, so that he never saw the sun.
But when, through a maidservant—the only one privy to the duty of the masters who had provided him a hiding place—it seemed that he had been betrayed and pointed out, as though admonished by the Spirit of God he removed to another place on the very night on which men were coming with informers to seize him, after six years. Thus those who had come were thwarted, and as the masters had taken to flight, they exacted punishment from the maidservant as from a false informer.