This paper aims to demonstrate what actually happened (rather than what is often assumed to have happened) at the Council of Nicaea. That involves rejecting the view that what happened was that a well-established ‘orthodoxy’ was challenged by Arius, an obvious heretic in the eyes of almost everyone. Rather, what happened at the Council was that orthodoxy was at least in part established in a rejection of various types of rather popular subordinationism. It will also be shown that the widespread belief that Athanasius played a major role at the Council (rather than after it) is mistaken and that the chief conciliar ‘players’ were Ossius, Alexander, Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and the Emperor Constantine himself. In the course of this demonstration, the ambiguity of the word ‘homoousios’ will be an important theme.