appeared shortly (Tac. Hist. ii, 8-9) after Nero’s death; another (Terentius Maximus) came forward in 80 Α.Ρ., who bore a physical resemblance to the emperor, and was only surrendered by the Parthians to Domitian after some years of power ; a third emerged in 88 Α.Ρ. (Suet. Nero, 57). This created disaffection, especially in the Eastern provinces (Tacit. Hist. 1. 2: “ mota prope etiam Partho- rium arma falsi Neronis ludibrio”’), where revolutionary hopes and dislike of the existing régime were only too easily excited. Even under Trajan, Nero was believed by some to be still alive somewhere (Dio Chrysost. Ovat., xxi.), but by that time the illusion had been broken for most people, or rather it had been transmuted into the shuddering belief that Nero would return from the under-world. The political expectation thus became semi-supernatural or transcend- ental.! In certain Jewish and early Christian circles towards the close of the first century, particularly throughout Asia Minor, Nero-redivi- vus became fused with the other weird figures of Beliar and the anti- christ. To some of the Romans Domitian was another Nero. Το the Christians who shared John’s view, Nero was to come again in an- other form. The Apocalypse passes over the Beliar-myth of a Satanic accuser who thwarts and seduces God’s people (cf. Introd. to 2 Thessalonians); incidentally, it assigns this function to the dragon, Satan (xii. 10). But it follows one cycle of Jewish tradition in associating antichrist with some political or foreign persecuting power (Antiochus Epiphanes, Daniel; Pompey=dragon, Ps. Sol. ii. 29; head of Roman Empire, Afoc. Bar., xxxix.-xl.). The dragon Satan delegates his authority on earth to the Roman empire and emperor. The supreme enemy on earth, however, is the weird, spectral figure of this revenant Nero, who reappears in history (A. C. pp. 184 f.; cf. for contemporary Jewish evidence, Dr. L. Ginzberg in E. F., 1. 625-627 on Nero as the devil-antichrist), Thus it is that the saga is doubled, not in xiii. 1-10, 11-18, so much as in xvii., and this doubling seems to be anticipated even in xi. 7 (compare xiii. 1f.). The seduction of the Jews by antichrist proper (xi. 7 f.) is subordinated by the prophet John to the seduction of the pagan nations (xiii.-xiv., xvi.-xvili.), the latter being regarded as a far more ominous sign of the end. On the other hand, Nero-redivivus is employed, quite in Old Testament fashion, as the unconscious in- strument of the divine vengeance upon Rome-Babylon; then he falls as a just victim to God’s wrath.
1 On the apocalypse as a means of transition from political to transcendental messianism, see Dr. Shailer Mathews’ scholarly pages (pp. 25 f.) in his Messianic Hope in the New Testament (1906).