Deciphering the Clues of Revelation (5)
Understanding the significance of Nero's death, the civil wars that followed, and Vespasian's rise to power in the year of four emperors.
This is Part 5 of a 5-part series. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Part of the challenge of interpreting the Book of Revelation in light of its original first-century context is that, because of the failure of our modern educational system, few Bible readers today have even a basic grasp of ancient history. Therefore, if the Apocalypse is best interpreted as relating to events that were about to take place in John’s own day,1 then for most of us, the crucial interpretive keys have been lost.
What’s particularly fascinating, however, is to discover the apparent relationship between events related to the death of Nero and key passages in Revelation. Since Nero was the last blood relative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty,2 the Roman historian Suetonius candidly admits that “The race of the Caesars ended with Nero.”3 Though subsequent emperors continued to use the name “Caesar” moving forward, they did so not because any of them happened to be related to Julius Caesar but because his name had essentially become synonymous with emperorship itself.
After Nero’s suicide, therefore, “the city was in panic,” since it was unclear who should rule the world moving forward. When it became clear who had been “appointed by Providence to ruin the empire,” Tacitus informs us that the masses “openly deplored their fate” and complained that the world had been “turned upside down.”4 In the historian’s estimation, the Roman Empire was thrown into such chaos during Galba’s brief reign that it nearly resulted in “the end of the commonwealth of Rome.”5 When Otho succeeded Galba several months later, even he wondered out loud whether there was a province in the empire that had not been “polluted with massacre?”6
Though this was seen as an empire-wide crisis, reports of Nero’s death and the chaos that followed were no doubt received as news to be celebrated throughout Judea. Because “the whole of Rome was intent upon the civil war,” Tacitus declares that “foreign affairs were neglected.”7 In what was left of Judea, this likely would have been seen as a kind of divine intervention since it resulted in the temporary suspension of the Roman assault on the nation’s capital. According to Josephus, as Vespasian was “getting ready with all his army to march directly to Jerusalem, he was informed that Nero was dead.”8 Since he was “in suspense about the public affairs, the Roman empire being then in a fluctuating condition,” Vespasian delayed his assault on Jerusalem, thinking that “to make any attack upon foreigners was now unreasonable, on the account of the fear they had for their own country.”9
In the following months, however, things quickly fell into disorder in Jerusalem, and “the affairs of the Jews became very tumultuous [as they] fell into dissensions amongst themselves.”10 After the short-lived reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, Vespasian was eventually declared emperor, which was seen by many throughout the Roman empire as an “unexpected deliverance of the public affairs of the Romans from ruin.”11 For the residents of Judea, however, Vespasian’s rise to power was seen as the worst possible news since he was the general who had already devastated so much of the country. Just as they feared, when Vespasian was first declared emperor, his thoughts immediately “turned…to what remained unsubdued in Judea.”12
The Resurrection of Rome
Because the civil wars of 69 AD temporarily put the war in Judea on hold, Victorinus, in his Commentary on the Apocalypse (written around 260 AD), concluded that Nero’s death was the key to understanding Rev 13:3. When John wrote that “One of its heads was mortally wounded, but its mortal wound was healed,” this church father argued that, “He is referring here to Nero, for it is a well-known fact that when the army sent by the Senate pursued him, he cut his own throat.” This suggestion by Victorinus aligns particularly well with the propaganda found on Roman coins minted during Vespasian’s first year as emperor (69-70 AD). As shown below, the words “Roma Resurgens” appear on the reverse above the image of Vespasian, who is depicted helping the goddess of Rome to her feet.13 When translated into English, the phrase can be understood to mean “Rome Rising Again.”
