The shadow of the Roman Empire broods over the whole of the Apocalypse. Not merely are the Empire and

the Emperors and the Imperial city introduced explicitly and by more or less clear descriptions among the

figures that bulk most largely in t he Visions: an even more important, though less apparent, feature of the

book is that many incidental expressions would be taken by the Asian readers as referring to the Empire.

Their minds were filled with the greatness, the majesty, the all-powerful and irresistible character of the

Roman rule; and, with this thought in their minds, they inevitably interpreted every allusion to worldly

dignity and might as referring to Rome, unless it were at the outset indicated by some marked feature as not

Roman. One s uch exception is the Horseman of 6:1, who rides forth accompanied by Bloodshed, Scarcity

and Death: he is marked by the bow that he carries as the Parthian terror (chapter 6, Figs. 1, 3), which always

loomed on the eastern horizon as a possible source of invasion with its concomitant trials.

Those incidental allusions can be brought out only by a detailed study and scrutiny of the Apocalypse,

sentence by sentence. But it will facilitate the understanding of the Seven Letters to notice here briefly the

chie f figures under which the power of Rome appears in the Apocalypse. Some of these are quite correctly

explained by most modern commentators; but one at least is still rather obscure. Almost every interpreter

rightly explains the Dragon of 12:3ff, the Beast of 13:1ff, and the Woman of 17:3ff; but the monster in 13:18ff

is not quite properly explained, and this is the one that most intimately concerns the purpose of the present

The Dragon of 12:1, the supreme power of evil, acts through the force of the Empire, when he waited to

devour the child of the Woman and persecuted the Woman and proceeded to make war on the rest of her

seed; and his heads and his horns are the Imperial instruments by whom he carries on war and persecution.

The Beast of 13:1, with his ten diademed horns and the blasphemous names on his seven heads, is the

Imperial government with its diademed Emperors and its temples dedicated to human beings blasphemously

styled by Divine names.

The Woman of 17:1, sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads and ten horns and names of

blasphemy, decked in splendour and lapped in luxury and drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood

of the martyrs, is the Imperial city, which attracted to her allurements and her pomp the kings of the nations,

the rich and distinguished men from all parts of the civilised world. The term "kings" was commonly used in

the social speech of that period to indicate the wealthy and luxurious. The kings of the client-states in Asia

Minor and Syria, also, visit ed Rome from time to time. Epiphanes of Cilicia Tracheia was there in AD 69, and

took part in the Civil War on the side of Otho.

To Rome go the saints and the martyrs to be tormented, that the woman and her guests may be amused on

festivals and State occasions. She sits upon the Imperial monster, the beast with its heads and its horns and

its blasphemous names and its purple or scarlet hue (for the ancient names of colours pass into one another

with little distinction), because Rome had been raised higher than ever before by the Imperial government.

Yet the same Beast and the ten horns, by which she is exalted so high, shall hate her, and shall make her

desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire: for the Emperors were no true

friends to Rome, they feared it, and therefore hated it, curtailed its liberties, deprived it of all its power,

murdered its citizens and all its leading men, wished (like Caligula) that the whole Roman People had one

single neck, and (like Nero) b urned the city to the ground.

In a more veiled, and yet a clearly marked way the Province Asia appears as a figure in the Vision. It must be

understood, however, what "the Province" was in the Roman system and the popular conception. The

Province was not a tract of land subjected to Rome: as a definite tract of the earth "Asia" originally had no

existence except in the sense of the whole vast continent, which is still known under that name. A