Vol. I., pp. 428, 439,
The Pergamian with all its evils merging into the worse Thyatiran degree of apostasy. Christians so-called, as intensely nominal and worldly as sectarians of the nineteenth century. The prophetess Jezebel, and “the Satan,” their representatives in the third century—Apoc. ii. 20, 24.
Act III.—Seal-Period Third
Apoc. vi. 5, 6.
The Greco-Latin horse, black with lamentation, mourning and woe.
A. D. 212.
“And when he opened the third seal, I heard from the third living one, saying, ‘Come and see.’ And I saw, and behold a Black Horse, and one sitting upon him holding a Balance in his hand. 6. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living ones, saying, ‘A choinix of wheat a denarius; and three choinices of barley a denarius; but the oil and the wine thou mayest not act unjustly by.’”
p. 1681.—The Spirit not yet Withdrawn
Such is the expressive hieroglyphic by which the Spirit “signified” to “his servants” the nature of the situation which should succeed the period in which they would “slay one another,” and “a great machaira” would appear to aggravate the strife. The Lamb also opens this third seal. It is an opening, not to give exit to blessedness upon Roman society; for that is not the nature of a seal; but, to loose those evils upon the world, which would be calamitous to pagan, Jew, and Jezebel-professors of christianity, in all the empire. Though the evils would be general, “the Brethren,” or as many as had not the Jezebel doctrine, would, doubtless, not suffer so severely as others; for in the time of the first four seals, it was certainly a ministration of Spirit in which retribution came upon ecclesias “according to their works.” It was, I say, a ministration of Spirit, though not so amply manifested as when Paul wrote 1 Cor. xii. xiii. and xiv. The presence of the Four Living Ones, and the emanation of voices from them, as a part of the symbolization, proves this. When the fifth seal is opened, there is no invitation from a Living One to “come and see.” Yet the Spirit still lingered among the Lightstands, as may be inferred from the saying, “it was said unto them.”
The third Living One is the symbol of the ecclesia of the Deity in its Pergamo-Thyatiran declension. Its face was that of a man, and “full of eyes before and behind.” The reader will remember, that in the apocalypse these four living ones are related to two states—the state of suffering in the flesh; and the state of glory in the resurrection; and that they are only introduced in the prophetic drama where there is direct and potential ministration and manifestation of Spirit.
2.—The Black Horse
While it is true, that black is used in scripture in connection with scarcity and famine; I am satisfied that in this third seal famine is not indicated by the color of the horse. The reader will therefore be so good as to run his pen through the word “famine” in line 16 of our “Chronological Tableau of the Apostasy,” on page 428, Vol. I. The color indicates mourning, distress, intense depression of mind, from any kind of calamity that may befal. This appears from Job xxx. 26-31: “When I looked for good then evil came; and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My bowels boiled, and p. 169 rested not; the days of affliction anticipated me. Mourning (קֹדֵר kodair, darkening) I went without the sun.... My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep.” We need not multiply examples. This from Job shows, that the outside blackness is caused by the inner heat of burning, or intense, affliction. So also in the case before us, the severe oppression to which the community represented by the horse, is subjected by them who ride, or rule it, gives it hieroglyphically, a black skin. It is therefore to be viewed as under the operation of great evil in days of affliction, producing lamentation, mourning, and great distress. The horse represents the same community as the white of the first seal, and the fiery red one of the second—the peoples subject to pagan Rome; the different colors signifying their different condition in different periods.
3.—The Balance-Holder
The rider of the black horse may be known by his badge. John saw one sitting upon him “holding in his hand a balance.” The other riders of the first and second seals were identified by their badges—the bow and the great dagger; and so must this of the third by the balance, which is his. He represents a class of agents who, in relation to the Roman peoples, held the balance as their badge of office; the duties of which they performed so oppressively that they became a public evil, which like a noxious weed of most luxuriant growth, “darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade.”
Among the Greeks and Latins, as also among the moderns, a balance was the symbol of justice. The scripture also adopts it as such: “Let him weigh me,” says Job, “in the balance of justice”—xxxi. 6. In the hand of an official it indicated a judge, or an administrator of justice, or properly, of law; which, in the mouth of a judge, is often times far removed from justice. In this seal, it is the symbol of agents, whose office it was to execute the laws—the imperial functionaries of the empire; both the emperors and their subordinates. There are Roman coins in the cabinets of the collectors of coins and medals, illustrative of this. Mr. Elliott has given copies of some in his work. Among these is an imperial coin of Alexander Severus. On one side is the head of an emperor; and on the other, a diademed figure holding a balance in the right hand, p. 170 and a measure in the other, with the legend Æquitas Augusti, S. C. It is the symbol of the equity of the emperor by decree of the senate in his levies upon the people in kind; for in imperial times the supreme judicial and financial, as well as supreme military power centred in the emperors. For this reason, the balance of justice is ascribed to them as well as the machaira, which, says Paul, “he beareth not in vain, for he is the minister of the Deity, a revenger to execute wrath upon them that do evil”—Rom. xiii. 1-4. So Shakespeare combines them in the address of Henry V. to the Lord Chief Justice, as the monarch’s representative;
“Hold thou still the balance and the sword.”
4.—The Voice
John says, that when he saw this vision of the third seal, he heard “a voice in the midst of the Four Living Ones.” Voice is sometimes used in scripture in the sense of the signification, or the thing signified by a sign; as in Exod. iv. 8. Moses was to do certain signs before the people, to convince them that he was sent by Yahweh to deliver them. “If,” said he, “they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, they will believe the voice of the latter sign.” The voices, though not expressed in words, were, that he whose power turned his flesh leprous as snow, and restored it instantly; and changed the water of the Nile into blood, had sent Moses with power to deliver them. The sign was one thing, the voice of the sign another. Voice also is sometimes used for law; as “if thou shalt be obedient to his voice,” i. e. to his law. It is also used for proclamation; as in Ezra i. 1, “Cyrus caused קוֹל a voice to pass through all his kingdom;” that is, he made a proclamation through all his kingdom.
This voice that John heard was edicts, decrees, or laws, proclaimed by authority; and to be executed by the class of agents who exercised the power symbolized by the balance—the prætors at Rome, and the governors of the provinces. John heard the voice “in the midst of the four living ones.” These being emblematic of the brethren and their fellow-servants in all the Roman earth, an imperial decree, addressed to the agents symbolized by the rider holding the balance, would be, hieroglyphically speaking, “a voice in the midst of the four living ones.”
The decrees of this voice caused to pass by authority throughout the Roman world were “a chœnix of wheat a denarius; and three p. 171 chœnices of barley a denarius; but the oil and the wine thou mayest not act unjustly by.” This was the voice in sign. It was the sign-voice. We are not to expect to find an imperial decree in these words, because the thing signified will be different from the sign. But when we come to understand the character of the sign, if it be an evil sign, we may expect to find the administration of the balance-holder evil; and productive of such results as would blacken the community over which he rules; or cause to it lamentation, mourning, and woe: but, if the sign-voice were a good sign, it would have developed a different aspect. The horse would have been white; because the administration of the rider to whom the voice comes, would have been beneficent. The sign-voice implies an intensely oppressive administration of public affairs in all the third seal period, with a brief intermission only. This was indicated by the words, “the oil and the wine thou mayest not act unjustly by.” This implies that the edict-making power, or voice of the seal, would not in all its career be devoid of equity. The words μη αδικησης in the English version are rendered hurt thou not; but, I prefer the above translation as more in accordance with the etymology; for it is a compound of a negative, and δικη justice—a denial of justice, which is unjust. There was one of the riders, or ruling class, who was ordered not to act unjustly in relation to “the oil and the wine”—“THOU mayest not act unjustly by the oil and the wine.”
This injunction in regard to the oil and the wine, indicates that injustice would be done in the matter of the wheat and the barley. These were taxable articles from which a great revenue was derived for the use of the state. The decrees, or seal-voice of the senate, fixed the tariff, which the emperors and their subordinates carried into effect, justly or otherwise as it pleased them. The grain tax was levied in kind, or an equivalent was paid in money to the farmers of the revenue; who often sent the treasury at Rome what the law required, and retained for themselves the excess they had extorted from the taxpayers they oppressed. Thus, for example, if wheat were assessed by the senate at ten cents a bushel, they might extort thirty; send the treasury its due, and keep the twenty for their own use. According to this principle of robbery in Sicily, when the wheat-procurations were required from the islanders, the market price being not above one denarius the modius, Verres exacted three denarii from some of them as a money equivalent for each modius due. These extortionate proceedings of the farmers of the revenue were a cause of great public distress and p. 172 irritation. They were appointed for an equitable administration of affairs, and the collection of revenue in kind and money according to the voice of the Senate. But, being pagans without enlightened conscience, they acted under the blind impulse of their natural organization, and plundered the people as far as they could do so with impunity. “Those,” says Gibbon, “who had learning enough to read the orations of Cicero against Verres, might instruct themselves in all the various arts of oppression with regard to the weight, the price, the quality, and the carriage; and the avarice of an unlettered governor would supply the ignorance of precept or precedent.” The emperor Alexander Severus used to style the revenue-collectors, “the robbers of the provinces;” it was with them as Hosea says of Ephraim, “the balance of deceit is in his hands; he loveth to oppress.”
5.—The Choinix
The voice made proclamation of a denarius the chœnix of the wheat. There are various opinions concerning the χοινιξ, chœnix. The English version uses the word in its widest sense for measure of capacity, without defining the capacity. In Ezek. xlv. 10, the Septuagint translators are thought to have used the word in this generic sense, Ζυγος δικαιος, και μετρον δικαιον, και χοινιξ δικαια εστω ὑμιν του μετρου; this is translated to suit the idea, “let there be among you a just balance, and a just measure, and a just chœnix.” But this is not true to the original; it should be, “a just balance, and just measure, and let there be to you a just chœnix of the measure.” Here, the word does not stand for measure in general, but for a specific part of measure called chœnix. The general opinion of the learned is, that there were three chœnixes in use among the Greeks and Latins, of the value of three, four, and eight cotylœ, of three gills each, respectively. The Attic chœnix was the most common, and consisted of three cotylœ, or nine gills, or one quart and an eighth, and weighing about two pounds.
“A chœnix of wheat a denarius; and three chœnixes of barley a denarius.” A denarius was a silver coin, worth about fifteen cents, or eight pence sterling. It was a coin of the Roman empire; and thereby indicates in its symbolic use, that the seal-prophecy had relation to Greco-Latin affairs. In the English version it is “for a penny,” or denarius. In the original, δηναριον is the genitive of estimation or value; which the English version supposes to be the price of the wheat and barley, and therefore inserts the word “for.” p. 173 I have omitted this word, and in my translation reduced it as near to the original as possible. It may have been the symbolic price of the grain before its assessment, which was to be added; or it may have been the tax assessed independently of the market price. In either view of the case, as emblematic of the financial extortion and all its attendant evils by which the body politic was made black, it was an enormous oppression of the people.
Wheat at fifteen cents, or eight pence, the two pounds, would be four dollars and fifty cents, or about twenty shillings sterling a bushel, estimated at sixty pounds weight. I believe it takes about four bushels to make a barrel of flour, weighing one hundred and ninety-six pounds. Hence, the first cost of the flour would be eighteen dollars, say in Egypt, Roman Africa, or Sicily. To this must be added exporting and importing mercantile profits, and freight to Rome; so that by the time it reached the consumers, it would more than double our New York prices after three years of civil war, in which our social horse has become red. But this would not be all the trouble. To this high price must be added the tax on every bushel, collected by “the robbers of the provinces,” before the wheat was converted into flour; so that, when the whole should be summed up it would make “a sign” indicative of great distress among the people.
But, if a denarius is to be taken as the price of the grain, three times the quantity of barley could be purchased for that coin—“three chœnixes of barley a denarius”—twenty-seven gills, or three quarts and three gills. Hence, ten denarii, or about one hundred and fifty cents, would purchase a bushel of untaxed barley. This is high for barley; and indicates some calamitous condition of public affairs, causing the necessaries of life to range so high. It would affect all classes, rich and poor, bond and free; none would be exempt. When the tax was paid on the barley, what would be its price then?
But after all, a denarius may not have been the price of the chœnixes; but the tax assessed on each respectively—a denarius on a chœnix of wheat; and a denarius on three chœnixes of barley. This, I am inclined to believe, is the signification of the voice. If so, a bushel of wheat would be assessed at four dollars and fifty cents; and a bushel of barley at one dollar and fifty cents. This superadded to the market-price would make the cost of the necessaries of life enormous; and cause whole tracts of country to be thrown out of cultivation, and so prepare the way for that famine which came upon the people as one of the miseries of their p. 174 situation during the fourth seal—verse 8. The Emperor Trajan likened the undue enlargement of the taxation, with exacting procurators to collect it, to the morbid enlargement of the spleen, causing atrophy. And, after the failure of Alexander Severus, who responded to the Senate’s voice, “not to act unjustly by the oil and the wine,” in attempting to ameliorate existing fiscal evils, the history of the sequel illustrates fully the truth of Trajan’s comparison. A general internal wasting of the Roman state resulted from it. Speaking of this seal-period, Gibbon remarks, that the form of the state was still the same as under Hadrian, “but the animating health and vigor was fled; the industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression;” and again, “that the general famine, which (soon after Philip’s death) befel the empire, was the inevitable consequence of the rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce (the wheat and barley) of the present, and the hope of future harvests.” The agriculture of the provinces was insensibly ruined; and thus preparation was made for famine. “The injustice and avarice of the provincial governors,” says Mosheim, “together with the rapacity of the publicans, by whom the taxes of the country were farmed, were the source and occasion of innumerable grievances to the people;” and another writer says, “the rapacity of the imperial procurators were among the causes that finally wrought the downfal of the empire.”
An edict by Aurelian shows what extortion had effected previous to his reign. It speaks incidentally of the desolation in Italy; and urges agriculturists to plant vines on certain extensive fertile lands of Etruria, that had been deserted. With reference to a later period, Gibbon states that sixty years after the death of Constantine, and before a barbarian invader had been seen in Italy, an exemption from taxes was granted for 300,000 acres in the fertile province of Campania, that is, for one eighth of the whole province, as being by actual survey ascertained to be desert; and he ascribes it to the long impoverishing effects of fiscal oppressions; the chief era of which is the period of this third seal.
Thus, the rapine and oppression symbolized in the sign-voice “in the midst of the four living ones,” involved both the depopulation and desolation of regions in themselves fertile. People do not abandon to the wild beasts of the forest such tracts of country, unless they are oppressed by their rulers, or left without protection against the barbarians without. The sign-voice in its operation reduced the inhabitants of the earth to despair, and banished every patriotic sentiment from their minds. Illustrative of the personal and family distress induced by official robbery and oppression, p. 175 which Constantine sought to remedy, Gibbon says: “The horrid practice of exposing and murdering their newborn infants was become every day more frequent in the provinces, and especially in Italy. It was the effect of distress; and the distress was principally occasioned by the intolerable burden of taxes, and by the vexatious as well as cruel prosecutions of the officers of the revenue against their insolvent debtors. The less opulent or the less industrious . . instead of rejoicing in an increase of family, deemed it an act of paternal tenderness to release their children from the impending miseries of a life which they were themselves unable to support. The humanity of Constantine, moved perhaps by some recent and extraordinary instance of despair, engaged him to address an edict to all the cities of Italy, and afterwards of Africa, directing instant relief to those parents who should produce before the magistrates the children whom their own poverty would not allow them to educate.”
The voice, then, of this third seal hieroglyphic, was not the voice of famine, but of an intolerable assessment for state purposes of the abundance already in store, and to be hereafter produced. The era succeeding the seal-period in which they were slaying one another under the generalship of the great machaira, was one of abundance of wheat, barley, oil, and wine. This appears from the testimony of Dion who lived in those times. He says that Septimus Severus celebrated the secular games with extraordinary magnificence, and at his decease, left in the public granaries a provision of grain for seven years, at the rate of 75,000 modii, or pecks, or about 10,000 bushels a day. This was a part of the policy of S. Severus by a constant and liberal distribution of grain and provisions, to captivate the affections of the Roman people. But the policy of his son and successor, the fierce Caracalla, was “to secure the affections of the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of little moment.” The liberality and indulgence to the troops was tempered by the father with firmness, authority, and prudence; but the careless profusion of Caracalla’s reign, the inaugural period of the sign-voice of the third seal, was, as Gibbon says, “the inevitable ruin both of the army and of the empire. The excessive increase of their pay and donatives, exhausted the state to enrich the military order, whose modesty in peace, and service in war, are best secured by an honorable poverty.”
I take it, then, that the sign-voice may be expressed thus: “Let a chœnix of wheat be assessed a denarius; and three chœnixes of barley rated at the same; but the oil and the wine thou mayest not act so p. 176 unjustly by.” The signification of this, and the causes operating so grinding and blackening a despotism, will appear in the Lamb’s opening of the seal hereafter to be expounded in the following
6. Fulfilment of the Prophecy
The declining health and last illness of S. Severus, inflamed the wild ambition, and black and blackening passions of Caracalla. He attempted, more than once, to shorten Severus’ life, and with as little success, to excite a mutiny among the troops. Severus deliberated, and threatened, but was too fondly parental to punish his son and colleague in the throne; and this last, and only instance of mercy he was ever guilty of, was more fatal to the empire than a long series of cruelty. At length he expired at York in Britain, A. D. 211, leaving his two mutually detesting and impetuous sons, Caracalla and Geta, the imperial chiefs of the Roman world.
Proclaimed by the army and cheerfully acknowledged by the Senate, the people, and the provinces, the two brothers commenced their reign, with equal and independent power. But they were implacable foes, who neither desired nor could trust a reconciliation. It was visible that only one could reign, and that the other must fall; and each of them judging of his rival’s designs by his own, guarded his life with the most jealous vigilance from the repeated attacks of poison or the sword. They met only in public; and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers. Even on these occasions of ceremony, the dissimulation of courts could ill disguise the rancour of their hearts.
This latent civil war already distracted the whole government. To remedy this, it was proposed to divide the empire between them. But this scheme was defeated by the influence of their mother; and Caracalla got rid of Geta by an easier, though more sanguinary process. He artfully listened to his mother’s entreaties, and consented to meet his brother Geta in her apartment, on terms of peace and reconciliation. In the midst of their conversation, some centurions, who had contrived to secret themselves, rushed with drawn swords upon him, and laid him lifeless at his mother’s feet. The deed accomplished, Caracalla, rushed with horror on his countenance, to the prætorian camp, where he reported in broken and disordered words, his fortunate escape from attempted assassination. Geta had been the favorite of the soldiers, but complaint was useless, revenge dangerous, and they had still a reverence for the house of their “great machaira,” Severus. Their discontent p. 177 died away in idle murmurs, and Caracalla soon convinced them of the justice of his cause, by distributing to them in one lavish donation the accumulated treasures of his father’s reign. The real sentiments of the soldiers alone were of importance to his power or safety. Their declaration in his favor commanded the dutiful professions of the Senate, which obsequiously ratified as usual the success of villany the most lawless and abandoned.
The anguish of remorse henceforth seized upon the haunted imagination of Caracalla, which prompted him to remove from the world whatever could remind him of the fratricide, or recal the memory of Geta. Seeing the empress Julia, his mother, in a company of matrons, weeping over his untimely fate, he threatened them with instant death; the sentence was executed against Fadilla, the last remaining daughter of Marcus Antoninus, the imperial stoick, and sanguinary persecutor of the christians, under the first seal. It was computed, that under the vague appellation of the friends of Geta, above twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death. His guards and freedmen, the ministers of his serious business, and the companions of his looser hours, those who by his interest had been promoted to any commands in the army or provinces, with the long connected chain of their dependants, were included in the proscription; which endeavored to reach every one who had maintained the smallest correspondence with Geta, who lamented his death, or who even mentioned his name. The particular causes of calumny and suspicion were at length exhausted; and when a senator was accused of being a secret enemy of the government, Caracalla was satisfied with the general proof that he was a man of probity and virtue. From this well-grounded principle he frequently drew the most sanguinary inferences.
Such was the opening of the third seal, A. D. 212. Through the mad ferocity of one of the basest of mankind, retribution fell upon the heads of a people, who in their public pastimes clamored for inoffensive and non-resisting professors of the christian faith, to be brought out of prison to fight with savage beasts in the amphitheatres for their amusement. It is a remarkable fact, and deserves to be noted, that while this monster of wickedness was filling the families of pagans with lamentation, mourning, and woe, christians found in him friendship and protection. His father Severus, we have seen, was a cruel persecutor; but in this son of iniquity, arose an avenger, who rendered the heathen public BLACK with mourning and distress. The education of Caracalla is said to account for his favor towards them. He had known Proculus his father’s p. 178 physician, who was a christian, if not a christadelphian, and maintained in the palace to his death; and he had himself been nursed by a professed christian woman. This gave him an early predilection in favor of the christians, insomuch that when he was seven years old, observing one of his playfellows to be beaten because he followed the christian religion, he could not for some time after behold with patience either his own father, or the father of the boy.
The tyranny of Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, who resided almost constantly at Rome, or in the adjacent villas, fell principally upon the senatorial and equestrian orders. But Caracalla was the common enemy of his heathen subjects. He left the capital, and never returned to it, A.D. 213. The rest of his reign was spent in the several provinces of the empire, particularly those of the East, and every province was by turns made black by rapine and cruelty. The senators, compelled by fear to attend his capricious motions, were obliged to provide daily entertainments at an immense expense, which he abandoned with contempt to his guards; and to erect in every city, magnificent palaces and theatres, which he either disdained to visit, or ordered to be immediately thrown down. The most wealthy families were ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes. In the midst of peace, and upon the slightest provocation, he issued his commands at Alexandria in Egypt, the seat of paganized christianity, and where in his father’s reign so much blood of professing christians had been shed, for a general massacre. From a secure post in the temple of Serapis, he viewed and directed the slaughter of many thousands of citizens, as well as strangers, without distinguishing either the number or the crime of the sufferers; since, as he coolly informed the Senate, all the Alexandrians, those who had perished, and those who had escaped, were alike guilty—guilty of slaying the disciples of the Lamb; and therefore in opening the third seal, the Lamb retributively gave them blood to drink; and made the survivors, black with lamentation and distress; so fearful a thing is it to tamper with the truth, and to persecute its friends. Sooner or later, terrible vengeance overtakes the guilty, even by the wicked, who are the Deity’s sword-bearers against all such evil-doers.
As long as the vices of Caracalla were beneficial to the armies, he was secure from the danger of rebellion. A secret conspiracy, however, provoked by his own jealousy, caused his assassination, and the election of the chief conspirator as his successor. The p. 179 grateful soldiers forgot his vices, remembered only his liberality to them, and obliged the Senate to stultify itself and their superstition, by decreeing him a place among the gods. While living, Alexander the great was the only hero which this “god” deemed worthy of his admiration; but in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance to him, except in the murder of a great number of his own and of his father’s friends.
His extraordinary gifts to the army amounted annually to about two millions three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or about 11,750,000 dollars. The prodigality of Caracalla left behind it a long train of ruin and disorder. But the policy of the house of Severus was to increase the dangerous power of the army, and to obliterate the faint image of laws and liberty that was still impressed on the public mind. In pursuing this policy, Severus and his son undermined the foundations of the empire, and hastened its decline. An important edict of Antoninus Caracalla, which communicated to all the inhabitants of the empire the name and privilege of Roman citizens, greatly contributed to this. This edict made the limits of the city Rome, and the limits of the empire, the same. His unbounded liberality, however, flowed not from the sentiments of a generous mind; it was the sordid result of avarice. Inattention, or rather, averse to the welfare of his subjects, he found himself under the necessity of gratifying the insatiate avarice which he had excited in the army. The favor of citizenship was lost in the prodigality of Caracalla, and the reluctant provincials were compelled to assume the vain title, and the real obligations of Roman citizens. Nor was the rapacious Caracalla contented with such a measure of taxation, as had appeared sufficient to his predecessors. Instead of a twentieth, he exacted a tenth, a denariad of all legacies and inheritances; and during his reign he crushed alike every part of the empire under the weight of his iron sceptre. The new citizenship brought with it only an increase of burdens. The old as well as the new taxes were, at the same time, levied in the provinces. This was an intolerable grievance, which found only a temporary remission in the reign of Alexander Severus, who reduced the tributes to a thirtieth part of the sum exacted at the time of his accession. “In the course of this history,” says Gibbon, from whose work I have condensed as before, “we shall be too often summoned to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of grain, wine, oil, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital.” Caracalla supplied the necessities of these insatiable consumers without any regard to the p. 180 blackening effect produced upon the unhappy civilians, from whom the supplies were so oppressively obtained.
Caracalla was assassinated A. D. 217, after a reign of six years; and was succeeded by Macrinus, at whose instigation he was stabbed by a desperado, to whom he had refused the rank of centurion.
The reader will, perhaps, now be able to “see” the historical significance of the hieroglyphical “opening” and “voice” of this seal-period; and how, by the sanguinary and fiscal oppression of the rulers, the horse-people whom they rode, were made black with anguish and despair. The mad career of Caracalla, however, was only the opening sorrows of this third seal. He had sown tares which bore much evil fruit in the reigns of his successors. Macrinus, who had procured his assassination, was proclaimed by the prætorian guards, whom he had bribed by promises of unbounded liberality of indulgence, the head of the empire. Macrinus had now reached a height where it was difficult to stand with firmness, and impossible to fall without instant destruction. The mercenary and fickle loyalty of the soldiery, to whom, from his reforming tendencies, he soon became detestible, was his only support. But the necessity of financial reform was inevitable. The expenses of the government had to be reduced; and he might have succeeded if the numerous army assembled in the East by Caracalla, and which had made him emperor, had been immediately dispersed through the provinces. But they remained concentrated in the luxurious idleness of their quarters; where, from various causes, they soon became ripe for another revolution, by which they might recruit their exhausted treasure. To minds thus disposed, the occasion soon presented itself.
A new candidate for the honor and danger of the imperial balance-holder appeared in a pretended son of Caracalla, the high priest of the sun, at Emesa, in Syria. The soldiers accustomed to attend his ministrations, professed to recognize in his the features of Caracalla, whose memory they now adored. His emissaries distributed large sums among them with a lavish hand, which silenced every objection, and they declared the young pontiff the successor of Caracalla, by hereditary right, and their own good pleasure. Macrinus remained inactive at Antioch. At length he went forth to encounter the forces of the young pretender, But, he was defeated and fled, and a few days after slain by his own guards.
Having been elected by the military, A. D. 218, Elagabalus, the high priest of the sun and the first Asiatic emperor of the Romans, without consulting the Senate, beside the machaira, assumed the p. 181 balance in assuming the tribunitian and proconsular powers of the State. It was the prerogative of the Senate to confer these by its decree—by “a voice in the midst of the four living ones”—upon the imperial sword-bearers; a right which had hitherto been respected by the turbulent prætorians and the imperial puppets it was their pleasure to set up. “This new and injudicious violation of the constitution,” says Gibbon, “was probably dictated either by the ignorance of his Syrian courtiers or the fierce disdain of his military followers.”
The timid prudence of the obsequious Senate having acquiesced in what it could not remedy, Elagabalus was duly recognized both as bearer of the balance and the sword; and the most potent, grave, and reverend senators confessed with a sigh that, after having long experienced the stern tyranny of their own countrymen, Rome was at length humbled beneath the effeminate luxury of oriental despotism.
The installation of the Sun in Rome as chief over all the religions of the earth, was the great object of the zeal and vanity of Elagabalus. The Sun’s marriage with the Moon, and the display of superstitious gratitude to him for his elevation to the throne, were the only serious business of his reign. He called himself Elagabalus (though his real name was Bassianus) after the name of his god, an appellation dearer to him than all the titles of imperial greatness. He was an irrational voluptuary who abandoned himself to the grossest gratification of sense with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in the midst of his enjoyments. Whilst he lavished away the treasures of his people in the wildest extravagance, his own voice and that of his flatterers applauded a spirit and magnificence unknown to the tameness of his predecessors. To sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects, and to subvert every law of nature and decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. No more beastly a sensualist could have been found in Sodom than this high priest of the Sun. The public scenes displayed before the Roman people attest that the inexpressible infamy of his vices and follies surpassed that of any other age or country. The corrupt and opulent nobles of Rome gratified every vice that could be collected from the mighty conflux of nations and manners. Secure of impunity, careless of censure, they lived without restraint in the patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites. Elagabalus, in his turn, viewing every rank of his subjects with the same contemptuous indifference, asserted without control his sovereign privilege of lust and luxury.
p. 182 But the licentious soldiers who had raised this dissolute pretender to the throne of the balance and the sword, blushed at their ignominious choice, and turned with disgust from the monster to contemplate with pleasure the opening virtues of his cousin, Alexander Severus, whom he had been induced to invest with the title of Cæsar, that his own divine occupations might be no longer interrupted by the care of the earth. In the second rank, that amiable prince soon acquired the affections of the public, but not without arousing the tyrant’s jealousy, who determined, but without success, to take away the life of his rival. Failing in this, he degraded him from the rank and honors of Cæsar. This sentence was received in the Senate with silence, and in the camp of the prætorians with fury. These swore to protect Alexander, and to revenge the dishonored majesty of the throne. Elagabalus trembled, and begged for his life with tears; his prayer was granted, but the folly of the emperor brought on a new crisis, which was instantly fatal to his minions, his mother, and himself. Elagabalus was massacred by the infuriated prætorians, his mutilated corpse dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown into the Tiber. His memory was branded with eternal infamy by a decree of the Senate in the year of his death, A. D. 222, after a reign of three years, nine months, and four days.
With two such tribunes and proconsuls of the Roman Senate, or Balance-Holders, as Caracalla and Elagabalus, what but oppression and injustice could result? The chœnix of wheat and the chœnices of barley must have been heavily taxed to provide the means of perpetuating for ten years such wild and reckless extravagance as history attributes to their administration. Better to grow no wheat or barley, than, having produced it, to be subjected to the visits of the rapacious farmers of the revenue of such monsters. As we have remarked already, they did abandon the labors of the field, and left thousands of fertile acres waste and desert, by which, as one among other causes, preparation was made for the intense famine of the fourth seal. Could any people be white—happy and prosperous—under such riders? Could they be anything else than black—overshadowed by the blackness of darkness that might be felt in all parts of the body politic.
But, for the sake of the four living ones (and concerning them whom they represent, Paul says, “All things are for their sakes”—2 Cor. iv. 15) the Lamb, who presided over these seal-judgments, had provided temporary relief in the preparation of a balance-holder, who would “not act unjustly by the oil and the wine”—in other p. 183 words, whose rigid economy in every branch of the administration would seek to neutralize the injustice under which they had previously groaned. Alexander Severus, aged seventeen, and his mother, Mammæa, were the persons under whom this happy transformation of public affairs was brought about. On the death of Elagabalus, Alexander was raised to the throne by the prætorian guards. His amiable qualities and his danger had already endeared him to the people, and the eager liberality of the Senate decreed to him in one day—the voice in the midst of the four living ones—the various titles and powers of the imperial dignity, all summarily symbolized by the Balance and the Sword or Dagger of the State.
The regency of Mammæa was equally for the benefit of her son and the empire. With the approbation of the Senate, she chose sixteen of the wisest and best disposed senators as a perpetual council of State, before whom every public business of moment was debated and determined. The celebrated Ulpian was at their head, and the prudent firmness of this aristocracy restored order and authority to the government. Learning and the love of justice became the only recommendation for civil offices; valor and the love of discipline the only qualifications for military employments.
The uniform tenor of the emperor’s life left not a moment for vice or folly. Since the accession of Commodus, the Roman world had experienced, during a period of forty years, the successive and various vices of four tyrants. From the death of Elagabalus, it enjoyed an auspicious calm of thirteen years. The provinces, relieved from the oppressive taxes invented by Caracalla and his pretended son, flourished in peace and prosperity, under the administration of magistrates who were convinced by experience that to deserve the love of the subjects was their best and only method of obtaining the favor of their sovereign. The price of provisions and the interest on money were reduced by the care of Alexander, whose prudent liberality, without distressing the industrious, supplied the wants and amusements of the populace. The dignity, the freedom, the authority of the Senate were restored, and every well-intentioned senator might approach the person of the emperor without a fear and without a blush.
In the civil or balance-holding administration of Alexander Severus, wisdom was enforced by power, and the people, sensible of the public felicity, repaid their benefactor with their love and gratitude. There still remained a greater, a more necessary, but a more difficult enterprise—the reformation of the military order, whose interest and temper, confirmed by long impunity, rendered them impatient of the restraints of discipline and careless of the blessings of public p. 184 tranquillity. By the most gentle arts he labored to inspire the fierce multitude with a sense of duty; but his prudence was vain, his courage fatal, and the attempt toward a reformation served only to inflame the ills it was meant to cure.
The administration of Alexander Severus was an unavailing struggle to “act justly by the oil and the wine.” Mutinies of the troops perpetually broke out; his officers were murdered, his authority insulted, and his life at last sacrificed to the fierce discontent of the army. Every cause prepared, and every circumstance hastened a revolution which distracted the Roman empire with a long series of intestine calamities.
Alexander was one of the most moral heathens of the ancient world. His mother, Mammæa, who was cruelly jealous and avaricious, is called by Eusebius, a bishop of the Laodicean Apostasy, “a most godly and religious woman.” There are many such in our day—Gentiles, who are “godly and religious” people, but as ignorant of the first principles of the truth as Mammæa and her son. While residing at Antioch, they invited that celebrated son of Jezebel, Origen, to visit them. They could not have sent for one whose christianity would have been less offensive to imperial liberalism. Origen’s christianity and theirs were not very remote, save that Origen did not bow down to imaginary deities. Alexander admitted into his own chapel all the deities of his wide empire. Jesus Christ, Abraham, Orpbeus, Apollonius of Tyana, &c., were placed among them. It is almost certain that his mother had biased him in favor of philosophical christianity in which she believed. He had a desire to erect a temple to Christ, and to receive him regularly among the gods! The excellent qualities of this amiable and just ruler were, doubtless, attributable to the divine principles he so imperfectly understood. These caused him to treat professors of christianity with favorable regard. As an instance of this, it is related that the right of possessing a certain piece of ground was claimed by a tavern-keeper. It had been without owner or possessor for a long time, and the christians had occupied it as a place of worship. “It is fitter,” said Alexander, “that God should be served there, in any manner whatever, rather than it should be used for a tavern.” He frequently said, “Do as you would be done by.” He obliged a crier to repeat it when he punished any one, and was so fond of it that he caused it to be written in his palace and in the public buildings. When he was going to appoint balance-holders of provinces, he proposed their names in public, giving the people notice that if they had any crime to accuse p. 185 them of they should come forward and make it known. “It would be a shame,” said he, “not to do that with respect to governors, who are intrusted with men’s properties and lives, which is done by Jews and christians when they publish the names of those they mean to ordain priests.” His great desire was, not only that he himself should not, but also that the representative officials of the Roman majesty in all parts of the empire, should “not act unjustly by the oil and the wine.”
There was no persecution of the christadelphians, nor of philosophical christians, under the Balance-Holders of this seal—to wit, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus. The calamities they experienced befel them in common with the general public. Though primitive christianity was losing ground, the Archer with his bow was still “conquering” the popular superstition. An Alexander Severus, on the throne of the world, was evidence that philosophical christianity, the metaphysics of the Alexandrian School of “Divinity,” was supplanting the grosser superstition of the heathen. Though christianity in the purity of its faith and practice, was succumbing to the rising and now rapidly maturing apostasy, there were very many christadelphians or Brethren of Christ, who still contended earnestly for the faith, as “the living ones” of the third Cherub of the seal. These were the salt which preserved the whole professing community from putrefaction. Little, however, is known about them, seeing that the writers of their times were the philosophicals of that Satanic synagogue, of which, by way of derision, the pagans named Alexander the chief.