The Fourth Seal of Revelation
Revelation 6:7-8
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
There is no debate about what the fourth rider represents, as his name is provided. Death, as the rider of the pale horse is called, rides across the earth using four different methods to kill. Close behind Death follows Hell, ready to ensnare those who are slain for an eternity of suffering.
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The phrase “the fourth part of the earth” over which Death was given power appears to have been slightly mistranslated by the King James Bible. The Latin Vulgate Bible, translated between 382 and 405 AD by Jerome,[i] uses a slightly different phrase. The Codex Amiatinus, the oldest surviving copy of the Vulgate, uses “super quatuor partes terræ,” which translates to “on the four parts of the earth” rather than “the fourth part.”[ii] This difference is not insignificant. If the correct translation were “the fourth part,” the implication is that only a quarter of the earth would be impacted by this seal. However, “the four parts of the earth” would be comparable to saying “the four corners of the earth” or its four directions, symbolizing the entire world.
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To find the correct fulfillment of the fourth seal, we must examine the historical record for a period following Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana in 212 AD, which could easily be defined as a time of widespread death in the Roman world—one with deaths caused by wars, starvation, disease, and even wild animals.
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After Pax Romana ended, civil wars and wars of succession raged from 193 AD through the end of the third century. The climax of this violent and turbulent period was the aforementioned Crisis of the Third Century, which lasted from the ascension of Maximinus Thrax following the assassination of Severus Alexander in 235 AD until shortly after the beginning of Diocletian’s reign in 284. This chaotic fifty-year period saw twenty legitimate emperors recognized by the Senate and numerous others who claimed the title. Civil wars between ambitious generals and their military factions severely depleted the financial and personnel resources of the empire, which further weakened Rome’s ability to defend itself.
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This disastrous period was not limited to civil wars within the empire’s borders. Rival kingdoms sensed Rome’s vulnerability and acted aggressively. Shapur I of the Sassanid Empire invaded Roman territory in Mesopotamia, defeating the imperial forces at the battles of Rhesaina and Misiche in 243 and 244 AD and gaining territory in the process. After an eight-year peace, Shapur earned another victory in 252 AD over the Romans at Barbalissus in Syria before losing at nearby Emesa the following year.
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In 256 AD, Shapur advanced on the Roman fortress of Dura-Europos and razed it to the ground. Emperor Valerian’s forces stopped the Sassanid army’s progress, but the stalemate was only temporary. Hostilities culminated at Edessa in 260 AD when Shapur captured Valerian—the first time a Roman emperor was taken alive in battle.
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The Sassanids were far from the sole opportunists to profit at Rome’s expense. The Goths raided the Roman provinces in Anatolia and the Balkans from the northwestern coast of the Black Sea in 238 AD. In 259 AD, another East Germanic tribe, the Alemanni, crossed the Alps and invaded the Italian peninsula from the north.
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Rome’s situation deteriorated into unprecedented chaos in 260 AD when its territory fractured into three independent regions. The southeasternmost provinces seceded and formed the Palmyrene Empire, which survived until its Roman reconquest in 273. All Roman lands to the north and west of Italy broke away to form the Gallic Empire, which Rome partially reconquered in 260 and completely subjugated after the Battle of Châlons in 274.[iii]
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The tripartite division of the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.
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Emboldened by the Roman infighting, the Heruli invaded the regions of Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace from the territory around the Sea of Azov in 267 AD. One year later, both the Alemanni and the Goths invaded the Italian peninsula again. Emperor Claudius II first defeated the Goths at the Battle of Naissus before routing the Alemanni at the Battle of Lake Benacus.
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During the Crisis of the Third Century, the issues caused by Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana had not abated. The emperor’s substantial increase in military salaries and expansion of both enlistment and benefits for soldiers placed an insurmountable strain on the empire’s finances which could not be overcome by simply increasing taxes further.
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At the dawn of Rome’s empire, the denarius was a silver coin weighing about 4.5 grams. By the 161-180 AD reign of Marcus Aurelius, the denarius was minted with only seventy-five percent silver. Shortly after he issued his Constitutio, Caracalla debased the currency further when he began minting a new coin called the antoninianus. This coin, colloquially known as a “double denarius,” had a face value of two denarii, but was struck with only fifty-two percent silver. When the Roman Empire fragmented in 260 AD, the denarius was a copper coin with a silver content of only five percent.[iv]
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This debasement of Roman currency caused hyperinflation throughout the empire, with prices ballooning an estimated one thousand percent. The inflationary environment required more salary increases to retain the soldiers’ loyalty as the value of the coins they were paid decreased. This required an increase in the amount of coinage in circulation, deepening the problem.
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Currency debasement magnified the food production shortage caused by the high taxes of the Constitutio Antoniniana. The cost of empire had increased while Rome was no longer plundering the riches of its enemies and its money had become nearly worthless. Scarcity quickly became pervasive, as farmers kept much of their limited crop yield for their families. The denarius was so severely devalued that many foreigners refused to accept it, which restricted trade and forced many Romans to resort to bartering amongst themselves to avoid starvation.[v]
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The third method of death in Revelation 6:8 is the Koine Greek word θανάτῳ, or thanáto. While the King James Bible translators’ word choice was “death,” other versions were more specific, choosing to render the word as either “pestilence,”[vi] “plague,”[vii] or “disease.”[viii] Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines thanáto as “the death of the body.”[ix] Whichever Bible translation you choose, the meaning of the third type of death is more accurately written as “disease” than merely “death.” In fact, Thayer’s also says that the original Greek word describing the color of the third horse, χλωρÏŒς, or chlorós, translates to “green” or “yellowish-pale”—colors which imply sickness.[x]
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Thirty-seven years after the Constitutio Antoniniana was enacted, a plague began to spread in Africa. Ancient sources place the probable beginning of the pandemic in Ethiopia, though the accuracy of this detail is uncertain due to the primitive understanding of contagions in antiquity. What is known is that the disease initially reached the Roman Empire in Egypt in 249 AD and moved northwest. Historians refer to this disease as the Plague of Cyprian, after the North African bishop who documented the contagion in detail.[xi]
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This outbreak ravaged various parts of the Roman Empire until as late as 270, twenty-one years after the first cases in Egypt. At its peak in 262, the Historia Augusta estimated that five thousand people died daily in Rome and the Greek cities in Achaea.[xii] The novel disease was catastrophic enough to make many people believe it was an apocalyptic sign from God. Christianity spread widely during the two decades of the Plague of Cyprian, as countless people searched for answers in religion during this period of such pervasive tragedies.[xiii] The already perilous agricultural shortage caused by oppressive taxation and currency debasement was intensified by a reduction in personnel to work the fields during the Plague of Cyprian, leading to further starvation throughout Europe.
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In his comments on the fourth and final cause of death in Revelation 6:8, the Biblical scholar Albert Barnes explained, “This, too, would be one of the consequences of war, famine, and pestilence. Lands would be depopulated, and wild beasts would be multiplied. Nothing more is necessary to make them formidable than a prevalence of these things; and nothing, in the early stages of society, or in countries ravaged by war, famine, and the pestilence, is more formidable. Homer, at the very beginning of his Iliad, presents us with a representation similar to this. Compare Ezekiel 14:21; ‘I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence.’”[xiv]
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Barnes was not alone in his assessment of the relationship between man and wild animals in antiquity. In Against the Heathen, written in 296 AD, the early Christian writer Arnobius described the hardships during his era. “Men complain, there are now sent us from the gods pestilence, droughts, wars, scarcities, locusts, hail, and other things noxious to man,” Arnobius wrote. “But was it not so in ancient times also? Were there not wars with wild beasts, and battles with lions, and destruction from venomous snakes, before our time?” Arnobius acknowledged that all four causes of death in Revelation 6:8 remained threats to the Roman citizenry in 296 AD, including wild beasts.[xv]
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In the ancient world, the range of the lion was far broader than it is today. Fourth-century writer Themistius documented his regret that Thessaly could no longer furnish lions for Roman beast shows, suggesting they had not gone extinct in the Balkan peninsula until his lifetime. Barbary lions were prevalent in Roman Africa throughout the life of the empire and survived there until the middle of the twentieth century.[xvi] In the medieval Middle East, the lion could be found as far as India in the east, Palestine and Turkey in the west, Arabia in the south,[xvii] and the Caucasus in the north.[xviii] In addition to lions, other carnivorous animals like wolves and bears inhabited Europe and could have also hunted Roman citizens.
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Each disaster that occurred during the third century—civil wars, limited crop yields, invasions, inflation, the Plague of Cyprian, and wild animals—intensified the severity of the others. These crises caused lasting damage to the Roman Empire, from which it would never fully recover.
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[i] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. Vulgate. September 22. Accessed October 22, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vulgate.
[ii] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Fourth Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 201-203. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
[iii] Hartmann, Udo. 2017. “The Third-Century ‘Crisis’.” In The Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles, First Edition 1047-1067.
[iv] Desjardins, Jeff. 2016. Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire. February 19. Accessed August 15, 2023. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/.
[v] Desjardins, Jeff. 2016. Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire. February 19. Accessed August 15, 2023. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/.
[vi] Rev. 6:8 (ESV), (LSV), (NRSV).
[vii] Rev. 6:8 (NIV), (NASB), (CSB).
[viii] Rev. 6:8 (GNT), (NLT), (CEV).
[ix] Thayer, Joseph Henry. 1889. “θάνατος.” In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, by Joseph Henry Thayer, 282-283. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: American Book Company.
[x] Thayer, Joseph Henry. 1889. “χλωρÏŒς.” In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, by Joseph Henry Thayer, 669. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: American Book Company.
[xi] Huebner, Sabine R. 2021. “The ‘Plague of Cyprian’: A Revised View of the Origin and Spread of a 3rd-c. CE Pandemic.” In Journal of Roman Archaeology 34, No. 1 151-174.
[xii] Magie, David. 1921. “The Two Galienii.” In Historia Augusta, Vol. III, by David Magie, 16-63. London: Heinemann.
[xiii] Harper, Kyle. 2017. Solving the Mystery of an Ancient Roman Plague. November 1. Accessed August 13, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/solving-the-mystery-of-an-ancient-roman-plague/543528/.
[xiv] Barnes, Albert. 1860. “Chapter VI.” In Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Book of Revelation, by Albert Barnes, 162-196. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[xv] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Fourth Seal.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. I, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 190-203. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.
[xvi] Douglas, Norman. 1927. Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology, 18. Florence: Tipografia Giuntina.
[xvii] Kinnear, N. B. 1886. “The Past and Present Distribution of the Lion in South Eastern Asia.” In The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. XXVII, by Bombay Natural History Society, 33-39. Bombay: The Times Press.
[xviii] Heptner, V. G., and A. A. Sludskii. 1992. Mammals of the Soviet Union, Vol. II, Part 2, translated by P.M. Rao, 83-95. New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co.
