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The Nero Redivivus legend was a belief popular during the last part of the 1st century that the Roman emperor Nero would return after his death in 68 AD. The legend was a common belief as late as the 5th century. [1] The belief was either the result or cause of several imposters who posed as Nero leading rebellions.
At least three Nero impostors emerged leading rebellions. The first, who sang and played the cithara or lyre and whose face was similar to that of the dead emperor, appeared in 69 during the reign of Vitellius. [2] During the reign of Titus (c. 79–81) there was another impostor, who appeared in Asia and also sang to the accompaniment of the lyre and looked like Nero but he, too, was exposed. [3] Twenty years after Nero's death, during the reign of Domitian, there was a third pretender. Supported by the Parthians, who hardly could be persuaded to give him up, [4] the matter almost came to war. [5]
Several variations of the legend exist, playing on both hope and fear of Nero's return. The earliest written version of this legend is found in the Sibylline Oracles. [6] It claims that Nero did not really die but fled to Parthia, where he would amass a large army and would return to Rome to destroy it. [7] Dio Chrysostom, a Greek philosopher and historian, wrote "seeing that even now everybody wishes [Nero] were still alive. And the great majority do believe that he still is, although in a certain sense he has died not once but often along with those who had been firmly convinced that he was still alive." [8] Augustine of Hippo wrote that some believed "he now lives in concealment in the vigor of that same age which he had reached when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed in his own time and restored to his kingdom." [1] In later forms of the legend, among many early Christians, this legend shifted to a belief that Nero was the Antichrist. [1] Some Bible scholars see the description of the wounding and healing of the Beast in Revelation 13:3 and the mention of the eighth king who is also one of the earlier seven kings in Revelation 17:8–11 as allusions to the Nero Redivivus legend. [9]
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68.
Preterism is a Christian eschatological view or belief that interprets some or all prophecies of the Bible as events which have already been fulfilled in history. This school of thought interprets the Book of Daniel as referring to events that happened from the seventh century BC until the first century AD, while seeing the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, as well as Christ's predictions within the Olivet Discourse, as events that happened in the first century AD. Preterism holds that Ancient Israel finds its continuation or fulfillment in the Christian church at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Vespasian was Roman emperor from 69 to 79. The last emperor to reign in the Year of the Four Emperors, he founded the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for 27 years. His fiscal reforms and consolidation of the empire brought political stability and a vast building program.
Titus Caesar Vespasianus was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, becoming the first Roman emperor to succeed his biological father.
Babylon the Great, commonly known as the Whore of Babylon, refers to both a symbolic female figure and a place of evil as mentioned in the Book of Revelation of the New Testament. Her full title is stated in Revelation 17:5 as "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth".
Dio Chrysostom, Dio of Prusa or Cocceianus Dio, was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. Eighty of his Discourses are extant, as well as a few letters, a mock essay Encomium on Hair, and a few other fragments. His sobriquet Chrysostom comes from the Greek chrysostomos, which literally means "golden-mouthed".
The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive, in an edition of the 6th or 7th century AD. They are not to be confused with the original Sibylline Books of the ancient Etruscans and Romans which were burned by order of the Roman general Flavius Stilicho in the 4th century AD. Instead, the text is an "odd pastiche" of Hellenistic and Roman mythology interspersed with Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian legend.
The Tiburtine Sibyl or Albunea was a Roman sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur.
The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameter verses, that, according to tradition, were purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and consulted at momentous crises through the history of the Roman Republic and the Empire.
Constantinian shift is used by some theologians and historians of antiquity to describe the political and theological changes that took place during the 4th-century under the leadership of Emperor Constantine the Great. Rodney Clapp claims that the shift or change started in the year 200. The term was popularized by the Mennonite theologian John H. Yoder. He claims that the change was not just freedom from persecution but an alliance between the State and the Church that led to a kind of Caesaropapism. The claim that there ever was a Constantinian shift has been disputed; Peter Leithart argues that there was a "brief, ambiguous 'Constantinian moment' in the fourth century", but that there was "no permanent, epochal 'Constantinian shift'".
Saint Victorinus of Pettau was an Early Christian ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis or Poetovionensis. Victorinus composed commentaries on various texts within the Christians' Holy Scriptures.
Futurism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets portions of the Book of Revelation, the Book of Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel as future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.
The man of sin or man of lawlessness,, man of rebellion, man of insurrection, or man of apostasy is a figure referred to in the Christian Bible in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. He is usually equated with the Antichrist in Christian eschatology.
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus and his reign have featured in music, literature, the arts, and in business.
The number of the beast is associated with the Beast of Revelation in chapter 13, verse 18 of the Book of Revelation. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of the Bible, the number of the beast is six hundred sixty-six or χξϛ. Papyrus 115, as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the number of the beast as χιϛ or χιϲ, transliterable in Arabic numerals as 616, not 666; critical editions of the Greek text, such as the Novum Testamentum Graece, note χιϛ/616 as a variant.
The Beast may refer to one of three beasts described in the Book of Revelation. Revelation 12 describes a series of wars. First, the dragon opposes "a woman clothed with the sun," then her male child, then Michael and his angels in heaven, then again the woman, and, lastly, the dragon goes away to make war against her other children. In each of the wars, the dragon is defeated. Revelation 13 begins with the dragon standing on the seashore, apparently waiting for reinforcements. From that vantage point, he is joined by two helpers; the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth.
After the emperor Nero committed suicide near the villa of his freedman Phaon in June of 68 AD, various Nero impostors appeared between the autumn of 69 AD and the reign of the emperor Domitian. Most scholars set the number of Nero impostors to two or three, although St. Augustine wrote of the popularity of the belief that Nero would return in his day, known as the Nero Redivivus legend. In addition to the three documented Pseudo-Neros, Suetonius refers to imperial edicts forged in the dead Nero's name that encouraged his followers and promised his imminent return to avenge himself on his enemies.
In Christian eschatology, Antichrist refers to a kind of person prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and falsely substitute themselves as a savior in Christ's place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist is found four times in the New Testament, solely in the First and Second Epistle of John. Antichrist is announced as one "who denies the Father and the Son."
Eclogue 4, also known as the Fourth Eclogue, is the name of a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. Part of his first major work, the Eclogues, the piece was written around 40 BC, during a time of brief stability following the Treaty of Brundisium; it was later published in and around the years 39–38 BC. The work describes the birth of a boy, a supposed savior, who once of age will become divine and eventually rule over the world. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, a desire emerged to view Virgil as a virtuous pagan, and as such the early Christian theologian Lactantius, and St. Augustine—to varying degrees—reinterpreted the poem to be about the birth of Jesus Christ.
Helius was a prominent freedman in the time of ancient Roman Emperor Nero. He and Patrobius exercised great and pernicious power and influence under Nero. Helius was the de facto ruler of Rome in the absence of Nero.