attendant, with the rod and are intertwined as of old in their fasces,' it was the custom for the Imperial Lieutenant, on appointment to his province, publicly to receive and assume the military sword, as well as cloak, outside the pomærium of Rome; as also on the termination of his office to lay the same down.2 More especially in Rome itself the Prætorian Prefect was on his appointment to office publicly invested with the sword by the Emperor in person. An anecdote told by Pliny, to the honour of his emperor Trajan, will be remembered by the classical scholar as a fit illustration of the custom3 and the scriptural reader will not forget

1 So Gibbon i. 103; "The Proconsuls of the Senate were attended by Lictors, the Lieutenants of the Emperor by soldiers."

2 So Dion Cassius, in a very important passage of his history, informs us most clearly; himself an eminent military commander, as well as historian, of the earlier half of the 3rd century, or times described in the second Seal. In his 53rd Book, giving an account of Augustus' arrangement about the provinces, both those which were to have avovñaтovs; Proconsuls, appointed by the Senate, and those which were to have avτispaτnyovs, or Proprætors, appointed by the Emperor, he speaks of the latter as την τε σρατιωτικήν σωλην φορεντας, και ξιφος, οἷς γε και στρατιωτας δικαιωσαι εξεστιν, έχοντας whereas the former were neither ξίφος παραζωννυμένους, nor στρατιωτική εσθητι χρωμενους adding, in explanation, Αλλα γαρ ουδενί, ούτε ανθυπατῷ, ούτε αντιστρατηγῳ, ούτε επιτροπῳ ξιφηφορείν δίδοται, ώ μη και στρατιώτην τινα αποκτείναι εξειναι νενόμισται' and further stating that these badges of the Imperial Lieutenant's office, τns apxns emionμa were only to be assumed by them, on appointment, outside of the Pomarium of Rome, and to be instantly laid down on the cessation of office.

The power of the sword, over soldiers as well as people, given to the imperial Lieutenants, appears to have been very much the same with that given to the Proconsuls in their several Provinces under the old Republic. Thus Niebuhr, on the settlement of the first Roman Province, Sicily, in his Lectures i. 140: "After the peace which terminated the first Punic war, Sicily was constituted as a Roman Province. This was a new system; and Sicily was the first country to which it was applied. A Province, in the Roman sense of the word, was a country in which a Roman general, either during the time of his Magistratus curulis, or (in case of his year of office having elapsed) during the time for which his imperium was prolonged, exercised over his soldiers, as well as over the inhabitants of the country, the same power as in times of war by virtue of the Lex de imperio." Pan. 67. On presenting the sword, as was customary, to the Prefect elect, ("cum insigne potestatis, uti mos erat, pugionem daret,") Trajan said, "Use it for me, if I shall reign well; if not, against me." And so Dion Cassius lxviii. 33, and Victor in his Life of Trajan.

On the passage from Pliny, Bernegger has the note following; which, in confirmation of what has been above stated, it may be well to append. "Præfecti prætorio, præter alia, insigne erat gladius, vel ensis, aut pugio (pos), quo donari atque accingi solebat à principe; quem nonnunquam et ipsi gerebant imperatores. Siquidem soli principes et præfecti prætorio Roma usum gladii habebant. Reliqui magistratus togati erant. Eo autem merum imperium, et jus vitæ ac necis civium, ipsis tribuebatur: cujus nota et signum gladius. Hinc gladium ponere est præfecturâ prætorii se abdicare: ut Tigellinus apud Plutarch, in Galba."-In which Note Bernegger seems to me to have overlooked the original and more proper power indicated by the sword-bearing, as Dion explains it, viz. the power of life and death over the soldiery; noting only that over

St. Paul's illustration of it, when he writes thus to the Romans, even like an eye-witness to eye-witnesses, of a magistracy and magistrate of high authority there, "He beareth not the sword in vain." I

2

Thus, on the whole, we can, I think, scarcely doubt but that St. John, like his brother Paul, would at once recognize the rider's sword-investiture in the vision as betokening specially either class of chief military commanders; alike the Prætorian Præfects at Rome, and the Imperial Lieutenants commanding the legions in the provinces and consequently understand theirs to be the chief agency, through which, in the second æra prefigured, the Roman sword of office, itself a small one, was to become, as it were, of exaggerated size and illegitimate use; and the inflamed body politic to appear ensanguined all over with the blood of civil carnage. Nor does there need any thing more to perfect our proof of the fulfilment of the vision, than to state that it was precisely these, the highest of the Roman military chiefs, to whom the wars and the bloodshed were almost altogether owing. The Prætorian Prefects made the initiative, in the murders of Commodus and Pertinax ;3 consequent on which was the Prætorians selling the empire to the highest bidder: the three chiefest of the Imperial Lieutenants in the provinces,-Severus, Niger, and Albinus,*—led in the civil wars following. After

the citizens, which came to be included also. The old jurisdiction of the Prætor in criminal cases of life and death was not indeed, I believe, ever formally abrogated; but it was gradually superseded by the superior dignity of the Imperial courts.

1 Rom. xiii. 4; 8 yap eikn τny μaxaιpav popei. In which passage we ought to mark the μαχαιρα, the same word for the sword as here,-the pope, and the transition from the plural, when speaking of apXovтes, governors, to the singular, in speaking of the sword-bearing magistrate in Rome. (Unless indeed the sword-bearing Emperor was himself intended.)-Under this sword, shortly after, St. Paul suffered martyrdom. It would seem that there were then two Prefects; appointed by Nero, pro illa vice, in place of Burrus. See Clement's Ep. c. 5, and Chevalier's note on it.-It was also a Prætorian Prefect under the first Severus that condemned the Christian Apollonius to death, of whom I have made mention, p. 26 suprà.

2 See the Note next but one preceding: and also Note 2 p. 144.

3 Lætus, the Prætorian Prefect, was, as we have seen, a joint conspirator with Marcia against Commodus: and he also fomented the discontent of the Guards against Pertinax, the result of which was that Emperor's massacre by them. Dion Cassius expressly states the prominent part acted by Lætus in both

cases.

* Their provinces were Pannonia, Syria, Britain ;-all Imperial provinces.

which, and in the wars and murders consequent on the first Severus' death, each took their share in the deeds of blood, the Prætorian Præfects much the most prominently so that indeed these latter have been marked out by Montesquieu, Denina, and others, as pre-eminently the revolutionists of the æra; and in respect of their deeds of blood, as well as of their power, like the Grand Visirs of Eastern misrule.'-The detail of their respective shares in the matter will be seen in a brief historic abstract below.2 Suffice it here to call attention, in conclusion, to Gibbon's very important notification on the subject, with reference to its bearing on the fate of the Roman Empire. Like the apocalyptic figuration he exhibits it as that wherein we may discern the primary era, and primary cause and symptom, of its decline. "The licentious fury of the Prætorian guards was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman Empire." 3

1 Montesquieu sur la Grandeur ch. 16 and 17; Denina Rivoluzioni d'Italia. Book iii. c. 3.-Denina dates from the increase of the power of the Prætorian Præfect by Commodus, A.D. 185. "Allora," he says, "la Præfectura Prætoriana comminciò à comprendere, come di propria ragion, tutta l'administrazione dell' impero, cosi civile che militare, come il gran Visirato appresso gli imperatori Ottomani." Gibbon dwells much on the increase of their power by Sulpicius Severus, who augmented their numbers from 16,000 to 50,000. Vol. i. p. 200.

2 Macrinus, the assassin and successor of Caracalla, was a Prætorian Prefect. (It is on this occasion that Gibbon writes, "The decisive weight of the Prætorian guards elevated the hope of their Prefects; who began to assert a legal claim to fill the vacancy of the Imperial throne." i. 224.) Again, Elagabalus (Macrinus' successor) was murdered in a sedition of the Prætorian bands; who were also afterwards the murderers of Maximus and Balbinus. Moreover their Prefect Philip, acting on the army generally, effected the conspiracy against the younger Gordian, in which that emperor perished.-On the other hand Maximin, the murderer of Alexander Severus, was one who held the first military command in a provincial army: and Decius, who revolted against Philip, was an Imperial Lieutenant; though as an extraordinary functionary, and on an extraordinary mission to the Mæsian army.

The Prætorians' subsequent history was this. Both in regard of number and powers, they were greatly reduced by Diocletian; and by Constantine the whole body suppressed, their camp destroyed, and their Prefects deprived of military authority, and confined to civil functions. So Aurelius Victor, referred to by Gibbon, ii. 161, 235.

i. 168-The subject is noted in much the same way by Schlegel in his Philosophy of History, ii. 34, as well as by Montesquieu and Denina already refered to.

CHAPTER III.

THE THIRD SEAL.

"AND when he had opened the third seal I beheld, and lo a black horse! and he that sat on him had in his hand a pair of balances: " (such is the rendering of guyos in the authorized English translation; and both from the associated notice of chænir in the hieroglyphic,1 and yet more from the Roman usage of symbols, it is, I doubt not, the correct one :) 2-" and I heard a voice in

1 So Vitringa.

2 The original word is guyos. This Woodhouse and others after him translate, from its other signification, a yoke: observing that it is always so used in the New Testament; and that elsewhere, where it is meant to signify a pair of balances, there is generally added some other word in the context to suggest that meaning as intended.

Now surely, as regards the latter remark, one might have thought that the accompaniment of the word chanix would have been precisely all that the Dean needed, to determine him in favour of the meaning of balances in the passage before us. As regards the former, if other words had been used in the New Testament in the sense of balances, to the exclusion of Cuyos, the argument would have had weight in proportion to the frequency of those instances. But the truth is there is no mention of balances in one single passage of the New Testament, unless it be in this. So that the value of the argument is just nothing.

As conclusions of no little importance have been built in part on the critical propriety of substituting the word yoke for balances in the translation of this clause, it may be useful to enter a little more fully into the Lexicographical question. There are five words in Greek that signify a balance, τρυτανη, ταλαντον, ςαθμιον, saluos, and guyos. Of these none being used, as before observed, in the New Testament, (except it be in this passage,) it becomes us next to inquire what is their use in the Septuagint. And the answer is that 7pUTavn is never used at all in it; that Taλavтov and salμov, though used, are only used in the sense of a weight (the latter answering to the Hebrew a stone); that the use of saluos also is confined all but constantly to the same sense of a weight, being the usual rendering of the Hebrew, and having the meaning of a balance once only, viz. in Isaiah xl. 12, where a second word, beside the usual one, was needed in that sense. The usual, I may say the constant, word in the Septuagint for balance is guyos; being so used some nine or ten times in it :-among others in the above-noted passage from Isaiah, τις εςησε τα ορη σαθμῳ, και τας ναπας ζυγῷ; in Prov. xi. 1, Ζυγοι δόλιοι, σαθμιον δικαιον ; in Ezek. xlv. 10, Ζυγος δίκαιος, μετρον δικαιον, χοινιξ δικαια : where, as here, the χοινιξ is in associatlon with it ; also in Levit. xix. 36, Hos. xii. 7, &c. &c. Hence, if the idea of balances was intended to be expressed in the passage before us, ¿uyos would be of all others the fittest word.

Thus a balance being a version of Cuyos as legitimate and authorized, in the sacred as well as the classic writings, as that of a yoke, the associated notice of a measure in the hieroglyphic, just as in that example above quoted from Ezekiel, might of itself induce a preference of the former rendering. Besides which (and I would beg the reader's attention to the fact) whereas in Roman usage,-to which usage, as we have already seen, the apocalyptic symbols are strikingly conformed, the balance-holding was, as will be afterwards shewn, a very common symbol, that of a yoke-holding was, if I am not mistaken, altogether un

the midst of the living creatures, saying, A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choenixes of barley for a denarius; and see that thou hurt not (or, rather, that thou wrong not in regard to)' the oil and the wine."

The intent of the symbols of this seal is less obvious than of the others, and will require some considerable thought and attention.

A famine of the chief articles of food (whether literally taken or metaphorically) has been supposed by nearly all interpreters to be denoted by them: their opinion being grounded on these two suppositions: 1. that the choenix spoken of was the Attic choenix of three or rather four cotylæ, i. e. of a pint and a half or two pints; 2. that the notice from the midst of the living creatures respecting the denarius, was a notification of the then average market-price of the choenix of wheat.

Now it is observable that the words uttered respecting the price of wheat, were words specifically addressed to the rider, not to any other auditory; and this in the way of precept and caution, not of general notification.2 An important indication this to which I shall presently again have to call the reader's attention. Moreover it it is to be observed that though the Attic choenix seems to have been the best known and most extensively used

known. Nor is it so used in Scripture. In Jeremiah xxvii and xxviii we have an example indeed of the prophet bearing upon his neck bonds and yokes, in type, passively, of the approaching oppression and captivity of Judah; but no where do we find the holding of a yoke in the hand as a type, actively, of oppressing.

1 τον οινον μη αδικησης. Αδικεω in the first aorist, as well as in other tenses, is often used absolutely for being unjust, or doing injustice. So Rev. xxii. 11; d αδικών αδικησάτω ετι, "He that is unjust let him be unjust still;" a passage in which no accusative follows the verb. In cases where an accusative follows the verb used in this sense, the accusative will often be of the thing in regard of which injustice has been done. So 2 Sam. xix. 19, un uvnoens dσa ndiknoev å Tais: and in the Phænissæ, Adikel Ta TWV Dewv. Compare Euripides Electra, 190: εμε δε πατρος ηδικεις λεχη : and Xenophon Cyropædia iv. 5 ; Την δε αγοραν την ουσαν εν τῳ σρατοπεδῳ κηρυξάτω μεν ηδη, εφη, μη αδικειν μηδενα, πωλείν δε τους καπηλους ὁ τι έχει εκαςος πρασιμον. In Philemon 18 the verb is followed by a double accusative, of the person and thing; & Ti σe ndunσe' “if he hath wronged thee in any thing."

Mede, I find, takes the phrase as I do, Ne sis injustus; also Junius, as Brightman says, and Arthur Dent.

2 It is evidently to the same individual that the first clause of the words from the midst of the living creatures was addressed,—I mean that respecting the wheat and barley, as the second, which had respect to the oil and wine; i. e. to the rider. And as the latter was in its character cautionary,-" See that thou wrong not in regard to the oil and the wine,"-so, we may naturally infer, the former.