THE THIRD SEAL.
“AND when he opened the third seal I heard the third living creature say, Come I And I beheld, and lo a black horse I and he that sat on him had in his hand a pair of balances:1 and I heard as it were a voice in 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, I conceive, that thou wrong not in regard to]2 the oil and the wine.”
The intent of the figuration in this Seal is less obvious than in the two former, and will require some considerable thought and attention. Let us then first consider the usually received, but, as will appear, incorrect solution; next, secondly, apply ourselves to seek one more correct and satisfactory.
I. A famine of the chief articles of food (whether literally taken or metaphorically) has been supposed by nearly all interpreters to be denoted by it: their opinion being grounded on these two suppositions; first that the choenix spoken of was the common small Attic choenix, second, that the specified prices for such a measure of wheat and of barley was a famine price.
Now, as to the former of these suppositions, it is to be observed that, though the Attic choenix seems to have been the best known and most extensively used in the Roman empire, yet there were other choenixes used in it also: not to add that the word is sometimes a designative of measure in the general;3 which generic sense however, from the specifications of price given, is here of course clearly out of the question.
Already long ago Mr. Mede observed on this variety of size in the ancient choenixes though not, I think, quite correctly or satisfactorily: and from a copious Essay on the subject in the Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, 4 and notices about it in later Treatises on the Greek and Roman measures by, Professor Wurm, and others, I infer it to be the general opinion of the learned that there were three choenixes in use among the Greeks and Romans, of the value of 3, 4, and 8 cotylae, or half-pints, respectively: 5 the Attic, or most common, being, as some would have it, a measure of three cotylae; as others, with more reason I think, that of four. 6 Besides which values it is used in one passage by the Greek Septuagint Translators as a term answering to the tenth part of the Jewish chomer; that is, as equivalent to the much larger measure of an English bushel.
Out of which varying values the horse’s colour black, the constant emblem or distress and mourning seems at once to set aside all idea of the large Syrian choenix of the Septuagint being intended: seeing that wheat at a denarius, i. e. 8d. a bushel,. would indicate superabundant plenty; a state of things directly opposed to general mourning and distress.
Nor would the chroenix of 8 cotylae, or 4 quarts, at the Apocalyptic price of wheat, imply a famine such as to cause the faces of the sufferers to gather blackness. For it would be but about 80s. a quarter a price not very materially higher than what we learn from the elder Pliny to have been the average price in Italy, shortly before the time of Domitian. and St. John’s exile in Patmos: the price of which time of course (not the prices of quite other times) is the standard of reference.7 Try we then the Attic, or more common choenix. And with it, I readily admit, the price of wheat named would be a scarcity price, though hardly one of famine. 8 But what of the very singularly added specification of the price of barley, “three choenixes of barley for a denarius?”
Surely it is one such as to put all idea even of scarcity out of the question. For three choenixes for a denarius would be but 53s. a quarter,9 on the hypothesis of the Attic choenix: a price not nearly double of the usual price about Domitian’s time. Or, (to put the argument otherwise, and perhaps more clearly,) as the Attic choenix was notoriously the, or day’s sufficient quota for a man, of wheat or barley’ 10 and at the same time a denarius was approximately the daily wage of labor in St. John’s time,11 the price specified would indicate that a laboring man would gain under this Seal a three day’s sufficiency of barley-bread, (above 5lb. in weight) by one day’s labor! Did ever man hear of such a famine as this? 12
Thus even if the value of the choenix, the most favorable to this hypothesis of famine be taken, and if no other difficulty were to occur, yet we find that the hypothesis would break down utterly on this one single account. But in fact, besides this, all else’ in the figuration, except the black color of the horse, is opposed to it.
There is first, the injunction on the rider, “See that thou injure not, or that thou act not unjustly about the oil and the wine,” the two other next most important articles of culture and consumption in the Roman world; 13 an injunction of which the spirit was directly opposed to the idea of its being the main object in the voice as from the throne to enjoin a famine.
Secondly, the circumstance of its being a conjunctive, disjunctive, which connects this latter clause of charge to the rider about the oil and wine with that charge in the former about the wheat and barley, 14 constitutes of itself a strong argument in favour of the former being of a similarly kindly purport with the latter.
Moreover, thirdly, the balance in the rider’s hand, associated as it is, not with a man’s weighing out bits of bread in scanty measure for his own or his family’s eating, so as in the often cited passage from Ezekiel 4:16 15 but in association with the buying and selling of corn, I say, in this association the balance, instead of being an indication of famine, might just as well be an indication of plenty; seeing that at all times corn and bread were sold by weight or measure. In fact in the Roman baker’s sepulchral monument, outside the Porta Maggiore at Rome, among the various implements of his trade there sculptured, a pair of balances is one. 16 Was this then a fit symbol for Famine?17 Surely a more unfit one could scarce have been devised.
II. The idea of famine thus decisively set aside, we are forced to seek for some other and quite different solution, such as may better suit the conditions of the caw. And, in order to this, and with reference to one very important particular in those conditions, it needs that we now settle preliminarily as to the right construction of that latter clause in the voice as from the throne, whether in the sense of injure not, or, wrong not in regard to, the oil and wine.
Now the admissibility of the latter, as well as the former translation, results clearly and necessarily, as it seems to me, from these two undisputed and indisputable facts;
First, that adicew is a neutral intransitive verb, as well as verb transitive and active;
Second, that in the case of intransitive neutral verbs generally there is frequently appended to them an accusative of definition, I. e. one defining the object to which the verb relates:”18 in which case, let me add, the accusative usually precedes the verb, so as here.19
I subjoin a few illustrations below. 20
The only possible way of escaping from this my conclusion, is by denying to the neutral the constructive rights of neutral verbs generally. that which no grammarian has ever done, and which no biblical critic has any right to do. The admissibility of the second reading of thus settled, a decisive reason at once suggests is itself for preferring it.
In order to any constant sense with the rendering “injure not”, the articles specified must needs be articles susceptible of injury, from some such famine-causing agency as that which the advocates of this translation recognize (incorrectly, as I have shown) in the rider. But what the articles here specified? Not, be it well observed, vines and olives; on which the destroyer was often let loose by an angry Providence, with his weapons of blight or hail: but the already expressed juice of the grapes and olive-berries, oil and wine, when housed and secured by the owner in his casks and cellars. 21
To which argument what the answer? The only answer that I have seen made is that we are to suppose the oil and wine to be here put poetically and figuratively for olives and vines. That is, we are to suppose poetry and figure intruded in noting them into the latter clause of a sentence, of which the former, when noting other fruits of the earth, is admittedly literal and prosaic. For we read not there, in poetical phrase, of waving corn-fields; but simply of wheat and barley; and this in the state evidently of grain threshed out, and ready for measuring out and sale. 22
A word on yet another and equally important part of indication in the symbol; I mean the balance in the hand of the black horse’s rider. Let it be well understood then by the reader that this symbol, instead of being in itself any way mysterious or difficult of comprehension, was in fact one most common and obvious at the time of St. John’s exile in Patmos; and always I believe, in one way or another, as a symbolization of justice. 23
And now then, our analysis of the several parts of the symbol being completed, proceed we in search of a solution such as may satisfy them all. Whose or what the agency, we have to ask, in the Roman empire that was symbolized by the balance-holding rider: whose or what the voice admonishing him as from the throne, and wherefore in such terms about the price of corn, and against injustice in the matter of wine and oil: how, though holding the balance of justice, his influence such, in aggravation of the other previous evil, as to deepen the ensanguined red of the Roman aspect into the darker blackness of distress finally, what the main intent of the hieroglyphic as a whole; and how designative (as it seems presumable) of some notable cause of further suffering and decline introduced into the Roman body politic; introduced at a time following on that of the establishment of military misrule, with its concomitants of civil wars and blood shedding, so as under the second Seal, and preceding that of the pestilence and mortality which, we shall soon see, attached to, the fourth?
This, I say, is the question. And though to ourselves for the present it be obscure and enigmatic, from want of that familiarity with on looking for light into history, and especially into that same philosophic and picturesque history of the Roman empire, which has already so admirably illustrated the subjects of our first and second Seals, the clue, I believe, will be found, the solution appear.
On consulting Gibbon then we find him, towards the close of his sketch of the reign of Alexander Severus, referring to the aggravated oppressiveness of taxation, consequent on a memorable edict of the preceding emperor Caracalla, (an edict which had to be enforced by the Provincial Governors,) as a fresh and wasting evil then introduced into the body politic. It is after a retrospective glance at that Primary cause of the empire’s decline, which, I suppose to been pictured in the symbolization of the Second Seal, (I mean the pure military despotism, of the soldiery and the sword,) that he takes it up for notice; even as if another influential cause of the decline of the empire. And he deems it of importance such as to call for a long digression, on the subject of Roman taxation to which it relates. 24 Let me briefly abstract his statement.
In the original constitution then by the Roman Republic of its conquered provinces, it seems that tributes more or less onerous were imposed on them; which tributes, after the conquests of Greece and Syria, had become so productive, as to suffice to pay all expenses of the government, and to allow of the entire exemption of Roman citizens from all taxes.
This exemption however continued only until the time of Augustus: who, soon after his establishment in the empire, declared the necessity of their again bearing a share also of the public burdens. Thus, the provincials had their distinctive taxes to pay, the Roman citizens (among whom all Italians were now included) theirs: the latter consisting of customs, duties and excise, (taxes the more oppressive from the constant and pernicious habit of farming them,) and the tax, of one twentieth on all legacies and inheritances; the former either of tributes of produce in kind, or a monetary tax. 25
During the era of Trajan and the Antonines, says Gibbon, the mildness and precision of Taxation of the laws, ascertaining the rule and measure taxation, and protecting the subjects of every rank against arbitrary interpretations, antiquated claims, and the insolent vexations of the tax collectors, alleviated the burdens, though they did not remove them. But some thirty or forty years after the death of the last Antonine, and while the rider of the red horse of civil war was yet in full career, they received, in so far as the provincials were concerned, a sudden aggravation.
The emperor Caracalla issued the memorable edict with which his name is associated, by which the ROMAN City was made co-extensive with the empire: an edict not of liberality, as might at first have been imagined, but simply avarice: for it was clogged with the condition that the provincials, thus admitted to Roman citizenship, should thenceforth pay both- their provincial tributes as before, and also, in addition, the. distinctive taxes of the Roman citizen.
The edict was compulsory, and the weight of taxation thus forced upon them intolerable. Even Italy itself escaped not from the tyrant’s financial oppression, though under another form. ” The great body of his subjects,” says Gibbon, “was oppressed by the aggravated taxes; and every part of the empire crushed under the weight of Caracalla’s iron scepter.” Nor did the evil of fiscal oppression, thus and then aggravated, end with him.
It was continued onward substantially, as I must observe, an inward canker in the state. Macrinus, whose brief reign for but a year succeeded, enacted a partial mitigation of It. But under Macrinus’ successor, Elagabalus, the oppression became as intolerable nearly as under Caracalla. Then did the protesting voice of the law of equity, for a long time almost silenced, speak again under the next reigning emperor, Alexander Severus; the only one for many years in those wretched times, whose character it was to do justice and love mercy.
And he indeed did seek to mitigate the evil; above all by inculcating the spirit and the law of equity upon the administrators of the provincial government, and of the revenue, throughout the Roman world.
But to reduce the tribute to any large amount, such as the case demanded, and such as some have supposed, 26 was what I feel well assured he neither did nor could do. The grand sources of the expenses of government were lasting in their nature. The soldiery, the real masters of the empire, must at any cost be satisfied. “Am not I be,” was his own language to the mutinying troops at Antioch, ” who bestow on you the corn, the clothing, and the money of the provinces?”27
“His administration was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of the age:”28 and for what did, or showed that he wished to do, he paid the penalty of his life.29 After his murder the evil soon became oppressive as before. Through the reigns of Maximin and his successors, we trace it still running on, (in meet sequence of the military tyranny that necessitated it) with disastrous influence on the body politic. In speaking of the empire’s internal state under Philip A. D. 248, only some 13 or 14 years after the death of Alexander Severus, the following is Gibbon’s descriptive sketch: “Its form was still the same, [ i.e. as under Hadrian or Augustus;] 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, with reference to the calamitous times that followed soon after Philip’s death, (of which more under the next Seal,) that “the general famine, which then befell the empire, was the inevitable consequence of the rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests.”
Nor did the evil stop then and there;. but still continued onward to, Gallienus’ death; and even afterwards, under the next succeeding restorers of the Roman empire, Claudius, Aurelian, Probus. Until in fine Diocletian, conjunctively with his new imperatorial scheme, more fully developed the fiscal system; its branch of provincial contributions in kind prominently inclusive: and therewith the oppression – and desolation of the provinces.
Such is in brief the account handed down to us of the nature and aggravation of the evil under Caracalla; of A. Severus’ vain attempts at applying an effective or permanent remedy; and of the perpetuation of the evil, as a further cause of decline in the empire. It is my conviction that we have here the very evil, and vain attempts of law and equity to arrest it, figured in the vision under consideration. Let us then now, as under the previous Seal, compare the history and the prophecy; in respect, 1st of the fiscal evil itself, as causing the dark colour of distress on the emblematic horse; 2ndly of its administrators, as signified by the horse’s rider.
I. Now, as to the first, the epoch of course well accords with the chronological position of the hieroglyphic before us; following closely, as it did, on the era of the introduction of the military despotism depicted under the second Seal, and preceding that of the mortality under Valerian and Gallienus, the subject of the fourth.
Further, another point of agreement will appear in the identity of the articles of produce on which the Roman taxation fell, with those noted in the vision. For the former, like the latter, comprehended both corn-produce, including wheat and barley, and also, from such of the provinces as best produced them, wine and oil. 30
And let me add that in the system of largesse, as about this time acted out at Rome, they were all, or nearly all, included ; and so the evil aggravated that we speak of. At first it was otherwise. For a long time corn only was distributed to the citizens. 31
The largess of oil given on one occasion by Julius Caesar was an extraordinary donative, and not repeated. Again, when Augustus was petitioned to supply them with wine, he declined. 32 In the reign of Septimius Severus, however, father to’ Caracalla, a largess of oil was again accorded; and, after a short intermission under Elagabalus, the donative renewed and established by Alexander Severus. Not very long after which, wine may perhaps also have been granted to them by Aurelian. 33
So that at the time to which I refer the voice in the vision, not only were all the four items of taxation mentioned in the vision regularly in requisition from the vectigales, or produce-paying provinces, but three out of the four had received aggravation from the system of largess above-mentioned; as aid, soon after, the fourth also.” We shall be too often summoned,” says Gibbon, to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of corn, wine, oil, and meat, extracted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital.”
The explanations that he here alludes to were to be given with reference more particularly to the times and financial system of Diocletian. But, as before observed there is good evidence of the perpetuation of the oppressive branch of the Roman fiscal system throughout nearly the whole interval.
Moreover, yet again, in regard to the state of the Roman people as affected by the evil spoken of, its accordance with the black colour of the horse in our hieroglyphic, the sign of distress and impoverishment in the body politic, is equally evident. Indeed, in the graphic descriptions of Gibbon, the very trope of the black colour of this third horse is adopted, (just as of the white and red of the two Seals preceding,) to illustrate the effect of the evil, with reference both to its earlier and its later operation. He speaks of “the dark prospect of distress and calamities bequeathed, through Caracalla’s “extravagance”, to his successors:” and how this fiscal evil, as “a noxious weed, sprang up again with the most luxurious growth; and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade.” 34
II Nor, I think, as, regards the agents in these oppressions, (those whom the rider of the black horse must be supposed to have impersonated,) in other words the provincial Presidents, Proconsuls, or Procurator, 35 to whom, as to the Praetors and Quaestors of the old Republic before them, was now entrusted in each province the collection of the produce and the revenue, will the Apocalyptic twofold indication be found less characteristic: I mean the indication, first, of the words addrest to the black horse’s rider from the throne; secondly, of the balance held by him in hand.
As to the former, it was obvious respecting persons in, offices like those of the provincial Proconsuls, that, as opportunities abounded for exaction, (more especially in respect of payments in kind, or of purchases in kind, 36 when extra supplies, as was often the case, were required by the sovereign government at Rome,) so, unless rigorously checked, abuse of those opportunities was likely to follow. In early times this forced itself on the notice of the Roman senate and people; and precautionary laws were enacted by them, laws adopted and added to subsequently by the emperors.
They were styled laws de repetundis, or against extortion and injustice on the part of the provincial governors; 37 and in their general charges against injustice well corresponded, it will be observed, with the tone and spirit of the monition to the rider in the text. Besides which, and with the same object. of preventing. injustice, particular precautionary provisions were sometimes, in other laws, made against it; especially by naming the price at which the governor was to rate and purchase.
I may cite as a specimen the Cassian frumentarian law. And really the expressions in it are so remarkably similar to the words pronounced in the apocalyptic vision, so illustrative of their perceptive and admonitory character, and of the object and meaning in that character of the charge they contain as to the price of corn, 38 as to seem like an actual comment of explanation on them.
It having been enacted, at the instance of Cassius, that 800,000 modii of wheat should be bought for the citizens of Rome by the provincial authorities, the price to be paid for it (about the fair market price evidently ) was by the legislating supreme government enjoined upon those authorities, in phrase brief and simple, as in the text A modius of wheat for a denarius!
Such was at that time the admonitory direction of the supreme law and government at Rome to the provincial authorities; such the naming of the price of corn, and the purport of its naming. or was the case different afterwards with any of the really justice-loving emperors:39 whether urging the thing with successful effect, like Trajan and the Antonines; or, like A. Severus, less successfully. And whence such monitory laws?
Surely, forasmuch as both these, and the general laws against extortion, were conceived in the spirit of equity, they might well be considered as emanating not only from the subordinate earthly powers ordained by God, but from Him the habitation of whose throne is justice and iudgment, 40 and who has solemnly declared himself in his written law against all defrauding, oppression, and wrong:41 even the same that in the Apoclayptic visions sat enthroned in the midst of the living creatures,42 God Himself. For, as Hooker beautifully says, “Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God:” a truth which even heathen Romans saw and acknowledged.
The price of wheat named in the Cassian law varied indeed greatly, as will be seen, from the one here mentioned; the former being a denarius for a modius: the latter a denarius for a choenixor eighth part of a modius: that is, if we follow the most natural hypothesis about the choenix, and suppose the common Attic choenix to be the one intended. 43
But it is to be remembered that as time went on, and the republic passed into an empire, and the empire became settled and mature, great changes took place in the price of corn throughout the Roman empire: under which circumstances changes proportionate, of course, occurred in the amount of price equitably dictated to the provincial Governors, in the laws. of equitable emperors, at which to estimate, to buy, and indeed also to sell.
Of the average price at a period not very long before the Apocalyptic vision we have already seen authentic record in the elder Pliny, who died A. D. 79, two years only before Domitian’s accession, stating it as then about three denarii the modius, or three times greater than in the age of Cassius.
This price would seem to have continued pretty much the average through the prosperous times of the second century: after which it declined; till it stood at just. half Pliny’s price under the Constantinian emperors, in the first half of the fourth century. 44 And on the reasonable hypothesis of the decline having progressed nearly about one third at the opening of the second quarter of the third century, the date of the reign of Alexander Severus, the price would at that time have been about two denarii and a half for the modius of wheat, or near one third of a denarius for the Attic choenix. But how then?
The price is still altogether at variance with that enunciated in the Apocalyptic vision; “A choenix of wheat (not for one third of, but) for a whole denarius.” Hence in truth at first sight a great difficulty. Indeed for a long time it seemed to me insurmountable, on the hypothesis of the Attic choenix: and I fell back, in consequence, on the superstition of the larger and less common choenix of 8 cotylae being meant, as its best solution.45 But I had overlooked one most important element for consideration in the question, which at once sets all right; viz. the intrinsic value of the denarius, at the time supposed to be depicted in the vision.
For so it is, as I now find, that though the denarius for centuries previous, under both Republic and Emperors, had been always scrupulously coined of pure silver, yet from the commencement of the third century it began to be gradually more and more adulterated: to the value of one-half in the reign of the first Severus; and in the of the second Severus to the value of just two-thirds. 46 So that, as under that last-mentioned prince the denarius had bat one third the silver, and consequently. but one third the value, of the older and standard denarius, the Apocalyptic charge, “A choenix of wheat for a denarius,” proves to have been the literally true expression of about its average price at that particular era. 47
Surely the coincidence must be deemed very remarkable. As to the price of barley specified in the voice from the throne, it is considerably lower than its usual proportion to that of wheat: it being but a third; not, as more commonly, a half 48 But there does not seem to be here anything inconsistent with historic probability: Alexander Severus large and celebrated procurations of corn quite accounting for it; since these were doubtless most by far of wheat. 49
Let me just add, ere passing from this subject, that the taking of the denarius as the standard-price, may perhaps have been borrowed from the Cassian law: and that this would involve the specification of that small wheat-measure the choenix, rather than the modius; it being the equivalent in value at the time figured in vision to a denarius.
Unless indeed we prefer to account for the small standard measure on the principle of the minuteness of A. Severus’ legislation on such subjects;’ through regard to the minute wants of the people, in transactions of buying and selling corn at the public granaries. Casaubon thinks that the Roman tesserae frumentariae were probably tickets for a choenix of corn. And the small measure thus deemed suitable for gratuitous distribution to the poorest, might suit a class less poor for purchase.
Somewhat curiously a weight of 2lb, just answering to the choenix measure of wheat, has been lately found at Rome: stamped as a government-weight under Alexander Severus; and destined for the use of his superintendents of weights and measures. 50
Thus is the specified price, as well as all else, found to suit our hypothesis about the rider: though with special reference, in so far as regards the Apocalyptic, voice as from the throne, to the reclamation of the law of equity under A. Severus.
And indeed I cannot but think that with St. John those words enjoining the price of wheat and barley must almost of themselves have suggested Imperial Provincial Governors, as the parties addrest under figure of the rider; just as the monitory words of the Cassian law might in earlier times have suggested the Provincial Administrators of the old Republic: more especially as there was added that other monition in the same spirit of equity, about the wine and the oil; precisely the like to which seems to have been enjoined from time to time on the Provincial Presidents by the more just emperors, in connection with the imperial exactions of wine and oil, in their Canon Frumentarius. 51
If however of itself this indication was insufficient, the second and additional indication of the rider’s holding a balance, must, I conceive, when con. joined with the former, have sufficed to set all doubt on the point aside. For the balance, from being the emblem of justice, came to be an official badge of those that had appointment to the administration of justice;52 such as the Praetors at Rome, and the Provincial Governors in the Provinces.
Which latter accordingly, under the old Republic, used sometimes to have a balance over the curule chair of their high office, on coins struck in connection with their appointment: and, together therewith, sometimes also an ear of corn, or it might be a Roman measure, with reference to the procurations of corn charged more or less directly upon them; just as in the medals which the reader here sees engraved before him. 53 In imperial times indeed the supreme judicial and financial, as well as supreme military power, centered in the emperors: whence the ascription to them of the balance of justice; whether in historic writings;’ or, with the legend Equitas Augusti around it, on imperial coins. Bat the authority that the balance indicate as well as that indicated by the sword, (the latter whether militarily or simply civilly judicial,) was delegated of course by. them to their subordinate provincial and financial governors.54 Just as in other times, and another country, by our Henry the 5th to the English Lord Chief Justice;
“Hold thou still the balance and the sword.” 55
Which being so, and the two Apocalyptic indications when combined together, of the voice as from the throne about corn, wine, and oil, and the balance, thus characteristic and distinctive of a Roman Provincial Governor, observe with what beautiful propriety they have been combined in the hieroglyphic before us: the rider’s being a position of authority, the balance held in hand, and the prices and measure and charge to equity audibly enunciated from the throne.
Nor let me forget to add that a horse was presented for his use to the Provincial. Governor, on which to go forth publicly to his Province, as well as to the Military propraetor. So that in respect of the black-horse’s rider, as well as of the red horse’s, the Apocalyptic emblem might be considered as one drawn from the life.
And now, I think, we may draw to a conclusion. We have seen what were the charges to equity addrest to the Provincial Governors. And their very badge of the balance might seem almost a profession of equity. But they were professions, from Caracalla’s time first figured in the vision, with few and brief exceptions’ almost always falsified; and the injunctions of the law to equity, however solemn, for the most part altogether in vain. ” 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; 56 and the avarice of an unlettered governor would supply the ignorance of precept or precedent.”
The “robbers of the provinces” was both A. Severus’ and Aurelian’s too just appellation of them. Moreover as in the wide extending branches of financial administration they acted out this mockery of justice, so too in the judicial and general administration. Hence the’ solution of the enigma that at first sight seemed scarcely explicable; how, under the influences of one that held the balance of equity as his badge, the aspect of the Roman horse, or people, should yet gather blackness. For it was but in official symbol and profession that he held the balance of equity.
The reality of the case with him, as with Ephraim, was that described by the prophet, “The balance of deceit is in his hands; he loveth to oppress.” 57The voice of natural equity indeed never, even from the first, ceased its reclamations. And by Alexander Severus, as we saw, there was in a very remarkable manner a waking up of the voice of law in support of it: even as by one who had studied . and loved the golden precept of Christianity, “Do as ye would be done by”.58
But it was all in vain. After brief and partial amelioration the evil triumphed as before. Throughout what remained of the third century the laws against extortion and injustice, like many others which meet the eye in history, must be looked on rather as records of the crime, than preventives of its commission And does it need that I impress upon my readers a sense-of the gravity of the evil?
With characteristic forethought the great Trajan likened the undue enlargement of the taxation, with exacting procurators to collect it, to the morbid enlargement of the spleen in man’s body, causing atrophy. And, after Alex. Severus’ vain attempts at effective amelioration, the history of the sequel illustrates too fully the truth of Trajan’s comparison.
A general internal wasting of the Roman state resulted from it, as I have already stated from Gibbon. The agriculture of the provinces was insensibly ruined: and thus preparation made for famine; 59 which, as we shall see under the next.
Seal, soon succeeded. In fine, in its not very remote consequences, it involved-both the depopulation and desolation of provinces once the most fertile in the empire:60 and also personal and family distress, such as to reduce the inhabitants to despair; 61 and to banish from the provincials every sentiment of patriotism. 62
Thus, by any one that considers the end from the beginning, this era of Caracalla cannot but be regarded in the same light in which it has been delineated by the historian, as one of the introduction of fresh and grievous horrific principle into the Roman body politic, under which it would indeed gather blackness. And who then can doubt but that it was a subject deserving of prefiguration?
Or who, that it was the very subject prefigured under the Seal before us? For surely, I may say, not a particular is there in the emblematic vision that has not been shown to have had its correspondence in the features, as noticed by me, of this period of Roman history. In truth, brief as is the description of the figuration in: the text, the whole subject of this long chapter seems to pass embodied before us, as we once again read it. “When he opened the third Seal I beheld, and Io! a black horse; and he that sat on it having a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice, as in 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 wrong not in regard to the oil and the wine!”
THE THIRD SEAL.
“AND when he opened the third seal I heard the third living creature say, Come I And I beheld, and lo a black horse I and he that sat on him had in his hand a pair of balances:1 and I heard as it were a voice in 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, I conceive, that thou wrong not in regard to]2 the oil and the wine.”
The intent of the figuration in this Seal is less obvious than in the two former, and will require some considerable thought and attention. Let us then first consider the usually received, but, as will appear, incorrect solution; next, secondly, apply ourselves to seek one more correct and satisfactory.
I. A famine of the chief articles of food (whether literally taken or metaphorically) has been supposed by nearly all interpreters to be denoted by it: their opinion being grounded on these two suppositions; first that the choenix spoken of was the common small Attic choenix, second, that the specified prices for such a measure of wheat and of barley was a famine price.
Now, as to the former of these suppositions, it is to be observed that, though the Attic choenix seems to have been the best known and most extensively used in the Roman empire, yet there were other choenixes used in it also: not to add that the word is sometimes a designative of measure in the general;3 which generic sense however, from the specifications of price given, is here of course clearly out of the question.
Already long ago Mr. Mede observed on this variety of size in the ancient choenixes though not, I think, quite correctly or satisfactorily: and from a copious Essay on the subject in the Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, 4 and notices about it in later Treatises on the Greek and Roman measures by, Professor Wurm, and others, I infer it to be the general opinion of the learned that there were three choenixes in use among the Greeks and Romans, of the value of 3, 4, and 8 cotylae, or half-pints, respectively: 5 the Attic, or most common, being, as some would have it, a measure of three cotylae; as others, with more reason I think, that of four. 6 Besides which values it is used in one passage by the Greek Septuagint Translators as a term answering to the tenth part of the Jewish chomer; that is, as equivalent to the much larger measure of an English bushel.
Out of which varying values the horse’s colour black, the constant emblem or distress and mourning seems at once to set aside all idea of the large Syrian choenix of the Septuagint being intended: seeing that wheat at a denarius, i. e. 8d. a bushel,. would indicate superabundant plenty; a state of things directly opposed to general mourning and distress.
Nor would the chroenix of 8 cotylae, or 4 quarts, at the Apocalyptic price of wheat, imply a famine such as to cause the faces of the sufferers to gather blackness. For it would be but about 80s. a quarter a price not very materially higher than what we learn from the elder Pliny to have been the average price in Italy, shortly before the time of Domitian. and St. John’s exile in Patmos: the price of which time of course (not the prices of quite other times) is the standard of reference.7 Try we then the Attic, or more common choenix. And with it, I readily admit, the price of wheat named would be a scarcity price, though hardly one of famine. 8 But what of the very singularly added specification of the price of barley, “three choenixes of barley for a denarius?”
Surely it is one such as to put all idea even of scarcity out of the question. For three choenixes for a denarius would be but 53s. a quarter,9 on the hypothesis of the Attic choenix: a price not nearly double of the usual price about Domitian’s time. Or, (to put the argument otherwise, and perhaps more clearly,) as the Attic choenix was notoriously the, or day’s sufficient quota for a man, of wheat or barley’ 10 and at the same time a denarius was approximately the daily wage of labor in St. John’s time,11 the price specified would indicate that a laboring man would gain under this Seal a three day’s sufficiency of barley-bread, (above 5lb. in weight) by one day’s labor! Did ever man hear of such a famine as this? 12
Thus even if the value of the choenix, the most favorable to this hypothesis of famine be taken, and if no other difficulty were to occur, yet we find that the hypothesis would break down utterly on this one single account. But in fact, besides this, all else’ in the figuration, except the black color of the horse, is opposed to it.
There is first, the injunction on the rider, “See that thou injure not, or that thou act not unjustly about the oil and the wine,” the two other next most important articles of culture and consumption in the Roman world; 13 an injunction of which the spirit was directly opposed to the idea of its being the main object in the voice as from the throne to enjoin a famine.
Secondly, the circumstance of its being a conjunctive, disjunctive, which connects this latter clause of charge to the rider about the oil and wine with that charge in the former about the wheat and barley, 14 constitutes of itself a strong argument in favour of the former being of a similarly kindly purport with the latter.
Moreover, thirdly, the balance in the rider’s hand, associated as it is, not with a man’s weighing out bits of bread in scanty measure for his own or his family’s eating, so as in the often cited passage from Ezekiel 4:16 15 but in association with the buying and selling of corn, I say, in this association the balance, instead of being an indication of famine, might just as well be an indication of plenty; seeing that at all times corn and bread were sold by weight or measure. In fact in the Roman baker’s sepulchral monument, outside the Porta Maggiore at Rome, among the various implements of his trade there sculptured, a pair of balances is one. 16 Was this then a fit symbol for Famine?17 Surely a more unfit one could scarce have been devised.
II. The idea of famine thus decisively set aside, we are forced to seek for some other and quite different solution, such as may better suit the conditions of the caw. And, in order to this, and with reference to one very important particular in those conditions, it needs that we now settle preliminarily as to the right construction of that latter clause in the voice as from the throne, whether in the sense of injure not, or, wrong not in regard to, the oil and wine.
Now the admissibility of the latter, as well as the former translation, results clearly and necessarily, as it seems to me, from these two undisputed and indisputable facts;
First, that adicew is a neutral intransitive verb, as well as verb transitive and active;
Second, that in the case of intransitive neutral verbs generally there is frequently appended to them an accusative of definition, I. e. one defining the object to which the verb relates:”18 in which case, let me add, the accusative usually precedes the verb, so as here.19
I subjoin a few illustrations below. 20
The only possible way of escaping from this my conclusion, is by denying to the neutral the constructive rights of neutral verbs generally. that which no grammarian has ever done, and which no biblical critic has any right to do. The admissibility of the second reading of thus settled, a decisive reason at once suggests is itself for preferring it.
In order to any constant sense with the rendering “injure not”, the articles specified must needs be articles susceptible of injury, from some such famine-causing agency as that which the advocates of this translation recognize (incorrectly, as I have shown) in the rider. But what the articles here specified? Not, be it well observed, vines and olives; on which the destroyer was often let loose by an angry Providence, with his weapons of blight or hail: but the already expressed juice of the grapes and olive-berries, oil and wine, when housed and secured by the owner in his casks and cellars. 21
To which argument what the answer? The only answer that I have seen made is that we are to suppose the oil and wine to be here put poetically and figuratively for olives and vines. That is, we are to suppose poetry and figure intruded in noting them into the latter clause of a sentence, of which the former, when noting other fruits of the earth, is admittedly literal and prosaic. For we read not there, in poetical phrase, of waving corn-fields; but simply of wheat and barley; and this in the state evidently of grain threshed out, and ready for measuring out and sale. 22
A word on yet another and equally important part of indication in the symbol; I mean the balance in the hand of the black horse’s rider. Let it be well understood then by the reader that this symbol, instead of being in itself any way mysterious or difficult of comprehension, was in fact one most common and obvious at the time of St. John’s exile in Patmos; and always I believe, in one way or another, as a symbolization of justice. 23
And now then, our analysis of the several parts of the symbol being completed, proceed we in search of a solution such as may satisfy them all. Whose or what the agency, we have to ask, in the Roman empire that was symbolized by the balance-holding rider: whose or what the voice admonishing him as from the throne, and wherefore in such terms about the price of corn, and against injustice in the matter of wine and oil: how, though holding the balance of justice, his influence such, in aggravation of the other previous evil, as to deepen the ensanguined red of the Roman aspect into the darker blackness of distress finally, what the main intent of the hieroglyphic as a whole; and how designative (as it seems presumable) of some notable cause of further suffering and decline introduced into the Roman body politic; introduced at a time following on that of the establishment of military misrule, with its concomitants of civil wars and blood shedding, so as under the second Seal, and preceding that of the pestilence and mortality which, we shall soon see, attached to, the fourth?
This, I say, is the question. And though to ourselves for the present it be obscure and enigmatic, from want of that familiarity with on looking for light into history, and especially into that same philosophic and picturesque history of the Roman empire, which has already so admirably illustrated the subjects of our first and second Seals, the clue, I believe, will be found, the solution appear.
On consulting Gibbon then we find him, towards the close of his sketch of the reign of Alexander Severus, referring to the aggravated oppressiveness of taxation, consequent on a memorable edict of the preceding emperor Caracalla, (an edict which had to be enforced by the Provincial Governors,) as a fresh and wasting evil then introduced into the body politic. It is after a retrospective glance at that Primary cause of the empire’s decline, which, I suppose to been pictured in the symbolization of the Second Seal, (I mean the pure military despotism, of the soldiery and the sword,) that he takes it up for notice; even as if another influential cause of the decline of the empire. And he deems it of importance such as to call for a long digression, on the subject of Roman taxation to which it relates. 24 Let me briefly abstract his statement.
In the original constitution then by the Roman Republic of its conquered provinces, it seems that tributes more or less onerous were imposed on them; which tributes, after the conquests of Greece and Syria, had become so productive, as to suffice to pay all expenses of the government, and to allow of the entire exemption of Roman citizens from all taxes.
This exemption however continued only until the time of Augustus: who, soon after his establishment in the empire, declared the necessity of their again bearing a share also of the public burdens. Thus, the provincials had their distinctive taxes to pay, the Roman citizens (among whom all Italians were now included) theirs: the latter consisting of customs, duties and excise, (taxes the more oppressive from the constant and pernicious habit of farming them,) and the tax, of one twentieth on all legacies and inheritances; the former either of tributes of produce in kind, or a monetary tax. 25
During the era of Trajan and the Antonines, says Gibbon, the mildness and precision of Taxation of the laws, ascertaining the rule and measure taxation, and protecting the subjects of every rank against arbitrary interpretations, antiquated claims, and the insolent vexations of the tax collectors, alleviated the burdens, though they did not remove them. But some thirty or forty years after the death of the last Antonine, and while the rider of the red horse of civil war was yet in full career, they received, in so far as the provincials were concerned, a sudden aggravation.
The emperor Caracalla issued the memorable edict with which his name is associated, by which the ROMAN City was made co-extensive with the empire: an edict not of liberality, as might at first have been imagined, but simply avarice: for it was clogged with the condition that the provincials, thus admitted to Roman citizenship, should thenceforth pay both- their provincial tributes as before, and also, in addition, the. distinctive taxes of the Roman citizen.
The edict was compulsory, and the weight of taxation thus forced upon them intolerable. Even Italy itself escaped not from the tyrant’s financial oppression, though under another form. ” The great body of his subjects,” says Gibbon, “was oppressed by the aggravated taxes; and every part of the empire crushed under the weight of Caracalla’s iron scepter.” Nor did the evil of fiscal oppression, thus and then aggravated, end with him.
It was continued onward substantially, as I must observe, an inward canker in the state. Macrinus, whose brief reign for but a year succeeded, enacted a partial mitigation of It. But under Macrinus’ successor, Elagabalus, the oppression became as intolerable nearly as under Caracalla. Then did the protesting voice of the law of equity, for a long time almost silenced, speak again under the next reigning emperor, Alexander Severus; the only one for many years in those wretched times, whose character it was to do justice and love mercy.
And he indeed did seek to mitigate the evil; above all by inculcating the spirit and the law of equity upon the administrators of the provincial government, and of the revenue, throughout the Roman world.
But to reduce the tribute to any large amount, such as the case demanded, and such as some have supposed, 26 was what I feel well assured he neither did nor could do. The grand sources of the expenses of government were lasting in their nature. The soldiery, the real masters of the empire, must at any cost be satisfied. “Am not I be,” was his own language to the mutinying troops at Antioch, ” who bestow on you the corn, the clothing, and the money of the provinces?”27
“His administration was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of the age:”28 and for what did, or showed that he wished to do, he paid the penalty of his life.29 After his murder the evil soon became oppressive as before. Through the reigns of Maximin and his successors, we trace it still running on, (in meet sequence of the military tyranny that necessitated it) with disastrous influence on the body politic. In speaking of the empire’s internal state under Philip A. D. 248, only some 13 or 14 years after the death of Alexander Severus, the following is Gibbon’s descriptive sketch: “Its form was still the same, [ i.e. as under Hadrian or Augustus;] 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, with reference to the calamitous times that followed soon after Philip’s death, (of which more under the next Seal,) that “the general famine, which then befell the empire, was the inevitable consequence of the rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests.”
Nor did the evil stop then and there;. but still continued onward to, Gallienus’ death; and even afterwards, under the next succeeding restorers of the Roman empire, Claudius, Aurelian, Probus. Until in fine Diocletian, conjunctively with his new imperatorial scheme, more fully developed the fiscal system; its branch of provincial contributions in kind prominently inclusive: and therewith the oppression – and desolation of the provinces.
Such is in brief the account handed down to us of the nature and aggravation of the evil under Caracalla; of A. Severus’ vain attempts at applying an effective or permanent remedy; and of the perpetuation of the evil, as a further cause of decline in the empire. It is my conviction that we have here the very evil, and vain attempts of law and equity to arrest it, figured in the vision under consideration. Let us then now, as under the previous Seal, compare the history and the prophecy; in respect, 1st of the fiscal evil itself, as causing the dark colour of distress on the emblematic horse; 2ndly of its administrators, as signified by the horse’s rider.
I. Now, as to the first, the epoch of course well accords with the chronological position of the hieroglyphic before us; following closely, as it did, on the era of the introduction of the military despotism depicted under the second Seal, and preceding that of the mortality under Valerian and Gallienus, the subject of the fourth.
Further, another point of agreement will appear in the identity of the articles of produce on which the Roman taxation fell, with those noted in the vision. For the former, like the latter, comprehended both corn-produce, including wheat and barley, and also, from such of the provinces as best produced them, wine and oil. 30
And let me add that in the system of largesse, as about this time acted out at Rome, they were all, or nearly all, included ; and so the evil aggravated that we speak of. At first it was otherwise. For a long time corn only was distributed to the citizens. 31
The largess of oil given on one occasion by Julius Caesar was an extraordinary donative, and not repeated. Again, when Augustus was petitioned to supply them with wine, he declined. 32 In the reign of Septimius Severus, however, father to’ Caracalla, a largess of oil was again accorded; and, after a short intermission under Elagabalus, the donative renewed and established by Alexander Severus. Not very long after which, wine may perhaps also have been granted to them by Aurelian. 33
So that at the time to which I refer the voice in the vision, not only were all the four items of taxation mentioned in the vision regularly in requisition from the vectigales, or produce-paying provinces, but three out of the four had received aggravation from the system of largess above-mentioned; as aid, soon after, the fourth also.” We shall be too often summoned,” says Gibbon, to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of corn, wine, oil, and meat, extracted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital.”
The explanations that he here alludes to were to be given with reference more particularly to the times and financial system of Diocletian. But, as before observed there is good evidence of the perpetuation of the oppressive branch of the Roman fiscal system throughout nearly the whole interval.
Moreover, yet again, in regard to the state of the Roman people as affected by the evil spoken of, its accordance with the black colour of the horse in our hieroglyphic, the sign of distress and impoverishment in the body politic, is equally evident. Indeed, in the graphic descriptions of Gibbon, the very trope of the black colour of this third horse is adopted, (just as of the white and red of the two Seals preceding,) to illustrate the effect of the evil, with reference both to its earlier and its later operation. He speaks of “the dark prospect of distress and calamities bequeathed, through Caracalla’s “extravagance”, to his successors:” and how this fiscal evil, as “a noxious weed, sprang up again with the most luxurious growth; and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade.” 34
II Nor, I think, as, regards the agents in these oppressions, (those whom the rider of the black horse must be supposed to have impersonated,) in other words the provincial Presidents, Proconsuls, or Procurator, 35 to whom, as to the Praetors and Quaestors of the old Republic before them, was now entrusted in each province the collection of the produce and the revenue, will the Apocalyptic twofold indication be found less characteristic: I mean the indication, first, of the words addrest to the black horse’s rider from the throne; secondly, of the balance held by him in hand.
As to the former, it was obvious respecting persons in, offices like those of the provincial Proconsuls, that, as opportunities abounded for exaction, (more especially in respect of payments in kind, or of purchases in kind, 36 when extra supplies, as was often the case, were required by the sovereign government at Rome,) so, unless rigorously checked, abuse of those opportunities was likely to follow. In early times this forced itself on the notice of the Roman senate and people; and precautionary laws were enacted by them, laws adopted and added to subsequently by the emperors.
They were styled laws de repetundis, or against extortion and injustice on the part of the provincial governors; 37 and in their general charges against injustice well corresponded, it will be observed, with the tone and spirit of the monition to the rider in the text. Besides which, and with the same object. of preventing. injustice, particular precautionary provisions were sometimes, in other laws, made against it; especially by naming the price at which the governor was to rate and purchase.
I may cite as a specimen the Cassian frumentarian law. And really the expressions in it are so remarkably similar to the words pronounced in the apocalyptic vision, so illustrative of their perceptive and admonitory character, and of the object and meaning in that character of the charge they contain as to the price of corn, 38 as to seem like an actual comment of explanation on them.
It having been enacted, at the instance of Cassius, that 800,000 modii of wheat should be bought for the citizens of Rome by the provincial authorities, the price to be paid for it (about the fair market price evidently ) was by the legislating supreme government enjoined upon those authorities, in phrase brief and simple, as in the text A modius of wheat for a denarius!
Such was at that time the admonitory direction of the supreme law and government at Rome to the provincial authorities; such the naming of the price of corn, and the purport of its naming. or was the case different afterwards with any of the really justice-loving emperors:39 whether urging the thing with successful effect, like Trajan and the Antonines; or, like A. Severus, less successfully. And whence such monitory laws?
Surely, forasmuch as both these, and the general laws against extortion, were conceived in the spirit of equity, they might well be considered as emanating not only from the subordinate earthly powers ordained by God, but from Him the habitation of whose throne is justice and iudgment, 40 and who has solemnly declared himself in his written law against all defrauding, oppression, and wrong:41 even the same that in the Apoclayptic visions sat enthroned in the midst of the living creatures,42 God Himself. For, as Hooker beautifully says, “Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God:” a truth which even heathen Romans saw and acknowledged.
The price of wheat named in the Cassian law varied indeed greatly, as will be seen, from the one here mentioned; the former being a denarius for a modius: the latter a denarius for a choenixor eighth part of a modius: that is, if we follow the most natural hypothesis about the choenix, and suppose the common Attic choenix to be the one intended. 43
But it is to be remembered that as time went on, and the republic passed into an empire, and the empire became settled and mature, great changes took place in the price of corn throughout the Roman empire: under which circumstances changes proportionate, of course, occurred in the amount of price equitably dictated to the provincial Governors, in the laws. of equitable emperors, at which to estimate, to buy, and indeed also to sell.
Of the average price at a period not very long before the Apocalyptic vision we have already seen authentic record in the elder Pliny, who died A. D. 79, two years only before Domitian’s accession, stating it as then about three denarii the modius, or three times greater than in the age of Cassius.
This price would seem to have continued pretty much the average through the prosperous times of the second century: after which it declined; till it stood at just. half Pliny’s price under the Constantinian emperors, in the first half of the fourth century. 44 And on the reasonable hypothesis of the decline having progressed nearly about one third at the opening of the second quarter of the third century, the date of the reign of Alexander Severus, the price would at that time have been about two denarii and a half for the modius of wheat, or near one third of a denarius for the Attic choenix. But how then?
The price is still altogether at variance with that enunciated in the Apocalyptic vision; “A choenix of wheat (not for one third of, but) for a whole denarius.” Hence in truth at first sight a great difficulty. Indeed for a long time it seemed to me insurmountable, on the hypothesis of the Attic choenix: and I fell back, in consequence, on the superstition of the larger and less common choenix of 8 cotylae being meant, as its best solution.45 But I had overlooked one most important element for consideration in the question, which at once sets all right; viz. the intrinsic value of the denarius, at the time supposed to be depicted in the vision.
For so it is, as I now find, that though the denarius for centuries previous, under both Republic and Emperors, had been always scrupulously coined of pure silver, yet from the commencement of the third century it began to be gradually more and more adulterated: to the value of one-half in the reign of the first Severus; and in the of the second Severus to the value of just two-thirds. 46 So that, as under that last-mentioned prince the denarius had bat one third the silver, and consequently. but one third the value, of the older and standard denarius, the Apocalyptic charge, “A choenix of wheat for a denarius,” proves to have been the literally true expression of about its average price at that particular era. 47
Surely the coincidence must be deemed very remarkable. As to the price of barley specified in the voice from the throne, it is considerably lower than its usual proportion to that of wheat: it being but a third; not, as more commonly, a half 48 But there does not seem to be here anything inconsistent with historic probability: Alexander Severus large and celebrated procurations of corn quite accounting for it; since these were doubtless most by far of wheat. 49
Let me just add, ere passing from this subject, that the taking of the denarius as the standard-price, may perhaps have been borrowed from the Cassian law: and that this would involve the specification of that small wheat-measure the choenix, rather than the modius; it being the equivalent in value at the time figured in vision to a denarius.
Unless indeed we prefer to account for the small standard measure on the principle of the minuteness of A. Severus’ legislation on such subjects;’ through regard to the minute wants of the people, in transactions of buying and selling corn at the public granaries. Casaubon thinks that the Roman tesserae frumentariae were probably tickets for a choenix of corn. And the small measure thus deemed suitable for gratuitous distribution to the poorest, might suit a class less poor for purchase.
Somewhat curiously a weight of 2lb, just answering to the choenix measure of wheat, has been lately found at Rome: stamped as a government-weight under Alexander Severus; and destined for the use of his superintendents of weights and measures. 50
Thus is the specified price, as well as all else, found to suit our hypothesis about the rider: though with special reference, in so far as regards the Apocalyptic, voice as from the throne, to the reclamation of the law of equity under A. Severus.
And indeed I cannot but think that with St. John those words enjoining the price of wheat and barley must almost of themselves have suggested Imperial Provincial Governors, as the parties addrest under figure of the rider; just as the monitory words of the Cassian law might in earlier times have suggested the Provincial Administrators of the old Republic: more especially as there was added that other monition in the same spirit of equity, about the wine and the oil; precisely the like to which seems to have been enjoined from time to time on the Provincial Presidents by the more just emperors, in connection with the imperial exactions of wine and oil, in their Canon Frumentarius. 51
If however of itself this indication was insufficient, the second and additional indication of the rider’s holding a balance, must, I conceive, when con. joined with the former, have sufficed to set all doubt on the point aside. For the balance, from being the emblem of justice, came to be an official badge of those that had appointment to the administration of justice;52 such as the Praetors at Rome, and the Provincial Governors in the Provinces.
Which latter accordingly, under the old Republic, used sometimes to have a balance over the curule chair of their high office, on coins struck in connection with their appointment: and, together therewith, sometimes also an ear of corn, or it might be a Roman measure, with reference to the procurations of corn charged more or less directly upon them; just as in the medals which the reader here sees engraved before him. 53 In imperial times indeed the supreme judicial and financial, as well as supreme military power, centered in the emperors: whence the ascription to them of the balance of justice; whether in historic writings;’ or, with the legend Equitas Augusti around it, on imperial coins. Bat the authority that the balance indicate as well as that indicated by the sword, (the latter whether militarily or simply civilly judicial,) was delegated of course by. them to their subordinate provincial and financial governors.54 Just as in other times, and another country, by our Henry the 5th to the English Lord Chief Justice;
“Hold thou still the balance and the sword.” 55
Which being so, and the two Apocalyptic indications when combined together, of the voice as from the throne about corn, wine, and oil, and the balance, thus characteristic and distinctive of a Roman Provincial Governor, observe with what beautiful propriety they have been combined in the hieroglyphic before us: the rider’s being a position of authority, the balance held in hand, and the prices and measure and charge to equity audibly enunciated from the throne.
Nor let me forget to add that a horse was presented for his use to the Provincial. Governor, on which to go forth publicly to his Province, as well as to the Military propraetor. So that in respect of the black-horse’s rider, as well as of the red horse’s, the Apocalyptic emblem might be considered as one drawn from the life.
And now, I think, we may draw to a conclusion. We have seen what were the charges to equity addrest to the Provincial Governors. And their very badge of the balance might seem almost a profession of equity. But they were professions, from Caracalla’s time first figured in the vision, with few and brief exceptions’ almost always falsified; and the injunctions of the law to equity, however solemn, for the most part altogether in vain. ” 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; 56 and the avarice of an unlettered governor would supply the ignorance of precept or precedent.”
The “robbers of the provinces” was both A. Severus’ and Aurelian’s too just appellation of them. Moreover as in the wide extending branches of financial administration they acted out this mockery of justice, so too in the judicial and general administration. Hence the’ solution of the enigma that at first sight seemed scarcely explicable; how, under the influences of one that held the balance of equity as his badge, the aspect of the Roman horse, or people, should yet gather blackness. For it was but in official symbol and profession that he held the balance of equity.
The reality of the case with him, as with Ephraim, was that described by the prophet, “The balance of deceit is in his hands; he loveth to oppress.” 57The voice of natural equity indeed never, even from the first, ceased its reclamations. And by Alexander Severus, as we saw, there was in a very remarkable manner a waking up of the voice of law in support of it: even as by one who had studied . and loved the golden precept of Christianity, “Do as ye would be done by”.58
But it was all in vain. After brief and partial amelioration the evil triumphed as before. Throughout what remained of the third century the laws against extortion and injustice, like many others which meet the eye in history, must be looked on rather as records of the crime, than preventives of its commission And does it need that I impress upon my readers a sense-of the gravity of the evil?
With characteristic forethought the great Trajan likened the undue enlargement of the taxation, with exacting procurators to collect it, to the morbid enlargement of the spleen in man’s body, causing atrophy. And, after Alex. Severus’ vain attempts at effective amelioration, the history of the sequel illustrates too fully the truth of Trajan’s comparison.
A general internal wasting of the Roman state resulted from it, as I have already stated from Gibbon. The agriculture of the provinces was insensibly ruined: and thus preparation made for famine; 59 which, as we shall see under the next.
Seal, soon succeeded. In fine, in its not very remote consequences, it involved-both the depopulation and desolation of provinces once the most fertile in the empire:60 and also personal and family distress, such as to reduce the inhabitants to despair; 61 and to banish from the provincials every sentiment of patriotism. 62
Thus, by any one that considers the end from the beginning, this era of Caracalla cannot but be regarded in the same light in which it has been delineated by the historian, as one of the introduction of fresh and grievous horrific principle into the Roman body politic, under which it would indeed gather blackness. And who then can doubt but that it was a subject deserving of prefiguration?
Or who, that it was the very subject prefigured under the Seal before us? For surely, I may say, not a particular is there in the emblematic vision that has not been shown to have had its correspondence in the features, as noticed by me, of this period of Roman history. In truth, brief as is the description of the figuration in: the text, the whole subject of this long chapter seems to pass embodied before us, as we once again read it. “When he opened the third Seal I beheld, and Io! a black horse; and he that sat on it having a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice, as in 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 wrong not in regard to the oil and the wine!”