se of John
(xiii., xvii.). Nero is here the beast that returns from the bottomless
pit, "that was, and is not, and yet is"; the head "as it were wounded to
death" that lives again; the gruesome similitude of the Lamb that was
slain, and his adversary in the final struggle. The number of the Beast,
666, points certainly to Nero ([Hebrew: keisar neron] = 666, or [Hebrew:
keisar nero] = 616). In the little apocalypse of the _Ascensio Jesaiae_
(iii. 13b-iv. 18), which dates perhaps from the second, perhaps only
from the first, decade of the third century,[8] it is said that Beliar,
the king of this world, would descend from the firmament in the human
form of Nero. In the same way, in _Sibyll._ v. 28-34, Nero and
Antichrist are absolutely identical (mostly obscure reminiscences,
_Sib._ viii. 68 &c., 140 &c., 151 &c.). Then the Nero-legend gradually
fades away. But Victorinus of Pettau, who wrote during the persecution
under Diocletian, still knows the relation of the Apocalypse to the
legend of Nero; and Commodian, whose _Carmen Apologeticum_ was perhaps
not written until the beginning of the 4th century, knows two
Antichrist-figures, of which he still identifies the first with Nero
_redivivus_.

In proportion as the figure of Nero again ceased to dominate the
imagination of the faithful, the wholly unhistorical, unpolitical and
anti-Jewish conception of Antichrist, which based itself more especially
on 2 Thess. ii., gained the upper hand, having usually become associated
with the description of the universal conflagration of the world which
had also originated in the Iranian eschatology. On the strength of
exegetical combinations, and with the assistance of various traditions,
it was developed even in its details, which it thenceforth maintained
practically unchanged. In this form it is in great part present in the
eschatological portions of the _Adv. Haereses_ of Irenaeus, and in the
_de Antichristo_ and commentary on Daniel of Hippolytus. In times of
political excitement, during the following centuries, men appealed again
and again to the prophecy of Antichrist. Then the foreground scenery of
the prophecies was shifted; special prophecies, having reference to
contemporary events, are pushed to the front, but in the background
remains standing, with scarcely a change, the prophecy of Antichrist
that is bound up with no particular time. Thus at the beginning of the
_Testamentum Domini_, edited by Rahmani, there is an apocal