Before Jerusalem Fell

T/w Nero Redivivus Myth 313
Although some of the details of this lamentation reach beyond the
Roman Civil War era of A.D. 68-69, most of it focuses on just that
era and relates the very events of that upheaval. Tacitus’s detailed
account of the ruin wreaked upon Rome almost equals in psychological
horror and cultural devastation that which befell Jerusalem during
the Jewish War as recorded by Josephus. Surely the Roman Civil
War (or, more literally, Civil Wars) was the %rstfruits of Nero’s
death.”%
These civil wars would, to all appearance, strike the citizens of
the empire – Christian and pagan alike – as being the very death
throes of Rome. Indeed, in Tacitus’s estimation it very nearly was
so: “This was the condition of the Roman state when Serius Galba,
chosen consul for the second time, and his colleague Titus Vinius
entered upon the year that was to be for Galba his last and@ th ~tate
almost the end. “4 7
The seven-headed Beast (Rome), before the world’s
startled eyes, was toppling to its own death as its sixth head (Nero)
was mortally wounded. As Suetonius viewed the long months immediately
following Nero’s death, the empire “for a long time had been
unsettled, and as it were, drifting, through the usurpation and violent
death of three emperors.”4 8
Josephus records the matter as perceived
by Titus and Vespasian while they were engaged in the Jewish War
in A.D. 69: “And now they were both in suspense about the public
affairs, the Roman empire being then in a fluctuating condition, and
did not go on with their expedition against the Jews, but thought
that to make any attack upon a foreigner was now unseasonable, on
account of the solicitude they were in for their own country.”4g
According to the pseudo-prophecy of 4 Ezra (or 2 Esdras) 12:16-
19, written around A.D. 100 (thirty years after the events 50
), the
Empire51 was “in danger of falling “- . “This is the interpretation of the
twelve wings which you saw. As for your hearing a voice that spoke,
coming not from the eagle’s heads but from the midst of his body,
46. Henderson, Fwe Roman Emperors, p. 87.
47. Tacitus, I%tor-ia 1:11. Emphasis mine.
48. Suetonius, VZs@sian 1:1.
49. Josephus, Wars 49:2.
50. Bruce Metzger, “The Fourth Book of Ezra,” in James H. Charlesworth, cd., Old
Tatamtmt Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 1:520.
51. Metzger, in agreement with almost all pseudepigraphical scholars, notes that
“The eagle, Ezra is told, represents the Roman Empire, which will be punished by God’s
Messiah for persecuting his elect ( 12: 10-34)” (rlna’., p. 517).