Before Jerusalem Fell

Clement of Alexandria 75
Another passage found in Sibylline Oracles 4:115-124 teaches that
Nero had fled Rome to Parthia, from whence he would come to terrify
Rome.
Two impostors claiming to be Nero are mentioned in profane
history, one, in A.D. 69 and the other twenty years later. 43
Their
attempts to deceive and to gain power required the pervasive belief
in Nero’s being alive and in hiding.
Book 5 of the Sibylline Oracles is also a Jewish composition,
written for the most part sometime after A.D. 80.W In this book “the
evil of Nero has the same three dimensions as the evil of Rome: he is
morally evil, he was responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem,
since the Jewish war began in his reign, and he claimed to be God. “4 5
There we read:
One who has fifty as an initial will be commander,
a terrible snake, breathing out grievous war, who
one day will lay hands
on his own family and slay them, and throw everything
into confusion,
athlete, charioteer, murderer, one who dares ten
thousand things.
He will also cut the mountain between two seas
and defile it with gore.
But even when he disappears he will be destructive.
Then he will return
declaring himself equal to God. But he will prove
that he is not.
Three princes after him will perish at each other’s
hands.46
Later in the same book Nero’s return from Persia is envisioned. 47
He is called
a savage-minded man, much-bloodied, raving non-
43. Tacitus, Histories 2:8,9; Dio Cassius, Rom Histqv 649; Suetonius, Nero 57.
44. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” OTP 1:390.
45. Ibid.
46. Sib>lline Oracles .5:28-35; OTP 1:393.
47. Sibyllinz Oracles 5:93-110. See Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” OTP 1:395, notes y and
b2.