JERUSALEM; ROME; REVELATION - The Preterist Archive

126. “An arrest was first made.... An immense multitude was convicted not so much
of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added
to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or
were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to service as a nightly
illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle....
127. “Poppaea died from a casual outburst of rage in her husband [Nero], who felled
her with a kick when she was pregnant.... Her body...after the custom of foreign princes was
filled with fragrant spices and embalmed [cf. Luke 23:55 to 24:1], and then consigned to the
sepulchre of the Julii. She had, however, a public funeral. And Nero himself from the rostra
eulogized her beauty, her lot in having been the mother of a deified child, and fortune’s other
gifts - as though they were virtues.... The death of Poppaea [in A.D. 65]...was a delight to
those who, recalling the past, thought of her shamelessness and cruelty.”
128. Unfortunately, the rest of Tacitus’s Annals, covering the last years of Nero’s life
till he committed suicide in A.D. 68, is no longer extant. However, the first five chapters of
Tacitus’s History from the beginning of A.D. 69 to the end of 70 - is extant. And from that
and other sources, one learns the following.
129. Otho had remained a friend of Nero, even after Nero had first seduced and later
married Otho’s former wife the Judaist Poppaea Sabina. But in AD. 68, Otho in turn betrayed
Nero and joined in Galba’s revolt against him. When also the Praetorian Guard soon
rebelled, Nero in that same year committed suicide. Yet after Galba then became Emperor -
Otho conspired against him; saw to it that Galba got killed; and then had himself proclaimed
Emperor.
130. The following is some of what Tacitus’s History (I:4-22) tells us about Nero,
Poppaea, and Otho. “The death of Nero had been welcome.... Vespasian, a general of
Nero’s appointment, was carrying on the war in Judaea.... Otho’s had been...a riotous youth,
and he had made himself agreeable to Nero by emulating his profligacy. For this reason, the
Emperor [Nero, formerly] had entrusted to him [Otho] - as being the confidant of his amours -
Poppaea Sabina, the imperial favourite, until he [Nero] could rid himself of his wife Octavia.
131. “Soon suspecting him [Otho] with regard to this same Poppaea, he [Nero had
then] send him [Otho] out of the way to the province of Lusitania, ostensibly to be its
Governor.” After the death of Nero, “many of the soldiers favoured him” ( viz. Otho) to
become the new Caesar. “The court was biassed in his favour, because he resembled Nero....
Nero had squandered in presents two thousand two hundred million sesterces.... Yet great
was the joy to think that the men whom Nero had enriched, would soon be as poor as [those]
whom he had robbed.....
132. “‘I was,’ said Otho, ‘too formidable to Nero!’.... The soul of Otho was not
effeminate like his person. His confidential freemen and slaves, who enjoyed a licence
unknown in private families, brought the debaucheries of Nero’s court...before a mind
passionately fond of such things....
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