135Babel
Chywah
…Beast
3
‘Eymatan | Appalling
Monstrous Beast…
The Romans were always oppressive, and usually cruel, but in Yahuwdah | Judea circa 66-73 CE during the Great Revolt, the Beast revealed its most appalling nature. That is until the third of three invasions of the Roman-occupied Province of Yahuwdah (Iudaea in Latin) between 66 BCE and 135 CE.
All three insurrections grew out of religious oppression, criminal activity on behalf of the Romans, and excessive brutality and taxation. When the emerging rabbinical influence in Judea rebelled, the empire responded by pummeling, then plundering, the object of their devotion, the most famous Temple in the world. Then to dissuade future displays of conscience and character, Rome crucified six thousand Yahuwdym in Yaruwshalaim.
By way of background, so long as a vanquished race or region accepted the gods of the Roman pantheon, and also acknowledged that Rome’s emperors were divine, so long as they were willing to sign an oath of allegiance to them, the empire didn’t much care how many other gods or goddesses the people enshrined. But there was one place, a tiny sliver of land at the crossroads of continents, where one race acknowledged only one God. And that God was unique. He was not only real, He had provided a very specific set of instructions on how to engage in a relationship with Him. As a result, He had a Covenant, a Chosen People, and a Promised Land. Especially important, this God was loving, and therefore jealous, and 136would not share His children with a deity or institution of man’s making.
This was not acceptable to the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, or the Roman Catholic Church. After all, this God’s prerequisite for engaging in a relationship with Him was walking away from all political and religious associations.
Immediately preceding the initial conflict, Roman citizenship throughout the empire reached six million. During this time, King Herod ruled Yahuwdah as a Roman vassal. He was essentially Roman: an egomaniacal tyrant, killing anyone and everyone he perceived to be a threat – especially members of his own family. He ran Rome’s client kingdom as if it were his own private plantation, similar to the lords of feudal Europe, treating laborers as if they were his slaves. And he used the priesthood to his advantage, appointing religious clerics who endorsed him, much like the marriage of Church and State throughout the world under the corruptive influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
Although Herod was a miserable man, when he died, in the vacuum of power that ensued, Yahuwdah became susceptible to political, religious, and economic uprisings. Initially the revolts were localized because the first Roman Procurators over Judea granted a partial exemption from pagan rites, from images of gods on coins, from statues of gods in sensitive places, and even from Sunday worship. That changed, however, with Gessius (note the similarity to the Christian misnomer “Jesus”) Florus. He set the Great Revolt in motion by stealing from the Temple treasury in 66 CE, then murdering the Yisra’elites who exposed and condemned his crime.
But there is some history we should reconsider before this because, rather than lighten the yoke, in 6 CE, Yahuwdah transitioned from a client kingdom to a Roman 137Province – a change that brought greater governmental interference, along with the imposition of Roman Law. Since the Romans adored Greek culture, Greek philosophy, and the Greek religion, even their Gnosticism, these influences began spreading throughout the Land, affecting both the religious fundamentalists and political liberals in Judea, with both embracing some Hellenistic ideals while chafing against others.
All the while, Greeks continued to look down their noses at Jews. They were, and they remain, among the most anti-Semitic people on earth. Even today, nearly two thousand years later, recent polls reveal that nearly seventy percent of Greeks are prejudiced against Jews – by far the highest level of racial hatred in Europe.
Therefore, the legacy of Alexander the Great’s conquests continued to chafe Yisra’elites. And now as a Province, Roman Law became much more pervasive and therefore onerous in Iudaea. Yisra’elites as a whole were non-compliant, causing them to be discriminated against.
Making matters worse, Caligula’s persona became an issue. This repulsive man with hideous tendencies became paranoid, so to curry favor with him and avoid his deadly wrath, Roman vassals like Flaccus in Egypt started placing monstrous statues of Caligula inside Jewish synagogues, beginning in 38 CE in Alexandria. This, as we know, stirred riots, which Caligula dealt with by abusing Jews and assassinating Flaccus.
Caligula’s successor, Claudius, forbade Jews from immigrating to Alexandria. He would also expel Jews from Rome, primarily because, as a zealous pagan fundamentalist, he found their public bickering regarding the identity of “Chrestus” irritating. Fascinating, however, as a passable writer and historian, Claudius added the letters W and Y to the Latin alphabet. But unfortunately, 138these contributions to being able to properly transliterate Yahowah’s name didn’t survive his reign.
As we discovered a moment ago, Agrippa accused Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, of planning a rebellion against Roman rule. This appeared plausible because, in 40 CE, riots broke out between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria after the Yisra’elites began destroying pagan altars. In response, Caligula, arguably the most self-absorbed ruler in Roman history, arranged to have a massive statue of himself erected inside Yahowah’s Temple in Jerusalem. Knowing that doing so would bring war, Publius Petronius, the governor of Syria, delayed implementing the pope’s decree for nearly a year. Thereafter, Agrippa finally convinced Caligula to reverse the order. But at this time, Yahuwdah remained a powder keg ready to explode. Rebellions became commonplace, with protests occurring in 46 and continued through 48 CE. Those believed to have inspired it were publicly and painfully executed.
According to Josephus, the noted Jewish traitor, the Great Rebellion was provoked by pagan Greek merchants who sold and sacrificed birds to honor the Greek gods in front of a synagogue in Caesarea in 66 CE, rendering the synagogue unclean. Rome didn’t intervene, allowing Hellenistic animosity toward Jews to fester. After all, they favored Greeks over Jews.
In response, one of the Temple clerks, Eliezar ben Hanania, terminated prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the Roman Emperor. Protests over taxation followed, especially after Nero increased each province’s tribute payments to fund his new palace.
It was then that Gessius Florus, who had been assigned by Nero, and who was noted for his greed, breached the Temple with Roman troops and stole seventeen talents from its treasury – an account used to aid widows and 139orphans. Mocking him, the population began passing baskets around to collect money for Gessius, as if he were impoverished. The Roman Procurator responded by raiding Jerusalem and arresting civil and religious leaders – all of whom were flogged and then crucified. Outraged, various religious and political factions throughout the Judean Province crafted improvised arms and attacked the Roman military garrison in Yahuwdah | Judah, quickly overrunning them.
Rather than apologize, the pro-Roman King Agrippa II and his sister, together with Roman officials, fled the capital. Given the opportunity, Yisra’elites cleansed the country of all vestiges of the Roman Empire – removing all of its pagan symbols.
At this moment, Nero, who was noted for duplicity, debauchery, and extravagance, was nearing the end of his life and reign. He is often blamed for having lit Rome afire to expand his palace and for having turned people into torches to illuminate his gardens, but neither is likely true. And if the latter were so, his luminaries would have been Jews, not Christians.
While we are clearing away some myths, Nero did not “fiddle while Rome burned.” It’s an anachronism, not only because of the preference for the lyre at the time but, also, because there were no fiddles in 1st century Rome.
Nero inherited the throne at seventeen after his mother, Agrippina, poisoned Claudius, his lame and innocuous predecessor, with laced mushrooms. A mean-spirited momma’s boy, Nero constantly insulted Claudius’ memory, joking that he “played the fool among mortals.”
Nero’s murdering mother was omnipresent, by his side in statues, eye to eye on coins, and sitting next to him on his throne during meetings and functions. All the while, Nero grew to hate Octavia, his wife, and entered into an indiscreet affair with a slave. The undignified interloper 140put a wedge between mother and son, with Agrippina promoting Nero’s teenage stepbrother as his replacement.
The family feud was negated when Nero poisoned his half-sibling. Then, once he tired of the captive coitus, he tried adultery, becoming romantically involved with Sabina, the wife of his friend and future emperor, Otho. Since Agrippina objected yet again, Nero killed his mother, calling it a suicide. Then, ever the hypocrite, Nero divorced Octavia for infidelity. When she complained, he had her executed.
Evidently hard to please, he kicked Sabina to death. But then developing postmortem feelings for her, he had her body stuffed with spices and embalmed. Looking for an alternative means of satisfaction, Nero selected Sporus, a young boy from his household staff, who he castrated and married.
Unconcerned that he may have been tarnishing his reputation with so many unexplained deaths, Nero decided to have a Praetor, who spoke critically of him at a party, put to death. According to the historian, Suetonius, Nero “showed neither discrimination nor moderation in putting to death whomsoever he pleased.”
And yet, since Nero mostly robbed and killed aristocrats, he remained popular with the people. In fact, like so many infamous individuals, Nero was obsessed with his personal popularity – especially among the drunkards in taverns and working ladies in brothels, frequenting both regularly. He reigned in the cruelest tax collectors and impeached government officials most noted for extortion. He even reduced the federal tax rate from 4.5% to a paltry 2.5%. Then to lower food costs, he made merchant shipping tax exempt.
While it may have all been a publicity stunt to salvage a deteriorating reputation, after the Great Fire in 64 CE, Nero ordered financial relief for ordinary citizens while 141embarking on civic reconstruction. He is said to have engaged in trying to find and save victims of the blaze, on occasion sifting through the rubble with his own hands. The surviving reports suggest that Nero would even open the doors of his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless. Of course, if a journalist intended to report otherwise, he would not have lived long enough to tell the story.
Like Hitler after him, Nero wanted a new Rome, one with wide boulevards and stately buildings – beginning with his own in the center of it all. Nero ordered a grand new palace complex for himself in the prime location cleared by the fire. In the heart of the city, there would be several hundred acres devoted to his private array of lush landscapes. It wasn’t that he was fond of nature but, instead, wanted to create the proper universe for the Colossus Neronis. A one-hundred-foot-tall bronze statue of Nero would be covered in gold to reveal Nero as Sol, the sun god.
To finance the construction of the graven image designed to transform an ugly man into a god, Rome imposed heavy tributes upon every province within the empire. This project, as well as the means to fund it, is telling. It is in this garden that Tacitus, who was nine at the time of the fire and therefore twelve at this moment, became the first somewhat credible secular historian to chronicle the propaganda surrounding the fire and resulting gardens. It was his claim that people, most likely Jews should the claim be true, became living torches to illuminate the golden statue within Nero’s Garden. And whether or not that is true, the increase in taxes demanded from the provinces to fund Nero’s obsessions contributed substantially to the rebellion in Yahuwdah that would follow.
Even with higher tributes, the cost to rebuild Rome was greater than the dwindling treasury could bear. Especially costly was the Golden House Nero had 142constructed to overlook his Golden Colossus. His new palace was the first Roman building constructed with concrete and featured walls covered in gold leaf while many ceilings were veneered in ivory and bejeweled in dazzling gemstones to represent the stars that were perceived to be fellow gods and goddesses. These ceilings were ingeniously designed so that, when cranks were manipulated by slaves, the dome would revolve like the heavens. The floors, vaulted ceilings, and walls were covered in mosaics, a technique which was extensively copied in Christian cathedrals throughout Rome and Constantinople, inspiring a fundamental feature of Church art.
With so much money devoted to a delusional god, demented emperor, and deranged pope, Nero devalued the Roman currency, doing so for the first time in the empire’s history. He reduced the weight of the Denarius from 3.85 grams of silver to 3.35 grams. He also reduced the purity of the silver from 99.5% to 93.5%. And all the while, with the Roman economy contracting, Nero continued promoting public works and charitable entitlements because they seemed to flavor the public’s perception of his economic malfeasance. Welcome to the future, played out for us in our past.
And so it would be, as the riots broke out throughout the Province of Yahuwdah in 66 CE, Nero dispatched his army. Immediately thereafter, Cestius Gallus, the Legate of Syria, arrived with the XII Thunderbolt Legion, a total of thirty thousand troops, to restore Roman authority and collect Nero’s tributes. Gallus began in Caesarea and then Jaffa, murdering 8,400 civilians. Narbata and Sipporis surrendered without a fight as a consequence. Lydda was taken next. But in Geba, the Judean rebels, led by Shim’own bar Giora, engaged and managed to kill five hundred Roman troops. The defeat caused Gallus to retreat toward the coast, where the XII Legion was ambushed and 143routed during the Battle of Beth Horon, leaving six thousand Romans dead, thousands more wounded, and their Aqila | Eagle lost – shocking and humiliating the empire. Second-only in carnage to what the Germanic tribes inflicted in the forest ambush, it was the worst defeat the Roman Empire had ever suffered in one of its provinces at the hands of a civilian militia. Gallus abandoned his troops as the survivors fled in disarray to Syria.
Emperor Nero replaced Gallus with Titus Flavius Vespasian, assigning him the task of snuffing out the righteous indignation of the Yisra’elites. His son, Titus, was appointed second-in-command. They were given four Legions to crush life out of the Iudaean Province, with the X Fretensis and IV Macedonica arriving in April 67 CE. Titus then brought the XV Apollinaris from Alexandria. It was combined with the troops under King Agrippa’s control, collectively bringing sixty thousand soldiers to crush Yahuwdah.
Beginning where his predecessor had left off, Vespasian terrorized Galilee. By 68 CE, he eliminated resistance in the north, perpetrating a campaign of terror designed to punish the population. He was exactly as Yahowah predicted.
“I remained observant (chazah hawah) regarding this revelation during a time of enfolding darkness (ba chazuw lyly) when, behold (wa ‘aruw), the fourth (raby’ay) monstrous beast (chywah) became the most fearsome and formidable, dreadful and frightening, respected only for being overtly oppressive, terrifying, and threatening (dachal), genuinely horrifying and appalling, terribly gruesome (wa ‘eymatan), with (wa) an exceptionally powerful and preeminent military (yatyr taqyph).
It had (wa la hy’) teeth comprised of iron (shen dy parzel la). Great multitudes, including the highly 144populated and powerful (rab), it devoured and devastated (‘akal), crushing the remainder (wa daqaq wa sha’ar) with its feet (ba ragal hy’) by trampling them down violently, celebrating while destroying them (raphats) under foot (ba ragal).” (Dany’el 7:7)
General Vespasian’s next objective was the Judean coastline and watershed. By delaying direct confrontation with the rebels in Jerusalem, he would isolate them and starve them in typical Roman fashion. But even with the force of four Legions against a civilian uprising, it took the Romans several months to suppress Galilee. The last holdout was Yadphat | Jodapatha, which was obliterated following the treacherous conclusion to a forty-seven-day siege by Legio V Macedonica, X Fretensis, and XV Apollinaris. Forty thousand Jews were murdered by the Romans and another 1,200 women and children were enslaved by them.
In both Rome and Jerusalem, political turmoil arose, with corrupt politicians vying for power. Nero’s megalomania was becoming a serious issue, prompting increasingly erratic behavior. With each extravagance, he was manufacturing rivals.
In March 68 CE, Gaius Vindex, the Governor of Gallia (a Gallic Province covering most of northern France), rebelled against Nero’s tax and tribute policies. So, Nero ordered Lucius Rufus, the Governor of Germania (east of Gallia), to suppress Vindex’s rebellion. But rather than capitulate, Vindex solicited the support of Sulpicius Galba, the Governor of Hispania (covering most of modern-day Spain), encouraging him to join the rebellion and claim the throne for himself. And while that plan had merit, it didn’t work out for Vindex. When the Governor of Germania defeated Gallia, Vindex committed suicide. Nero’s strategy, however, backfired, because the Germanic Legions declared Lucius Rufus emperor.
145At the same time, a number of Senators (in what could be compared to England’s House of Lords), many of the Praetorian Guard, and a few of the surviving aristocratic Romans, came to favor Sulpicius Galba for emperor.and so, they conspired to assassinate Nero, labeling him “an Enemy of the People.” Already unstable, Nero fled Rome, hoping to sail off to a supportive province in the East and reestablish himself. But when the military officers he encountered along the way to the harbor refused to obey his orders, Nero chirped, “Is it so dreadful a thing then to die?”
Evidently, Nero didn’t like the prospect, so he wrote a speech, hoping to beg Romans to pardon him for his past offenses, while at the same time requesting control of a minor province, suggesting Egypt. And while a copy of the speech has been found, Nero, who found the courage to return to Rome, couldn’t muster the nerve to deliver it. The shuddering little man would spend the night in his palace overlooking the Colossal Nero. But come morning, he found himself without servants or guards, allegedly muttering a line similar to Paul’s last pathetic lamentation, “Have I neither friend nor foe?”
Later that day, wrongly believing that the Senate planned to torture him to death, Nero, who couldn’t bring himself to take his own life, forced his secretary to do the deed. And in his dying breath, the insane and delusional beast uttered, “What an artist dies in me!” It was June 9th, 68 CE. He was the last of the short-lived Julio-Claudian dynasty. Aristocrats celebrated his death while the lower classes, who were beneficiaries and recipients of the fabulous excesses, bemoaned the news. The army, as it turns out, was bribed to turn against him.
Sulpicius Galba, the Governor of Hispania, became Nero’s replacement. His short reign was spent executing most every potential rival, including allies of Nero. It was politics as usual from Rome.
146Rise by the sword, fall by the sword: Galba was stabbed to death a few months later by one of his intended victims, Marcus Salvius Otho. The political intrigue triggered a third Civil War. This chaotic period was called the “Year of the Four Emperors,” even though there were five within thirteen months.
Otho, who was encouraged to murder his way to the top, did so on the counsel of astrologers, making it a religious response to a political objective. To better appreciate his motivation, Otho had squandered his inheritance and had just enough money left to bribe some twenty members of the Praetorian Guard. They took him to their barracks and heralded him as emperor. Now backed by muscle, the would-be Emperor Otho made his way to the Forum at the base of Capitoline Hill. Alarmed that treachery was underfoot, the temporary Emperor, Galba, waded through the crowds to reach the barracks Otho had just departed. But along the way, Galba’s cohort deserted him, and the Praetorian Guard turned on him, brutally murdering Galba and his immediate family. Celebrating the slaughter, Otho claimed the throne.
History reveals that the reason Galba became vulnerable was that he had promised to lavish large amounts of gold on the Legions’ Praetorian Guards who supported his ascension but then reneged. But Ortho proved no better. Further demonstrating the deterioration of Roman character, Otho, the man whose wife had been taken by Nero, the man who had been banished to Portugal by Nero, adopted Nero’s name. He even became intimate with Sporus, Nero’s castrated lover. He moved into Nero’s Golden House and reestablished all of the statues of Nero that Galba had taken down, in recognition of how popular the perverted emperor remained with the populous.
It was a lesson learned and a strategy often repeated: rob the rich to indulge the poor and most people will venerate the liberal politician, even if the welfare state 147bankrupts the country, devalues its currency, and precipitates war. The West’s crippling response to the Covid-19 virus, followed by insane stimulus packages, and then aiding and abetting a war in Ukraine, replete with suicidal sanctions, demonstrates that Rome’s foolishness is being repeated because we have failed to learn these lessons.
After arranging his predecessor’s death, the man, whose reckless temperament, grandiose extravagance, and effeminate and yet murderous demeanor were said to be identical to Nero’s, was confronted by another rival, this one Vitellius, the commander of the Rhine Legions. He and they were advancing on Rome with Otho in their sights. So after vainly trying to conciliate Vitellius, offering him a share of the empire, Otho prepared to combat him.
For reasons now lost to history, the Legions of Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia rallied to Otho’s cause, as did the Praetorian Guards. As emperor, Otho also had access to Rome’s formidable fleet which was dispatched to Liguria along the coast of northwestern Italy to prevent Vitellius’ advance. Undeterred by foreboding omens and prophecies, Otho barricaded himself in Brixellum, while ordering his men to attack the Vitellian Legions. They did, they failed, and they retreated right back to Brixellum.
Vitellius pursued them, expecting another battle, but upon his arrival, the disheartened army of Otho welcomed Vitellius’ army into their camp as friends. It was then that Otho would allegedly declare: “It is far more just to perish one for all, than many for one,” before stabbing himself to death. Some soldiers were so impressed, Rome’s propagandists claim that they threw themselves on Otho’s funeral pyre to die with their emperor.
Yet another suicide allowed Vitellius to become the fourth emperor of Rome in less than a year. But that was not the end of Ring Around the Rosie – they all fall down. 148The Danube armies (III Gallica, IV Macedonica, VIII Augusta, and VII Claudia) were brought against Vitellius after swearing an oath initially to him and then later to Vespasian. To counter their duplicity, Vitellius composed an army of XXI Rapax, V Alaudae, I Italica, and XXII Primigenia. But as Vespasian’s Legions saluted the Sun, acknowledging their god at sunrise as was their custom, Vitellius misinterpreted the gesture. He was led to believe that they were welcoming reinforcements. So, the general-turned-emperor lost heart and retreated. Vitellius was taken prisoner and, after a matter of months on the throne, was summarily executed. He was prepared to abdicate, but that wasn’t the Roman way.
In the midst of this chaos, Vespasian, who was now hailed as emperor by his Legions, left the bludgeoning of Yahuwdah | Judah, turning his killing machine over to his son, Titus, so that he could return to Rome and claim his prize. There was no longer any doubt, the empire that was forged in war had become a military state.
Also confirming this realization, in dating his rule, Vespasian chose the moment the decree was made by his Legions, rather than the timing of the Senate’s capitulation. The Roman military turned the Senate into an electoral college for would-be dictators.
Meanwhile, the Yahuwdym were not of one accord either. Menahem ben Yahuda’s attempt to lead the Sicarii (men wielding daggers) into Yaruwshalaim | Jerusalem was repulsed by the Sadducees. Ben Yahuda was executed and his Sicarii were driven back. All the while, Ananus, the Sadducean leader, was reinforcing the city in preparation for the beastly attack that was sure to come.
149Surprisingly, the first siege wasn’t from the Romans. Driven from Galilee, the Zealot rebels and thousands of homeless civilians sought refuge in Yahuwdah | Judah, creating political and social turmoil in Yaruwshalaim. Infighting between the Zealots (conservative religious fundamentalists) and Sadducees (liberal secular politicians) became violent and bloody. With ‘Edomites fighting on behalf of the Zealots, Ananus was killed, and his faction of the fractured rebellion suffered substantial casualties. And as a result, Bar Giora, commanding a militia of fifteen thousand men, was invited into Jerusalem by the Sadducees in an effort to ward off the Zealots. They prevailed but at a tremendous cost of lives and treasure that would have been better invested in fighting Rome.
During the time Vespasian had been in Judah, he opposed an open siege against Jerusalem. The city, situated on a hill and protected by three concentric walls, was a formidable target. Vespasian was worried that he would lose too many troops in a direct assault. Mind you, his concern wasn’t for his soldiers’ lives but for his own career. Generals who squandered Legions were summarily dismissed. But when Vespasian withdrew to Rome, he left his son, Titus, in command.
Younger, brash, and impervious to the human cost of his strategy, Titus was destined to build a name for himself. He struck the heart of the opposition, besieging Yaruwshalaim in early 70 CE. He breached the outer two walls within a few weeks, but the inner wall was thicker and resistance was aggressive, keeping the Romans at bay for seven months. Inside the city, the brutal Civil War raged on, with the religious Zealots ultimately prevailing over the political Sadducees. Then without internal opposition, they mounted a passionate defense, turning the siege of Jerusalem into a stalemate.
The Romans were as predictable as ever. In support of their siege, they built walls and dug trenches around the 150city, creating a formidable barrier in hopes of starving the Jews to death. Anyone who dared run the gauntlet between the two walls in an attempt to flee the city was captured, crucified, and displayed in long lines on top of the dirt walls the Romans had made, always facing Jerusalem.
The message was clear: every Jew would die. They would suffer excruciating death at the hands of the Roman government Paul had claimed in his letter to the Romans just a few years earlier had been appointed and was guided by his god.
The Beast of Rome crucified an average of five hundred Jews a day, day after day, week after week, month after month, for seven months. That equates to over one hundred thousand excruciatingly slow and agonizingly painful deaths perpetrated on God’s people by the Romans. The only reprieve was that the dying couldn’t suck enough air into their lungs for their pitiful screams to be heard over any distance.
It wasn’t all unbearable torture, however, because at the same time, the Romans began constructing ramparts to facilitate their ultimate assault on God’s city. Contemplating the inevitable, the Zealots, in a desperate act, inflicted a wound that accomplished what the siege implements and crucifixions could not achieve. To motivate Yaruwshalaim’s population to fight the Romans as if their lives were dependent upon it, the religious fundamentalists intentionally burned the city’s stockpile of food. As a result, the entrapped Yisra’elites would either die hopelessly fighting a vastly superior force without appropriate weapons, starve to death, or be crucified.
Most of the remaining nearly one million besieged men, women, and children engaged in the resistance, fighting Romans in hand-to-hand combat after the walls finally gave way. But it was futile. The Romans ransacked the entire city, burning Yahowah’s favorite place on Earth 151to the ground. The last bastion of Yisra’elite resistance, the Temple itself, was destroyed and plundered by the most depraved nation in human history on Tisha B’Av, August 30, 70 CE.
The Arch of Titus outside the Colosseum in Rome chronicles the moment, showing the Legions hauling away the Temple’s implements, including the Manowrah | Menorah, during the frenzied celebration. The Arch was built to commemorate Titus’ Triumphal procession in Rome, demonstrating all that is wrong with humanity. Roman coins were distributed throughout the empire with the inscription “IVDEA CAPTA – Judea Captured.” They were minted to demonstrate the futility of rebelling against the empire. It didn’t matter, at least to the Romans, that their reprehensible behavior had precipitated the rebellion or that their Legions and leaders had been murderously savage in suppressing it.
The Romans were so depraved that they actually celebrated their debauchery. Torturing women and children to death was sport. On the commemorative coins, Yahuwdah was represented by a woman whose head was bowed, bent over in shame and sorrow, crying. As for Titus, he allegedly refused the wreath of victory, claiming that he had “lent his arms to god.” It becomes all the more reprehensible when we recognize that this was the monster from which the Roman Catholic Church emerged.
The last Jewish holdout was Masada. The Romans, led by Lucius Silva, destroyed it in the spring of 73. To do so, they deployed the X Fretensis (Sea Strait) and an army of Jewish slaves. Once they finally achieved their immoral aim, they found all but seven of the nine hundred sixty-seven men, women, and children inside having already committed suicide.
Elsewhere, everything surrounding Jerusalem was destroyed, either torn to the ground or burned. The war the 152Romans had started with thievery and the imposition of their arrogance ended ruthlessly and vengefully, even sadistically. The survivors were either crucified or enslaved. In all, one million one hundred thousand Jews were killed during the Roman siege. At least one hundred thousand Jewish slaves were carted off to Rome, initiating the Diaspora. They were initially tasked with building the Flavian Amphitheater, more commonly known as the Roman Colosseum. The project was funded out of the treasure stolen from the Temple.
Nothing in all of human history speaks louder or more clearly regarding the Beast of Rome than the fact that they funded their Colosseum with the metals they looted when they destroyed Yahowah’s Temple, constructing the most carnal amphitheater on earth using Jewish slaves. In the Temple, Yahowah celebrated life and relationships. In the Colosseum, the Romans celebrated conquest and death.
With the Temple’s destruction, the debate between the rabbis who had claimed that the Towrah | Torah was a compilation of Laws that had to be meticulously obeyed and the likes of Dowd | David who realized that the Towrah was comprised of Teaching and Guidance should have been over. All of the Towrah’s instructions pertaining to the Temple were now impossible to perform, making the religious interpretation invalid. And yet, every nuance of every word remained relevant for those seeking to know God, for those wanting to participate in His Covenant Family.
The failure on behalf of the rabbis to adjust their thinking accordingly and to embrace the simple truth of Yahowah’s message further alienated the Chosen People from their Land and their God. The rabbis used the occasion to begin weaving the Towrah and the Temple, along with its Author, out of their religion, such that the focus of Judaism would become the Talmud – with its words authored by rabbis who would become venerated 153over Yahowah. Rabbis would ultimately become a greater threat to impeding the relationship Yahowah intended for His people than Rome.
There were more battles in more places. And while my heart tells me to leap ahead sixty years, my head realizes that we should complete what we have started. Since Yahowah detailed His utter disgust for Rome, the empire and what it represents today in Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, the least we can do is delineate why Rome earned Yahowah’s enduring wrath.
In 84 CE, Romans scored another military victory, this one in Scotland. Although, the only account we have of this battle was described by Tacitus who was not there, and nothing he said can be confirmed by modern excavations, leaving many historians to doubt whether it even took place. The vanquished were illiterate.
A great deal more is known about Domitian’s next war. It was waged against the Dacian Kingdom in 86 CE to confront King Duras. He had invaded the Roman Province of Moesia – a tiny strip of land in the Balkans that sat along the south bank of the Danube River in modern-day Serbia but, also, included northernmost Macedonia and parts of Bulgaria. He caught the Romans by surprise, annihilating the V Alaudae / Gallica Legion.
In his counterattack, Domitian replaced the lost Legion. Looking for a turn of fortune, he brought in the IV Flavia Felix (Lucky Flavian) along with the I and II Adiutrix (Rescuers). And while historians disagree on whether Domitian personally led the operation or returned to Rome, the result was a Roman victory, clearing the Dacians out of Moesia. Domitian claimed credit and a 154Triumph was offered in his honor. It was perhaps a bit premature, because in 87 CE, Fascus crossed the Danube, was ambushed, and Rome’s V Alaudae Legion was destroyed.
As we move into the 2nd century, the battleground remains unchanged. In 101 CE, Emperor Trajan defeated the Dacian King Decebalus. This is telling because, in 88 CE, the Dacians and the Romans signed a long-term and comprehensive peace accord. But by violating it, Trajan was afforded the opportunity to annihilate the remainder of the Dacian forces, which he did the following year near Adamclisi (in modern Romania). After the battle, a new peace accord was negotiated with those who knew nothing of it.
Obviously, this Pax Romana didn’t last either. The Romans laid siege to the Dacian capital in 106 CE, sacking it. Upon their return to Rome, they carried 165,000 kilograms of Dacian gold and 331,000 kilograms of their silver along with them, even Decebalus’ head and right arm.
This battle and its covetous and ghoulish conclusion would be memorable. The assault marked the final conquest of the Roman Empire. From this point on, every battle would be defensive, fought to retain control of their crumbling killing machine. Their iron teeth were fracturing from overuse.
Truth be known, from the moment they tortured the Passover Lamb, destroyed Yahowah’s Home, and murdered His people, Rome began to die. However, while the Beast was mortally wounded, Rome’s death would be agonizingly slow – as if enduring national crucifixion.
Returning to bludgeon their favorite victims, Rome found yet another reason to punish God’s people. The third of four wars between the Beast and Yahuwdah would be called “Kitos War.” It was waged between 115-117 CE.
155Even though their ranks had been thinned, with many hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered and enslaved forty-five years earlier, there were still Yahuwdym living around the Mediterranean. But they were not happy. Following the brutal and sadistic Roman assault against Yahuwdah between 66 and 70 CE, the Jews in Diaspora were righteously indignant. As a result, they are said to have initiated protests in Cyrene, Cyprus, and Egypt, allegedly killing many Romans to avenge the deaths of their brethren and the destruction of their homeland. And while the 4th century Christian theologian, Orosius, exaggerated the scope of the Jewish protests to demonize Jews, as was the Roman custom, there is indisputable evidence that Greeks throughout the late 1st and early 2nd century became increasingly prejudiced against God’s people, largely as a result of the growing popularity of Paul’s anti-Semitic letters among Gentiles.
At the time, Emperor Trajan was victoriously advancing through northwestern Mesopotamia in his pursuit of the Parthian Empire. And with a remnant of Jews still living where they had been enslaved long ago by the Babylonians, there is every reason to believe that, given the opportunity, Jews menaced Trajan’s rear, attacking some of the smaller garrisons stretched out along his supply line.
During the same period, unrest in Cyrenaica, along the coast in northeastern Libya, spread into Egypt and then Cyprus, inciting supportive demonstrations in Judaea. The most notable protest occurred in Lydda, known as Lowd | Travail in Hebrew, which was located some ten miles southeast of today’s Tel Aviv. The Romans were concerned because the unrest could potentially threaten grain supplies from Egypt that had been confiscated and transported to feed Trajan’s troops.
Lusius Quietus, the bane of Jews in Mesopotamia, was put in command of the Roman army in Judaea. He 156immediately laid siege to Lydda, crucifying thousands of Jews in the process.
Simultaneously, back in Cyrenaica, Yahuwdym began desecrating Roman, Greek, and Egyptian temples to Jupiter, Apollo, Artemis, and Isis. Interpreting their fight for freedom and desire to rid the world of false gods as if doing either was somehow wrong, the 5th century Gallaecian (Spanish) priest, Christian theologian, and budding historian, Paulus Orosius, wrote: “The Jews...waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, its land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not the Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out.” (Orosius, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, 7.12.6) In reality, as a Christian, Father Paulus had been indoctrinated by his namesake to hate those Yahowah had chosen. He was simply doing his part to justify Christianity’s religious hatred of Jews while proving that Christian theologians should never be trusted.
Christian clerics such as Priest Paulus Orosius were required to reconstruct late Roman and early Church history to preserve the myths that Paul had promoted. The truth would have been devastating to Roman Catholicism. So, it should be noted that Orosius, who took the Christian name, Paulus, became one of Saint Augustine’s students. As a result, he also had significant contact with Jerome – the author of the Latin Vulgate. Paulos Orosius was at times a Roman apologist, advocating on behalf of the Roman Empire, doing so in Braga (in the Iberian Peninsula) during his youth. He then migrated to Algeria where he met Augustine, becoming his secretary and Christian propagandist. In this role, Orosius likely contributed to Augustine’s most acclaimed work, The City of God, his apologist rant on behalf of Rome. He would 157claim that the “one true god protected pagan Romans because they were virtuous.”
Too senseless to realize that the Romans were the most universally evil empire in recorded history, and that Christianity grew out of Rome’s pagan roots, Augustine promoted his religion at the expense of pagan myths. Nonetheless, beginning thirty-three years after Emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica making Nicene Christianity the official and exclusive religion of the Roman Empire, and three years after the sack of Imperial Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis set out to prove that Christianity wasn’t responsible for what had occurred within the Roman Empire. In so doing, he missed the obvious: Imperial Rome was now the Roman Catholic Church. It had occurred just as Yahowah had predicted, with the most vicious of Beasts becoming the deadliest.
Rome was and remains very much alive, menacing the entire world, not just Jews, through the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. Indirectly, it is a point Augustine makes within the City of God, unaware of the consequence. It is actually his claim that Rome became the Roman Catholic Church. One Beast evolved into the next. It’s a miracle anyone believed that Rome and its Church were now the “New Jerusalem.” Paul’s Replacement Theology was being heralded by those God despised.
As we should expect, almost all of Augustine’s arguments relative to Christianity were derived from the poisoned Roman pen of Paul. The fulcrum of his worldview pivots on denying the millennial celebration of Sukah following Kipurym in year 6000 Yah affirmed in Yasha’yah, Yirma’yah, Zakaryah, Malaky, and Dany’el. He would have Roman Catholics believe that it was all manifest by God through the transition of Rome to the Church 1,600 years in our past. The resulting romp through this make-believe world of religion would require the 158faithful to discount everything Yahowah revealed and deny everything we have just considered.
It is telling that Augustine, like Paul, was a Gnostic. Just as Paul’s letters present the Gnostic view of the spirit and the flesh, with one being good and the other evil, the actual city of Rome is contrasted with a spiritual construct in The City of God. Augustine was heavily influenced by Manichaeism, a variation of Gnosticism that was founded by the Prophet Mani in Sasanian Babylonia. This elitist philosophical belief system thrived during Augustine’s lifetime, especially between the 3rd and 7th centuries when it was not only as widespread and as influential as Christianity, the religions became so similar, Gnosticism was amalgamated into Christianity. This explains Augustine’s fascination with Plato, the Greek scholar who popularized Gnosticism among intellectuals. It also affirms Yahowah’s prophecy in which Babylon would evolve into Roman Catholicism, with the Beast transitioning through Persia, Greece, and Imperial Rome along the way.
Since Augustine’s The City of God, second only to Paul’s letters, is the most influential text in developing Christianity, it should be noted Augustine was wrong in developing the doctrine of being enslaved to Original Sin along with the doctrine that Grace was the only means to freedom. His Doctrine of the Trinity was purely Babylonian. And his Doctrine of Amillennialism was Gnostic. And while all of Augustine’s errors continue to haunt Christianity, the least known, Amillennialism, may be the most troubling. His projected prophetic timeline of the last days on earth, which is still the prevalent Christian view today, is that the millennial celebration of Sukah and the Shabat is a wholly invalid concept, wrong in nature, wrong in time, wrong in place, and wrong in purpose. This perspective, which is the antithesis of Yahowah’s promise, was advanced because Augustine was opposed to the Shabat, to the Miqra’ey, to the Towrah, to the Covenant, to 159Yahowah’s six plus one formula, and to what Yaruwshalaim and ‘Eden represent. With Augustine, all of these things were replaced by the Roman Catholic Church, making them superfluous. In Augustine’s mind, the millennium had already begun, and it was synonymous with the advent of Roman Catholicism. He was obviously wrong.
Much of The City of God paints paganism and Christianity as black and white, as good versus evil. And yet, almost every material aspect of the Christian doctrine has pagan roots. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church grew through syncretism, by combining complementary and contradictory mythologies that were practiced and accepted by the different cultures the Church wanted to assimilate and control. It was easier for the emerging Roman church to accommodate prior religious beliefs than convert masses of people to a whole new religion.
And while Augustine was a Catholic apologist, his affinity for predestination made him a favorite of Calvinists and therefore many Protestants. He’s even become a saint, with his Feast Day celebrated on June 15th. And since for much of his life he was a hedonist and bisexual libertine, he and his City of God have become popular again in academia. It should also be noted that his conversion experience occurred while reading Paul’s attack on the flesh in the midst of his letter to the Romans.
As an interesting insight into this unique slice of history during Christianity’s formative years, it was Augustine who sent Orosius to the recently named “Palestine” to meet with Jerome in Bethlehem. The intent of the trip was to undermine Augustine’s most effective foe, Pelagius, who recognized that Augustine’s promotion of original sin and predestination were absurd. Augustine wanted Pelagius to be declared a heretic, thereby demeaning the man, since Augustine could not refute 160Pelagius’ arguments. And that is because Pelagius consistently cited the Towrah to prove that his assessment was consistent with God’s testimony. Noting the fact that Pelagius relied expressly on the testimony of God, I love his retort to his critic: “Who is Augustine to me?”
Paulos Orosius continued to make his mark on the early Christian church. His book, History Against the Pagans promotes Christianity’s three persona trinity as monotheistic, when it is not only pagan, it was conceived in Babel | Babylon. Making matters worse, Orosius also protested that the Towrah’s proclamation that Yahowah was one, was somehow pagan, and needed to be corrected. As a result, he found utter futility in trying to convert Jews to Christianity.
Rather than associate Jews with monotheism, Orosius did the opposite, and claimed that Christianity had replaced the villainous nature of pagan Jews and Judaism. He contrasted Rome’s initial decadence with what it had become – Christian – odd since it was never worse than at the time of Orosius’ writing. Rome was sacked by the Visigoths led by Alaric in 410 CE. But neither truth nor reason has ever been popular among those advancing Christian myths.
The ground we are currently tilling is the soil in which Christianity was planted and took root. It explains, in part, the mindset of the Romans and Greeks, as well as the Church which emerged from them. Everything associated with Yahowah, His Towrah, His Covenant, His People, and His Land was rejected and despised. Christianity was born out of animosity toward Yahowah and it grew ever more adverse to God, His Towrah, and His Chosen People. If this review of Roman history accomplishes nothing more than explaining why Christianity is so overtly hostile to everything God cherishes, then for that reason alone, this long march through human depravity has been worth our time.
161Turning back the clock to another Roman and Christian apologist to assess the situation circa 115 CE, we find Dio Cassius, who also was prone to revisionism and exaggeration. He claimed, “Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason, no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.” (Dio’s Rome, Volume V, Book 68, paragraph 32) The Roman who made up these demonizing accusations against God’s people was among those crafting the doctrines of the emerging Church. The Devil would have many advocates.
We cannot simply dismiss this racist rant as irresponsible hyperbole from an isolated individual. Cassius Dio was an insider and an elitist. He was the son of a Roman Senator. He became a Byzantine Consul – the highest elective and appointed office in the empire. He was born as “Lucius” in Nicaea in 155 CE not long after the obliteration of the Promised Land. He was directly related to Dio Chrysostom, the famed Greek philosopher. And as a Nicaean, he was heavily influenced by the Council of Nikaia | Nicaea where Christianity became overtly pagan – shaped by Gnosticism and the cult of Dionysus, the Sibylline Oracles and Homer’s Odysseus. He was also a contemporary and compatriot of Theodosius – a name that will soon loom large in the imposition of Christianity.
162Dio’s historical musings, while often mythological and fanciful, were hardly trivial. Over the course of twenty-two years he composed eighty books detailing the history of Rome, from its legendary founding in 756 BCE up until 229 CE. So, while his voice was shrill, while he was prone to revisionist history, while he was a Christian propagandist mired in Replacement Theology, and while he was a raging anti-Semite, his views reflect the prevailing view from Constantinople in the 3rd century CE.
This known, there is some evidence that some Jews, oppressed to the breaking point, may have vandalized the tomb of Pompey. While a victimless crime, and a worthy target, it elicited a strong and vicious response from Trajan.
Aggravating the situation in Cyprus, Jews, in an act of self-defense, likely killed some of the Greeks and Romans who were oppressing them. So, after dispatching a Legion to crush the rebellion, Trajan issued laws forbidding Jews to live in Cyprus.
While Trajan was busy creating a name for himself by conquering Nisibis, the capital of Edessa in today’s Turkey, and then Seleucia on the Tigris in today’s Iraq, his very presence was sufficient to irritate the large Jewish populations still living there as exiles. And as it would transpire, in the summer of 117 CE Trajan succumbed to a lingering illness and died after a grandiose speech delineating his achievements.
Trajan was replaced as the head of the Beast by Publius Aelius Hadrian in August of 117 CE. This action was not without effect. Hadrian demoted Lusius Quietus, later executing him, because he had been too soft on the Jews. It was then that Hadrian began planning a final solution. To accomplish his objective, he began accumulating resources and eliminating distractions. To that end, he withdrew his troops from Mesopotamia and 163garrisoned Legio VI Ferrata in Caesarea, a harbor town on the Mediterranean coast in northern Judea.
And while that was fearsome and foreboding, it was insufficient. A grand deception would be required to entice wandering Jews back into the land from which they had been expelled. So just as a hunter lures his prey into his trap, Hadrian publicly appeared sympathetic to Jews. He encouraged them to return home to Jerusalem with the promise that they would be allowed to rebuild the Temple his predecessors so hastily destroyed. What’s worse, Jews believed him.
As the expectations of the returning Yahuwdym rose, and as they busied themselves with plans to rebuild the Temple, Publius Aelius (from the Greek Helius | Sun) Hadrianus Augustus sprung his trap. He arrived on the Temple Mount and announced his actual intent, which was to rebuild Yaruwshalaim as a vacation spot for Roman Legions with the city named in his honor: Aelia (the Sun’s) Capitolina. Jerusalem would be a shrine to Hadrian six hundred years before Muslims erected their trophies to Allah | Satan on the same Temple Mount.
His vision was for Jerusalem to be a place where pagan deities and Roman emperors would be celebrated. It was so religious, patriotic, and militant of him. He had already laid out its broad avenues and urban grid in Roman style, replete with piazzas, forums, and baths. In addition to announcing that Aelius Hadrian would be worshiped as divine, there would be lesser shrines built for regional deities. There would also be a grand Capitolina for the trinity of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, Venus, and Minerva. With Jupiter’s sacred edifice defacing the Temple Mount, the Shrine to Venus would be situated so strategically, it would later become Roman Catholicism’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
164As his plan revealed, and with Jews now clustered in one place, Hadrian knew what would follow. They would riot and he would respond by crushing them. Aelius Hadrianus was playing with Jews like an Orca plays with a wounded seal before eating it.
The intended consequence of Hadrian’s final solution was the Third Roman War against Judea. Every city in Yahuwdah would be laid waste, when over half a million Jews would be killed. Virtually every survivor would be dispersed, sold in the Roman slave markets. The Promised Land would be depopulated.
For eighteen long centuries, the Roman assault on Yahuwdah remained the most horrific genocide ever perpetrated against a nation or race. And all the while the Jews were baited into being victims by a depraved man at the helm of a ruthless empire.
The battle was waged over religion and politics, military power and economic oppression. The spark, as previously mentioned, that ignited the Great Jewish Revolt was Aelius Hadrian’s visit to the Temple Mount in 130 CE when he disclosed that the city would become a shrine to himself with a temple to Jupiter erected where Yahowah’s Home once stood. To mark the occasion, Rome minted a coin inscribed “Aelia Capitolina” in 132 CE, just as the people’s indignation boiled over.
The Jewish reaction was predictable, immediate, and obviously averse. But Aelius Hadrian was ready, having brought a second Legion, the VI Ferrata, into the Province of Ieuda.
Then in early 131 CE, as work commenced on the shrine to Roman ego, Senator Tineius Rufus presided over the foundation ceremony for Aelia Capitolina. He thereby officially announced the decision to rename, reshape, and repurpose Yaruwshalaim to serve the Roman Empire rather than Yahowah’s Children. The perverse lie that was Rome 165would be placed directly on top of the place where Yahowah’s testimony had been manifest to the world. In this way, it would be a dress rehearsal for Christianity. It would also serve as a model that Muslims would follow.
But there was more to Tineius Rufus than just a master of ceremonies. He was a sexual pervert who found great pleasure in raping Jewish women. And he, like so many other Romans, was sadistic and anti-Semitic. I suspect Hadrian knew this, which is why he was appointed.
Desecrating Jewish women, Yaruwshalaim, and the Temple in this way was offensive. But the Roman Emperor wasn’t done yanking their chain. Demonstrating his animosity toward Yahowah and His Covenant, Hadrian, a Hellenist, abolished circumcision – effectively nullifying God’s family and the means to salvation.
Greeks and Romans, like the Babylonians and Persians before them, considered the rest of the world inferior. But because Yisra’elites knew that they were God’s Chosen People, they were unwilling to bow before their pervasive prejudice. Therefore, their every peculiarity, and especially circumcision, was viewed as barbaric. And since Romans and Greeks were typically bisexual libertines fixated and enamored with the male genitalia, they considered circumcision a form of mutilation. This then explains in part why Paul, a Roman speaking to Greeks, was so opposed to it. Most Romans and Greeks agreed with him. This is one of the reasons that Yahowah insists upon it, knowing that it would make His people different and distinct from the religious and vicious gowym.
At the time, and on the opposing side, a man most probably on God’s top ten most despised list, Rabbi Akiba, promoted the myth that a local thug, Shimon bar Kosiba, whom he renamed Bar Kokhba (“Son of a Star” in Aramaic), was ha Mashyach. It made sense to some 166because the coming year, 133 CE, would be a Yowbel, this one within a century of Year 4000 Yah. And during the Yowbel, slaves are freed, and land is returned.
Unfortunately, like most things in Rabbinic Judaism, Akiba’s assertion regarding Bar Kokhba was as phony as his name. But truth seldom, if ever, matters to the proponents of religion, so Akiba saw to it that Jews either accepted his declaration or die – an unconscionable admission for the many Yahuwdym, who were now part of the Covenant as a result of Dowd’s fulfillment of its Towrah and Miqra’ey promise to provide the Pesach | Passover Lamb. Those who had actually come to recognize the Messiah as the Passover Lamb, as we have done, were persecuted mercilessly when they refused to accept Akiba’s religious lie. So once again, Yisra’el was a house divided.
Rabbinic lore portrays Shimon bar Kokhba capturing scores of Roman forts and nearly one thousand undefended villages, including Jerusalem. Impressed with himself, especially after some initial success, Shimon bar Kokhba began referring to himself as “Nasi Yisra’el – the Prince of Israel.” This declaration was hauntingly similar to Adolf Hitler’s “der Fuehrer – the Leader” moniker. The newly coined Prince minted shekels showing his star above a façade of the Temple. His currency proudly proclaimed: “The Era of the Redemption of Israel.”
But Hadrian wasn’t impressed. He simply recalled General Sextus Julius Severus from Britain and gathered troops from as far away as the Danube, from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Macedonia. Reinforcements would also come from Egypt, Syria, and Britain. It would become the largest army ever assembled in the history of the Roman Empire – a total of twelve Legions. Hadrian’s plan to exterminate the Jews was playing out with Roman precision.
167Predictable as ever, General Severus surrounded Jewish towns and withheld food. When the people were too weak to fight effectively, he attacked. This cruel strategy played out for three years before the rabbinical revolt was finally crushed in the summer of 135 CE. One by one, Rome antagonized, starved, assaulted, captured, and then eradicated every village, town, and city in Judea and then Israel.
In spite of Severus’ strategy of weakening his foe before killing him, when people have nothing to lose, when their enemy becomes inhuman, even when wielding farm implements and kitchen utensils, they become deadly. So great was the resulting carnage, Rome was forced to disband the XXII Deiotariana Legion due to its irrecoverable losses. The Legio IX Hispana was also dismissed immediately after the war – and never heard from again.
Bar Kokhba’s last stand occurred at Bethar. It served as his headquarters, the home of the Sanhedrin, and a strategic fort situated on a mountain ridge overlooking the Sorek Valley. The Fifth Macedonian Legion and the Eleventh Claudian coordinated the siege – killing everyone. According to the Talmud, “the Romans went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils.” So enraged were the Romans, they wouldn’t even allow the bodies of Jews to be buried for six days, and some say six months. This defeat fell on the 9th of ‘Ab, a fast day for rabbinic Jews who were commemorating the day Rome had destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Cassius Dio, neither a friend of the Jews nor of the truth, wrote: “580,000 Jews were killed, fifty fortified towns were destroyed, and 985 villages were razed to the ground.” A rabbinic Midrash states that, in addition to Bar Kokhba, the Romans executed the ten most senior members of the Sanhedrin, including the High Priest. The Rabbinic account details agonizing tortures, with Rabbi 168Akiba being flayed alive. Rabbi Ishmael had the skin on his face pulled off slowly over time. Rabbi Hanania was burned alive with a dampened Towrah scroll wrapped around his body to prolong his agony.
Hadrian subsequently imposed policies that made Judaism illegal, prohibiting the practice of the Jewish faith anywhere in the Roman Empire. In addition, impersonating the “Antichrist,” the Roman emperor outlawed Yahowah’s Towrah, making God’s Shabat, and His seven Mow’ed Miqra’ey illegal – as remained the case with circumcision, nullifying God’s Covenant. Every Torah scroll found in Yisra’el was burned upon the Temple Mount. All Hebrew scholars were executed. Hadrian had achieved what he had sought to accomplish. And in the process, he proved Yahowah right and all things Roman wrong.
At the site of the Temple, the Roman emperor erected two massive statues, one of himself and the other of Jupiter. Jerusalem would become as he had envisioned, the pagan colony of Aelia Capitolina. Jews were forbidden entry – except on Tisha B’Ab – the date which commemorates the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Romans. Then to erase any memory of Judea or Israel, Aelius Hadrian wiped both names from every map, replacing them with the name of an ancient, albeit long extinct foe, Palestina, for the Philistines. Even today, scholars and theologians influenced by the Beast refer to Yisra’el by this misnomer. And worse, the Muslims who invaded the land promised to God’s people, beginning five centuries later, would masquerade as Fakestinians and call the land they were occupying “Palestine.” Lies die hard.
As for the man who would play god, the man whose ambitions ignited the war that he then ruthlessly prosecuted, he died in 138 CE. The rabbis who foisted the debilitating religious deception upon their own people were executed but not before their shenanigans brought death or enslavement to almost every Jew.
169The few who were able to flee the carnage moved to Babylon. Unfortunately, many came to accept Babylonian religious customs and went on to scribe the Babylonian Talmud in the heart of the Beast. As a result, Judaism would become as Babylonian as Christianity.
Centuries removed from this day, in 614 CE, after contributing to Islam’s Quran, after being savaged by Muhammad and the first Muslims, amoral Jews joined the Devil’s brigade and, along with Persian Muslims, attacked the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem. Their return, however, would be short-lived. They would surrender to Byzantine forces in 625 CE and were summarily massacred four years later. A dozen years thereafter, in 637 CE, Arab Muslims under the command of Umar ibn al-Khattab devastated the Byzantines, claiming Yisra’el for Islam.
It remained the Promised Land, but there were no Chosen People. It was a fight to the death over religion, with God opposing both sides.
Inexplicably, rather than renouncing him for promoting a lie that cost the Yisra’elites everything, their freedom, their lives, and their land, Rabbi Akiba grew to become the father of Rabbinic Judaism – the most revered man in the only surviving form of the religion. Bar Kokhba, who embodied his lie, became a symbol of valiant national resistance when he should have become the poster child for false hope. His kowkab | star, not Dowd’s | David’s, remains the symbol of the state.
Before we move on, recognizing how disorienting carnage and duplicity of this magnitude can be, I’d like to reestablish our bearings. Two Yowbel prior to the Roman destruction of Judea, Yahowah, by deploying Dowd’s nepesh and the Ruwach Qodesh had affirmed the promises He had made in His Towrah to liberate His children and give them life. And yet, now under the influence of Rome, His Towrah was outlawed, and His people were either dead 170or enslaved. Four score and four years prior to this infamous occasion, Paul, a Roman citizen and wannabe rabbi, the author and inspiration of most of the Christian New Testament, would denounce Yahowah’s Towrah, claiming that it enslaved and could not save. And three score and three years prior to the culmination of ancient history’s most diabolical plot, we know that the Roman Empire initiated it all by a brazen act of common thievery – by robbing the Temple treasury. Rome and the Beast that lives within her sought to claim that which belongs to Yahowah, fulfilling, albeit temporarily, Satan’s ultimate objective. That is what this history lesson has been about – which is why Rome was called a monstrous and vicious beast.
It should also be duly noted and specifically reinforced that Rome’s final conquest occurred between the two wars the empire fought against Yisra’el. From this point, the Beast would only fight to delay the inevitable. Rome was dying – although its death would play out over another nineteen centuries. Its wound was self-inflicted.
As we have done in the past, let’s consider the lowlights of Aelius Hadrian and his legacy. He claimed the throne at age forty and remained for twenty years. He is credited for having rebuilt the Pantheon – the universal home of Rome’s pagan gods. He served as the architect and then arranged for the construction of the Temple of Venus and Eternal Rome, erecting Rome’s second most imposing building between the Forum and Colosseum. This tribute to the Everlasting and Divine Fortune of Rome was set upon the porticoed vestibule of Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea, requiring him to move the Colossus of Nero which was modified to become the Colossus of Sol.
171The rotating ceiling of gods that rose above the giant Nero was later repurposed by Pope Honorius, with the consent of Emperor Heraclius. The gilt-bronze tiles and jewels from the roof of Nero’s Temple were used to adorn the roof of St. Peter’s Basilica. The building which housed the Colossus of Nero was transformed into the church of the Saint Mary, with the columns of the pagan temple still visible and dominant in the rear. Delusional, Roman Catholics claim that this is “one of the oldest and most important shrines in the world dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and was, in fact, built at her request!”
Since the papacy of Saint John Paul II, the temple has been used as a platform for large public addresses, especially on Good Friday, when a cross is carried by the pope from the temple to the Colosseum. And so, it is with every stroke, the Beast of Empire and Church become one.
As will be the case with the Towrahless One, Hadrian is regarded as a humanist – as a man who celebrated the works of men. In this regard, he was also a Philhellenist – a lover of Greek culture and philosophy. Hadrian actually established an extensive and enduring Greek religious cult in Rome and served as its leading evangelist. His first tour of Greece as a Roman emperor was climaxed by his participation in 124 CE in the Eleusinian Mysteries where he, himself, was initiated. Less than a year later, during Easter week in March 125 CE, Hadrian presided over the Festival of Dionysia to honor the god, Dionysus, the deity upon which the Christian caricature of Jesus Christ was fashioned. This makes it all the more intriguing that Paul, a Roman himself, quoted Dionysus’ most famous line during his conversion experience seventy-five years earlier.
The Festival of Dionysia was held over four days approaching the full moon in the midst of the lunar month nearest the spring equinox. It served as the inspiration for the Catholic Holy Week celebration associated with Easter 172at the same time of year. On the first day of the Festival, statues of Dionysus, who was believed to be the Son of the Sun, were brought into Athens. Once they arrived in the Theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis, the god in the image of a man was rejected, with Dionysus being severely punished, mirroring the Christian Good Friday. This is said to have plagued the male genitalia, which was then cleansed and cured, saving the people when the preponderance of the population accepted Dionysus and joined his cult by splashing around in holy water. This was a symbolic counterfeit for circumcision, the sign of the Covenant, which Christians replaced with baptism.
The faithful pagans acknowledged their devotion by marching in the streets carrying a phallus on poles, a rite also associated with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods. Chorus leaders in the most expensive and ornate robes carried holy water and wine in the procession. Bulls, the symbol of the sun, were sacrificed.
In the Eleusinian Mysteries, Dionysus, who was known to Romans as Bacchus, was called the “Liberator” who “frees his faithful from fear and from the oppressive restraints of the laws imposed by the most powerful. This then became synonymous with “Jesus” freeing Christians from the Law through the Gospel of Grace.
Those who partook in his mysteries were believed to be possessed and then empowered by Dionysus, which is why the faith was called the “Cult of Souls.” His devotees were restored to life by feeding on bread representing his dead flesh and by drinking wine, symbolizing his blood during a divine communion – establishing the tradition upon which the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Eucharist would be based.
Dionysus was the son of Zeus, the father of the gods. But he had a mortal mother, Semele, who served as the 173model for Roman Catholicism’s devotion to Mary, the acclaimed Mother of God. This illicit affair between a supposedly divine being and a virginal woman was said to have conceived Dionysus in human form, a being who was also considered the Son of God. His birth was celebrated by bringing trees into homes during the winter solstice, then December 25th on the Julian calendar, thereby establishing the timing and tradition of Christmas. In addition to his birthday, his annual death and resurrection were celebrated in numerous mystery religions.
In yet another parallel, Dionysus is said to have appeared before King Pentheus, who imprisoned him, for having claimed to be a god. This is obviously comparable to the idea of “Jesus” being tried on the same claim before Pontius Pilate. And in Rome, Dionysus is celebrated for bringing an end to the old Law, freeing the faithful from its restraints.
Nietzsche observed that the oldest forms of Greek tragedy were based upon the suffering of Dionysus. In particular, the story underlies the most famous of Greek poems, with several of the trials and tribulations of Odysseus in the Odyssey incorporated into Christianity. The same holds true with the Sibylline Oracles – particularly when discussing baptism.
In Roman form, Bacchus appears in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian, which was part of The Chronicles of Narnia. The famed Christian apologists interpret the Greek religious myth as a story celebrating the Christian Christ.
Paul, the most important force within Christianity, cited the most famous line from Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, during his conversion experience: “It is difficult to kick against the goad.” First performed posthumously at the Theater of Dionysus, it won first prize in the City Dionysia Festival Competition in 405 BCE. In the Greek myth, Dionysus, as the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, 174arrives to avenge being slandered by King Pentheus and his mother, Agave of Thebes. His resolution is to initiate a new religion with the Dionysian rites replacing prior rituals. The story even includes the gruesome punishment of Pentheus for not supporting the new religion. This, along with Agave holding the head of her beloved son on a plate, is not only reminiscent of the crucifixion but, also, the myth of “John the Baptist.” Indeed, the entire story serves as a warning, telling the old establishment and future doubters that there will be hell to pay in this life and the next if they dare speak out against the religion of Dionysus – a.k.a., Christianity.
Returning our focus back to the Roman who sought to be a god, the author of The Prince, Machiavelli, who was the patron of papal supremacy and strategy, placed Hadrian among Rome’s five greatest emperors. British historian, Edward Gibbon, agreed, and wrote in 1776 that Hadrian’s “vast genius, equity, and moderation” created the “happiest era of human history.” Methinks, God disagrees.
Emperor Hadrian, like today’s popes, wielded absolute power. He spoke for Rome and its gods. He served as supreme commander of the most brutal military State humanity would ever endure. And he most always dressed for appearances, creating the illusion of being a great and distinguished leader by wearing an elaborately designed uniform. He, like today’s pope, was never seen in civilian attire.
Hadrian’s father was of Patrician rank and a Senator. As a young man, he began public life as the Tribune – an officer considered sacrosanct, prohibiting any assault on his person. He was placed in command of Legio II Adiutrix – Second Rescuer Legion. It had been levied by Vespasian from Rome’s naval marines. Still at a young age, he was transferred to Legio I Minervia when the First Army Devoted to the Goddess Minerva was stationed in Germania. Then upon Emperor Nerva’s death, Hadrian 175was appointed Legate of a Legion in Pannonia, eventually becoming Governor of the Province. And prior to becoming the Legatus of Syria and Emperor of Rome in 117 CE, as Archon / Lord and Ruler of Athens, he accepted Athenian citizenship.
At the time, Trajan became gravely ill, which was a problem because Hadrian, who had served with him during the expedition against Parthia, had not been adopted as Trajan’s heir. To remedy this problem, the adoption papers were signed by Plotina, Trajan’s widow, albeit after Trajan was dead. With his legitimacy affirmed, Hadrian quickly secured the support of the Legions, knowing that the Senate’s endorsement would quickly follow.
Hadrian, however, initially shied away from Rome, preferring to busy himself with admiring the Greek religion and eradicating Jews. Even then, before returning to the capital, in typical Roman fashion, Hadrian charged anyone loyal to Trajan, his adoptive father, with conspiracy, hunting them down and killing them. Yes, indeed, it was the happiest era of human history.
Apart from his obsession with obliterating Yahuwdah and Yahuwdym, Hadrian wasn’t much of a fighter. He surrendered his predecessor’s conquests of Mesopotamia, claiming that the territory was indefensible. He used diplomacy rather than the military with Parthia. He built the massive wall in Britain and others near the Danube and the Rhine to separate the barbarians from the Romans.
As will be the case with the Towrahless One, as is the case with Paul, and now with the Roman Catholic priesthood, Emperor Hadrian’s closest and most enduring sexual relationship was with Antinous, a beautiful Greek boy. Upon his death from drowning, Hadrian “wept like a woman.” At his request, “the Greeks deified Antinous, and henceforth spoke oracles through him that were composed by Hadrian, himself.” The sullen emperor founded the 176Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his memory. The resulting Cult of Antinous at Hadrian’s direction became extremely popular in Greece, Egypt, and Rome, serving as the means to unify the religions, cultures, and politics, synchronizing these things with Roman authority. It was an act that would foreshadow the development of Roman Catholicism from Imperial Rome.
Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli included a sacred Alexandrian Garden which was then repurposed by Roman Catholic Cardinal d’Este to erect his Villa d’Este, replete with its Tivoli Fountains. And while Hadrian considered himself to be a great architect, the leading designer of the day, Apollodorus of Damascus criticized his sense of proportions. In response, Hadrian had him exiled and then executed. And as was the case with Nimrod, Hadrian fancied himself a great hunter. He established cities in places where he or Antinous claimed bears and lions.
Prior to his mortal death, Hadrian designed the largest mausoleum in Rome for himself – a building that was later transformed into a papal fortress: Castel Sant’Angelo. Atop his grandiose tomb, Hadrian had a statue of himself erected. It featured the wannabe god and anti-Semite driving a four-horse chariot that was so enormous, it not only dwarfed the number of individuals offering tribute, each horse’s eye was bigger than the largest man.
Each time we investigate the character of the men who shaped the Beast, we come to see the personality of the Beast that ravages Yisra’el again during the Time of Ya’aqob’s Troubles. We also witness just how overwhelmingly Imperial Rome and the Roman Catholic Church and, thus, Christianity are entwined, forever babel | mingled and confounding.
With the ongoing war against Parthia continuing apace, commanding Rome’s attention from 161 to 166 CE, something happened that changed the course of history. 177Marcus Aurelius’ returning troops contracted the plague. Soon thereafter, the army infected the heart of the Beast with a deadly pandemic – likely smallpox. One in ten Romans would die as a consequence of the Antonine Plague from 165 to 180 CE, crippling the empire.
At the same time, great migrations were occurring throughout occupied Europe, with the Goths moving westwards and into lands foraged by the Germanic tribes. Against this backdrop, thousands of Langobardi and Lacringi invaded Pannonia. And while their advance was checked by the Legio I Adiutrix, the encounter marked the beginning of the end. The military governor of Pannonia, Marcus Iallius Bassus, was forced to negotiate with eleven Germanic tribes in hopes of maintaining some semblance of control. But the Marcomannic King Ballomar, a Roman client, acting as mediator, was unable to reach an accord. Then as Bassus had anticipated, the Vandals and the Sarmatians invaded Dacia, killing the Roman governor.
The Legio V Macedonica was moved to Dacia so that it would be closer to this rising menace to Roman supremacy. All the while, Marcus Aurelius, being a good Roman, which made him a bad person, wanted to lead a punitive expedition against the Vandals. But the plague he had brought with him was ravaging his military, instead, causing him to postpone his vengeance. Then, beginning in 166 CE and continuing through 180, the previously mentioned Marcomannic King, Ballomar, asserted his dominance against his former benefactor.
With all of these pieces in play, in the spring of 168, Marcus Aurelius established a headquarters at Aquileia and supervised the defense of the Italian Peninsula. He raised two new legions, the II and III Italica, and crossed the Alps into Pannonia. By the autumn of the following year, Aurelius and his son were ready to subdue barbarians of all shapes and shades. However, it was like chasing cats 178because the tribes they were pursuing weren’t staying put, and some were moving in their direction.
The Costoboci crossed the Danube and plundered Thrace. They would reach Eleusis, near Athens, destroying the Temple of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Meanwhile, the Marcomanni, as part of a confederation of Germanic tribes, were maneuvering in the west. They dared to cross the Danube, where they won a decisive victory over a force of twenty thousand Roman soldiers near Opitergium. Next, they set siege to Marcus Aurelius’ headquarters in Aquileia. It would be the first time that hostile forces had invaded Italy since 101 BCE.
It should be noted that these Germanic tribes were called barbarians by the very empire that embodied the concept. Moreover, there is no indication that the Germans were any more savage than the Beast menacing them.
Also relevant to this story, the only reason the Marcomanni were able to rebel was as a direct result of Rome removing so many of its Legions from the Danube and the Balkans into Judea to annihilate Jews. Hadrian had doomed the empire by his grotesque obsession against Jews.
Faced with so many foes, Marcus Aurelius had to reestablish Rome’s priorities, withdrawing forces from the frontier to protect Italy. And having proven that they should never be trusted, Rome’s attempts at diplomacy continued to flounder. They had earned a bad reputation for not honoring their agreements. The Quadi wouldn’t comply, nor would the Varistae or Naristi. It got so bad, that in one battle, when the Legio XII Fulminata was hemmed in by a superior Germanic force, and were dying of thirst, a thunderstorm was required to save them. The aforementioned Cassius Dio would call it “divine intervention,” saying: “the rain started as a result of an 179Egyptian magician praying to Mercury.” Tertullian attributed the rain to Christian prayer. Both were wrong.
Following Roman custom, after subduing the indigenous people living in the plain along the Tisza River, Marcus Aurelius required that their king forfeit one hundred thousand young men to serve in Rome’s infantry and another eight thousand to serve in the cavalry. So, with his new recruits, Aurelius marched eastward to suppress the rebellion of Avidius Cassius. And while he was successful, Rome was running out of fingers to plug leaks in the dam.
By 177 CE, the Quadi rose up against Roman oppression a third time, now motivating the Marcomanni to ally with them. Marcus Aurelius jumped upon his horse and galloped north once again. And once again, Rome prevailed, chasing the Quadi westwards and deeper into Germania. As for Marcus Aurelius, he would die in his tent playing soldier in Pannonia a few years thereafter.
Aurelius’ successor, Commodus, didn’t have much of a taste for war. He was a diplomat. So, against the advice of his generals, he negotiated a lasting peace with the Marcomanni and the Quadi and left for Rome. Even though he had decided not to fight, he arranged for a Triumph to be celebrated in his honor in the fall of 180 CE. He was the new “Germanicus Maximus.”
In spite of the ceremony, Rome was now vulnerable and knew it. Sixteen of her thirty-three Legions were stationed along the Danube and Rhine Rivers – along the frontier. But the Legions were ineffective in stopping mass migration into northern Italy. Even when Rome banned settlers, who they referred to as “barbarians,” Germans kept coming.
The Battle of Cyzicus followed in 193 CE, but this fight wasn’t to hold barbarians at bay. It was between Roman rivals, the forces of Septimius Severus and his 180competitor for the throne, Pescennius Niger. This uncivil war would usher in the Year of the Five Emperors, a tumultuous period in Roman decline. It began when the Praetorian Guards assassinated Emperor Pertinax. While not very good at providing protection, the aspiring entrepreneurs who made up the Guard held an auction for the throne of Rome. Didius Julianus was the high bidder and became emperor. But not everyone bought into the idea of an auction, and Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger, the military governors of Syria and Britain, decided to settle the dispute the old-fashioned way – through a clash of rival Legions. Severus marched to Rome where Didius capitulated and was decapitated. Then he turned to cross swords with Niger in Asia Minor, defeating him, also.
But since once was never enough, in the Battle of Nicaea, Severus attacked his rival, Niger, once more, defeating him a second time at Issus in 194 CE. That was interesting because the battlefield was where Alexander the Great defeated the Persian King Darius in November 333 BCE. Severus’ strategy was quite different from his predecessors. He kidnapped the wives and children of neutral parties, motivating them to play along with him to earn their release. Niger, of course, was captured and executed.
To close out the 2nd century, during the Battle of Lyon, France in 197 CE, the newly minted Emperor Severus caught up with Clodius Albinus, a usurper for the throne and former ally of Severus. The propagandists tell us that it was the “largest, most hard-fought, and bloodiest of all clashes between Roman forces.” Our resident anti-Semite and exaggerator extraordinaire places the number of combatants at 150,000 to 300,000 depending upon how his terminology is interpreted – with either number being far-fetched because that would represent the vast majority of Rome’s soldiers at the time.
181What appears likely is that Albinus took three Legions from Britannia to Gaul, meeting another there, the Legio VII Gemina. Severus was in command of the Danubian and German Legions. Albinus struck first, defeating the Germanic slaves but not decisively enough to trot into Rome for a Triumph. So, these former allies engaged again, with Severus appearing to prevail. Albinus withdrew but was pursued and ultimately crushed. Albinus was stripped and beheaded by Severus, who, to the delight of his troops, ran back and forth over his naked body with his horse. Albinus’ head was then sent to Rome, where it was probably mounted in Severus’ trophy room.
By 210 CE, the Romans and Parthians were back at each other’s throats. The dispute arose because Emperor Caracalla, who considered himself the living incarnation of Alexander the Great, decided to take advantage of an internal dispute between rival monarchs. He proposed an alliance to Artabanus, even offering to marry his daughter.
Although there are conflicting accounts, as the prevailing story is told, when the treaty was agreed upon, Caracalla entered Mesopotamia unopposed. Ostensibly, he was there to break bread with his new ally and to meet and marry his arranged bride. But when Caracalla entered the Parthian palace, he attacked and slew the king’s court. While Artabanus escaped, the Romans freely plundered the lands east of the Tigris before returning to Edessa for the winter. I’ll bet it was a lovely wedding.
Fittingly, the treacherous Roman schemer fell victim to a plot by his Praetorian Prefect and was murdered in April 217 CE. Macrinus, who most likely orchestrated his assassination, was pronounced emperor by his Legions. 182And that meant he would have to deal with the irate foe his predecessor had created.
With Artabanus approaching with a massive army and looking for revenge, Marcrinus was in a pickle. He then did something few if any Romans have ever done. He told the truth: “You see the barbarian with his whole Eastern horde already upon us, and Artabanus seems to have good reason for his enmity. We provoked him by breaking the treaty, and in a time of complete peace we started a war.... This is no quarrel about boundaries or riverbeds; everything is at stake in this dispute in which we face a mighty king fighting for his children and kinsmen who, he believes, have been murdered in violation of solemn oaths.” His assessment of Rome, his confession, is breathtaking.
After the pep talk, Macrinus, having limited military experience, and wanting to avoid conflict, tried to placate Artabanus. When that failed, he tried to reach an accommodation. But Artabanus wanted the Romans to pay to rebuild the towns they had destroyed and plundered, and he wanted them out of his hair. And that would require the cession of all Roman provinces in northern Mesopotamia. What seemed at the moment too expensive in money and prestige to surrender soon appeared cheap.
The Battle of Nisibis was waged between Emperor Macrinus and Artabanus IV. The Romans had a more disciplined infantry while the Parthians were better horsemen and more mobile. Artabanus attacked at sunrise, launching a volley of arrows while the heavily armored cavalry, supported by lancers on camels, charged Macrinus’ line. When it buckled, the Parthians roared in, only to find Roman caltrops littering the battlefield. These four-pronged iron spikes were the landmines of antiquity, destroying the effectiveness of the Parthian cavalry and dromedaries.
183In the resulting hand-to-hand combat, the Romans held a slight advantage. And yet, there were no winners, only death. The adversaries fought to a draw that day and the next. By the third day, the entire plain was covered in corpses piled up in huge mounds.
With his army on the verge of collapse, Emperor Macrinus sent another envoy to Artabanus, informing him that Caracalla had been killed and that Rome was now ready to reimburse the Parthians for the cities they had razed. Artabanus agreed to peace after receiving two hundred million sesterces. The battle would also cost Rome any claims it would ever have against Parthian territory. This was the last major battle between Rome and Parthia, although Rome and Persia would soon rekindle old wounds.
Now broke, Macrinus cut the pay of his legionnaires. So, the Legio III Gallica hailed Elagabalus Emperor in May 218, with other Legions following suit. He was evidently loaded. His family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, with Elagabalus (Lord God of the Mountain) serving as High Priest. There was even a lavish temple called the Elagabalium on Palatine Hill to showcase Elagabel. Like Allah centuries later in Palmyra, Elagabel | the Lord God of the Mountain was represented by a black conical meteorite.
In retaliation, Macrinus dispatched his cavalry with Julianus in command to stem the flow of desertions. But the cavalry killed Julianus along the way and joined Elagabalus. Even when Macrinus offered to reinstate the original wage and to pay retention bonuses, his offer was considered a day late and a denarius short. Every Legion under his command defected to Elagabalus. Macrinus could not even flee effectively. He shaved his beard and changed his clothes to look like a commoner, but he was recognized by a centurion along the Bosporus, taken back to Antioch and executed.
184The infighting continued. In 238 CE in the Province of Africa, forces loyal to Emperor Maximinus Thrax engaged those commanded by Emperors Gordian I and II – a father and son duo endorsed by the Roman Senate. The conflict arose as a result of the increased taxation imposed on Roman landowners which was required to offset the Parthian concessions. The opposing Roman armies met near Carthage. Gordian II was killed, and his father, learning of his son’s death, committed suicide.
But there would be another Gordian, this one the GIII. He arranged a campaign to retake the Roman cities of Hatra, Nisibis, and Carrhae in modern Turkey. His forces were initially successful, but their momentum was halted far short of his objectives.
Then in 250 CE, during the Battle of Philippopolis, between the Romans and the Goths, King Cniva prevailed. His success during a previous siege emboldened other oppressed peoples to ally with him, and collectively, they attacked and defeated the Roman Emperor Decius in the Thracian city located in modern-day Bulgaria.
The following year, they would meet again, this time in Abritus, just west of the Black Sea. The Goth King Cniva, leading a federation of Scythians, shot and killed Emperor Decius’ son and co-regent, Herennius Etruscus, during pre-battle maneuvers with a well-aimed arrow. All the while, his father, addressing his troops, said that the loss of his son was irrelevant: “Let no one mourn. The death of one soldier is not a great loss to the Republic.”
Thereafter, Cniva outmaneuvered the Romans who marched directly into a swamp and were slaughtered. The defeat was one of the most catastrophic in the history of the Evil Empire. The emperor and his army were lost in the mud. No one was spared.
In 259 CE, Emperor Valerian was out fighting the Sassanid Empire which, along with the Goths, had sacked 185the Province of Thrace and was plundering Asia Minor. Unable to protect Rome’s borders, Valerian appointed his son, Gallienus, co-emperor. As bad as the situation was becoming in the east, it was worse in the western half of the crumbling country. Apparently “barbarians” don’t much like being abused, starved, raped, robbed, or oppressed. Germanic tribes led by the Alamanni, living between the Rhine and Danube Rivers, crossed the Alpine steps and claimed the harvest from the fertile farmland along the Po River. Since the Po flows eastward across northern Italy, through cities like Turin and Milan and into a delta near Venice, and since the federation of Germanic tribes was in a foul mood and had sacked the region, Rome finally realized that it was defenseless. Romans were terrorized.
They were also discovering that armies comprised of disgruntled slaves, forced conscripts, and mercenaries can be a little twitchy. As the young Gallienus marched toward Dacia and Moesia to confront unrest in the Balkans, the Legions of Moesia and neighboring Pannonia rebelled and decided to ally with Ingenuus, the imperial legate in Pannonia, declaring him emperor. So, after battling his own army, and subduing Ingenuus, Gallienus turned to intercept the Alamanni and associated Germanic barbarians in northern Italy. He was in command of the I Adiutrix, the II Italica, and the II Parthica Legions.
Simultaneously, Romans were beginning to realize that dispersing their military to protect the borders of the empire was a risky proposition since the oppressed inhabitants within the empire were now a more present and menacing danger. So, to protect themselves against the kindled indignation of those they had subjugated, the Roman Senate hastily conscripted Plebeians, the lowest-ranking Roman citizens, into the army.
Self-preservation aside, fighting might have had some appeal to them because the only way to climb up the 186Roman caste system was to be adopted into the Noble Household or to achieve one of the three highest military awards. Recognizing the need for a pep talk, and thereby patting their pawns on their backs, the Senate proclaimed: “You are not a lowly peasant. You are a citizen of Rome, and you must never bend a knee in supplication to either lords or gods.” That is funny in a way. Every Roman was required to bow to the Patrician Lords who as emperors claimed to be gods.
When Gallienus reached the Po Valley, the Alamanni were camped around Milan. Catching them off guard, the victory was resounding, with three hundred thousand Germans dying in a single day. For anything even approaching this level of massacre to occur, particularly at the hands of three relatively novice Legions, the overwhelming preponderance of the people killed were non-combatants: women, children, and the elderly. For his act of wanton depravity, Gallienus was declared Germanicus Maximus. It was nothing more than propaganda borne out of a desperate sense of elitism, whereby the military, no matter how egregious, was presented as protecting the public.
Upon his return, Emperor Gallienus disbanded the Senate’s guardian plebs. Dictators are typically paranoid, making them uncomfortable with any potential threat to their authority, real or imagined. At the same time, he began building a wall around Rome.
Meanwhile, in 260 CE, Emperor Gallienus’ father, Emperor Valerian, was fighting the Sassanids under Shahanshah (“Shah of Shahs and King of Kings”) Shapur. It did not go well. His army was defeated and captured by the Persian forces. For the first time in Roman history, the empire’s emperor was taken hostage.
Prior to the battle, Shapur had successfully penetrated Roman territory, conquering and plundering Antioch in 187Syria. While Valerian was able to restore some semblance of Roman order, there were too many challenges. A Gothic naval invasion ravaged Pontus and was poised to plunder Cappadocia. And there was nothing Emperor Valerian could do to stop them. Plague was once again debilitating the Roman military. Capitalizing upon the opportunity, the Shah of Shahs invaded northern Mesopotamia.
Perhaps believing his own patriotic propaganda, the sixty-year-old emperor marched eastward toward King Shapur, meeting his army between Carrhae and Edessa, in modern-day Turkey. There are no Roman sources to tell us what happened because the entire army was lost. It appears from Persian historians that Valerian tried to negotiate a truce but was captured in the process, causing his men to surrender.
The Persian sources also reveal that Shapur sent Valerian along with part of his army to Bishapur, where the Romans may have lived out their lives as freemen. The remaining soldiers, according to this accounting, were deployed to build a dam near Susa. But to be fair, some scholars claim that Shapur humiliated Valerian, using the former emperor as a human stepping stool when mounting his horse. Then once that got wearisome, he had Valerian’s body skinned and stuffed with manure and straw to serve as a macabre trophy.
Following Valerian’s capture, the Shah of Shahs raided Cilicia. He was finally rebuffed by Macrianus, Callistus, and Odenathus of Palmyra, commanding a Roman force. Thereafter, Macrianus proclaimed his sons, Macrianus and Quietus, co-emperors. This was coterminous with Ingenuus and Regalianus revolting in the Balkans, albeit briefly, because they were defeated by an army sent by Gallienus, the son of the captured Emperor Valerian.
188In the mounting chaos, Rome occasionally won some battles. This was the case in 268 CE when an invading Gothic coalition was defeated near Naissus in present-day Serbia. Emperor Aurelian’s success on the battlefield suppressed the threat of the Germanic tribes for several decades. But we must be careful. Throughout the troubled 3rd century, Roman history is muddled and often more myth than reality. It is yet another bad trait the Beast would retain during the transition from crumbling country to politicized church.
Our primary source for Roman history is now Zosimus, a Byzantine from the 6th century. Since he was not a witness to these events, he would rely on Dexippus, Eunapius, and Olympiodorus – sources with varying degrees of credibility. Exacerbating this dilemma, Imperial disinformation during Constantine’s dynasty contributed to the confusion. The propagandists wanted to attribute all of the calamities occurring during this period to Gallienus to avoid blemishing the legacy of Claudius. The reason becomes obvious once we realize that Constantine claimed to be a descendant of Claudius, not Gallienus.
Further, during the metamorphosis between these two iterations of the Beast, the monstrous character of Imperial Rome was transformed in the words of the chroniclers whose agenda was to reveal the birth of Christianity. Truth was no longer relevant – something which becomes particularly evident as we study the development of the Christian New Testament during this time.
Theirs was a disorienting task because Gallienus was the first emperor to issue an edict of tolerance toward Christians, creating forty years of peaceful coexistence. But as a result of their creative accounting, Roman history was revised to such an extent, it became nearly impossible to know what invasions occurred, what battles were fought, and under whose reign they were repulsed.
189In particular, Constantine’s propensity for propaganda and revisionist history ought to send shivers up the spines of Christians. He authorized Eusebius, the Bishop of Caesarea, to compose the New Testament for what would become the Roman Catholic Church while serving as his personal historian and publicist. His portraits of Constantine and the Christian Christ were neither consistent nor accurate. As a result, the religion of Christianity was comprised and shaped by this man as he babel | intermixed Roman and Christian propaganda, consistently weaving an ever more extravagant web of lies.
The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church are the legacy of Rome that was accused in Dany’el of trampling the whole world while giving rise to the Beast. This trend toward duplicity means that Christianity is based entirely on revisionist history while promoting Replacement Theology. It is modeled upon religious and political propaganda designed to popularize a false reality. In the milieu of madness, “Jesus Christ” emerges as a god out of the myths of Dionysus, Odysseus, and the Sibylline Oracles. This is when much of the Christian New Testament was composed, taking it beyond even Paul’s devilish drivel.
Returning to the lore of Rome as seen through Constantine’s jaundiced eyes, and reported through the likes of Eusebius, we are told that the Battle of Naissus was the result of two massive invasions by Scythian / Iranian tribes (more likely Goths) between 267 and 269 CE. The first wave approached during the reign of Gallienus, when the Heruli sailed five hundred ships toward the southern coast of the Black Sea.
While their impact was initially devastating, at Byzantium (which became Constantinople and then Istanbul), they faltered. Then at Cyzicus (a city on the southwestern coast of the Sea of Marmara), they were allegedly rebuffed by the Roman navy. The Heruli are said 190to have escaped into the Aegean Sea, where they assaulted the islands of Lemnos and Scyros, sacking cities in southern Greece in the process, including Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. Saving the day, an Athenian militia, led by the historian, Dexippus, pushed the invaders to the north where they were intercepted in Macedonia by the Roman army under Gallienus.
The propagandists would have us believe that Gallienus subsequently negotiated a truce with the Heruli. However, it is also possible that the victory Gallienus achieved at Nessos was so overwhelming that Claudius’ subsequent claims of having defeated the Goths were contrived. By comparing sources, historians have also learned that, after prevailing in Macedonia, Emperor Gallienus left hastily for Italy to suppress an insurrection led by his cavalry officer, Aureolus. But that misadventure did not go as well. Gallienus was assassinated outside of Milan in the summer of 268 CE as part of a plot pursued by his generals. They declared Claudius emperor and headed to Rome to establish his claim.
On the way to deification, Claudius was diverted. The Alamanni were on the prowl, provoking northern Italians. So, after prevailing over them in the Battle of Lake Benacus, Claudius marched back to the Balkans to suppress yet another incursion occurring there.
All the while, a second and much larger seaborne invasion was underway. The Goths (called Scythians and Iranians by the Constantinian propagandists), led by the Heruli, assembled a force of six thousand ships and three hundred thousand men at the mouth of the Tyras River in the troublesome Ukraine, not far from Odessa and the Crimean Peninsula. Recognizing that the numbers are exaggerated, the Goths attacked Byzantium and Chrysopolis (on the southern shore of the Bosporus Strait). Thereafter, some portion of their fleet was wrecked, either failing to navigate the currents in the Sea of Marmara or by 191the Roman navy. The surviving contingent, nevertheless, after surviving the gauntlet, sailed through the Dardanelles Strait and into the Aegean, where they plundered Crete and Rhodes. Then while building siege works to capture Thessalonica and Cassandreis, the Goths retreated into the Balkans on rumors that Emperor Claudius was advancing – or so we are told.
Roman legend would then have us believe that this contingency of Goths ran into a Roman army near Naissus in 269 CE. The fiercely contested battle claimed many lives, with the Romans prevailing by feigning retreat. The Goths were ambushed, with some fifty thousand killed or taken captive. Aurelian, who was in charge of all Roman cavalry during Claudius’ reign, implemented the prevailing strategy.
The surviving Goths, who contracted the plague from the Romans, were weakened. They were subsequently harassed and starved, ultimately surrendering. The remaining able-bodied men were conscripted into the Roman Legions, bringing the plague with them, infecting Emperor Claudius II, who died from it in 270 CE.
After his death, to instill a sense of Roman exceptionalism and to affirm the empire’s manifest destiny, Claudius II would be renamed “Claudius Gothicus – Conqueror of the Goths.” But in the real world, the Goths had not been conquered. The breakaway faction of Rome known as the Gallic Empire would continue to threaten Rome’s Legions, commencing again a year later in 271 CE. And there were a lot of them, recognizing that, at its peak, the Gallic Empire included Germania, Gaul (France), Britannia, and Hispania (Spain).
With Roman Legions occupied along the Danube keeping the Vandals at bay during the winter of 270, we find the Juthungi tribe seizing the opportunity to invade Italia. Emperor Aurelian, who was in Pannonia chasing 192after the nomadic tribes, hastily returned to Italy to defend the region around Milan. When he arrived, he sent the invaders a message, demanding their immediate surrender. But, considering themselves freemen, they did not listen because they had no intention to return to Roman servitude. So, they fought the Romans, instead, confronting the exhausted Roman army near Placentia, defeating them.
Buoyed by their success, the Juthungi moved toward Rome, panicking its defenseless inhabitants. Quivering in their sandals, the Romans turned to their gods for help. According to Historia Augustus, the Sibylline Books were consulted and religious ceremonies were conducted to elicit the assistance of the Roman and Greek deities.
Should you be interested, the Sibylline Books were tightly controlled by the Roman Senate, demonstrating that, in the Roman Republic and Empire, there were no distinctions between politics and religion. The texts were used to set poligious observances, to resolve political disputes, and to preclude military defeats. As would be the case with the Latin Vulgate, the script itself was not made available to the public at the time, but that did not stop the Romans from drawing from it to embellish Christian mythology.
There were actually two sets of politicized religious literature from similar sources – the Sibylline Oracles and the Sibylline Books. Both were written in Greek and considered divinely inspired and prophetic. Legend has it that the “Roman Books” were originally scribed by a Sibyl at the Temple of Apollo on Mount Ida in Gergis (near Troy) during the reign of Cyrus the Great. And while that is unlikely and is without historical support, it was during this period that we are reviewing in the late 3rd century and through the 4th, as Christianity was being conceived, that the Sibylline Books became resurgent. The devotees worshiped a trinity of gods, including Apollo, the Father, Cybele, the Great Mother, and Ceres (a female 193interpretation of Dionysus). The Books, which were controlled by the Roman Senate, served to syncretize the Greek and Roman religions while integrating them into Roman politics as the foundation of the official State religion.
By comparison, the Sibylline Oracles were also written in hexameter verse and in Greek. They were cited vociferously by early Church fathers to justify Christian doctrine. In particular, the notions of baptism and the story of John the Baptist emerged from the Sibylline Oracles. And that is troublesome for the religion because the Oracles were an amalgamation of Gnostic and Hellenistic Jewish, now Kabbalistic, beliefs, blended with a dose of Christian apocalyptic notions, while all derived from pagan Greek and Roman religious mythology. Also interesting, the oldest surviving copies come from scriptoriums in Alexandria – the same sources from which we find every pre-Constantine text of the Christian New Testament.
The Christian apologist, Athenagoras of Athens, quoted verbatim from the Sibylline Oracles in his letter requesting leniency from Marcus Aurelius. The Oracles were cited by Justin Martyr (circa 150 CE), Bishop Theophilus of Antioch (circa 180 CE), Clement of Alexandria (circa 200 CE), Lactantius (250 to 325 CE), and Augustine in 400 CE to validate the new religion using pagan mythology. Of them, Lactantius is particularly intriguing because he was an advisor to Roman Emperor Constantine and was responsible for guiding his policies and interpretations of the Christian religion as it was integrated into the politics of Rome. His poem, The Phoenix, was based upon the myth of the immortal bird of Greek mythology. It dies and is resurrected, born again, a myth Lactantius helped amalgamize into the Christian perception of the death and resurrection of their god.
Returning to the politics and militarism of 271 CE, Emperor Aurelian avenged his loss during the Battle of 194Fano, defeating the Alamanni as they advanced on Rome. Aurelian was able to pin the Alamanni against the Metaurus River, just inland of Fano. Pressured by the Roman advances, many Juthungi slipped into the River and drowned.
The Juthungi requested peace, but Aurelian rejected their plea for safe passage out of Italy and back home. He was more interested in repairing his now shattered reputation. So, Aurelian attacked the retreating Juthungi while they crossed the open plains near Ticinum, slaughtering all remaining survivors. For his victory, Aurelian assumed the overused title of “Germanicus Maximus – the Greatest Victor Over the Germans.”
Rome found itself unable to defend its eastern provinces from Sassanid invasions. In the vacuum of power, a Palmyra chief, Septimius Odaenathus, improvised an army capable of repelling the Sassanid onslaught. As a result, Gallienus made him a king and protector of the Eastern Empire. After Odaenathus’ death, his wife, Queen Zenobia, assumed direct control of the provinces of the Eastern Empire that were under Palmyrian protection. A shrewd diplomat, she convinced many in Asia Minor to recognize her authority and to view Palmyra as the capital of the Eastern Empire. She then expanded her holdings into Egypt, effectively building a Palmyrene Empire inside of Rome. She did this very cleverly by maintaining the facade that she was in partnership with Rome, always placing her son in a subordinate position to Aurelian in all official documents and coins.
Her ruse prevailed until she connived her way into Egypt. Her presence was problematic because it was considered the personal property of the emperor. As a result, Aurelian viewed her claim as nothing short of a declaration of war against him. Therefore, once Aurelian had his way with the Alamanni, he restored his army to full 195strength and commenced a campaign into the East to deal with Queen Zenobia in 272 CE, racing toward Antioch.
Realizing that her charade was over, Queen Zenobia, who was ruling through her son, had him declared “Augustus,” and mobilized an army, placing it under the command of General Zabdas. But Aurelian outmaneuvered him, turning Zabdas’ superior heavily armored cavalry into a liability in the intense heat. After allowing the Palmyrene cataphracts to gallop through their ranks, the moment they grew weary the superior infantry of the Romans overwhelmed them, driving Zabdas back to Antioch. Queen Zenobia and General Zabdas withdrew to Emesa during the night. Then fearing Aurelian’s reputation for savage retribution, Antioch surrendered.
Aurelian pursued the clever queen to Emesa. And while his cavalry was no match for the Palmyrene cataphracts, Zabdas’ forces were sufficiently dispersed to allow the Roman infantry to carry the day – interesting in that enslaved Judean units armed with clubs turned the tide of the battle in favor of the Romans, slaughtering the Palmyrene horsemen. Also interesting, while Queen Zenobia was ultimately captured, she was not executed. Aurelian was perhaps learning that a nation cannot slaughter people into submission.
Two years later, in 274 CE, during the Battle of Chalons in Champagne, France, Aurelian and Tetricus met, ostensibly to decide the fate of the Gallic Empire after thirteen years of autonomy. Truth be known, infighting among the Gauls had weakened the breakaway entity to the point that Tetricus had little chance of prevailing over Liechtenstein. Predictably, Tetricus was captured early in the battle, and his army was torn to shreds by Aurelian’s troops. The only distinguishing aspect of the battle was the high death toll.
196Then in 285 CE, we find Roman emperors squaring off against one another yet again. On this occasion it was Diocletian v. Carinus. They were in the Margus River Valley in today’s Serbia and, therefore, continued to fight in the Balkans. Carinus owned more soldiers, but having abused them, they were less reliable. Carinus had also made a lifetime of enemies, forcing Senator’s wives into his lair to satiate his twisted desires while also seducing the wives of his senior officers. So, it wasn’t much of a fight. Emperor Carinus was killed during the battle by his own troops.
This placed Diocletian in sole control of the eroding empire. The Legions declared him emperor solely because he was the highest-ranking surviving officer. But there was a rival. Carinus was also one of Carus’ sons, so when Diocletian attacked him, he was revealing a deeply flawed character.
Diocletian presented himself and his royal court as Roman royalty. He spared no expense promoting lavish ceremonies. His personal extravagance required greater taxation, which he also imposed. He then tried unsuccessfully to control the inflation that he had caused with the Edict on Maximum Prices. Administratively, Diocletian appointed fellow military officer, Maximian, as Augustus and co-emperor a year into his reign in 286 CE.
Seven years later, Diocletian appointed Galerius and Constantine as Caesars and Junior Co-Emperors, the bane and sponsor of Roman Christianity. And so, it is alleged that Diocletian persecuted Christians late in his reign, sometime after 303 CE, while it is seldom acknowledged that he appointed the two men who set the stage for the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church.
While it colors his historic portrait, let’s be clear: the brevity and brutality of the period of Christian persecution was nothing, not even .001% of the magnitude, when 197compared to Rome’s war against Jews and Judaism. And to the degree it was true, it would be the empire’s final act of denial because Rome was quickly being absorbed by Christianity. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the plague Paul had spread throughout the Beast 250 years previously.
Aware that those telling this story are not only untrustworthy, the alleged persecutions were used to demonstrate that the new faith was so compelling, believers were willing to die to promote it. It is the same level of commitment we view today in suicide bombers – and to the same result.
Diocletian became the ideal foil while trying to restore Rome’s lost luster. He surrounded himself with patriotic proponents of the pantheon of Roman gods, with men like Constantine and Galerius. Both were fierce advocates of the old ways and of new wars. Purging the army of Chrestucians, later known as Christians, was done for practical reasons. Some vocally defied the chain of command and refused to fight, even in self-defense.
It is said that Galerius urged Diocletian to lessen the growing Christian influence in State institutions. This was to be done without any bloodshed. The intent was to remove Christians from government posts while curtailing the influence of their churches and literature. Beyond this, an overt act of defiance was required to engender a Roman response.
The most acclaimed of these is that of Marcellus of Tangier (d. 298 CE), a centurion who threw away his belt, his arms, and the ensigns of his office in a public display of insubordination. He is said to have shouted, “I will obey none but Iesou Christou, the eternal King. I forever renounce the use of carnal weapons in service to an idolatrous master.” He was tried locally and convicted 198using his own declaration and beheaded for the crime of desertion.
In another act of defiance, when the edict restricting Christian influence in the State offices was first posted in Nicomedia, we are told that a Christian named Eutius tore it down. The myth is that he was arrested, tortured, and burned alive, setting the standard for martyrs to follow. They would prove their faith by dying for it.
In reality, within four years of his edict, Diocletian retired in 304 CE. And Galerius, who was a dullard and simpleton, not unlike today’s conspiratorialists, gave up on the idea of subduing the growing influence of Christianity within the Beast. In 311 CE, he issued the Edict of Toleration which legalized Christianity throughout Rome.
Galerius died within weeks of his acceptance of the religion, only to be besmirched posthumously by the ultimate cancer, Eusebius. The amalgamator and creative editor, even a substantial contributor, to the Christian New Testament, Eusebius, would describe the man who legalized Christianity in Rome as “a malignant ulcer…down in his secret parts.” The truth, however, was staring him in the face because, just 69 years after Galerius’ Edict of Toleration, Christianity and Rome would be inseparable.
