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Nero as the Antichrist Essay

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Nero as the Antichrist Nero was a mixture of megalomania, evil, and cruelty according to Roman historians as well as Jews and Christians. His sin of matricide and his claims of deity were major elements in his infamous reputation. Though modern Historians have tried to whitewash Nero and say that certain groups in Rome and other parts of the empire supported him, his name has become a synonym for tyrant and, for many, Antichrist. Nero was born in AD 37 on December 15 to Agrippina and Gnaeus. Nero's father was said to have run his chariot over a boy deliberately and to have killed one of his freedman for drinking less than he was ordered. Agrippina was without a doubt the most successfully ambitious mother in history. She would …show more content…

Impostors pretending to be the returning Nero appeared in sixty-nine and in eighty AD. In the year eighty - eight AD, a more serious pretender surfaced in Parthia and, according to the Roman historians, almost succeeded in bringing about a war between these ancient superpowers. We know that the idea of a returning Nero affected Jewish thought of the first and second centuries primarily through his appearance in the Sibylline oracles. In book five written in Egypt around one - hundred AD and bitterly anti - Roman, makes a full presentation of Nero as the apocalyptic opponent of the messiah. No less than five passages contain an extensive development of the story of the evil emperor. Aspects of his life and deeds are prophetically recounted. He is described as having disappeared but also as becoming destructive again when he returns declaring himself equal to God. A final passage in Book five also approaches the Antichrist legend by contrasting the action of the returning Nero as the agent of final apocalyptic conflict. The belief that Antichrist - Nero is the devil incarnate is one of the two major forms of the Christian use of the stories about Nero. Although this form would be rejected by the mainstream tradition, it would have a number of adherents in later centuries. The second Christian use of the Nero legend, one that found its center in contrasting resurrections

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