Paradise Lost Episode 4 - And Behold, A Black Horse

<p>“And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”  – Revelation 6:5-6</p> <p>The third century was a period of turmoil and change both for Rome and for its neighbors in the forests of Germany and the deserts of the Near East. In Persia, a new empire would arise, one that aimed to restore Persia’s greatness of old. In Germany, tribes would vie for position and prominence, raiding one another as well as the Romans as climate change and resource scarcity drove them ever westward. As its old enemies changed so did Rome, the Empire would be reborn under a new kind of emperor, its government, army and economy changed forever. Any concept of the Pax Romana was decidedly in the past now, the Empire’s age of gold and marble had been replaced by one of iron, brick, and blood. </p> <p>Image: Diocletian's Camp and Qasr Ibn Maʿan - Ulrich Waack at the German-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diocletian%27s_camp_and_Qasr_Ibn_Maʿan.jpg</p>