And after this there will arise another king from the western city of Epidamnos, which is in Latin Dyracchium. The name of the king is hidden from the gentiles, but his name resembles the last day and begins with the eighteenth letter [sigma], but when he seizes the kingship he will be called Anastasius. He is bald, handsome, his forehead like silver, he has a long right arm, he is noble, terrifying, high-souled and free and hates all the beggars. He will ruin many from among the people either lawfully or unlawfully and will unseat those who observe godliness. And the Persians will arise in his times and will overturn with the sword the cities of the east together with the multitudes of the soldiers of the Roman empire. And he will be king for thirty-one years.
Grim fantasy of the future
Here is where we turn from melodramatized history to grim fantasy of the future:
And after that men will be rapacious, greedy, rebellious, barbarian, they will hate their mothers, and in lieu of virtue and of mildness they will assume the appearance of barbarians. They will raid their own ancestral cities, and there is none to resist their works and deeds. They work their land because of their great avarice. In the ninth generation the years will be shortened like months, and the months like weeks, and the weeks like days, and the days like hours guided tours istanbul. And two kings will arise from the east and two from Syria, and the Assyrians will be countless like the sand of the sea, and they will take over many lands of the east. . . . And there will be much shedding of blood, so that the blood will reach the chest of horses as it is commingled with the sea. And they will capture and set on fire the cities and despoil the East. . . .
And after that there will arise another king who has a changed shape and he will rule thirty years and will rebuild the altars of Egypt. And he will wage war upon the king from the east and will kill him and all his army and will seize children from the age of twelve. And people will seize poisonous asps and suck milk from women with newborn babes and draw blood for the sake of the poison of arrows and the violence of wars. . . . And after that there will arise a woman. She will run from the setting to the rising of the sun and will not see a man; and she will long for the track of a man and will not find it.
And she will find a vine and an olive-tree and say, “Where is he who planted these?” And she will embrace these plants and give up her spirit, and wolves will eat her. And after that there will arise another king from Heliopolis and he will wage war against the king from the east and kill him. And he will grant a tax-exemption to entire countries for three years and six months, and the earth will bring forth its fruits, and there is none to eat them. And there will come the ruler of perdition, he who is changed, and will smite and kill him. And he will do signs and wonders on earth. He will turn the sun into darkness and the moon into blood. And after that the springs and rivers will dry up, and the Nile of Egypt will be transformed into blood. And the survivors will dig cisterns and will search for the water of life and will not find it Heliopolis not long after 502.
Arabs and bedouin
The story ends first with the return of Enoch and Elijah, and then with the second coming of Christ. The fear running through these lines is palpable: fear of the forces of the east, but fear of the emperor as well, and fear of the barbarians—in this case, as likely as not the Arabs and bedouin to the south. Hope resides, if anywhere, in apocalyptic redemption (accompanied by tax cuts), for this is the land of the Fertile Crescent where such hopes had long sprung up and taken root. Objectively, this world was in better shape than it had been, and looked forward to better prospects than it had known for a long time; and Heliopolis had not suffered special depredations in living memory, despite isolated raids by Huns 100 years earlier.
But the possibility of disaster turned into fear, which turned into expectation, which shaped the way men and women lived in the world. That kind of fear is corrosive and pervasive, the drop of water on a stone that, if continued long enough, wears away a mountain. We must keep in mind the role of the religious traditions of the eastern provinces in creating and nurturing this skepticism, this fear, and this alienated expectation of magical redemption as we watch men making the sometimes bungled and self- defeating political calculations of their age.
