ypse,
possibly of the time of Decius, though it has been worked over (Harnack,
_Chronol. der altchrist. Litt._ ii. 514 &c.) In the third century, the
period of Aurelianus and Gallienus, with its wild warfare of Romans and
Persians, and of Roman pretenders one with another, seems especially to
have aroused the spirit of prophecy. To this period belongs the Jewish
apocalypse of Elijah (ed. Buttenwieser), of which the Antichrist is
possibly Odaenathus of Palmyra, while _Sibyll._ xiii., a Christian
writing of this period, glorifies this very prince. It is possible that
at this time also the Sibylline fragment (iii. 63 &c.) and the Christian
recension of the two first Sibylline books were written.[9] To this time
possibly belongs also a recension of the Coptic apocalypse of Elijah,
edited by Steindorff (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, N. F. ii. 3). To the
4th century belongs, according to Kamper (_Die deutsche Kaiseridee_,
1896, p. 18) and Sackur (_Texte und Forschungen_, 1898, p. 114 &c.), the
first nucleus of the "Tiburtine" Sibyl, very celebrated in the middle
ages, with its prophecy of the return of Constans, and its dream, which
later on exercised so much influence, that after ruling over the whole
world he would go to Jerusalem and lay down his crown upon Golgotha. To
the 4th century also perhaps belongs a series of apocalyptic pieces and
homilies which have been handed down under the name of Ephraem. At the
beginning of the Mahommedan period, then, we meet with the most
influential and the most curious of these prophetic books, the
_Pseudo-Methodius_,[10] which prophesied of the emperor who would awake
from his sleep and conquer Islam. From the _Pseudo-Methodius_ are
derived innumerable Byzantine prophecies (cf. especially Vassiliev,
_Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina_) which follow the fortunes of the Byzantine
emperors and their governments. A prophecy in verse, adorned with
pictures, which is ascribed to Leo VI. the Philosopher (Migne, _Patr.
Gracca_, cvii. p. 1121 &c.), tells of the downfall of the house of the
Comneni and sings of the emperor of the future who would one day awake
from death and go forth from the cave in which he had lain. Thus the
prophecy of the sleeping emperor of the future is very closely connected
with the Antichrist tradition. There is extant a Daniel prophecy which,
in the time of the Latin empire, foretells the restoration of the Greek
rule.[11] In the East, too, Antichrist prophecies were extraordinar