10 Sjef van Tilborg (2) All four are fantastic beings to see, dangerous, powerful, strong. Against the background of the hunting games as I have described them until now, the Apocalypse is the story of one big qhriomacia, the fight of one animal against other animals, here in this v case the fight of the Lamb that is a Lion against the Dragon and his Beasts. Eventually it ends up in a kunhgesiva: the fight of the rider on the white horse against the Beast and the kings, ending in a banquet for the birds out of the sky which may feast on the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men (19,11-21). (3) Because it is about a war (19,19) perhaps we are supposed to think of the staged battles like those organized by many emperors: the naumachia which were played from the time of Caesar until Trajan: sea battles imitated in the amphitheatres in which thousands of dead fell (one time 6.000 soldiers under Julius Caesar; 3.000 under Augustus; 19.000 under Claudius; etc); or better still the re-enacted wars just like what Claudius did on the Campus Martius: He (= Claudius) gave representations in the Campus Martius of the storming and sacking of a town in the manner of real warfare, as well as of the surrender of the kings of the Britons, and presided clad in a general’s cloak (Suetonius, Claudius 21.6) (26) or what Josephus tells about Titus regarding the fate of the Jewish war prisoners after the fall of Jerusalem: Titus passed to Caesarea Philippi where he remained for a considerable time, exhibiting all kinds of spectacles. Here many of the prisoners perished, some being thrown to wild beasts, others compelled in opposing masses to engage one another in combat (BJ VII. 23-25). The final conflict in the book of the Apocalypse is a muddled combat between the beasts and the heavenly and earthly armies. The result is one great mass of corpses, killed by fire or with the sword. In the last case the corpses are food for the birds (27), the carnarium, an extraordinary punishment because then no proper burial is possible anymore. (26) See COLEMAN, “Fatal Charades”, 70-73 (27) What happens here once again is that an intertextual cross-reference (to Ez 39,17-21) and a reference to actual reality go hand in hand. See KYLE, Spectacles of Death, 130-132; 156-171 about the clearing away of the people who were killed in the arena: as feed for the beasts, birds and dogs; ad flammas and in the river.