Rev. 17: Babylon and Rome: A Mocking of Empire

Opening

Bring a picture of a piece of currency to group tonight — a coin, a bill, doesn’t matter which country — and ask: what does the imagery on our money quietly tell us to believe about our nation? Every empire has always used its currency as propaganda: strength, permanence, destiny. First-century Rome was no different, and Revelation 17 takes Rome’s own money and turns it into one of the most savage pieces of political satire in the Bible.

The coin John’s readers carried in their pockets

Picture a common Roman coin from the reign of Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD). One side shows the emperor himself, surrounded by an inscription listing his titles: “Emperor Caesar Vespasian Augustus, Pontifex Maximus (Greatest Priest), holder of Tribunal Power, Father of the Fatherland, Consul for the third time” — a compact résumé of imperial power, both political and religious.

The other side shows the goddess Roma: seated in military dress on the seven hills of Rome, a sword resting on her knee as a symbol of the empire’s military strength, with the river Tiber personified as bowing before her, and beneath it all, the founding legend of Rome — a she-wolf nursing the infant twins Romulus and Remus. At the bottom, simply, the word “Roma.” For the fuller argument and an image of the coin itself, see expl/content/harlot/the-harlot-in-revelation-a-mocking-of-the-roman-empire.md.

That’s a coin built entirely to celebrate Rome’s power, protection, and permanence — exactly the propaganda message of the so-called Pax Romana, the “peace” Rome claimed to have secured for the world through military dominance. Revelation 17 takes that same imagery, point by point, and flips it into an image of horror.

Flipping the propaganda

Line up the coin against Revelation 17 and the reversals are precise and deliberate:

• Roma sits enthroned on the seven hills, protector of Rome. In Revelation, the woman sits on the beast and is identified with the seven hills (17:9) — but instead of being protected, she is destroyed by the very powers she rode on (17:16).
• Roma is a goddess in military dress. Revelation recasts her as “Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots” (17:5) — not just any prostitute, but the source of all of them.
• Roma’s sword symbolizes protection through strength. The harlot, instead, is “drunk with the blood of the saints” (17:6) — the “protection” Rome offered was violence turned against God’s people.
• The coin celebrates the Pax Romana as the peace that makes everyone secure. Revelation shows that peace paid for in the blood of the martyrs.

It’s worth pausing with your group on how effective this would have been as counter-propaganda. Every believer who handled Roman coinage in ordinary commerce — buying bread, paying taxes — would have seen this image regularly. Revelation doesn’t need to argue that Rome is corrupt; it just needs its readers to remember this scene the next time they look at their own money.

One more detail from the coin is worth mentioning as background, though it needs a caveat: there’s an old and disputed piece of Roman wordplay suggesting “Roma,” reversed, spells “Amor” (love) — sometimes described as a kind of secret or poetic name for the city. It’s an intriguing tradition worth knowing, though its antiquity and reliability as a genuine “secret name” used by Romans themselves is debated among historians, so it’s best held loosely rather than stated as settled fact. Similarly, in Latin slang a woman described as a “she-wolf” (lupa) was a well-attested way of calling her a prostitute — a pun that’s well documented in Roman literature itself. Whether Revelation’s original audience, mostly Greek-speaking Christians in the provinces of Asia Minor, would have caught that specific Latin double-entendre is harder to say with confidence; it’s a resonance modern readers who know Latin literature can appreciate, but we can’t be sure John’s first hearers caught this particular wordplay. What they certainly would have recognized, regardless of language, is the she-wolf and Roma imagery itself — it was stamped on coins and imperial art throughout the empire, visually unmistakable no matter what language you spoke.

A literary form worth knowing: ekphrasis

Here’s a original-language and literary note that repays some attention. The first half of Revelation 17 is unusual in the whole book: it’s the only place where an angel stops to interpret a static image for the reader, rather than simply narrating action. This matches a known ancient literary form called ekphrasis — a vivid rhetorical description of a work of art (the most famous example in ancient literature is the description of the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad). Ekphrasis was a popular genre in Rome from the first century BC onward, and it typically features a bewildered narrator who needs the scene explained — precisely John’s role in Revelation 17:7, where the angel says, “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery.”

Similar ancient works — like the Tabula of Cebes, where a crowd stares baffled at a temple dedication plaque until an old man explains its hidden meaning, or the Odes of Solomon (38:9-14), where “Error” and “Lack of Knowledge” disguise themselves as bride and groom at a wedding — use exactly this device to make one point: understanding the deception in front of you is the necessary first step toward escaping it. That’s precisely what Revelation 17 is doing. Rome’s propaganda was brazen and everywhere, and yet — like all effective propaganda — genuinely hard to see through from inside it. The angel’s explanation is an invitation to actually look at what you’ve been looking at your whole life.

Why this matters beyond Rome

It would be easy to hear all of this as a fascinating but safely historical exercise — interesting facts about an empire that fell fifteen centuries ago. But the whole force of Revelation 17’s satire is that propaganda dressed up as protection, prosperity, and destiny is not a uniquely Roman temptation. Every nation issues its own version of that coin — its own story of chosen-ness, strength, and peace secured through power. The question this chapter leaves for us isn’t just “was Rome guilty of this?” but “where has my own nation’s story about itself quietly become my story about God?”

Discussion questions

Understanding the text

1. Walk through the four reversals between the Roma coin and Revelation 17’s harlot imagery. Which one lands hardest for you, and why?
2. What is an ekphrasis, and why does that literary form fit what’s happening in Revelation 17:1-13 particularly well?
3. Why is it important to hold the “Roma/Amor” wordplay and the “she-wolf” Latin pun as interesting but uncertain background, rather than settled facts John’s readers definitely caught?

So what for us 4. If your own country minted a coin celebrating its “peace” and “protection,” what images might be on it — and what would Revelation-style satire have to say about what that peace has cost, and who has paid for it? 5. Revelation’s first readers needed an angel to help them see through propaganda they’d absorbed their whole lives. What “coin” — cultural story, symbol, or slogan — might your group need help seeing through today? 6. This chapter turns celebration into horror by simply showing what the celebrated power actually does to the vulnerable. Where might that same reversal apply to systems or institutions you currently trust without question?

Closing prayer

Ask God for eyes to see where national or cultural stories of strength, security, and prosperity may have quietly substituted themselves for trust in God alone. Pray for discernment to recognize propaganda — whether ancient or modern — and for the courage to name it honestly within your own group, not just in history.