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increments in a chronology especially stand out. In A.D. 248, for example, Romans celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the mythical founding of the empire by Romulus and Remus with considerable pageantry and fanfare, singing hymns to Apollo and Diana, dancing in the streets and in the hills, and looking forward to being freed from the Barbarian peril. But the millennium takes on deep meaning, and becomes a phenomenon, when associated with the apocalypse (from the Greek apo un, kalypsis veiling, or revelation)—the catastrophic destruction of evil forces in the world followed by the resurrection of the righteous. And this, in turn, is a form of the larger genre of eschatology, or the study of final events and the end of history.

There are two types of apocalyptic scenarios: religious, where God destroys Satan and sinners and resurrects the virtuous; and secular, where the destruction of evil comes about by natural or historical forces, and good triumphs over evil. Either way it plays out the same: destruction followed by redemption, with the fatalistic twist that The End, or some major break in human history, is inevitable. This apocalyptic millennium is a variation on the destruction-redemption and messiah myths considered in the previous chapter, as well as the still broader categories of renewal and eschatology myths reviewed in Chapter 7. These stories of the end resonate deeply in the human breast for the simple reason that we are all aware of the passing of time, that we are locked into that chronology, and that the end of our personal time must come. This is true whether one is religious or not: Everyone who ever lived has died, and so will we, and so will our descendants. Even if all the religious end-times scenarios prove hollow, the Earth itself will be engulfed by the Red Giant the sun will become in another 4.5 billion years. Even if our descendants colonize the galaxy, or other galaxies, the universe will either collapse into a giant black hole, destroying everything in it, or continue expanding until every star in every galaxy runs out of nuclear fuel and is snuffed out like the candles at the end of a liturgical ceremony. Either way, the end is coming. It is literally only a matter of time.

Three traditional representations of Judgment Day. Albrecht Dürer’s 1498 The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals, the Distribution of White Garments Among the Martyrs and the Fall of Stars, is a depiction of St. John the Divine’s vision in Revelation, 6:1217: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand.” The Last Judgment by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Below: Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

The connection between the millennium and the apocalypse was made most poignantly by St. John the Divine in a vision recounted in Revelation 20:110, where he “saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit,” where he threw Satan “and bound him for a thousand years.” According to Revelation, this post-Armageddon event is to be followed by the judgment of sinners and resurrection of the saved, who then “reigned with Christ a thousand years.” After this millennium, “Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations,” join forces with Gog and Magog in one final epic battle—Armageddon