This symbol is also that of a horseman, differing from the preceding ones only in his characteristics.  He is seated upon a black horse, denoting something dark or appalling in its nature, the very opposite of that of the first seal.  He possesses no bow nor crown, but instead he has a pair of balances in his hand for weighing food.  This he deals out only at exorbitant prices—­“a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny.”  The penny, or denarius, is equal to about fifteen cents of our money, and was the ordinary wages of a day laborer.  In the parable of our Lord recorded in Mat. 20, the householder is represented as hiring laborers for a penny a day to labor in his vineyard.  The measure, or choenix, of wheat was the usual daily allowance of food for a man.  So according to the rate given, it would require a day’s labor to supply food sufficient for one man, which shows an enormous price placed upon these necessaries of life.  In ordinary times the penny would procure about twenty measures of wheat instead of one, and fifty or sixty measures of barley instead of three.  Surely this represents famine prices.

The expression “see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” seems to have some direct connection with the exorbitant schedule of food rates.  The following facts of history, as recorded by Lord, will serve to make the matter clear:  “The taxes required in the Roman empire, to sustain the court and civil service, the army and desolating wars, and the hungry brood of office-holders, as well as to provide largesses to the soldiers, were excessive in the extreme, so as to prove an almost insupportable burden to the people.  The ordinary and economical expenses of the government were great; but when we take into view that during a period of seventy-two years previous to Diocletian, there were twenty-six individuals who held the imperial crown, besides a great number of unsuccessful aspirants, and that each of these must secure the favor of the army and the people by large donations of money, we may well conceive that the taxes and exactions laid to raise the needed amount must have proved a crushing burden.  They were so great as sometimes to strip men of their wealth and reduce them to poverty.  These were laid upon everything that could be brought into service.  Nothing was too insignificant to escape....  The taxes might be paid in money, or in produce, grain, fruit, oil, or whatever else it might be;...  The exactions were so excessive that the people were led to avoid them in every possible mode, as men always will under such circumstances.”  Once in fifteen years, a Roman indiction, an assessor would go round to levy upon the products of the soil, and the assessment was made according to the amount of the yield.  One method adopted to secure a lower assessment at this time was that of mutilating their fruit trees and vines.  We find among the Roman laws severe enactments against such as “feign poverty, or cut a vine, or stint the fruit of a tree” in order to avoid a fair valuation, and the penalty attached was the death of the offender and the confiscation of all his property.  The fact that this law existed shows that the offense was committed and also that the exactions of the government must have been of the most oppressive kind.