Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.15

In the hidden depths of the holy writings we read that the leader of the Hebrews, together with his whole household and kin, was forced by a shortage of grain to cross into Egypt (Exodus 1:14). His descendants, after dwelling there for a long time, grew into a great nation and were crushed beneath a heavy, intolerable yoke of slavery; God struck Egypt with an incurable plague and delivered his people, leading them through the midst of the sea while the waves were split apart and driven to either side so that the people walked on dry ground (Exodus 14:13-31). When the Egyptian king tried to pursue the fugitives, the sea returned to its place and engulfed him with all his forces.

That deed, glorious and wondrous as it was, displayed God's power to humanity at that moment, yet it served only as a foreshadowing and a figure of a greater act that the same God will perform at the consummation of the ages: he will free his people from the heavy servitude of the world. In those days there was but one people of God, confined to a single nation, so only Egypt was struck; now, however, the people of God, gathered from every tongue, dwell among all nations and are oppressed by their rulers, and therefore it is necessary that all nations — that is, the whole world — be scourged by heavenly plagues so that the just and God‑fearing people may be liberated. Just as signs were given then to reveal the coming destruction of the Egyptians, so in the last days marvelous portents will appear through every element of the world, by which the imminent end of all nations will be recognized.

As the end of this age draws near, the condition of human affairs must change and deteriorate, because wickedness grows stronger, so that our present times — in which iniquity and malice have reached their highest pitch — may be judged fortunate and almost golden by comparison with that incurable evil. Justice will become so rare, and impiety, greed, and lust so rampant, that any good people who happen to exist will become prey for the wicked and will be driven away on every side by the unjust; only the wicked will be wealthy, while the good will be cast into every kind of contempt and poverty. All law will be confounded and statutes will perish; no one will possess anything except what they have seized or defended by hand, and audacity and force will rule everything. There will be no faith among men, no peace, no humanity, no shame, no truth, and consequently no security, no government, no rest from evils. The whole earth will be in turmoil, wars will rage everywhere, all nations will be armed and will attack one another; neighboring cities will fight each other, and first of all Egypt will pay the penalty for its foolish superstitions, drenched in blood as if by a river.

Then the sword will sweep across the world, cutting down everything and laying all things low like a harvest. The cause of this devastation and confusion will be that the Roman name, by which the world is now governed — my soul shudders to speak it, but I must, because it will happen — will be removed from the earth, the empire will revert to Asia, the East will dominate once more, and the West will serve. No one should be surprised if a kingdom founded with such immense strength, enlarged for so long by so many and such great men, and finally secured by such vast resources, should nevertheless collapse at some point. For nothing built by human power cannot be undone by human power, since the works of mortals are mortal. Thus other kingdoms that flourished for a long time have nonetheless perished: the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Assyrians are recorded to have held dominion over the earth, and when they were all destroyed, supreme authority passed to the Romans. The more the Romans surpass all other kingdoms in greatness, the greater will be their fall, because the higher they rise, the more weight they carry toward ruin.

Seneca did not foolishly divide the history of the Roman city into ages. He said the first age was infancy under King Romulus, from whom Rome was born and, as it were, nurtured; then childhood under the subsequent kings, by whom it was enlarged and shaped by many disciplines and institutions; but when Tarquinius reigned, Rome had already begun to be, as it were, an adult, and it could not endure servitude, so it rejected the yoke of proud domination and chose to obey laws rather than kings. When its adolescence ended with the conclusion of the Punic War, it finally began to mature, its strength confirmed. After Carthage, the long‑standing rival of the empire, was destroyed, Rome stretched its hands over the whole world by land and sea until every king and nation had been subdued; then, with no more wars to fight, it misused its own power and destroyed itself. This was its first old age, when, worn out by civil wars and pressed by internal corruption, it fell back under the rule of a single emperor, as if returning to a second infancy. Having lost the liberty it had defended under Brutus's leadership and authority, it aged as though unable to sustain itself without the support of rulers. If these things are so, what remains but that destruction follows old age? And this will happen soon, as the prophecies of the prophets announce under the veil of other names so that no one may easily understand. The Sibyls, however, declare openly that Rome will perish, and indeed by the judgment of God, because it bore a name hated by God and slaughtered the people of truth, the foster child of justice. Hystaspes, the most ancient king of the Medes, from whom the river now called the Hydaspes takes its name, transmitted to posterity an admirable dream through the interpretation of a prophesying boy: he foretold long before the founding of the Trojan nation that the empire and the Roman name would be removed from the world.