From 303 to 313 AD [was] the time of the tenth, worst, and last official persecution of the Christians by the Roman state (The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD, pg. 32).

“All former persecutions of the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the tenth wave … of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope.”

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, pp. 66.

Guerber writes that it was “the worst and bloodiest that had yet been known” of the Christian persecutions. (The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD, pg. 33.)

H. A. Guerber, The Story of the Romans, p. 267.

The traditional interpretation places the fifth seal immediately following the events of the four horsemen, or from 303 to 313 AD, the time of the tenth, worst, and last official persecution of the Christians by the Roman state (pg. 32, The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD).

“We naturally, however, look for the fulfillment of it [the fifth seal] in some period succeeding those designated by the preceding symbols. … in a period succeeding that represented , under the fourth seal, by Death on a pale horse.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on … Revelation, p. 160.

[The wars with the barbarians affected the population in almost every province, thus death by the sword.] … The entire … reigns of Valerian and his son (AD 254 to 268) … was one uninterrupted series of disorders and disasters. (The First Four Seals, pg. 28).

“Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. … But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the Barbarians, were entirely depopulated.”

Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, “Emperors Decius, Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part IV.

Pestilence raged in Rome, and over most of the Empire … (The First Four Seals, pg. 27).

This well-documented outbreak was likely the black death or plague (although smallpox is also suggested), the same which decimated the population of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.

“In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. But despite this gesture of universality, the Severan dynasty was tumultuous—an emperor’s reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution—and, following its collapse, the Roman Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague.”

“Roman Empire: History,” Wikipedia, referencing P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, London, 1971, p. 22. Emphasis added.

Commodus, the first emperor of the red horseman, emptied the state treasury on bread and circuses for the citizens, in an attempt to purchase their favor. Subsequent emperors were unable to refill it, and new taxes were devised, which were ever increased. Farmers who could no longer afford to farm left their lands and crowded into Rome, where bread was given to the people as welfare, to secure their favor for whatever emperor happened to be on the throne at the time. (The First Four Seals:96-300 AD, pg. 26).

“Most of the small farmers gave up the struggle to keep their little bit of land, for the taxes had become unbearable … The once sturdy farmer lost his independence in an eager scramble for a place in the waiting line of city poor, to whom the government distributed free bread, wine, and meat. Rome was filled with the unemployed who were supported by the State with money which had been raised by taxing more heavily the few remaining farmers. The same situation was, in the main, to be found in all the leading cities.”

James Robinson and James Breasted, History of Europe: Ancient and Medieval, pp. 260, 261.

“The time [of the city poor] which should have been spent in breadwinning was worse than wasted among the cheering multitudes at the chariot races, bloody games, and barbarous spectacles.”

James Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, pg. 670.

“An empty treasury required economy and retrenchment, while a greedy soldiery and a demoralised people clamoured for shows and a donative. … He [Caracallus] endeavoured to secure the affections of the soldiers by combining excessive rewards for service with very remiss discipline, thus doubly injuring the Empire. The vigor of the army melted away under his lax rule; and the resources of the State were exhausted by his ruinous profuseness, which led him to devise new and ingenious modes of increasing taxation.”

George Rawlinson, Ancient History: From the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire, pp. 502, 504.

The unceasing civil wars ruined business, as we saw, and inflation grew apace. (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 26).

“At the same time the financial and business life of the cities was also declining. The country communities no longer possessed a numerous purchasing population. Hence the country market for the goods manufactured in the cities was so seriously reduced that city industries could no longer dispose of their products. They rapidly declined. The industrial classes were thrown out of work and went to increase the multitudes of the city poor.”

James Breasted, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, p. 670.

“Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them—an indication that the coin was valued on its face, not for its metal content. This tendency toward fiat money led eventually to the debasement of Roman coinage, with consequences in the later Empire.”

“Roman Empire: Currency and Banking,” Wikipedia.