The Emperor Nero, one of the most infamous figures of antiquity, but did the early Christians

associate Nero with the Antichrist mentioned in the New Testament, particularly the beast

in revelations? Joining me to sort the fact from the fiction is Shishma Malik. Shishma is

a professor from the University of Rohampton, and she has recently written a book all about

Nero's portrayal as the Antichrist in Christian literature and indeed throughout history. And

this was a fascinating chat. We first of all look at Nero's relationship with the Christians,

and then we explore how this association with the Antichrist was invented by third, fourth,

and fifth century Christian writers. And then we go on to the 18th and 19th centuries where this

association was revived, and how it spilled over into the 20th century and a famous Hollywood

production called Quo Vardis. Here's Shishma. Shishma, it is great to have you on the show,

great to see you again. Thank you, it's lovely to see you as well. Now, this pardon the pun is one

hell of a topic. It really is, yeah, it doesn't get much more apocalyptic. So I mean Nero and the

Antichrist, this association, you would argue this was a link that was invented later and then also

later later revived. Yes, yes, exactly. So I think this is a idea about Nero that really came to

being fully fledged in about the third century AD. So as the Roman Empire was sort of getting towards

its later period after what we would call the heyday of sort of the second century. And then

revived, like he say, in the 19th century when we start to find the idea of Nero's the Antichrist

popping up in, well, French and British literature actually in particular, as a way of understanding

the Antichrist that was going against kind of anti-papal rhetoric that was quite prevalent at the time

in the mid 19th century. Wow. So let's have a talk first about Nero and the Christians during his

reign. So in the in the mid first century AD, what is the Christian population in Rome? How

significant are they at this time? So we don't have any concrete sort of numbers, unfortunately,

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