I am not making this post to argue absolutely Babylon=Rome in some preterist or Historicist sense. It should not be controversial to acknowledge that Rome is where Mystery Babylon was at John's time. Zechariah 5 gives us reason to suspect she moves around.
I disagree with the argument that Babylon is "Code" for Rome in some way meant to hide it from Roman authorities who might read the Book. It is largely Rome's own cultural symbolism that makes it explicit, applying purely prior Biblical meaning to the same symbols is if anything what weakens it. A city on Seven Hills which had Seven Kings is how Rome defined itself, not how it's enemies defined it.
People interpreting Revelation have tried to make Seven Hills a defining characteristic of countless cities, I've looked into the argument for applying it to Jerusalem and find it to be pretty bad. The thing is the only city already defined as a city on Seven Hills (whether that is strictly geographically accurate or not) before Revelation was written was Rome. And since it was written the only attempts to make a city a Seven Hill city as a positive trait with no regard for the Biblical implications are ones doing so in a desire to claim to be a New Rome or successor to Rome. It was done with both Constantinople and Moscow for example.
What I want to get into here is some stuff about Rome that may have been particularly relevant to the region of the Seven Churches The Revelation was first given to.
The City of Smyrna was where the Roma cult was founded in 195 BC. Roma was the City of Rome personified as a Goddess. Mellor has proposed her cult as a form of religio-political diplomacy which adjusted traditional Graeco-Eastern monarchic honours to Republican mores. Athens and Rhodes accepted Roma as analogous to their traditional cult personifications of the demos (ordinary people). In 133 BC when Pergamon became part of the Empire it quickly became another major center of the Cult of Roma.
We can't be certain what colors Roma would have usually be depicted wearing, what we know about how she was depicted comes largely from coins. But we know that during The Roman Triumph the Triumphitor wore Purple and their face was painted Red, so I feel Purple and Scarlet as the colors of Roma fits. Some want to point out Purple and Scarlet being the colors of the Veil of The Tabernacle/Temple of Solomon to support the Jerusalem as Mystery Babylon theory, but every-time the Veil is refereed to as Purple and Scarlet/Crimson in Exodus 25-28, 35-39 and 2 Chronicles 2-3 the color Blue is also mentioned, usually first, and no Blue is in Revelation 17-18. The Veil of The Temple is basically the Bisexual Flag.
In the Hellenistic world typically Male deities had male Priests and Goddesses had Priestesses. But the Roma Cult was explicitly an exception to this, her worship was lead by male Priests. And so I think that is partly what the False Prophet may have been seen as to the book's earliest readers in these cities.
In either 30 or 29 BC the worship of the Emperor in the provinces began, and in Asia particularity it was essentially just merged with the Roma Cult. Pergamon was the first city where the Imperial cult was established. From here on Roma increasingly took the attributes of an Imperial or divine consort to the Imperial divus, but some Greek coin types show her as a seated or enthroned authority, and the Imperial divus standing upright as her supplicant or servant. Thus her as a woman riding the Beast.
The reason Smyrna and Pergamon were the churches most facing persecution is because in these cities the worship of the Emperor was required by law, most Pagans didn't see it as a conflict. Jews were usually excepted as theirs was an ancient religion, but Christianity was new and so once it stopped being seen as a sect of Judaism the Christians had a problem in these cities.
Aphrodite/Venus as the mother of Aeneas mythical progenitor of Rome naturally become identified with Roma sometimes, like in the Temple Hadrian built. And in the context of Revelation I've already noted possible Aphrodite imagery for the Beast out of the Sea.
People who like to argue the United States is Babylon could easily draw attention here to how the concept of Roma is basically the same as the concept of Columba/Columbia. But other such feminine personifications of the state exist in the modern world, the Pan-Europa movement has taken Europa of Green Mythology and made her more of a Roma type figure. I'm pretty sure Athena was originally just the Demos of Athens before Pan-Hellenism turned her into an Olympian all of Greece had to recognize. And of course I believe the Woman of Revelation 12 is the Demos of Israel being symbolically personified in a similar way.
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