The rider of the black horse may be known by his badge. John saw one sitting upon him "holding in his hand a balance." The other riders of the first and second seals were identified by their badges -- the bow and the great dagger; and so must this of the third by the balance, which is his. He represents a class of agents who, in relation to the Roman peoples, held the balance as their badge of office; the duties of which they performed so oppressively that they became a public evil, which like a noxious weed of most luxuriant growth, "darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade."

Among the Greeks and Latins, as also among the moderns, a balance was the symbol of justice. The scripture also adopts it as such: "Let him weigh me," says Job, "in the balance of justice" (xxxi. 6). In the hand of an official it indicated a judge, or an administrator of justice, or properly, of law; which, in the mouth of a judge, is often times far removed from justice. In this seal, it is the symbol of agents, whose office it was to execute the laws -- the imperial functionaries of the empire; both the emperors and their subordinates. There are Roman coins in the cabinets of the collectors of coins and medals, illustrative of this. Mr. Elliott has given copies of some in his work. Among these is an imperial coin of Alexander Severus. On one side is the head of an emperor; and on the other, a diademed figure holding a balance in the right hand and a measure in the other, with the legend Aequitas Augusti, S. C. It is the symbol of the equity of the emperor by decree of the senate in his levies upon the people in kind; for in imperial times the supreme judicial and financial, as well as supreme military power centred in the emperors. For this reason, the balance of justice is ascribed to them as well as the machaira, which, says Paul, "he beareth not in vain, for he is the minister of the Deity, a revenger to execute wrath upon them that do evil" (Rom. xiii. 1-4). So Shakespeare combines them in the address of Henry V. to the Lord Chief Justice, as the monarch’s representative;

"Hold thou still the balance and the sword."