fathers spoke and wrote in Greek, not Latin, so that these beliefs were (and still are, sometimes) known by the Greek word “Chiliasm”, which corresponds to the Latin-rooted word “Millennialism”. Several other fathers, including the great Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430), opposed this view precisely because it seemed too this-worldly. They followed instead the idea of a fourth-century theologian, Tyconius, who declared that Revelation 20 was symbolic, not literal: the “thousand years” was simply a