"The four horsemen"

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder / One of the four beasts saying, / 'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse". "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash makes numerous Biblical references. Especially to the Book of Revelation which is derived from Greek, apokalypsis, meaning unveiling or revelation. The book is central in Christian eschatology and "the four horsemen" is a popular subject in art, film and music. According to the Book of Revelation (chapter 6:1–8) the four horsemen of the apocalypse appear with the opening of the first four of the seven seals that bring forth the cataclysm of the apocalypse. The first horseman, equipped with a bow and crown, rides a white horse, which symbolizes Christ or the Antichrist; the second horseman is given a great sword and rides a red horse, symbolizing war; the third carries a balance scale, rides a black horse, and symbolizes famine; and the fourth horseman rides a pale horse and is identified as Death. The main distinguishing feature of the four horses is their colour; white for conquest, red for war, black for famine, and pale for death. The four horsemen are armed with different attributes; conquest with a bow, war with a sword and famine with a balance scale. The fourth horseman, symbolizing death, doesn't have any attribute. The woodcut by Albrecht Dürer was made as one of a series of fifteen illustrations for a 1498 edition of the Apocalypse. In 1511, the plates were republished. The pale rider in the woodcut carries a sort of pitchfork or trident, despite the fact that he’s given no weapon in the Book of Revelation; he simply unleashes hell. The illustrations are very detailed. The colours of the horses are achieved by very distinctly drawing their various weapons and by placing them in order from background to foreground, slightly overlapping, so that they ride across the composition in the same order as they appear in the Book of Revelation. This places Death, a skeletal figure on a skeletal horse, in the foreground. "And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts / And I looked, and behold a pale horse / And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him".