Revelation never calls the first horseman Pestilence
Popular culture often names the Four Horsemen as Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. The Book of Revelation, though, gives a name only to the fourth rider. The white rider's identity has been read as Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Antichrist and even Napoleon, while the Pestilence label, of unclear origin, is documented from at least 1906.
The riders appear in the Book of Revelation, attributed to John of Patmos and usually dated to about AD 95, with echoes in the older books of Ezekiel and Zechariah. In chapter 6, the Lamb opens the first four of seven seals on a scroll held in God's right hand, and each seal summons a rider: on a white horse, a red, a black and finally a pale one. Every rider except Death looks human, and Christians have generally read them as heralds of the Last Judgment.
The white rider carries a bow and receives a crown, riding out to conquer. Some see Christ in him, since white signals righteousness in the Bible and Christ appears elsewhere as a conqueror; others propose the Holy Spirit sent at Pentecost. In 1866 C. F. Zimpel argued he was the Antichrist, specifically Napoleon Bonaparte, a reading that spread among American evangelicals, including Billy Graham.
The red rider, whose colour comes from the Greek word for fire, wields a great sword and takes peace from the earth so that people slaughter each other. Commentators often cast him as civil war rather than conquest, and some as the persecution of Christians. The black rider, a food merchant holding a pair of scales, stands for famine.
Edward Bishop Elliott read the riders as a prophecy of Roman history. For him the white horse matched the triumphant era of emperors such as Nerva and Trajan, and the red horse the chaos after Commodus, 92 years in which 32 emperors and 27 pretenders fought over the throne. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's 1916 novel, filmed in 1921 and 1962, helped popularise the image of the white rider spreading pestilence.
Source: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
