I have seen many, many wild beasts of Arabia and India, but this beast, that is commonly called a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it can be crooked of claw, and armed with horrible fangs .And of wild beasts you cannot say that they were ever known to eat their own mothers, but Nero has gorged himself on this diet. In addition, Revelation speaks of this sixth king as the reigning king. If one starts with Julius Caesar as the first king, as the ancient historians did, Nero is the sixth king. If this is true, to hold the late date one must either say John wrote Revelation before AD 70 or one must say the destruction of Jerusalem was at least 25 years after it was really destroyed. Also, the preterist will maintain the Antichrist is not someone coming in the future.
Scholars maintain antichrist refers to a system of belief and individual persons.
We can see that antichrist is a description of both the system of apostasy and individual apostates. Gnosticism, the heresy denying the reality of the incarnation and the first-century heresiarch Cerinthus would fit in this category. Revelation 13 clearly shows he is an extremely evil and idolatrous person. With this in mind, the conclusion is the beast is Nero. He was more cruel and evil than other rulers.