Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
As a roaring lion ...  In the time at which Peter wrote, Satan was indeed, not a sly and stealthy serpent, nor disguised as an angel of light; but he was a roaring lion elevated in the person of Nero upon the throne of the Caesars and thundering his decrees of death and destruction, like a roaring lion!  Many of the Christians would be terrified and intimidated, and some under threat of death would renounce their faith.  Satan's true nature is more visible in this than in the other Scriptural likenesses; because he adopts other methods only when circumstances make it impossible for him openly and wantonly to destroy, as was the case in the Neronian persecution.  Paine was not wrong, therefore, when he wrote: "This passage may well be a veiled reference to Nero or to his amphitheater with its lions!"[29]