The hope in a thousand-year reign of happiness preceding the final denouement of history was widely shared by the first Christians. ... It still clearly dominates in Saint Irenaeus. It will be profoundly relativized from the fourth century onward in favor of a symbolic reading of the book of Revelation. This reversal will be carried out mainly under the influence of Saint Augustine, though also by Tyconius, who appears to us in this matter to have been a true "Augustine before Augustine." The rejection of a literal understanding of Revelation 20 became the dominant position of the Church and then, after the Reformation, of the main churches." -Bernard Hort