The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse In the New Testament, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the allegorical figures of the sixth chapter of the Book of Revalation. These four agents of destruction are generally understood to symbolize power or conquest, violence or war, poverty or famine, and death. The first appears on a white horse, the second on a red horse, the third on a black horse, and the fourth on a pale horse. The Four Horsemen have been given the limited "power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." The first horse symolizes conquest, which causes war. The second rider, "a fiery red one" "carries