§ 1. I now judge that I have demonstrated sufficiently from the Scriptures that earthly kingdoms are begun, increased, preserved, and cast down not by fortune or chance or fate, but by the will of God. Yet my mind is resolved to linger here and to bring forward this providence in a clear matter and most familiar history, as though for an example of the others. The words of Daniel, chapter 8, are as follows:
In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me. I, Daniel, after that which I had seen at the beginning, saw in my vision, when I was in the fortress of Susa, which is in the region of Elam; and I saw in the vision that I was above the gate of Ulai. And I lifted up my eyes and saw; and behold, one ram stood before the marsh, having lofty horns, and one higher than the other and growing upward. Afterward I saw the ram brandishing its horns against the west, against the north, and against the south; and all the beasts could not resist it or be delivered from its hand. And it did according to its will and was magnified.
And I understood; but behold, a he-goat of the goats came from the west over the face of the whole earth and did not touch the ground. Moreover, the he-goat had a distinguished horn between its eyes. And it came as far as that horned ram which I had seen standing before the gate and ran at it in the impetus of its strength. And when it had approached near the ram, it was enraged against it and struck the ram and broke its two horns; and the ram could not resist it. And when it had cast the ram to the ground, it trampled it, and no one was able to deliver the ram from its hand.
But the he-goat of the goats became exceedingly great; and when it had grown, the great horn was broken, and four horns arose beneath it toward the four winds of heaven. But from one of them came forth one little horn, and it became great against the south, against the east, and against the host. And it was magnified even unto the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars and trampled them. And it was magnified even unto the prince of the host; and it took away from him the continual sacrifice and cast down the place of his sanctuary.
§ 2. And at verse 19 and those following:
And he said to me: I shall show you the things that are to be in the last time of the curse, because the appointed time has its end. The ram which you saw having horns is the king of the Medes and Persians. But the he-goat of the goats is the king of the Greeks, and the great horn which is between its eyes is the first king. But because, when it was broken, four arose in its place, four kings shall arise from his nation, but not in his strength.
And after their reign, when iniquities have increased, there shall arise a king shameless of face and understanding propositions; and his strength shall be reinforced, but not by his own forces. And beyond what can be believed, he shall lay waste all things, prosper, and act. And he shall kill the mighty and the people of the saints according to his will, and deceit shall be directed in his hand. And he shall magnify his heart, and through the abundance of all things shall kill very many. And he shall rise against the prince of princes and shall be broken without a hand. And the vision of evening and morning which was spoken is true. Therefore seal the vision, because it shall be after many days. And I, Daniel, languished and was sick for days; and when I had risen, I performed the king’s works, and I was astounded at the vision, and there was no one who could interpret it.
Weigh these things and reckon within yourself how accurately Darius and Alexander are described, along with their deeds and the transfer of the monarchy to an ignoble corner of Greece. The ram is Darius, who stands before the marsh or before the river—in Hebrew, liphne haubal, “in the sight of the Ubal.” For even after the remainder of Asia was lost, Darius placed his hope in the rivers and standing marshes of water from the Euphrates and Tigris, since he held Media, Persia, the Assyrians, and the whole barbarian region together with Bactria. Here, therefore, the ram stands confidently.
The lofty horns are the kingdoms of Media and Persia. For although very many kingdoms obeyed Darius, the Medes and Persians nevertheless ruled. The higher horn, however, was the Persian kingdom, which had been far inferior to the Median, but grew powerful after Cyrus and was more excellent than the kingdom of the Medes. It is therefore said to grow upward, or to ascend at the end. Since Cyrus, himself a Persian, possessed the Persian dominion by inheritance but the Median as a dowry, he preferred the Persians to the Medes. Hence the monarchy is customarily called Persian, not Median, by authors.
That ram brandishes with its horns—menagag, that is, it attacks with the horn, κερατίζει—as is said in Exodus 21:28 and verses 31 and 32 concerning kings who violently oppress a province, and in Deuteronomy 33:17, “The horns of the rhinoceros are his horns.”
Against the west—in Hebrew, iamma, πρὸς θάλασσαν, toward the sea, namely the Mediterranean. The Jews were accustomed thus to call the west because the sea enclosed the western side of Palestine. But the Persian dominion was scarcely bounded by the sea. To the west of Persia were the Babylonians, Syrians, part of Armenia, and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. In the south they conquered Arabia, Egypt, part of Libya, the Ammonians, and the southern Indians. In the north they conquered part of Armenia, Pontus, and Colchis. Herodotus, Book I; Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus and ἀναβάσει (Anabasis); the Halicarnassian, Book I; Curtius; Ctesias in his Persian History; and innumerable others expound these matters.
No one could resist it—no one, that is, among the Asiatic nations; for the Greeks and Scythians resisted, although afflicted with the greatest disasters.
Daniel was not ignorant that a king or kingdom was signified, yet he could not yet know who it was. But behold, there comes the he-goat of the goats, the king of Greece, Melech Iavan. The king of Javan, or king of the Ionians—for among the Greeks, ἴων, and among the Hebrews, יון, because Hellas does not recognize consonantal yod; hence Ionia among the celebrated cities of the Greeks. Moreover, Javan was a son of Japheth and a brother of Madai.
The Persian is a ram because, as Theodoret says, the dominion, now heavy with resources, fatness, and luxury, and scarcely master of itself, was assuredly being conquered by the Greeks through those things in which it most abounded, such as money, because the soldiers were neglected through the avarice of the governors. Accordingly, at this time it was like a golden animal which by its golden fleece generally profited others, the strength of the bear having long since failed. For they either hired the generals of the Greeks with money or corrupted them, so that the ram now bore its fleeces not for itself but for others.
The king of the Greeks is the he-goat of the goats. “He-goat—he-goat” is said in Hebrew, yet with two words: vehazaphir veschaghir, both “he-goat”
and “male goat.” The Seventy, however, call it τὸν τράγον τῶν αἰγῶν. Others read “hairy he-goat”; our interpreter and the Seventy read an addition at the end in this manner: hazephir haschehiroth, “he-goat of the goats.” Thus most interpret it, and it is called the same in verse 5: zephir hahazim, “he-goat of the goats,” just as though it said one from a herd of goats or the offspring of a she-goat. Thus in Leviticus 4:28 it is said, “a female kid or she-goat of the goats.”
Some think that the maternal origin is indicated by this addition. For after Philip died, only his mother Olympias survived. Alexander was dearer to her than to his father, so far that he is thought to have been aware of his father’s murder. Certainly Olympias could not conceal the joy she had conceived at her husband’s death, so far that at night she placed a crown upon Pausanias the parricide as he hung upon the cross. She would not have dared so infamous a crime unless she thought it would please her son, who at last even denied that Philip was his father and killed those who praised Philip. But I prefer that he should be named “he-goat of the goats” by a Hebrew expression rather than that I should follow an uncertain exposition.
He is a he-goat who, by a swift leap as though he did not touch the earth, flew, as it were, across great kingdoms. Darius did not boast emptily that so much land still belonged to him that even to traverse it—not merely to conquer it—would be laborious. “A man would grow old,” he says in Curtius, “merely by traveling over so much land, even without battle.” But Alexander, as roe deer are accustomed to do, poises himself from cliff to cliff without traversing the valley, and thus subdued so great a monarchy in six years.
In the first year he restrained many rebellious nations and extinguished seditions. Then, setting out at a rapid pace, he was appointed commander of Greece while he prepared the Persian war. In the very midst of the undertaking, it was announced that the Athenians, Thebans, and Lacedaemonians had defected to the Persians and would draw the whole of Greece with them by their authority and power. At the same time war had to be waged against the barbarians at the Ister. Intending to meet these disturbances, he overwhelmed Greece with such speed, with his army equipped and prepared, that those who had not perceived him coming could scarcely believe they saw him.
§ 3. Next, upon the Adrastean plains, or at the Granicus, he put six hundred thousand Persians to flight and killed one hundred and twenty thousand cavalrymen, although nine infantrymen and one hundred and twenty cavalrymen from his own army were killed. He waged several wars against Darius’s governors, whom he conquered by terror of his name; he wore them down in three battles after the battle of Issus. When crossing Mount Taurus he covered five hundred stadia—that is, fifteen German miles—at a run. Tyre delayed his impetus a little, for it presented more difficulty than the entire Persian kingdom. But when it was captured, Egypt, Cilicia, and Rhodes came under his dominion without a contest. Meanwhile, as though at leisure, he saluted Jupiter Ammon, founded Alexandria, and finally defeated and buried Darius at Gaugamela. For this reason he is called the exceedingly swift he-goat who did not touch the earth.
He is also called a he-goat because he was harsh, inhuman, lustful, and had not only a bloody court but even bloody banquets, infamous for the killings and perils of his closest friends. Curtius, Book VI, says that when freed from cares he admitted pleasures, games, and herds of concubines. What kind of man he was in the storming of cities is taught by Eleadas, a captive after Thebes had been conquered: “Now there remains a crowd of old men and women, weak indeed but also harmless; and this very crowd has been harassed by rapes and insults so that they have never suffered anything more bitter.” Nor were the Greek kings who followed dissimilar to Alexander: distinguished for lusts, pride, and cruelty, they afflicted the world and were hostile to one another in perpetual wars. For Daniel speaks about kings in such a way that he embraces the whole body of the kingdom.
§ 4. The he-goat, however, came to the horned ram—bahalker anaim, “lord of the horns”—in the impetus of his strength: ἐν ὁρμῇ, says the Greek, which the Hebrew calls bacchamath cocho, “in the fervor or blazing anger of his strength.”
But when it had drawn near the ram, it was enraged against it—ἐξηγριώθη. Although it had formerly been a domestic and tame animal, it is now changed into a fierce and savage beast. The Hebrew has vaithmarmar: it made itself savage and gathered all its anger against one. Who would not think that Daniel, when writing these things, had been present at the deeds? They had indeed long contended in courtesies and humanity while the war continued, but when it came to the actual matter, he was driven by the Furies. “Alexander,” says Justin, “undertook all the most dangerous things; and wherever he saw the densest enemy forces fighting most fiercely, he always plunged himself into that place and willed the dangers to be his own, not his soldiers’.”
He drew near: he destroyed three armies of the commanders and then put Darius himself to flight. In the second battle each king was wounded; in the third Darius perished. But concerning Alexander’s enraged disposition toward Darius, let us hear Curtius, Book IV. “For you undertake impious wars”—the Macedonian reproaches Darius’s legates in this way—“and, although you possess arms, you bid for the heads of your enemies, just as you lately, king of so great an army, wished to purchase my assassin for a thousand talents. I therefore repel war; I do not inflict it.” And because Darius had omitted Alexander’s title of king, he added: “Hereafter, when you write to me, remember that you are writing not only to a king, but also to your own king.”
But nothing enraged him more than the letters of which Curtius speaks in chapter 4. Letters of Darius were then intercepted, by which the Greek soldiers were solicited to kill or betray the king. Therefore Alexander said in his response to the legates: “But if he sought peace at least in good faith, I might perhaps deliberate whether I should grant it. In truth, since he solicits now my soldiers by letters to betray me, now my friends to destroy me, he must be pursued by me to extermination, not as a just enemy, but as an assassin and poisoner.”
§ 5. Behold for yourself the enraged he-goat rushing with a violent impetus against the ram without regard for its own safety. Could not God, who predicted these things so long beforehand and foresaw them from eternity, have fortified the ram and turned away the he-goat?
It truly broke its two horns. “By this battle,” says Justin, “he seized the whole of Asia in the fifth year after receiving the kingdom. His success was so great that after this no one dared to rebel, and the Persians patiently received the yoke of servitude after so many years of dominion.” After Persepolis had been destroyed, even the Medes did not attempt to resist.
All the beasts could not resist it or be delivered from its hand. The reason was that the ram had now been abandoned by God; accordingly, it did not conquer even once in so many battles. For the iniquities of the Persians and Medes had now grown great and were no longer tolerable to the world. Nor was Alexander ignorant of this. In Justin, Book II, the matter is narrated thus: “Before any ship departed from shore, he sacrificed victims, seeking victory in the war in which he had been chosen as avenger of Greece, so often attacked by the Persians; they had possessed dominion long enough and to maturity, and the time had come for successors who would act better to take their turn.” Thus it could not happen that the Persian should resist or at least conduct the war; but, destitute of assistance and wisdom, he delivered all things into the victor’s hands.
When it had cast him to the ground, it trampled him. Alexander had pursued him as an assassin and poisoner. When Darius saw his men being conquered, he himself wished to die, but was compelled by those closest to him to flee, as Justin relates. He was therefore cast down to the ground while Hyrcania, Bactria,
and half the kingdom still remained. He was bound with golden chains by his own governors Nabarzanes and Bessus and cast into a wagon covered with hides. Finally, when ordered to mount a horse, he refused to accompany the parricides. “Then indeed,” says Curtius, Book V, “inflamed also with anger, they cast weapons at the king and left him pierced through with many wounds. They also wounded the beasts of burden so that they could not proceed farther, after killing the two servants who accompanied the king.”
All these things are attributed to the he-goat of the goats because he was the cause of all of them and, pressing upon the fugitive, used to say: “Our victory is placed within that body.” But Curtius, Book V, points him out to us lying upon the ground, as though reciting Daniel’s very words: “When Darius was about to see Artabazus for the last time, he embraced him; and, drenched with many tears, ordered him, though clinging to him, to be pulled away. Then, having covered his head so that he might not gaze amid his groans upon the man departing as though from a funeral pyre, HE CAST HIMSELF FACE DOWN UPON THE GROUND.” Thus cast down and trampled, he most miserably lost his life.
Then Persepolis was trampled, burned in mockery at the nod of a petty courtesan; and captives whose price had rendered them pitiable were killed, for the wealthy victors preferred to kill the most worthless of the captives rather than sell them.
The distinguished horn, ἐπίσημον, between the eyes is Alexander—not the first king of Macedonia, but the first commander of all Greece and monarch of Asia. He is more powerful than his successors, projecting upon the forehead between the eyes—that is, among his father’s most clear-sighted generals; for no one readily led the ranks unless he was sixty years old. Therefore the he-goat is both the king himself and the kingdom of Greece.
But the great horn was broken—either struck down by drunkenness or by Babylonian poison—when it had stood for twelve years.
§ 6. When it was broken, four kings arose. The Hebrew calls them four Malchivoth, kingdoms. Our interpreter read niem in place of uth, namely, melachim. No judgment concerning the true ancient reading can be established from the word, for it is iaghamodenna, whose beginning possesses the mark of the masculine, but whose ending is feminine; I find nothing similar to it. Accordingly, either there is an error in the Hebrew, or it is an indication that the discourse concerns kings and kingdoms—that is, persons and things.
There were more kings and kingdoms, but the principal ones with which the passage deals were only four: Macedonia, Egypt, Asia, and Syria. The principal kings were Philip, or Arrhidaeus; Antigonus; Ptolemy; and Seleucus. From these things I conclude that there is a providence directing all things; all things are subject to it; at God’s discretion all things stand and all things fall—they are not only foreseen and predicted.
The things said in chapter 11 must be considered no less. It says that three kings were to stand in Persia—Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, for it omits Smerdis as a tyrant of a few months—and that the fourth, namely the great Xerxes, was to be enriched with the greatest resources and, when he had grown powerful, was to rouse everyone by means of his riches to war against Greece. Then Alexander, a strong king, shall arise and rule with great power from Macedonia as far as the Ammonians and India. But once the kingdom has been acquired, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds, into four principal kingdoms and many other smaller ones, but not among his descendants. For all his posterity was extinguished within the twelfth year, nor did it pass according to his power, for no one among his successors obtained even a tenth part of his power.
The happiness of Alexander was miserable. When he was about to go against the Persians, he had polluted himself with kindred blood. After his death Olympias, besieged by Cassander and judged an enemy by the Macedonians, was ordered by a public judgment to die. Barsane and Roxane were killed with their children. A certain part and the name of the kingdom were granted to his brother Arrhidaeus, but he too was soon extinguished.
§ 7. The kingdom was torn even among outsiders—those, namely, who were not from the nobles of the Macedonians. Torn among members of the household, torn among outsiders. Livy, Book XLV: “The greatest kingdom and name of the Macedonians upon earth, pulled apart into many kingdoms at the death of Alexander while each man seized its resources for himself, with its strength torn apart, stood for one hundred and fifty years from the highest summit of fortune to its final end.” Does he not appear to be writing a commentary upon Daniel? O depth of the wisdom of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and untraceable his ways!
After Alexander’s death, his commanders placed diadems upon themselves, and evils were multiplied upon the earth. His mother, brother, wives, and children, almost all his commanders and princes, and the Silver Shields, enriched with the spoils of the world, paid for the success of that one robber: within sixteen years they were cut down and consumed by wounds mutually inflicted. Olympias killed Arrhidaeus; Cassander killed Olympias and two daughters-in-law with two grandchildren; Demetrius extinguished Cassander and his whole house, as though making a funeral offering to Alexander’s family; Perdiccas killed Meleager; Ptolemy, Cleomenes and Perdiccas and others; Philotas, Python; Antigonus, Eumenes and the Silver Shields. After thirty-four commanders, Alexander’s fellow soldiers, had now been extinguished, the last ones, Seleucus and Lysimachus, came together in battle.
“It was a spectacle of the foulest kind,” says Orosius, “that two kings—of whom Lysimachus was seventy-four years old and Seleucus seventy-seven—should meet to seize one another’s kingdoms, stand in a battle line, and bear arms. This was indeed the last war of Alexander’s fellow soldiers, but one that had been preserved as an example of the greatest misery. For although, after thirty-four commanders of Alexander had now been extinguished, they alone possessed the world, they did not regard the exceedingly narrow bounds of their old age and life, but judged the bounds of their dominion over the whole world too narrow. In that war, after he had previously lost fifteen children through various misfortunes, Lysimachus, dying not without spirit, was added as the final heap upon the ruin of his house.
“Seleucus, rejoicing in so great a victory and because—which he judged greater than victory—he alone had remained from the companies of Alexander the Great and had proved the conqueror of conquerors, boasted that it was not a human work but a divine one. He was altogether ignorant that not long afterward he himself would become an example of human frailty. For after only seven months, he was surrounded by an ambush and killed by Ptolemy, whose sister Lysimachus had had in marriage; and together with his life he likewise lost the kingdom of Macedonia which he had taken from Lysimachus.” Thus those who had defiled the whole world with killings, ambition, and debaucheries perished by this end, through the fire of divine vengeance bursting forth from the throne. These things, indeed, occurred among members of the household.
But what of the outsiders? As soon as they heard of Alexander’s death, the Indians, after killing his governors, vindicated themselves into liberty; and the Seleucids did not long command beyond Persia and Media. Justin, Book XLI, relates that Arsaces the Parthian revolted; Theodorus says that a thousand cities of the Bactrians did so at the same time, and that the peoples of the whole east followed their example, as did, by an equal principle, the Pontic and Scythian nations, whence new kingdoms and commonwealths afterward emerged.
And the king of the south shall be strengthened: Ptolemy the son of Lagus, who obtained Egypt, the southern part of the Macedonian kingdom, was a most prudent man, as the historian says. “But Ptolemy in Egypt prepared great resources by skillful industry; for he had both won over the Egyptians to his favor by distinguished moderation and bound neighboring kings to himself by benefits and services. He had also enlarged the boundaries of his dominion by acquiring the city of Cyrene and had already become so great that he did not so much fear his enemies as
was himself to be feared by them.” Let what Pausanias says about him in the Attica be consulted. Amid the other commanders contending with one another, he had an opportunity to grow, since he possessed a stable kingdom not exposed to any incursions. He was called Soter by the Rhodians because he assisted them against Demetrius. After taking Jerusalem he captured one hundred and twelve thousand Jews, but treated them most humanely, so that many went voluntarily from Judea into Egypt. He entrusted fortresses and cities to them because, from the response of Jaddua to Alexander, he knew that they were the most steadfast keepers of an oath.
He is one of Alexander’s commanders. Ptolemy Philadelphus was the killer of brothers who plotted against him. He possessed one hundred thousand infantry, two thousand chariots, four hundred elephants, one hundred and fifty warships, a thousand cargo ships, an annual revenue of fourteen thousand eight hundred talents of silver, and finally one million five hundred thousand artabas of grain. An artaba contains three modii and one third.
But at the end of the years, after many troublesome contests between the kings of Asia and Egypt, the daughter of the king of the south—Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt—shall come to the king of the north, Antiochus Θεὸν, to establish friendship, with a great dowry, so that she even acquired the name φερνοφόρος, “dowry-bringer.” But she shall not retain the strength of the arm, nor shall she be a bond between the two kingdoms. For Laodice, the former wife of Antiochus, shall kill her husband with poison, appoint Seleucus Callinicus king, and deliver Berenice with her son to the princes at Antioch to be killed. Indeed, those who brought her there and were sponsors of the marriage shall likewise be killed.
But one shall stand from the shoot of her roots, namely Ptolemy Euergetes, Berenice’s brother, who occupied almost the entire kingdom of Seleucus. Justin narrates the history in Book XXVII: “When Antiochus, king of Syria—the God, namely—had died and Seleucus had succeeded in his place, at the urging of his mother Laodice, who ought to have restrained him, he began the auspices of his reign with parricide. For he killed Berenice, his stepmother, the sister of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, together with his little brother born from her. By perpetrating this crime, he both incurred the stain of infamy and involved himself in a war with Ptolemy.
“Moreover, when Berenice learned that men had been sent to kill her, she shut herself within Daphne. When it was reported to the cities of Asia that she was being besieged there with her little son, remembering the dignity of her father and her ancestors and pitying the misfortune of so undeserved a fate, they all sent her assistance. Her brother Ptolemy too, roused by his sister’s peril, left his kingdom and flew to her with all his forces. But before the arrival of assistance, Berenice—since she could not be conquered by force—was surrounded by deceit and slaughtered. The matter appeared undeserved to all; and so, when all the cities that had revolted had prepared an immense fleet, terrified by this sudden example of cruelty and at the same time intending to avenge the woman whom they had been about to defend, they delivered themselves to Ptolemy. If he had not been recalled to his kingdom by a domestic sedition, he would have occupied the whole kingdom of Seleucus.”
Accordingly, it is apparent why Daniel says: “Moreover, he shall lead captive into Egypt their gods and carved images, and likewise precious vessels of silver and gold.” Historians say that he brought back those things which Cambyses had formerly carried away. Recalled by domestic sedition, he carried away with him four thousand talents of gold and two thousand five hundred gods; but he occupied all things as far as the Euphrates.
§ 8. I refrain from expounding the remainder. If you add the names of the kings to those passages, you will compose a complete history from the prophecy. You, reader, consider God’s foreknowledge, which most accurately sees through all deeds and all the minds of all persons; revere the divinity conscious of every outcome. And you will discover that all things are from God and are preserved by God; that without God human counsels fall into futility and are turned into the greatest calamities. Those powerful marriages first dashed kings, queens, and children against one another, and then the kingdoms themselves, in a war of mutual extermination.
Foreknowledge of future things is therefore the surest and never-fallacious sign of the divinity that governs all dominions. Thus Isaiah 41: “Announce to us the things that shall come in the future, and we shall know that you are gods.”
Among these I also count that most manifest prophecy concerning Cyrus, which was shown to him after two hundred years, when he had obtained the kingdom, as Josephus narrates in Antiquities, Book II, chapter 1.