The two-horned ram, he said, the Baal-keranaîm, or "lord of two horns," represents the King of Media and Persia; the shaggy goat is the Empire of Greece; and the great horn is its first king—Alexander the Great.[557]
The four horns rising out of the broken great horn are four inferior kingdoms. In one of these, sacrilege would culminate in the person of a king of bold face,[558] and skilled in cunning, who would become powerful, though not by his own strength.[559] He would prosper and destroy mighty men and the people of the holy ones,[560] and deceit would succeed by his double-dealing. He would contend against the Prince of princes,[561] and yet without a hand would he be broken in pieces.
Such is the vision and its interpretation; and though there is here and there a difficulty in the details and translation, and though there is a necessary crudeness in the emblematic imagery, the general significance of the whole is perfectly clear.
The scene of the vision is ideally placed in Shushan, because the Jews regarded it as the royal capital of the Persian dominion, and the dream begins with the overthrow of the Medo-Persian Empire.[562] The ram is a natural symbol of power and strength, as in Isa. lx. 7. The two horns represent the two divisions of the empire, of which the later—the Persian—is the loftier and the stronger. It is regarded as being already the lord of the East, but it extends its conquests by butting westward over the Tigris into Europe, and southwards to Egypt and Africa, and northwards towards Scythia, with magnificent success.
The he-goat is Greece.[563] Its one great horn represents "the great Emathian conqueror."[564] So swift was the career of Alexander's conquests, that the goat seems to speed along without so much as touching the ground.[565] With irresistible fury, in the great battles of the Granicus (b.c. 334), Issus (b.c. 333), and Arbela (b.c. 331), he stamps to pieces the power of Persia and of its king, Darius Codomannus.[566] In this short space of time Alexander conquers Syria, Phœnicia, Cyprus, Tyre, Gaza, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Media, Hyrcania, Aria, and Arachosia. In b.c. 330 Darius was murdered by Bessus, and Alexander became lord of his kingdom. In b.c. 329 the Greek King conquered Bactria, crossed the Oxus and Jaxartes, and defeated the Scythians. In b.c. 328 he conquered Sogdiana. In b.c. 327 and 326 he crossed the Indus, Hydaspes, and Akesines, subdued Northern and Western India, and—compelled by the discontent of his troops to pause in his career of victory—sailed down the Hydaspes and Indus to the Ocean. He then returned by land through Gedrosia, Karmania, Persia, and Susiana to Babylon.
There the great horn is suddenly broken without hand.[567] Alexander in b.c. 323, after a reign of twelve years and eight months, died as a fool dieth, of a fever brought on by fatigue, exposure, drunkenness, and debauchery. He was only thirty-two years old.
The dismemberment of his empire immediately followed. In b.c. 322 its vast extent was divided among his principal generals. Twenty-two years of war ensued; and in b.c. 301, after the defeat of Antigonus and his son Demetrius at the Battle of Ipsus, four horns are visible in the place of one. The battle was won by the confederacy of Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, and they founded four kingdoms. Cassander ruled in Greece and Macedonia; Lysimachus in Asia Minor; Ptolemy in Egypt, Cœle-Syria, and Palestine; Seleucus in Upper Asia.
With one only of the four kingdoms, and with one only of its kings, is the vision further concerned—with the kingdom of the Seleucidæ, and with the eighth king of the dynasty, Antiochus Epiphanes. In this chapter, however, a brief sketch only of him is furnished. Many details of the minutest kind are subsequently added.
He is called "a puny horn," because, in his youth, no one could have anticipated his future greatness. He was only a younger son of Antiochus III. (the Great). When Antiochus III. was defeated in the Battle of Magnesia under Mount Sipylus (b.c. 190), his loss was terrible. Fifty thousand foot and four thousand horse were slain on the battlefield, and fourteen hundred were taken prisoners. He was forced to make peace with the Romans, and to give them hostages, one of whom was Antiochus the Younger, brother of Seleucus, who was heir to the throne. Antiochus for thirteen years languished miserably as a hostage at Rome. His father, Antiochus the Great, was either slain in b.c. 187 by the people of Elymais, after his sacrilegious plundering of the Temple of Jupiter-Belus;[568] or murdered by some of his own attendants whom he had beaten during a fit of drunkenness.[569] Seleucus Philopator succeeded him, and after having reigned for thirteen years, wished to see his brother Antiochus again. He therefore sent his son Demetrius in exchange for him, perhaps desiring that the boy, who was then twelve years old, should enjoy the advantage of a Roman education, or thinking that Antiochus would be of more use to him in his designs against Ptolemy Philometor, the child-king of Egypt. When Demetrius was on his way to Rome, and Antiochus had not yet reached Antioch, Heliodorus the treasurer seized the opportunity to poison Seleucus and usurp the crown.
The chances, therefore, of Antiochus seemed very forlorn. But he was a man of ability, though with a taint of folly and madness in his veins. By allying himself with Eumenes, King of Pergamum, as we shall see hereafter, he suppressed Heliodorus, secured the kingdom, and "becoming very great," though only by fraud, cruelty, and stratagem, assumed the title of Epiphanes "the Illustrious." He extended his power "towards the South" by intriguing and warring against Egypt and his young nephew, Ptolemy Philometor;[570] and "towards the Sunrising" by his successes in the direction of Media and Persia;[571] and towards "the Glory" or "Ornament" (hatstsebî)—i.e., the Holy Land.[572] Inflated with insolence, he now set himself against the stars, the host of heaven—i.e., against the chosen people of God and their leaders. He cast down and trampled on them,[573] and defied the Prince of the host; for he