CHRYSOSTOM (†407), In Danielem, cap. XIII. (XIV.) comments on Bel and the Dragon as part of the book, seemingly without reserve or alteration of tone.
PRUDENTIUS (†410), in his Cathemerinon, IV., has several verses on the den episode, of which this is one:
"Cernit forte procul dapes ineuntas
Quas messoribus Habakkuk propheta
Agresti bonus exhibebat arte."
JEROME (†420), though excluding this and the other Additions from the canon, according to what he writes in his preface to Daniel, "veru anteposito easque jugulante subjecimus," retains it in his Bible. In his Onomasticon de Nominibus Hebraicis he includes under Daniel, Astyages, Bel, Ambacum, without distinction from the rest of the names in Daniel. But for this last work he was chiefly indebted to Eusebius, Πετὶ τῶν οπικῶν ὀνομάτων. (D.C.B. II. 336a).
HESYCHIUS OF JERUSALEM (†438), in his Στιχηρόν on the XII prophets, says of Habakkuk that, whether he was the same Habakkuk as an angel carried to Babylon, εἰπεῖν τὸ σαφὲς οὐκ ἔχω.
THEODORET(†457), towards the close of Ep. CXLV., quotes v. 36 with clear belief in the miracle. He also comments on vv. 1, 2 as if forming v. 14 of Dan. xii.; and then ceases.
We see, then, that the more than respectful references to this piece in the writers of ancient Christendom, if not quite so frequent as the citations of the Song and of Susanna, are still numerous and clear.
Art.
This apocryphal tract has afforded two fairly popular subjects for artistic illustration, viz., Daniel destroying the dragon, and Daniel and Habakkuk in the lions' den.
Daniel destroying the Dragon is a subject represented on glass from the catacombs (D.C.A. art. Glass, p. 733a). Garrucci (Vetri, XIII. 13) has a glass vessel in which Christ is represented with Daniel, who is giving cakes to the dragon (D.C.A. Jesus Christ, Representations of, p. 877b). In Paganism in Christian Art in the same Dictionary (p. 1535a), it is said, "Hercules feeding the fabled dragon with cakes of poppy-seed appears to have furnished the motive for the representation of the apocryphal story of Daniel killing the dragon at Babylon." Presumably this means the dragon Ladon in the garden of the Hesperides. But the connection between the two dragon episodes of Hercules and Daniel seems a little difficult to establish by indisputable evidence.