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presented to the Eternal, from whom he receives power,
honour and kingdom forever. The stupefied Prophet
approaches one of those standing by and beseeches him
to explain the meaning of this wonderful vision. The good
Angel gives the interpretation of it in such a manner that
the whole mystery enveloped in the figurative or allegorical
language and image is brought to light.

Being a prince of the royal family, Daniel was taken,
together with three other Jewish youths, to the palace of
the King of Babylon, where he was educated in all the
knowledge of the Chaldeans. He lived there until the
Persian Conquest and the fall of the Babylonian Empire.
He prophesied under Nebuchadnezzar as well as under
Darius. The Biblical critics do not ascribe the authorship
of the entire Book to Daniel, who lived and died at least
a couple of centuries before the Greek Conquest, which
he mentions under the name of “Yavan = Ionia.” The first
eight chapters -if I am not mistaken- are written in the
Chaldean and the latter portion in the Hebrew. For our
immediate purpose, it is not so much the date and the
authorship of the book that forms the important question
as the actual fulfilment of the prophecy, contained in the
Septuagint version, which was made some three centuries
before the Christian era.

According to the interpretation by the Angel, each
one of the four beasts represents an empire. The eagle-
winged lion signifies the Chaldean Empire, which was
mighty and rapid like an eagle to pounce upon the enemy.
The bear represents the “Mádaí-Páris,” or the Medo-
Persian Empire, which extended its conquests as far as
the Adriatic Sea and Ethiopia, thus holding with its teeth
a rib from the body of each one of the three continents
of the Eastern Hemisphere. The third beast, from its
tigrish nature of swift bounds and fierceness, typifies the
triumphant marches of Alexander the Great, whose vast
empire was, after his death, divided into four kingdoms.