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presented to the Eternal, from whom he receives power,74honour 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 wastaken, 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 eaglewinged 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 MedoPersian Empire, which extended its conquests as far as the Adriatic Sea and Ethiopia, thus holding with itsteeth 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, typifiesthe triumphant marches of Alexander the Great, whose vast empire was, after his death, divided into four kingdoms.