A FRAGMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH BOOK

Given by A. Majus in the New Collection of Ancient Writers. Rome, 1825, tom. 1, par. 2, p. 173, in the Commentary on Daniel ii. 31.

I THOUGHT it incumbent on me to quote what is said by the famous Eusebius Pamphilus, of Caesarea, in the Fifteenth Book of The Proof of the Gospel; for in expounding the whole vision he says as follows:—"I believe this in no way differs from the vision of the prophet: for the prophet saw a great sea, just as the King saw a vast image: the prophet again saw four beasts, which he interpreted to mean four kingdoms, just as the King from the gold, silver, brass, and iron, figuratively described four kingdoms: and, once more, as the prophet saw a division of the ten horns of the last beast, and three horns destroyed by one, so the King saw part of the extremities of the image to be iron and part clay. And, moreover, as the prophet, after the vision of the four kings, saw the Son of Man receive universal rule, power and empire, so the King seemed to ^{- 237 -} see a stone destroy the whole of the image, and become a great mountain that filled the sea. And the explanation is easy, for it was natural that the King, deceived as he was by the outward appearances of life, and admiring the beauty of the visible like colours in a picture, to liken the life of all men to a great image, whereas the prophet was rather led to compare the vast and mighty surge of life to a great sea. So the King, who admired the substances of gold, silver, brass, and iron, which are costly among men, likened the dominant empires that succeed one another in the human world to substances, while the prophet described the same empires under the forms of wild beasts, according to the ideals of their rule. Then again the King, who probably was conceited, and prided himself on the empire of his ancestors, the mutability of human things is revealed, and the end of earthly kingdoms, to purify him of his pride, and to make him realize the instability of human things, or at least the final universal Kingdom of God. For after the first, or the Assyrian Empire, signified by the gold, was to come the Persian, shewn forth by the silver; and thirdly, the Macedonian, portrayed by the brass; and after that, the fourth, that of the Romans, would follow, more powerful than its predecessors, and therefore likened to iron. For it is said of it, 'And the fourth kingdom shall be stronger than iron': just as iron crushes and subdues everything, so did Rome crush and subdue. And after these four, the Kingdom of God was presented as a stone that destroyed the whole image. And the prophet agrees with this in not seeing the final triumph of the Kingdom of the God of the Universe before he has described the course of the four world-powers under the similitude of the four beasts. I consider, therefore, the visions both of the King and the prophets, that there should be four empires only, and no more, to be proved by the subjection of the Jewish nation to them from the time when the prophet wrote."

[Note to the online text: the remainder of books 11-20 is lost.]

[A footnote has been renumbered and moved here]