Babylon's Crucial Hour

Cyrus the Persian, with his army, entered the golden city through unbarred gates. But all this
would have been in vain, had not the whole city given itself over on that eventful night to the most
abandoned carelessness and presumption, a state of things upon which Cyrus calculated largely for the
carrying out of his purpose. On each side of the river through the entire length of the city were walls of
great height, and of equal thickness with the outer walls. In these walls were huge gates of brass, which,
when closed and guarded, debarred all entrance from the river bed to any of the streets that crossed the
river. Had the gates been closed at this time, the soldiers of Cyrus might have marched into the city along
the river bed, and then marched out again, for all that they would have been able to accomplish toward the
subjugation of the place.

But in the drunken revelry of that fatal night, these river gates were left open, as had been foretold
by the prophet Isaiah years before in these words: "Thus said the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose
right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before
him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut." Isaiah 45: 1. The entrance of the Persian
soldiers was not perceived. Many a cheek would have paled with terror, had the sudden going down of the
river been noticed, and its fearful import understood. Many a tongue would have spread wild alarm
through the city, had the dark forms of armed foes been seen stealthily treading their way to the citadel of
their supposed security. But no one noticed the sudden subsidence of the waters of the river; no one saw
the entrance of the Persian warriors; no one cared for aught but to see how deeply and recklessly he could
plunge into the wild debauch. That night's dissipation cost the Babylonians their kingdom and their
freedom. They went into their brutish revelry subjects of the king of Babylon; they awoke from it slaves to
the king of Persia.

The soldiers of Cyrus first made known their presence in the city by falling upon the royal guards
in the vestibule of the palace of the king. Belshazzar soon became aware of the cause of the disturbance,
and died fighting for his life. This feast of Belshazzar is described in the fifth chapter of Daniel, and the
scene closes with the simple record, "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And
Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old."
The historian Prideaux says: "Darius the Mede, that is Cyaxares, the uncle of Cyrus, took the
kingdom; for Cyrus allowed him the title of all his conquests as long as he lived." [6]
Thus the first empire, symbolized by the head of gold of the great image, came to an ignoble end.
It would naturally be supposed that the conqueror, becoming possessed of so noble a city as Babylon, far
surpassing anything else in the world, would have taken it as the seat of his empire, and maintained it in
its splendor. But God had said that that city should become a heap, and the habitation of the beasts of the
desert; that its houses should be full of doleful creatures; that the wild beasts of the islands should cry in
its desolate dwellings, and dragons in its pleasant palaces. (Isaiah 13: 19-22.) It must first be deserted.
Cyrus established a second capital at Susa, a celebrated city in the province of Elam, east from Babylon,
on the banks of the River Choaspes, a branch of the Tigris. This was probably done in the first year of his
sole reign.

The pride of the Babylonians being particularly provoked by this act, in the fifth year of Darius
Hystaspes, 517 BC, they rose in rebellion and brought upon themselves again the whole strength of the
Persian Empire. The city was once more taken by stratagem. Darius took away the brazen gates of the
city, and beat down the walls from two hundred cubits to fifty cubits. This was the beginning of its
destruction. By this act, it was left exposed to the ravages of every hostile band. Xerxes, on his return from
Greece, plundered the temple of Belus of its immense wealth, and then laid the lofty structure in ruins.
Alexander the Great endeavored to rebuild it, but after employing ten thousand men two months to clear
away the rubbish, he died from excessive drunkenness and debauchery, and the work was suspended. In
the year 294 BC, Seleucus Nicator built the city of New Babylon in the neighborhood of the old city, and
took much of the material and many of the inhabitants of the old city, to build up and people the new.
Now almost exhausted of inhabitants, neglect and decay were telling fearfully upon the ancient capital.
The violence of Parthian princes hastened its ruin. About the end of the fourth century, it was used by the
Persian kings as an enclosure for wild beasts. At the end of the twelfth century, according to a celebrated
traveler, the few remaining ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace were so full of serpents and venomous
reptiles that they could not be closely inspected without great danger. And today scarcely enough even of
the ruins is left to mark the spot where once stood the largest, richest, and proudest city of the ancient
world.

Thus the ruin of great Babylon shows us how accurately God fulfills His word, and makes the
doubts of skepticism appear like willful blindness. "After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to
thee."

The use of the word "kingdom" here, shows that kingdoms, and not particular kings, are
represented by the different parts of this image. Hence when it was said to Nebuchadnezzar, "Thou art this
head of gold," although the personal pronoun was used, the kingdom not the king himself was meant.

The Naval Battle Of Salamis

One of the most noted battles between the Greeks and the Persians was fought at Salamis in 480
BC. Medo-Persian Kingdom. The succeeding kingdom, Medo-Persia, answered to the breast and arms of
silver of the great image. It was to be inferior to the preceding kingdom. In what respect inferior? Not in
power, for it conquered Babylon. Not in extent, for Cyrus subdued all the East from the AEgean Sea to the
River Indus, and thus erected a more extensive empire. But it was inferior in wealth, luxury, and
magnificence.

Viewed from a Scriptural standpoint, the principal event under the Babylonian Empire was the
captivity of the children of Israel; under the Medo-Persian kingdom it was the restoration of Israel to their
own land. At the taking of Babylon Cyrus, as an act of courtesy assigned the first place in the kingdom to
his uncle, Darius, in 538 BC But two years afterward Darius died, leaving Cyrus sole monarch of the
empire. In this year, which closed Israel's seventy years of captivity, Cyrus issued his famous decree for
the return of the Jews and the rebuilding of their temple. This was the first installment of the great decree
for the restoration and building again of Jerusalem (Ezra 6: 14), which was completed in the seventh year
of the reign of Artaxerxes, 457 BC, a date of much importance, as will hereafter be shown.
After a reign of seven years, Cyrus left the kingdom to his son Cambyses, who reigned seven
years and five months, to 522 BC Eight monarchs reigned between this time and the year 336 BC The
year 335 BC is set down as the first of Darius Codomannus, the last of the line of the old Persian kings.
This man, according to Prideaux, was of noble stature, of goodly person, of the greatest personal valor,
and of a mild and generous disposition. It was his ill fortune to have to contend with one who was an
agent in the fulfillment of prophecy, and no qualifications, natural or acquired, could make him successful
in the unequal contest. Scarcely was he warm upon the throne, ere he found his formidable enemy,
Alexander, at the head of the Greek soldiers, preparing to dismount him from it.

The cause and the particulars of the contest between the Greeks and the Persians we leave to
histories especially devoted to such matters. Suffice it to say that the deciding point was reached on the
field of Arbela in 331 BC, where the Grecians, though only one to twenty in number as compared with the
Persians, won a decisive victory. Alexander became absolute lord of the Persian Empire to an extent never
attained by any of its own kings.

Grecian Empire.

"Another third kingdom of brass . . . shall bear rule over all the earth," the
prophet had said. Few and brief are the inspired words which involved in their fulfillment a succession in
world ruler ship. In the ever-changing political kaleidoscope, Greece came into the field of vision, to be
for a time the all-absorbing object of attention, as the third of what are called the universal empires of the
earth.

After the battle which decided the fate of the empire, Darius endeavored to rally the shattered
remnants of his army, and make a stand for his kingdom and his rights. But he could not gather out of all
the host of his recently so numerous and well-appointed army a force with which he deemed it prudent to
hazard another engagement with the victorious Grecians. Alexander pursued him on the wings of the
wind. Time after time Darius barely eluded the grasp of his swiftly following foe. At length three traitors,
Bessus, Nabarzanes, and Barsaentes, seized the unfortunate prince, shut him up in a close cart, and fled
with him as their prisoner toward Bactria. It was their purpose, if Alexander pursued them, to purchase
their own safety by delivering up their king. Hereupon Alexander, learning of the dangerous position of
Darius in the hands of the traitors, immediately put himself with the lightest part of his army upon a forced
pursuit. After several days hard march, he came up with the traitors. They urged Darius to mount on
horseback for a more speedy flight. Upon his refusing to do this, they gave him several mortal wounds,
and left him dying in the cart, while they mounted their steeds and rode away.

When Alexander arrived, he beheld only the lifeless form of the Persian king, who but a few
months before was seated upon the throne of the universal empire. Disaster, overthrow, and desertion had
come suddenly upon Darius. His kingdom had been conquered, his treasure seized, and his family reduced
to captivity. Now, brutally slain by the hand of traitors, he lay a bloody corpse in a rude cart. The sight of
the melancholy spectacle drew tears from the eyes of even Alexander, familiar though he was with all the
horrible vicissitudes and bloody scenes of was. Throwing his cloak over the body, he commanded that it
be conveyed to the ladies of the Persian royal family who were captives at Susa, and furnished from his
own treasury the necessary means for a royal funeral.

When Darius died, Alexander saw the field cleared of his last formidable foe. Thenceforward he
could spend his time in his own manner, now in the enjoyment of rest and pleasure, and again in the
prosecution of some minor conquest. He entered upon a pompous campaign into India, because, according
to Grecian fable, Bacchus and Hercules, two sons of Jupiter, whose son he also claimed to be, had done
the same. With contemptible arrogance, he claimed for himself divine honors. He gave up conquered
cities, freely and unprovoked, to the mercy of his bloodthirsty and licentious soldiery. He often murdered
his friends and favorites in his drunken frenzies. He encouraged such excessive drinking among his
followers that on one occasion twenty of them died as the result of their carousal. At length, having sat
through one long drinking spree, he was immediately invited to another, when, after drinking to each of
the twenty guests present, he twice drank, says history, incredible as it may seem, the full Herculean cup
containing six of our quarts. He was seized with a violent fever, of which he died eleven days later, Jun
13, 323 BC, while yet he stood only at the threshold of mature life, in the thirty-second year of his age.
Verse 40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and
subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
Iron Monarchy of Rome. Thus far in the application of this prophecy there is a general agreement
among expositors. That Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece are represented respectively by the head of
gold, the breast and arms of silver, and the sides of brass, is acknowledged by all. But with as little ground
for a diversity of views, there is strangely a difference of opinion as to what kingdom is symbolized by the
fourth division of the great image the legs of iron. What kingdom succeeded Greece in the empire of the
world, for the legs of iron denote the fourth kingdom in the series? The testimony of history is full and
explicit on this point. One kingdom did this, and one only, and that was Rome. It conquered Greece; it
subdued all things; like iron, it broke in pieces and bruised.

Says Bishop Newton: "The four different metals must signify four different nations: and as the
gold signified the Babylonians, and the silver the Persians, and the brass the Macedonians; so the iron
cannot signify the Macedonians again, but must necessarily denote some other nation: and we will venture
to say that there is not a nation upon earth, to which this description is applicable, but the Romans." [7]
Gibbon, following the symbolic imagery of Daniel, thus describes this empire:

"The arms of the Republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced
with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold, or silver,
or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron
monarchy of Rome." [8]

At the opening of the Christian Era, this empire took in the whole south of Europe, France,
England, the greater part of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the south of Germany, Hungary, Turkey,
and Greece, not to speak of its possessions in Asia and Africa. Well therefore may Gibbon say of it:
"The empire of the Romans filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single
person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies . . . To resist was fatal, and it was
impossible to fly." [9]

It will be noticed that at first the kingdom is described unqualifiedly as strong as iron. This was
the period of its strength, during which it has been likened to a mighty colossus bestriding the nations,
conquering everything, and giving laws to the world. But this was not to continue.
Verse 41 And whereas thou saw the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the
kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou saw the
iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the
kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

Rome Divided. The element of weakness symbolized by the clay, pertained to the feet as well as to the toes.
Rome, before its division into ten kingdoms, lost that iron vigor which it possessed to a superlative degree during the
first centuries of its career. Luxury, with its accompanying effeminacy and degeneracy, the destroyer of nations as
well as of individuals, began to corrode and weaken its iron sinews, and thus prepared the way for its disintegration
into ten kingdoms.

The iron legs of the image terminate in feet and toes. To the toes, of which there were of course
ten, our attention is called by the explicit mention of them in the prophecy. The kingdom represented by
that part of the image to which the toes belonged, was finally divided into ten parts. The question naturally
arises, Do the ten toes of the image represent the ten final divisions of the Roman Empire? We answer,
Yes.