"Driven headlong on by Fate's resistless force, Through Asia's realms he took his dreadful course: His ruthless sword laid human nature waste, And desolation followed where he passed.... "Ev'n to the utmost west he would have gone, Where Tethys' lap receives the setting sun." --"_Pharsalia._" But in the prime of his years, Alexander was cut down, and Rome had yet more time in which to develop its strength preparatory to the deciding contest for the mastery of all the world. Sure it is that after Grecia, there followed the Roman Empire, the strongest and mightiest and most crushing of them all. This fourth universal empire the prophet proceeded to describe, as represented by the legs of iron in Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great image. Rome "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." How appropriately the iron of the image fits the character of the fourth great empire! Gibbon, the historian, calls it "the iron monarchy of Rome." It broke in pieces the kingdoms, subduing all, just as prophecy had declared so long before. As iron is strongest of the common metals, so according to the prophecy--"as iron that breaketh all these"--this fourth kingdom was to be more powerful than any before it. Strabo, the geographer, who lived in the days of Tiberius Caesar, said, "The Romans have surpassed (in power) all former rulers of whom we have any record."--_"Geography," book 17, chap. 3._ Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, who lived in Rome in the third century,--under the "iron monarchy,"--wrote thus of this prophecy: "Already the iron rules; already it subdues and breaks all in pieces; already it brings all the unwilling into subjection; already we see these things ourselves."--_"Treatise on Christ and Antichrist," sec. 33._ Hippolytus also saw clearly from the prophecy that the empire of his day would be divided, and he wrote of the kingdoms that were "yet to rise" out of it. For Daniel's interpretation explained clearly the meaning of the mingling of clay with the iron in the feet and toes of the great image. The Kingdoms of Modern Europe "Whereas thou sawest 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 sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. "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. "And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." "The kingdom shall be divided." So declared the prophet of God. In the height of its power, Rome scouted the thought that so mighty a fabric could ever be broken up. Horace sang in his "Odes,"