That the King of Babylon should be represented as at once acknowledging the God of Daniel as "a God of gods," though he was a fanatical votary of Bel-merodach, belongs to the general plan of the Book. Daniel received in reward many great gifts, and is made "ruler of all the wise men of Babylon, and chief of the governors [_signîn_] over all the wise men of Babylon." About his acceptance of the civil office there is no difficulty; but there is a quite insuperable historic difficulty in his becoming a chief magian. All the wise men of Babylon, whom the king had just threatened with dismemberment as a pack of impostors, were, at any rate, a highly sacerdotal and essentially idolatrous caste. That Daniel should have objected to particular kinds of food from peril of defilement, and yet that he should have consented to be chief hierarch of a heathen cult, would indeed have been to strain at gnats and to swallow camels! And so great was the distinction which he earned by his interpretation of the dream, that, at his further request, satrapies were conferred on his three companions; but he himself, like Mordecai, afterwards "sat in the gate of the king."[326] FOOTNOTES: [265] Dante, _Inferno_, xiv. 94-120. [266] The Assyrian and Babylonian kings, however, only dated their reigns from the first new year after their accession. [267] _Antt._, X. x. 3. [268] 2 Chron. xxxv. 21. See _The Second Book of Kings_, p. 404 (Expositor's Bible). [269] See Professor Fuller, _Speaker's Commentary_, vi. 265. [270] Malcolm, _Hist. of Persia_, i. 39. [271] The belief that dreams come from God is not peculiar to the Jews, or to Egypt, or Assyria, or Greece (Hom., _Il._, i. 63; _Od._, iv. 841), or Rome (Cic., _De Div._, _passim_), but to every nation of mankind, even the most savage. [272] Dan. ii. 1: "His dreaming brake from him." Comp. vi. 18; Esther vi. 1: Jerome says, "Umbra quædam, et, ut ita dicam, aura somnii atque vestigium remansit in corde regis, ut, referentibus aliis posset reminisci eorum quæ viderat." [273] Gen. xli. 8; Schrader, _K. A. T._, p. 26; _Records of the Past_, i. 136. [274] The word is peculiar to Daniel, both here in the Hebrew and in the Aramaic. Pusey calls it "a common Syriac term, representing some form of divination with which Daniel had become familiar in Babylonia" (p. 40). [275] Exod. vii. 11; Deut. xviii. 10; Isa. xlvii. 9, 12. Assyrian _Kashshapu_. [276] As in the rule "_Chaldæos ne consulito_." See _supra_, p. 48. [277] The equivalents in the LXX., Vulgate, A.V., and other versions are mostly based on uncertain guess-work. See E. Meyer, _Gesch. d. Alterth._, i. 185; Hommel, _Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr._, v. 386; Behrmann, p. 2. [278] _E.g._, iii. 2, 3, officers of state; iii. 4, 5, etc., instruments of music; iii. 21, clothes.