We would have gladly spared the touch of savagery with which the story ends. The deliverance of Daniel made no difference in the guilt of his accusers. What they had charged him with was a fact, and was a transgression of the ridiculous decree which they had caused the king to pass. But his deliverance was regarded as a Divine judgment upon them--as proof that vengeance should fall on them. Accordingly, not they only, but, with the brutal solidarity of revenge and punishment which, in savage and semi-civilised races, confounds the innocent with the guilty, their wives and even their children were also cast into the den of lions, and they did not reach the bottom of the pit before "the lions got hold of them and crushed all their bones."[485] They are devoured, or caught, by the hungry lions in mid-air. "Then King Darius wrote to all the nations, communities, and tongues who dwell in the whole world, May your peace be multiplied! I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for He is the living God, and steadfast for ever, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and His dominion even unto the end. He delivereth and He rescueth, and He worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who delivered Daniel from the power of the lions." The language, as in Nebuchadrezzar's decrees, is purely Scriptural.[486] What the Median mages and the Persian fire-worshippers would think of such a decree, and whether it produced the slightest effect before it vanished without leaving a trace behind, are questions with which the author of the story is not concerned. He merely adds that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and of Cyrus the Persian. FOOTNOTES: [452] Lam. iv. 7. [453] Isa. xliv. 25, 26. [454] Isa. xliii. 2. [455] Ezek. xxxi. 2-15. [456] Prov. xvi. 18. [457] Isa. x. 33. [458] Isa. xlvii. 13. [459] Isa. xxi. 2. [460] The word is a cabalistic cryptogram--an instance of _Gematria_--for Babel. [461] Jer. li. 28-57. [462] Psalm lvii. 4. [463] Psalm lviii. 6. [464] Lam. iii. 53. [465] Isa. liv. 17. [466] _Sanhedrin_, f. 93, 1. See another story in _Vayyikra Rabba_, c. xix. [467] _Bereshîth Rabba_, § 68. [468] The LXX. says 127, and Josephus (_Antt._, X. xi. 4) says 360 (comp. Esther i. 1, viii. 9, ix. 3). Under Darius, son of Hystaspes, there were only twenty divisions of the empire (Herod., iii. 89). [469] Dan. vi. 2: "Of whom Daniel was"--not "_first_," as in A.V., but "_one_," R.V. [470] Matt. xix. 29. [471] 1 Cor. iv. 2. [472] Dan. vi. 6, _char'ggishoo_; Vulg., _surripuerunt regi_; A.V. marg., "came tumultuously." The word is found in the Targum in Ruth i. 19 (Bevan). [473] The den (_goob_ or _gubba_) seems to mean a vault. The Hebrew word for "pit" is _boor_. [474] See Layard, _Nin. and Bab._, i. 335, 447, 475; Smith, _Hist. of Assur-bani-pal_, xxiv.