The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DanielFarrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Daniel
Farrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Bible. Daniel -- Commentaries
The he-goat is Greece.[563] Its one great horn represents "the great
Emathian conqueror."[564] So swift was the career of Alexander's
conquests, that the goat seems to speed along without so much as
touching the ground.[565] With irresistible fury, in the great
battles of the Granicus (B.C. 334), Issus (B.C. 333), and Arbela
(B.C. 331), he stamps to pieces the power of Persia and of its
king, Darius Codomannus.[566] In this short space of time Alexander
conquers Syria, Phœnicia, Cyprus, Tyre, Gaza, Egypt, Babylonia,
Persia, Media, Hyrcania, Aria, and Arachosia. In B.C. 330 Darius was
murdered by Bessus, and Alexander became lord of his kingdom. In B.C.
329 the Greek King conquered Bactria, crossed the Oxus and Jaxartes,
and defeated the Scythians. In B.C. 328 he conquered Sogdiana. In
B.C. 327 and 326 he crossed the Indus, Hydaspes, and Akesines,
subdued Northern and Western India, and--compelled by the discontent
of his troops to pause in his career of victory--sailed down the
Hydaspes and Indus to the Ocean. He then returned by land through
Gedrosia, Karmania, Persia, and Susiana to Babylon.
There the great horn is suddenly broken without hand.[567] Alexander
in B.C. 323, after a reign of twelve years and eight months, died
as a fool dieth, of a fever brought on by fatigue, exposure,
drunkenness, and debauchery. He was only thirty-two years old.
The dismemberment of his empire immediately followed. In B.C. 322 its
vast extent was divided among his principal generals. Twenty-two years
of war ensued; and in B.C. 301, after the defeat of Antigonus and his
son Demetrius at the Battle of Ipsus, four horns are visible in the
place of one. The battle was won by the confederacy of Cassander,
Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, and they founded four kingdoms.
Cassander ruled in Greece and Macedonia; Lysimachus in Asia Minor;
Ptolemy in Egypt, Cœle-Syria, and Palestine; Seleucus in Upper Asia.
With one only of the four kingdoms, and with one only of its kings,
is the vision further concerned--with the kingdom of the Seleucidæ,
and with the eighth king of the dynasty, Antiochus Epiphanes. In
this chapter, however, a brief sketch only of him is furnished. Many
details of the minutest kind are subsequently added.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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