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Oriental kingdoms, Greece and Rome, and along with the Macedonia, the growing power of Rome.
First the Roman kingdom spread its power and dominion over the whole οἰκουμένη, over all the historical nations of antiquity in Europe, Africa, and Asia. “There is” (says Herodian, ii. 11. 7) “no part of the earth and no region of the heavens whither the Romans have not extended their dominion.” Still more the prophecy of Daniel reminds us of the comparison of the Roman world-kingdom with the earlier world-kingdoms, the Assyrico-Baylonian, the Persian, and the Grecian, in Dionys. Halicar., when in the proaem. 9 he says: “There are the most famous kingdoms down to our time, and this their duration and power. But the kingdom of the Romans ruled through all the regions of the earth which are not inaccessible, but are inhabited by men; it ruled also over the whole sea, and it alone and first made the east and the west its boundaries.” Concerning the other features of the image in Daniel 2, we can seek neither in the two legs and feet of the image, nor in the twofold material of the feet, any hint as to the division of the Roman kingdom into the Eastern and Western Rome. The iron and clay are in the image indeed not so divided as that the one foot is of iron and the other of clay, but iron and clay are bound together in both of the feet. In this union of two heterogeneous materials there also lies no hint that, by the dispersion of the nations, the plastic material of the Germanic and the Slavic tribes was added to the Old Roman universal kingdom (Dan 2:40) with its thoroughly iron nature (Auberl. p. 252, cf. with Hof. Weiss. u. Erf. i. p. 281). For the clay in the image does not comes into view as a malleable and plastic material, but, according to the express interpretation of Daniel (v. 42), only in respect of its brittleness. The mixing of iron and clay, which do not inwardly combine together, shows the inner division of the nations, of separate natural stocks and national character is, which constituted the Roman empire, who were kept together by external force, whereby the iron firmness of the Roman nation was mingled with brittle clay.
The kingdoms represented by the ten horns belong still to the future. To be able to judge regarding them with any certainty, we must first make clear to ourselves the place of the Messianic kingdom with reference to the fourth world-kingdom, and then compare the prophecy of the Apocalypse of John regarding the formation of the world-power - a prophecy which rests on the book of Daniel.