Page 32 - 15 THE FOURTH KINGDOM - CHAPTER 11C

THE STORY OF DANIEL THE PROPHET

Stephen N. Haskell

“But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest and stand in thy
lot at the end of the days.” Daniel 12:13.

Lepidus, one of the second triumvirates, soon

died; Antony, a second member, enamored by

Cleopatra, entrapped in the net of Egyptian

darkness, cast himself upon his own sword

and died; Octavius, an adopted son of Julius

Cæsar, alone remained. Says Gibbon: “A

marital nobility and stubborn commons,

possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and

collected into constitutional assemblies, form

the only balance capable of preserving a free

constitution against the enterprises of an

aspiring prince.” Rome had none of these;

every barrier of the Roman constitution had

been leveled by the ambition of Octavius,

called Cæsar Augustus. Furthermore, the

provinces had so long been oppressed by the

scheming ministers of the republic that they

gladly welcomed a one-man power. Augustus