The Hellenistic World and Rome
For historians of the classical world, however, what is most distinctive
and significant about Daniel is the representation, through the medium of
narratives, dreams, and prophecies, of a succession of Near Eastern empires,
in steadily increasing detail and accuracy, from the Neo-Babylonian Em-
pire through Achaemenid Persia to Alexander, and then to the Seleucids and
Ptolemies. Viewed literally, there are in these representations various mis-
takes, misidentifications, and transpositions. But, taken as a series, the pic-
ture presented by Daniel is indeed that which Momigliano argued should
be seen as a borrowing from the Greek world, namely the notion of his-
tory as a succession of world empires.^31 In terms of the subsequent history
of the world the issues which were stirred up by Antiochus’ persecution and
the Maccabean counter-revolution, and which gave rise to the composition
of the book of Daniel as we have it, had a significance far greater than any
other aspects of the Hellenistic period. For it was in the persecution of the
s and the resistance to it that Jewish monotheism, its sacrificial cult, and
the personal observances required of its adherents faced and survived their
greatest test. But even as regards ancient political history, and the represen-
tation in literature of the successive regimes which had claimed domination
over the peoples of the Near East, Daniel can add a dimension, and the sense
of a longer perspective, which even Polybius was not in a position to attach
to those drastic swings of fortune which took place in .., the year at
which his greatHistoryhad originally been intended to end. But, as history,
Daniel’s brief and allusive representations of selected episodes, taken largely
out of context, and seen from a very precise and limited viewpoint, cannot
of course compare with Polybius’ profound conception of how events in dif-
ferent parts of theoikoumenē(inhabited world) had come to be interlinked,
and to form a single causative sequence. For an understanding of Hellenistic
history we will still depend on Polybius, and on his greatest modern inter-
preter.
. See A. D. Momigliano, ‘‘The Origins of Universal History,’’Ann.Sc.N.Sup.Pisa,
ser. , . (): – OnPagans,JewsandChristians(), –.