Visio Danielis

A discourse of our father among the saints, John Chrysostom, on the vision of Daniel. Hear, O heaven, with precision, how the four kingdoms were gathered together with one another: Ethiopians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans. These are the four winds by which the prophet Daniel saw the great sea shaken. Philip, the father of Alexander, married the daughter of Chuseth, king of Ethiopia, from whom Alexander the Macedonian was born. He founded Alexandria the Great and reigned in it for fifteen years, and ruled over many lands and cities, as far as the sea called the Land of the Sun. And he went as far as the eastern land, and there he found an untraceable nation, every foul beast, snakes, cats, flies, and every creeping thing. And they did not bury their dead, but rather ate them, and the miscarriages of women were a kind of unclean beast. They did not bury their dead, but rather ate them. Having observed these things happening among them in the fields, Alexander, fearing lest they might spread throughout the land and defile it with their abominable practices, earnestly besought the Lord, and gathered them together, men with women and children, and to speak simply, all their encampments, and led them out of the eastern land and pursued them until they entered into the regions of the north. And there is no entrance from the east or the west. Again, then, he entreated God and shut them in there with bronze gates, coating them with asynchiton.

These foul and counterfeit nations have employed every magical artifice, and in these things their filthy, inhuman, and indeed god-hating sorcery has been nullified by the nature of the unmixed. In those times, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel which says: on the last day of the consummation of the world, there will come forth Choth, Gog, Anes, Ageg, Achenaz, Pharbatinos, Phazeno, Olbianoi, Sarmatai, Thyalai, and cannibals. These twenty-two kings have been established within the Caspian Gates, which King Alexander constructed. Then King Byzas, the founder of Byzantium, sent Germanicus, his general, to Ethiopia to King Phol of Ethiopia to make peace with him, writing to him also about Chouseth, his daughter, that he might take her as wife and reign with her. So the king, having received the letters from Germanicus and seen the honors from him, rejoiced greatly; he himself arose and gathered a multitude of an army from all the nations of Ethiopia. He also took his daughter Chouseth and went to Byzantium, and gave great honor, having with him forty thousand Ethiopians. King Byzas welcomed them across the sea at Chalcedon with great joy, gave many gifts to those accompanying him, and entered Byzantium, and gave great honor and very great gifts according to royal custom.

And Buzas the king took Chouseth, the daughter of the king of Ethiopia, from whom a daughter is born to him, whom he called by the name of his city, Byzantia. Romulus the king of Rome, Archelaus, married her, and because of her surpassing beauty he loved her exceedingly. He himself was very wealthy and magnanimous, whence also in the dowry he gave Rome as a gift. When his magnates heard this, they were indignant against him. Byzantia also bore three sons: the first he named after his own appellation, Archelaus; the second, Urbanus; the third, Claudius. So each reigned: Archelaus in Rome, Urbanus in Byzantium, the city of his mother, Claudius in Alexandria. The seed of Chouseth, daughter of the king of Ethiopia, prevailed over the threefold Macedonia, both of the Romans and of the Greeks, that is, of the Romans from the race of the Ethiopians. For alluding to this, the holy David spoke these words: Ethiopia will stretch forth her hand to God. For the kingdom of the Christians, constituted from the race of the Ethiopians, possesses the great and venerable wood of the precious and life-giving cross, whence this same kingdom of the Christians is stronger than every kingdom, and there is no nation or kingdom under the heavens able to subdue the kingdom of the Christians of the Romans. For as we have fittingly said before, beloved, the most honored, life-giving, and powerful cross in the midst of the earth, by which the limits of the inhabited world are very clearly delineated in breadth, length, height, and depth.

For what kingdom is strong compared to the rule of the Romans? Let us hear, then, what the inspired Paul foretold concerning the last day and the kingdom of the Christians, I mean, of course, in the epistle to the Thessalonians, thus. I ask you and the rest, until they prove that he is God. So this one alone, holding that he be removed from the midst, and then the lawless one will be revealed. What then is "from the midst" if not the kingdom of the Christians? For every rule and authority of this world will be abolished except this one. For it itself is warred against and not destroyed, and all the nations clash with it and will be consumed by it and will be held until the last day arrives. And this is what it means to extend its hand to God, according to the apostle who says: when every rule and authority of this world is abolished, then it will deliver to the king, to God and father. What kingdom? Clearly that of the Christians, for there is no kingdom more powerful than it. But on account of the multitude of their sins, God will be angered against it and will summon the hunter Ishmael, and he will stir them up like the countless sand of the sea, and they will spread out like hawks over the high mountains, and their horses will be transformed as if flying, and they will enter the seven-hilled city with chariots and horses, and on account of these, much bloodshed, having done not a little plunder as well. What need to say? And Ishmael entered with the angel as far as Attalia. And I, Daniel, said to the angel: My lord, why have these afflictions come upon the Christians?

And the angel said to me: It is not because the Lord God loves Ishmael that he will give him the authority to take hold of the land of the Romans, but because of the sins of those dwelling in it. And the honor of the priests will be taken away, and the sacrifice will cease from the churches, and evil will be filled among men, and the people will become like wild beasts, and priests will be as the common people. In that time, that is, in the hebdomadal period in which the number of the Ishmaelites and their dominion, which they seized, is completed, and they laid waste to Romania and Pisidia and the remaining islands found near Rome, Calabria and Sicily, the city called Tyrannis. Then the Ishmaelites, having blasphemed, will say that the Romans have no deliverance from our hands. Then suddenly those of that city called Tyrannis will go out, and they will find, through a revelation of God, in the midst of their city a certain man whose name was lesser in the world. And having seized him, they will lead him away as far as a whirlpool, and there they will anoint him as king, whom men considered as dead and of no use. And his name is in the thirtieth chapter. He will go out against the Ishmaelites in a certain place called Petrinos, and they will join in a strong war. And in that place there is a two-mouthed well.

There they will strike one another so that the well becomes full of the blood of Romans and Ishmaelites. And the Lord God will deliver Ishmael into the hands of the king, and after this he will send into their lands and will make a construction of ships and will equip them. And he will send his other angels into the inner parts of Rome and will tame the blond nations, and together they will pursue Ishmael. And then the prophecy that says, "A dog and a whelp will pursue a field," will be fulfilled. And as the king goes to Rome, he will enter a place called Longobardia, and the inhabitants of that place will oppose him, and having exhorted them, he will enter Rome, and having come to a certain place where a treasure was sealed, he strikes with his whip at the animal where the treasure is sealed. By the command of God they will be opened, and from it he will make distributions to his people. And he will depart from Rome with a very great multitude and will go by land to the seven-hilled city, and there will be no one opposing him, because the Lord God was with him. And his fear will be heard in every city and country, and the one who hears the two-hundredth chapter of the thirtieth chapter will flee from the seven-hilled city into the inner part of the east and will perish miserably. Then a young man will arise from the tribe of Dan according to the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob which says, "A serpent sitting on a road, biting the heel of a horse, and the rider will fall backward, awaiting salvation from the Lord.

The truth and piety of the orthodox Christians is a horseman, and the last day is the heel. And these saints will in time be bitten by the serpent, that is, the son of destruction, into his illusions and his false prophecies; for he will perform signs and wonders on the earth, vain and fleeting. The blind will see, and the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, and the demon-possessed will be healed; he will turn the sun into darkness and the moon into blood, and by these his signs and fantastic wonders, deceptions and tricks, he will deceive, if possible, even the elect, as it is written. For the son of destruction will enter Jerusalem and sit in the temple of the Lord as if equal to God, being a fleshly man, from the seed of a man and from the womb of a woman, being of the tribe of Dan. For Judas Iscariot, who betrayed the Lord, was also from the tribe of Dan. For as the oppression of those days from the son of destruction increases, the divine does not bear to behold the destruction of the race of men whom the Son and Word of God redeemed with his own blood, but quickly sends his own servants, Enoch and Elijah, to refute the adversary himself before all nations, saying that this is the deceiver, the adversary, the abomination of desolation. Then, when the nations see him refuted by the servants of Enoch and Elijah, they will flee from him and follow the saints.

Seeing, then, that the enemy is severely refuted by them and despised by all, in wrath and anger he will destroy the saints. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear with heavenly glory, and the Lord will destroy him with the breath of his mouth, according to the word of the apostle. Then the righteous will shine as luminaries in the world, holding the word of life, while the impious will be driven out and turned back into Hades, from which may we be delivered by the grace and philanthropy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and power, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages, amen.