Ostrogoths - Exterminated.
Vandals - Exterminated.
Franks - France.
Suevi - Portugal.
Alemanni - Germany.
Anglo-Saxons - England.
Heruli - Exterminated.
Lombards - Italy.
Burgundians - Switzerland.
Visigoths - Spain."

 

"One of the most satisfying expositions I have read thus far is that of E. B. Elliott, in his commentary, Horae Apocalypticae. E. B. Elliott observes that there were 10 kingdoms present in the period 486-490:

1. Anglo-Saxons
2. Franks
3. Allemans
4. Burgundians
5. Visigoths
6. Suevi
7. Vandals
8. Heruli
9. Bavarians
10. Ostrogoths

But he also argues, convincingly, that the primary period intended by both Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, is about 532-33 AD... So at that time, he lists the following 10 kingdoms:

1. Anglo-Saxons
2. Franks of Central
3. Alleman-Franks of Eastern
4. Burgundic-Franks of South-Eastern France
5. Visigoths
6. Suevi
7. Vandals
8. Ostrogoths in Italy
9. Bavarians
10. Lombards"

The Evidence

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Applying the symbolic meaning of the number ten to the horns on the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast of Daniel 7 tells us that the number ten represents there were quite a few kings, certainly more than ten, that came out of the Western Roman Empire in 476.  By considering the number ten as symbolic of all the kings that came out of the Western Roman Empire in 476, we no longer have to be arbitrary in making selections of who is and is not a horn.  The only additional criteria that we have to meet once we understand this is to determine which kingdoms had some effect upon God's people, whether for a long time or for a very short time.  Because nearly all of the kingdoms in 476 were Christian kingdoms, so therefore would have an impact on God's people, all of the Christian kingdoms coming out of the Western Roman Empire in 476 should be part of the symbolic ten horns.

Upon hearing this, there are those who will try to argue against this idea.  They are used to the idea that ten is literal and will fight against any suggestion that it can be otherwise.

One argument such people will use is that seven of the ten nations that people usually list as the successors of Rome are still around today.  They do this by listing the various tribes and the nations they supposedly became.  This, of course, implies that the ten usually listed were the major nations and the only ones that God was talking about because he could see the future and see what would become of them.  They will argue that all the others were smaller and followed the lead of the larger groups so cannot possibly count. 

It is true that some of the nations disappeared very soon after 476 and that God could see what would become of the ten listed nations.  And it is also true that the smaller groups often followed the lead of the larger groups, but that does not mean they should not be counted.  Those who see things this way are determining the kings based on the idea that the number ten must be literal and based on the nations that continue to exist today or, at least, far into the future beyond 476, rather than what existed in 476 when the two decrees doing away with the Roman Empire were written.  In essence, these people argue that continuity of existence from 476 until today is the criteria by which to determine the identity of the ten kings rather than their effect upon God's people and their existence within the borders of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476.  In so doing, they are ignoring the evidence given in the Bible which contradicts their ideas. 

The evidence which contradicts their ideas is found in the four heads upon the leopard beast.  This evidence shows us whether or not a nation being around centuries later (for example, in the year 2009) is the criteria for determining the identity of the ten horns because the criteria that applies to the leopard beast must also apply to the ten horns.  Recall that God could have shown five heads or three heads or even two heads on the leopard beast in Daniel 7, but in fact showed only four heads.  The situation where there were only four heads existed for about 7 years, obviously a very short time.  After 294 BC there were only three kings which means there were only three heads after that point in time, a condition which lasted for only another 13 years.  After that, there were only two heads, a condition which lasted from 281 BC to 64 BC.  The point of this is that God marked the four heads at the point of the agreement, not before then and not after.  It was a very narrow window of time that he marked.  This indicates that one cannot count the kings long after the marking date, but must count them at the time of the decree related to the time at which the count is done by God.

Because God showed four heads on the leopard beast, this indicates that he marked the point in time with the decree or agreement among the four generals/kings and counted for heads only those kings that existed then, not later.  Therefore, we should not worry about what happens to the kingdoms represented by the ten horns 1500 years or so later because that clearly is not the criteria.  Instead, the criteria is which kingdoms existed at the time of the decree, which of these kingdoms affected God's people, and which of the territory of these kingdoms were previously owned by the preceding empire.  These are apparently the only significant criteria that we can know of from what God has shown us in Daniel 7.  Longevity of a kingdom, importance, or size and strength are not specified as criteria per se, so have no place in our evaluation of the kingdoms to count.

God is a king, and as such, he issues decrees from time to time also.  He shows us in Daniel 9 that he counts or marks things based on decrees.  Perhaps it is important that we pay attention to this rather than substituting our own criteria, such as whether a group is larger or more influential than the others?

The lesson from this is that you determine who is and is not a king to be counted ONLY at the point when the decree or agreement divides the kingdom (dissolves it or whatever significant event it creates), not years before and not years after.  Therefore, in the case of the Western Roman Empire, you account for the kings in the year 476, not in the year 400, not in the year 1000, not in the year 2009, and especially not based on whether they survive to 2009.  It is clear from the Bible that there is no other way to do this.  But, if you insist on doing it according to man's criteria (how it has traditionally been done), you are not following the Bible's defined way of doing it.  Sorry about that, but there seems no way around this.  I know that I find the traditional way attractive, but know that I must do it the way the Bible shows us this is to be done. 

The ten horns must represent kings that were the successors of the Western Roman Empire (their territory had previously been owned at some point by the Western Roman Empire) which affected God's people in some way.  All that remains to be done is find all who were kings in 476 and had territory within the borders of the Western Roman Empire before it fell apart.  Because nearly all of the kingdoms that came out of the Western Roman Empire were Christian in 476, that means nearly all of their kings should be counted among the ten horns because nearly all of them would have an effect upon God's people.  This can be easily determined by looking at a map of the kingdoms that existed in 476.  We could get more detailed if we want by looking for sub level kings that existed within those kingdoms.  It would be valid to count them also because, as explained later, the ram in Daniel 8 shows that God also counts sub kings as horns.

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Before we count the kings, there are a few more things to do.  There are several important questions about the Eastern Roman Empire that need to be addressed.  These are:

1. Should the Eastern Roman Empire be included as part of the territory from which the ten horns would arise?
2. Should the Eastern Roman Empire be considered as a successor of the Roman Empire, or in other words, because Rome split into two parts in 395, was it and the Western Roman Empire among the ten horns?
3. If the two halves of the Roman Empire were not successors of the Roman Empire and therefore not among the ten horns, then there should have been two heads on the dreadful looking fourth beast.  Why was only one head shown?

These are important questions to ask because in the vision given to Daniel as recorded in Daniel 7, the ten horns grow out of the head of the fourth dreadful looking beast, which in turn are followed by the talking horn growing up out of it.  We know that the Roman Empire split into an east and west half.  We also know that there was only one head on the fourth dreadful looking beast, so logically, we can ask the three questions posed above. 

Let us consider the second question first.

We have to consider that because there was only one head on the beast, then both the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire might have been among the ten horns on the head of the beast and would be considered a successor just like the other horns came out of the Western Roman Empire.  Maybe they just got an earlier start?  How can we know whether or not the two halves of the empire should be considered successor kingdoms to the original Roman Empire, the empire that existed before 395 when Rome split into two parts?

To begin to answer these questions, something that may be of some interest in relation to the history of Rome are the titles the Roman rulers used.  See these web addresses for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_emperors, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Imperial_Victory_Titles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperator (imperator, from which the English word emperor is derived)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Emperors

The Roman Empire was divided several different times, but ultimately in 395 it was divided into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, which was the final division of the Roman Empire.  This division of the Roman Empire answers the second question posed above.  Think about it carefully and the logic of what I am about to explain should make sense.  We have good reason to believe that the ten horns arose in 476 when the Western Roman Empire died.  Now, the split in the empire had already occurred in 395.  Therefore, if the Eastern Roman Empire was to be considered to be a successor of the Roman Empire, then the Western Roman Empire also would have to be considered a successor of the Roman Empire.  However, this would not make much sense of things because then other kingdoms that were successors of the Western Roman Empire would be among the ten horns right alongside the two halves of the empire on the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast.  However, if this is true, then there are several problems with it. 

First, the fact that the talking horn came up after the ten horns indicates that when there is a separation of time between the rise of two groups of horns, there will be a separation in the rise of the power they each represent.  In other words, to indicate that the ten horns arose in 476, they were on the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast first and then the talking horn rose out of the head of the beast in view of Daniel to indicate that it rose in 538, a time difference of 62 years.  The angel explained this in Daniel 7:24.  Daniel did NOT see two horns on the head of the beast and then see 8 more appear a short time later, and then have that followed by the rise of the talking horn.  You would think that if the two halves of the Western Roman Empire were successors of the original Roman Empire, then this would have been shown to Daniel in the vision.  But the fact that it was not shown indicates that the two halves are to be considered as one. 

Second, if the two halves of the empire were to be considered successors of the original empire, then they would coexist with their own successors, which would seem to violate the ideas presented by the four heads of the leopard beast in which the four heads represented the four lines of unrelated kings who took over for the line of Alexander the Great.  In other words, Alexander's line was followed by its successors and did NOT coexist with one another.  This argues that the head of the dreadful looking beast of Daniel 7 must represent both halves of the empire, even after they split in 395, and the horns must represent the successors so that they and the two halves of the Roman Empire do not coexist together with one another, whereas the successors do coexist with one another.

Therefore, in answer to the second question, Eastern and Western Rome cannot be considered to be successors of the original Roman Empire and therefore must not be among the ten horns on the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast.

Rome changed its government some seven different times during its life, and God ignored all these internally generated changes.  We do not see new beasts arising to replace the previous beasts, all of which would, of course, represent Rome.  We do not have heads rising up to replace the previous heads.  As a consequence, the only change in king lines that takes place with real significance was when Odoacer removed the last Western Roman Emperor in 476, dissolved the remains of the Western Roman Empire, and then created a new government of Italy alone.  Thus, this would most likely be the event represented by the change from the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast to the ten horns.  Nothing else really fits.  Therefore, the change point from the body and head to the ten horns almost certainly does not represent the split of the empire in 395, but rather its demise and change of power to its successors in 476.

This shows us that the body and the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast must represent the entire time of the Roman Empire, from its beginning to the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and beypond to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453.  Therefore, the head of that beast must represent the last stages of the history of the Western Roman Empire, followed by its successors and it represents the last stages of the Eastern Roman Empire at a much later date when the Muslims took the Eastern Roman Empire apart.  The successor kingdoms of the Eastern Roman Empire were not Christian and would have had very few of God's Christian people among them, so would not have been represented by the ten horns.  Remember that with the leopard that represented Alexander the Great and his successors, the territories that had little or no effect on God's people were not represented as heads on the leopard.  As a result, it is highly doubtful that the ten horns on the dreadful looking fourth beast represented any of the successor kingdoms of the Eastern Roman Empire. 

The successor kingdoms of the Eastern Roman Empire can be considered to have come out of it at a single point in time with a decree just as they did in the Western Roman Empire, but by then nearly all of them were populated by Muslims who had long before converted away from the Christian religion, though not quite all of them converted.  The decree for that would have occurred when the Muslim rulers finally conquered Constantinople in 1453 and declared themselves rulers over it and the territories that they had previously conquered. 

There is one final reason to understand that the ten horns must come only from the Western Roman Empire. The Bible says in Daniel 7:24 that the ten horns would rise out of the kingdom of the dreadful looking fourth beast, clearly meaning after its demise, and then the talking horn would follow it. If you carefully study the behavioral characteristics of the talking horn, there is only one power in history that matches the description given, which is that of the Catholic Church.

Now, for a moment, assume that the ten horns came out of the Eastern Roman Empire. Then the talking horn had to have followed its demise. Yet that would make no sense because the Catholic Church was at about the height of its power when the Eastern Roman Empire finally fell in 1453 when the city of Constantinople was captured by the Muslims. To say that the talking horn arose following that event would make no sense at all. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that the talking horn must have arisen following the fall of the Western Roman Empire rather than the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire because only in that way can its history logically follow through and develop its power and rise to greater power yet in the centuries following. Logically, the ten horns must have arisen before the the rise of the talking horn, so also had to have arisen following the demise of the Western Roman Empire. The logical conclusion is that the ten horns can come only from the remains of the Western Roman Empire. The real events of history just do not fit any other scenario.

From this we can conclude that the head represented the Western and Eastern Roman mpires and these were not among the ten horns as successor kingdoms of the united Roman Empire that split in 395.  We can also conclude that the ten horns could not come from the Eastern Roman Empire.  And finally, the ten horns can only represent kingdoms that came out of the Western Roman Empire in 476.

However, there is a new question that rises to the forefront at this time.  Because it should be obvious that the head of the dreadful looking beast must include both halves of the Roman Empire (this must be so because the talking horn was given power by the Eastern Roman Empire, which could NOT have happened unless both parts of the empire were represented by the one head of the dreadful looking fourth beast), then why is it shown as one head rather than as two heads? It split in 395 just as did the kingdom of Alexander the Great, so two heads should be shown. Why is there only one head on it instead of two heads?

A little Roman history will help explain the answer to this question and will help facilitate a better understanding of how God represented the four powers through the symbolism of the beasts.

The first major division of the empire occurred in 286.  At that time the Emperor Diocletian (a former Roman soldier) decided to divide the responsibility for the empire.  First, he divided it into an east and west half, with himself taking the east and his fellow soldier, Maximiam, taking the west.  Later, in 293, he (Diocletian) adopted Galerius as his junior emperor and heir to his position when he either died or retired.  He could train in his own replacement with this approach.   Maximium adopted Constantius I Chlorus in the same year (293).  This created a system where there were four rulers (a tetrarchy): two senior emperors (called Augusti) and two junior emperors (usually called Caesars and in more modern times sometimes called junior Augusti or junior emperors), with the idea that the junior emperors would eventually be promoted to senior emperors when the senior emperors either retired or died (Nigel Rodgers, page 73).  After Diocletian retired in 305, there were several Augusti who followed him by being promoted from Caesars and there were several Caesars in turn who followed their predecessors into office. 

Constantius I Chlorus had a son (the son apparently was born in February of 272) who later became emperor and was known as Constantine I.  Constantine's I army troops in York, Britain, declared him emperor in 306 and eventually he was assigned as one of the junior Emperors.  Through battles, Constantine I was able to eventually reunite the east and west halves of the Roman Empire into one empire in 324, which ended the rule of the tetrarchs and made him sole emperor of the entire reunited empire.  He was the last emperor to rule all of the Roman Empire for an extended period of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Emperors and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I).

Sometime between 325 and 330, after he had become the sole emperor, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to the city of Constantinople, which was strategically located near the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.  This gave him easy access to both seas and to the Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea and was also the boundary of European Rome. 

A map of the Eastern Roman Empire can be seen at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:3Byzantium476lightblue.PNG.  Eastern Rome was constituted from everything running east of a line running north and south roughly from the Adriatic Sea seashore of the Roman Province of Macedonia and eastward from that boundary line.

Upon the death of Constantine I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I) in AD 337, the Roman Empire was divided three ways among his sons per the written will of Constantine I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantius_II).  Yet, in spite of having the empire divided three ways in 337, note that we do not see three heads on the dreadful looking fourth beast. 

The divisions among the three surviving sons of Constantine I were:

• Constantine II - Got Western Rome (Britain, Hispania, Gaul)
• Constans - Got Illyria, specifically Pannonia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonia] and included Italy and North Africa
• Constantius II - Got Eastern Rome, but later got the entire empire after the deaths of Constantine II and Constans which recreated the empire as a whole again 

What happened to bring them back together was that when Constantine I died in 337, the army mutinied under the direction of one of Constantine's I sons, Constantius II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantius_II), and killed much of Constantine's I family.  Constantine's I three surviving sons, Constans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constans), Constantine II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_II_(emperor) ) and Constantius II  divided the empire into three parts as he (Constantine I) wished, but then they began feuding over the empire.  Constantine II, as the eldest son, was initially guardian of Constans, the youngest son. Constantine II was killed in one of the battles between himself and Constans in the year 340, after which Constans became the sole ruler of the Western Roman Empire.  Constans was murdered in 350 by Magnentius (a usurper of the emperor's throne).  After that, when Magnentius tried to take over the Western Roman Empire, Constantius II refused to accept him as the ruler of the Western Roman Empire and defeated him in battle in 351, and he died in 353.  After the battle in 351 against Magnentius, Constantius II became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.  So, the three way division of the empire ended and it became just one reunited empire again in 351.

Constantius II was considered vain and stupid by his contemporaries and he forced his Arian beliefs upon the empire.  He needed a co-emperor, however, so chose his cousin, Gallus.  But Gallus turned out to have problems similar to Caligula, so he was killed.  Do note that Constantius II did not divide the empire when he brought in a co-emperor.  Next Constantius II chose his sole surviving relative, Julius, who was Gallus' half brother.  Julius was the son of Constantine's I half brother, Julius Constantius.  Julius Constantius died when the army mutinied in 337.  There were feuds between Julius and Constantius II, but the latter died in 361, after which Julius took over the empire.  He got rid of many corrupt officials and generally improved the government and its effect on the people, but his time in power lasted only 18 months because he died in a battle (Nigel Rodgers, page 234).  It appears he certainly left Rome in better shape than what he received at the beginning of his time as emperor.

In 364, Valentinian I was elected by the army to be emperor.  He then chose Valens, his own brother, as co-Augustus and assigned himself to rule the Western Roman Empire and Valens to rule the Eastern Roman Empire.  The empire was divided again at this point.  Several more emperors for both east and west followed, including Gratian (for the west).  Eventually, Theodosius I was appointed as Augustus for the east by Gratian upon the death of Valens.  Theodosius I became the sole senior Augustus after the death of Valentinian II (who was Augustus for the west).  Upon the death of Valentinian II in 392, events were set in motion to again reunite the Roman Empire, which did happen, but these events eventually led to the permanent division of the Roman Empire in 395. 

Years later in 379, long after Constantine's death and the empire had been divided again, Theodosius I was appointed as Augustus for the east by Gratian (who was Augustus for the west) upon the death of Valens (who was Augustus for the east until his death in 379).  In 392 Valentinian II (Augustus for the west) died and then Theodosius I became the sole emperor of a united empire.  Very soon after, a usurper by the name of Eugenius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenius) took the throne of the Western Roman Empire for himself against the wishes of Theodosius I.  Here is the description of the events that soon transpired as described by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenius):

"When he was elected emperor, Eugenius sent ambassadors to Theodosius's court, asking for recognition of his election. Theodosius received them, but started to gather troops to defeat Eugenius. Theodosius also promoted his eight-year-old son Honorius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorius_(emperor) ) to the rank of Augustus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_(honorific) ) of the West in January 393.

Theodosius then moved from Constantinople with his army, and met Eugenius and Arbogast in the Battle of the Frigidus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frigidus, on the modern Italy-Slovenia border) on 6 September 394. The bloody battle lasted two days, and was marked by unusual astronomical and meteorological events, but in the end Theodosius won. Arbogast immediately committed suicide after the defeat, while Eugenius was held for execution as a criminal, his head afterward being displayed in Theodosius' camp."

This is the description of the results of this battle from the same web page:

"The reign of Eugenius marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. A year later Theodosius died, dividing his empire between his two sons. This had happened many times before in the previous two centuries, but this time it was to be final - the Roman Empire never reunited, and the Western half soon fell.

Eugenius also represented the last opportunity for the Pagans and the senatorial class to oppose the Christianization of the Empire. The Battle of the Frigidus was part of a trend towards using increasing percentages of barbarian troops, especially in the west, where it led to the weakening of the empire itself."

This battle in 394 against Eugenius forcibly reasserted Theodosius' I right as sole emperor.  Unfortunately for Theodosius I, he died about a year later in 395 while still in Italy. The empire was then split between his two sons, whom he had previously elevated to junior Augusti (Honorius for the west and Arcadius for the east as co-rulers with their father).  Once their father died, they elevated themselves to senior Augusti in each of their respective halves of the empire, which amounts to a decree (verbal or written, either is just as good as the other) concerning the destiny of each ruler and their respective portions of the empire.  They could easily have elevated just one of them over the entire empire, but it is obvious that they instead agreed to split the empire between them.  Through his two sons, the king line of Theodosius I ruled both halves of the empire from then on.  Their elevation to senior Augusti effectively split the empire permanently and was accompanied by a decree of their positions which answered the question about the final destiny of the two halves of the empire. 

Given that the empire was permanently split in 395 and there was effectively a decree for this and it answered the question about the destiny of the two halves of the empire, logically two heads should have been shown on the dreadful looking fourth beast for this event.  In fact, two heads (or even three heads) could have showed up for previous splits of the empire or new beasts, but that did not happen.  God ignored all previous times the empire split.  But this time was the final event, and that certainly should not have been ignored.  Yet it was.  The only reason that makes any sense of this is that the two brothers who took the throne were apparently considered by God to be of the same line, that of Theodosius I, for which reason God looked upon it as if it was one king line and consequently, one kingdom.

It is evident from history that the line of Theodosius was not a direct descendant of Constantine, yet he and Constantine were very indirectly related through marriage.  However, there was no actual genetic linkage between Constantine and Theodosius.  The line of Theodosius I started when the Roman army elected Valentinian I to replace the Roman Emperor Jovian, who died early in 364.  This was an internally generated change (a type of change of rulers which God ignored when he symbolized Rome), so this change would not require another beast to rise to represent it just as God ignored the changes in the line of Alexander until the four generals divided the empire (remember that Alexander's relatives on the throne were murdered and the regents ruled the empire from then on).  Also, note that when Valentinian I was elected emperor early in 364, he became emperor of the entire Roman Empire, not just the Eastern or Western Roman Empire.  A month or so later, he split the empire with his brother, Valens, but until that happened, he was the emperor of the entire Roman Empire. 

Below is a graphic which shows the relationship between Constantine I, Valentinian I and Theodosius I.  Note that it is not a direct father to son relationship, but very indirectly through marriage these people were related to one another and are therefore considered to be of the same family line.  Note, however, that there was no actual genetic linkage between Valentinian I and Arcadius and Honorius.  The relationship was purely through marriage, without which there would have been no connection.

The logical conclusion is that unlike Alexander's Empire in which there was a break of the line of rulers followed by new rulers who were unrelated to Alexander and unrelated to each other and who took over and divided up the empire, in the case of Rome, there were breaks in the line of rulers that God ignored because they were internally generated changes that resulted in new lines of rulers that God apparently decided to consider as one line.  When the empire split in 395, God considered that the same line ruled both halves because it was brothers who were the rulers from then on.  As a result, there was no "split" into two heads of the fourth dreadful looking beast.  There was only one head which reflects the reality that God considered the kings of both the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire to be the same line. 

The fact that there is only one head tells you that the Eastern Roman Empire was NOT a successor of Western Rome and could not be because God clearly saw it as one and the same empire even when divided.  If he had seen in otherwise, he would have shown two heads on the dreadful looking beast of Daniel 7.

Is it possible that some of the ten horns came from the Eastern Roman Empire?  The answer to that is no, they cannot.  The reason is very simple.  The date for determining the ten horns was in 476 (it cannot come after 538, which is when the talking horn obtained the power of a king - see Daniel 5:19-20).  Western Rome had many successor states then, while Eastern Rome had no successor states at that time.  Therefore, the ten horns can come ONLY from the Western Roman Empire.

The decrees of 476 concerned only the territory of the Western Roman Empire and did not involve the Eastern Roman Empire at all.  In fact, the decrees of the child emperor and Odoacer could not involve the Eastern Roman Empire territory because neither the child emperor (who was the last emperor of Rome) nor Odoacer (who deposed the last emperor of Rome in 476 and took over Italy) had jurisdiction over the Eastern Roman Empire.  Since the decrees could not involve Eastern Roman Empire territory, that rules out that the successor kingdoms could ever come from the Eastern Roman Empire territory, even if it had been in a condition where successor states existed for it at that time, which, of course, was not the case.

The fact that there is one head on the beast indicates that neither tribes nor nations nor kingdoms are counted by God.  Instead, it is a clear indication that king lines are what is to be counted rather than kingdoms, nations, or even tribes which are made equal to nations or kingdoms.  If it had been kingdoms or nations that was counted, then for sure there would have been two heads on the dreadful looking fourth beast of Daniel 7 because obviously when Rome split, it split into two different kingdoms or nations.  Tribes cannot fit because Rome was not a single tribe but was a mix of many different tribes.  Therefore, the definition that heads are kings fits very well.  Kings, of course, are lines of kings.  Since these were brothers which split the Roman Empire, they evidently were seen by God as one line. 

Some have suggested that there were four or five kingdoms that came from the Eastern Roman Empire that were part of the ten horns, but clearly that cannot be true (see, for an example of this, http://focusonjerusalem.com/theidentityofthe7.html). 

In summary, the Eastern Roman Empire was not part of the ten horns and the ten horns were not made up from divisions of the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire, but rather came from the territory of the Western Roman Empire alone.  The fact that there was only one head on the dreadful looking beast shows that the Eastern Roman Empire was not a successor kingdom of the Roman Empire.  Moreover, the reason there was only one head on the dreadful looking fourth beast instead of two to reflect the division of the Roman Empire is that two brothers took over the throne from their father, who was the ruler of all of the Roman Empire.  They split the empire permanently between them.

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Some have argued that the image of Daniel 2 tells us that Rome split into two parts, an act of history they believe is represented by the two legs of the image.  Usually they also believe that the ten toes of the image are the same as the ten horns and that five toes come from the western division of the empire, and five toes from the eastern division of the empire.  Of course, this means that of the ten horns, five come from the western division of the empire and five from the eastern division of the empire.  Unfortunately, though this idea seems attractive, there are several reasons why this is not correct.  Permit me, if I may, to explain this. 

First, there is the explanation given in the section above which shows that God considered the Eastern and Western Roman Empires to be of the same king line.  This, combined with the fact that the Eastern Roman Empire was not divided when the decree occurred in 476, totally disallows any successor states to come from the Eastern Roman Empire.  Therefore, all successors must come only from the Western Roman Empire.

Second, the split leg argument is based on faulty reasoning because there is a matter of the location of the split on the image, which should be reflected in the political realities of the kingdoms represented by the different parts of the image.  The reason there is a problem is that the split occurs where it normally would on human anatomy - in the hip.  The metal representing Alexander the Great, the bronze (remember that the head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar, so why cannot the bronze represent Alexander the Great?), constituted both the belly and the thighs.  Obviously, between the belly and thighs are the hips.  The legs, representing Rome, occur from the knee and downward to the feet, probably ending about the ankle. 

Now, if the two legs are to represent the split of Rome into an eastern and western parts, then why are the thighs represented as bronze?  Why are they not made of iron?  They should have been made of iron if this idea is true.  Remember that because the body parts of the image from top to bottom are made of different metals which represent different successive kingdoms, then IF the split is significant, there is a problem because this split occurred within the kingdom of Alexander's, before Rome rose as an empire.  Did the kingdom of Alexander's split only two ways?  Of course not!  And even if it had happened, how on earth would a split within the kingdom of Alexander the Great create a split within the Roman Empire before it even began?  Do we know of such a split from the history of Rome?  The answer is no, we know of no such split that occurred before or even as Rome began. 

Alexander's kingdom split four ways in 301 BC as predicted by the symbolism of the four heads of the leopard beast, not two ways.  Rome started out its "life" as one kingdom and then centuries later, in AD 395, it permanently split into two parts.  There was no connection between the two-way split of Rome that occurred in 395 and the four-way split in Alexander's kingdom that occurred in 301 BC.  Therefore, the legs are not representative of the split of Rome, but are presented that way because that is normal human anatomy and the dream would not make sense to the viewers if it was done any other way. 

So far as Daniel explained things, there are two things that are actually significant.  First, there are the materials (metal or metal mixed with clay) from which the different body parts are made.  Second, there is the position from top to bottom for the different materials that is significant.  We have no indications that anything else is significant.  Thus, the arms, the split of the body at the hips, the thighs, the legs, the feet, and the toes are not significant but are presented as part of normal human anatomy so the image would be recognizable to the viewer.  As one person commented to me, how about the two eyes?  Do they represent Nabonidus and Belshazzar?  That was meant to be a joke, of course.  But in the same manner I might add, how about the two ears sticking out of the side of the image's head?  The point is that a person can be guilty of making more significance of the different parts of the image than was intended by God.  We know this to be the case because people do things like this sometimes and yet there is no Biblical support for it.  There are no statements in the Bible informing us that these things have any significance whatsoever.

The Bible says that the division of the kingdom of Rome is represented ONLY by the mixture of the iron and the clay present only in the feet and toes.  Here is the evidence for this:

Dan 2:42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

While it is true that the iron represents the strong kingdoms and the clay represents the weak kingdoms, the mixture of the two together is what creates the understanding that the kingdom would be divided, just as Daniel explained it.  You could not have strong and weak kingdoms together as successors of Rome without first dividing the strong kingdom, Rome.  The presence of two feet and ten toes is, according to Daniel, not the primary criteria for determining that the kingdom would be divided, but rather the mix of iron and clay which shows a mix of weak and strong kingdoms that is the primary indicator of this division.

If one were to argue that the ten toes are the same as the ten horns of the dreadful looking beast of Daniel 7 and say that those ten horns represent the divisions of the Western Roman Empire, the argument is invalid because Daniel did not indicate that divisions of the body of this type were significant.  If one insists anyway, then the feet are significant, the legs are significant, the thighs are significant, and then you have the problem of explaining the split having occurred in the kingdom of Alexander the Great.  Such a logical connection would have to be explained to be consistent.  Of course, one could just arbitrarily declare it so, but then one loses credibility altogether with others by doing that.  Better to be logical and consistent, right?  Remember, Daniel said that only the relative position of a body part from top to bottom and the materials they were made of were significant. 

And, if one insists on this theory in spite of evidence contrary to it, then one cannot say that the ten toes are representative of only ten kingdoms because they were each made of a mix of clay and iron, indicating that there were at least 20 such kingdoms, and probably more.  That certainly goes against the theory that the number ten is literal.

Another reason has to do with the decree dating and the facts of history.  As mentioned before, when the decrees of 476 were written, the Eastern Roman Empire consisted of a single empire, not several.  If one insists on arguing that it must be included, then there is a problem because it was not in a divided state at that time.  It is true that it divided later based on events of history, but those divisions are irrelevant because they didn't exist when the decrees were written.  Thus, though this idea that five of the kingdoms of the ten come from the Eastern Roman Empire may appear attractive, it is not correct.  History does not support the idea of the Eastern Roman Empire as the source of five of the kingdoms because they simply did not exist in 476 when the decrees were written.

Another reason is that because the position upon the body of the image relates to its position on the time line of history, then you have a problem because the ten toes would be the last thing that occurs just before the coming of Jesus.  We know that we are living in the very last days of earth's history, so in today's world we are symbolically in the ten toes time period.  Just as the position upon the body of the image relates to its position on the time line of history, this is also true of the feet and toes.  The change from the iron of the legs which probably occurred at about the ankles of the image would represent the change from the Western Roman Empire to the ten horns with the decrees of 476.  Thus, to go forward in time towards the Second Coming of Jesus, one would need to move from the ankles forward towards the toes. Remember that the feet also were mixed with iron and clay to indicate the mix of strong and weak kingdoms.  Obviously the ten kingdoms cannot be represented by the ten toes because they (the ten toes) occur long after 476.  The time of 476 would be represented by the location on the image, probably about the ankles, where the iron changes to the mix of iron and clay, not in the toes.

And finally, there is adequate fulfillment of the prophecy about the ten kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire.  Then why is there a need to go to the Eastern Roman Empire to fulfill it?  That seems redundant and unnecessary.

If the two legs theory were correct, then not only would the split have to occur only where the iron was present on the image (the legs, which would look strange or else the iron would have to have extended up to the hips), but it would also have to actually explain to us that the two legs represented the division of the kingdom, something that was not done.  For those wishing to believe in this, the Bible is totally silent on this.  Instead, it indicates that the division is shown by the mix of materials, the iron and clay, which contradicts the theory that the two legs indicates this.  It seems to me that we should stick to the symbols as they are explained rather than trying to create one that is not there.

Consider this if you are still not convinced:  If the anatomical parts themselves are significant independently of the materials they are made of and their relative locations from top to bottom, then why are not the arms on the image significant in some way?  How about the hands?  They each should have five fingers on them.  Do those arms and hands represent some sort of a two way split of the Persian Empire with the fingers of the hands representing a further split into ten kingdoms?  If one insists that the split in the legs represents the split of Rome into two parts, then the arms, hands, and fingers must also have some significance to the Persian Empire.  How do you explain that when there is no known split of the Persian Empire?  One has to wonder about that!  You cannot say that the split in the legs represents a split within Rome and then turn around and ignore the obvious symbolism of the arms and hands and not deal with it.  Maybe it is better to be consistent and not do this?

Ultimately, this tells us that we cannot use the two legs to argue that the ten toes represent the ten horns, with part coming from the Western Roman Empire and part from the Eastern Roman Empire.  That simply does not work with the symbolism.  On the surface of it, it is an attractive theory, but it is not correct.

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Here is an important question: Were the ten horns only from the territory that the Western Roman Empire actually controlled in 476, or were they from all the territory that had once been the Western Roman Empire? 

To help clarify the answer to this question, let us for a moment hypothesize that the ten horns must come only from territory that Rome actually controlled when the decrees were written in 476.  That territory then consisted of:

• Italy,
• the northwest portion of Illyrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrium),
• a portion of Northwestern France,
• a portion of what is today Austria, 
• and a portion of North Africa across from Spain (but not the territory that the Vandals had taken which was farther east along the coast around Carthage)

Clearly, if only the territory that the Western Roman Empire actually controlled in 476 is to be considered when counting the ten kings, then it reduces it to a situation where the ten horns represent only a few kings, something that does not make much sense.  This is true because there were only a few kings who took over over the actual territory that the Western Roman Empire controlled after the decree was written.  It especially does not make sense given that it says you lose three kings, then have seven remaining.  We should conclude from this that all the territory of the Western Roman Empire must be included because if we try to do otherwise, it creates major problems with the symbols.  So far as is known, there were not likely any sub kings that could be counted to make ten kings within the Western Roman Empire in 476.

This little exercise, of course, disproves the hypothesis made above.  Therefore, the entire territory that the Western Roman Empire controlled prior to and including that which it controlled in 476 must be included for determining from where the ten horns arise.

For your interest, a map of Rome at its greatest extent under Emperor Trajan in AD 117 can be seen at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Romia_Imperio.png.  There is one minor mistake in the map in that the territory just east of Dacia which they took over during that time period is not shown on the map.  But that is a relatively small area on the northwest side of the Black Sea.

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Introduction to the Problems

There seems to be some confusion over the definition of a horn. Some think that a tribe is to be counted as a horn. Some believe that nations are to be counted as horns while others say kingdoms. There probably are other definitions out there. But whatever definition is used, it is always best to use the definitions given in the Bible because the visions of Daniel and John were created by God and the vision can be properly understood only if God's definitions are used to interpret it. If a person does not use the definitions that God gives, it is very likely that a person will be led down the wrong path. 

Seventh-day Adventists have traditionally defined horns to be the barbarian tribes that invaded the Roman Empire and eventually became parts of the nations of modern-day Europe. To justify their idea, their reasoning has been that a tribe is a nation or kingdom so therefore fit the definition of a horn. But there are problems with this approach.  The problems are:

• There is no definition in the Bible that a tribe is a horn.  
• There were instances where a group is considered by Seventh-day Advents to be a tribe, but in fact there were members of several tribes in the same group, so which tribal group did the group as a whole really belong to?  This is not as easily answered as it may seem, especially where there is no majority tribal group present.
• While the definition might be true of some tribes, one cannot say that this definition fits for all.
• Definitions given in the Bible have a priority ranking that is evident, something which they totally ignore, most likely because they are not aware of this fact. It is not obvious, yet with careful study it can be discerned. In other words, there is a first level definition which they should first attempt to use to define the horns. Only if the first level definition fails should they move on to the second level. They totally ignore this. More on this later.

SDAs have traditionally said that the Catholics destroyed the Heruls, which again focuses on the idea of a tribe being a horn.  If you ask them about this, they will usually say that the Catholic Church arranged for the destruction of the Heruls tribe during the invasion of Italy by the Ostrogoths in the year 493. The Heruls were members of the army in the kingdom run by Odoacer, king of Italy from 476, when Rome fell, until 493 when the Ostrogoths came and killed him and took over his kingdom. 

The are several problems with this idea. The kingdom of Odoacer's was not just a Heruli kingdom.  The Scirians also helped create the kingdom ruled by Odoacer, so were also participants with the Heruls.  Moreover, there were Rugians who also participated in forming his government (article subsection: The late Roman Empire and the Ostrogoths, main article: "Italy." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugi)  And finally, there was a historian by the name of Jordanes, who wrote in the middle of the 6th century. Jordanes reported that the leader of the people who deposed the child emperor in 476, Odoacer, was "the king of the Torcilingi, having with him the Sciri, the Heruli and auxiliaries from several other peoples...." (Cited in Emperors of Rome the Story of Imperial Rome From Julius Caesar to the Last Emperor, David Potter, Quercus, London, UK, copyright 2007, page 241).  While we do not have verification from other sources that Odoacer was the king of the Torcilingi, it does show that very likely there were Torcilingis (who might have been Thuringians) among them who helped create Odoacer's kingdom and were members of his army.  Just how many groups were members of Odoacer's army is actually unknown, but based on Jordanes statement, it appears that there were probably at least five different groups present in his army. Therefore, the Heruli were probably a minority of the entire group.

So, we should ask this question: was it a Herulian kingdom?  Was it a Scirian kingdom?  Or, because some Rugians were with Odoacer, was it a Rugian kingdom?  Or, was it a Torcilingian (possibly Thuringian) kingdom?  Or, was it a kingdom of one of the other unnamed groups? Or, was it really all of them?  Or could it be said to be none of them since it was a combination of them all, so should actually be seen as a blended power unlike each one individually and with no tribal name attached to it, which really is a much more accurate characterization? 

Based on the definition given by SDAs, does this constitute one horn or several?  This question is a serious one because Adventists have typically thought that a tribe is a kingdom and the Heruls in Odoacer's kingdom had Heruls in it so they constituted a kingdom and therefore a horn.  But, to be consistent, the exact same reasoning must be applied to the other groups, so do you count each of the constituent groups as a kingdom and therefore a horn? After all, if SDAs would have it that the Heruls were a horn by virtue of being in Odoacer's army, then the same must be true of the other groups as well. One must be consistent. If the others are also horns, then how many horns were actually taken down when Odoacer's kingdom fell? 

How do you answer these questions?  There are probably two ways you can approach this. First, if you equate members of tribal groups to horns, which Seventh-day Adventists have done in the case of the Heruls in Odoacer's army, then to be honest and consistent, you must admit that there must be several horns in the kingdom of Odoacer because there were Heruls, Rugians, Torcilingis, Scirians and others in his army. This is the only right way to do it because if the Heruls in the kingdom of Odoacer are a horn, and they clearly were just a small part of his army, then so also must each of the other tribal groups in his army be a horn. Thus, you end up with perhaps 5 horns. However, doing this creates problems. 

The problem this creates is that all of these horns would have been taken down when Odoacer's kingdom was destroyed. It would not have been only the Heruls which would have been taken down. This creates a problem with Daniel 7 because if this is true, then about 5 horns were actually removed from the kingdom of Odoacer's by the Ostrogoth's invasion. If you consider the horn count to be literal and only three horns were removed from the head of the dreadful looking fourth beast of Daniel 7, then obviously, there is a mismatch between the actual number of horns removed from Odoacer's kingdom (5) and the number predicted in the Bible (3). What to do about this?

You can get around this problem with a second approach, which is to define horns to be the army group of Odoacer's without a specific tribal identity attached to it. In other words, because it is a composite group of several different tribal groups, consider it to be a unique group distinct from any one tribe and count the group as a whole to be one horn without a tribal name attached to it. By doing this, you do not create math problems with Daniel 7 because then you are counting one horn only which was removed by the Ostrogothic invasion. But, doing this eliminates the Heruls as the target group, which Seventh-day Adventists do not want to do because they think that the tribes are horns and they therefore must identify a specific tribal group. Because they believe that the number ten is literal and that the Heruls were one of the literal ten tribes, they will not accept the definition suggested here in most cases. This definition is actually much more true to the Bible's definition than the definition that they use, but they would still refuse to use it.

Note that SDAs typically do not count the other tribal groups present in Odoacer's army as horns. They ignore them. The likely reason is that they will say that these other tribes were not within the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476, but that is not true. Here are the reasons their excuse is not true:

• The Heruls present within Odoacer's army were the only known group of Heruls within the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The main body of their tribe was actually outside the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476, so if these members of the Heruls could be counted as a tribe by virtue of being within Odoacer's army in 476, then also the same must be true of the other tribal groups who were in Odoacer's army in 476 regardless of whether or not the main body of their respective tribes were within the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476.
• Just so you know the facts, the main bodies of the Scirian and Rugian tribes were within the boundarias of the Western Roman Empire in 476, which means the excuse not to count these as horns is invalid. The Torcilingian tribe may have been the Thuringian tribe, which was outside the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The other groups, of course, remain unknown as Jordanes did not name them, so they may or may not have been within the boundaries of the Wistern Roman Empire in 476. However, as pointed out, that would not have mattered because the same standard that SDAs apply to the Heruls must be applied to the other tribes who were members of Odoacer's army. If the Heruls were a horn, then so also must the others be horns, or else you must count them all as one composite group, separate and distinct as a group from any one tribe, so constitute one horn only without a specific tribal identity.

These things may seem like splitting hairs, but it is factually true.

There are additional problems with the way SDAs have defined horns. It would seem that the kingdom of Odoacer creates a real problem because the Bible defines a horn to be a king as its first and foremost definition and never defines it as a tribe.  Adventists tend to think that horns and tribes are synonymous, and while that may be true sometimes, that is not necessarily always true.  For example, the Alamanni were a tribe that was eventually divided among four nations.  Do we count them as one horn or four?  Or, should the Alamanni be counted at all since they were conquered?  They may be a tribe but because they were eventually divided among four nations, a condition that remains today, so they can probably be said to have four kings.  In the case of the Alamanni, a tribe contains not just one king, but four. 

Most lists by Adventists do include the Alamanni - as Germany - as if there was only one king, which is incorrect.  Also, since Germany actually is constituted from several groups, is this the right thing to do?  Why should the descendants of the Alamanni in Germany be given greater status than those Alamanni descendants in say, France, or other groups within Germany who are just as much German as the Alamanni, such as the Bavarians or the Saxons? Ah, but they will say that these other tribes were not one of the original ten literal tribes, so do not count. But this does not solve the inconsistency that is obviously present with the Alamanni being divided among four different nations. And it shows that insisting that the ten horns are literal only creates other inconsistencies. Besides that, it ignores the political history of Germany, which shows that the Alamanni were only one of several groups that were brought together by a conquering force and placed into one kingdom. The Alamanni had little choice about the creation of Germany and did not do much to actually create it. It was created for them by their kings who in turn were imposed on them through conquest. Typically, if we are to name the founders of a nations, you pick the group of people most responsible for a nation's founding. So, in this case, naming the Alamanni is NOT naming the founders. More on that later.

As you can see, there are real problems with equating a tribe with a kingdom approach.  In the case of the kingdom of Odoacer, the tribe cannot be equated with a kingdom because there were members of more than one tribal group as part of one army and the army was not the nation itself. The civilian population was the nation.  What should be done about that?

Consider that people speak of the destruction of the Vandals as if they were one group.  Actually, they consisted of two different groups (something that Seventh-day Adventists usually do not know), but these had one king over them.  The two different groups were the Alans and the Vandals.  Their kings called themselves the kings of the Vandals and Alans (Peter Heather, The Goths, copyrights 1996 and 1998, Blackwell Publishing (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com), Malden, MA, USA, Page 176). Justinian had the Vandal tribe destroyed and the Alans that were with them were also destroyed.  However, there were members of the Alan tribe elsewhere, so they as a people were not eradicated.  Most Vandals did survive the war against them, so one cannot say that they were eradicated by this war. Of course, the Vandal/Alan kingdom was destroyed by the action of Justinian and their king was permanently removed from power. As a people, they never were able to recreate their kingdom.

The Alans in about 370 were living outside the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire and were attacked by the Huns.  As a result, they were divided into several groups.  Some went westward into Roman territory.  Some of those who went westward joined the Sueves and Vandals in their invasion of Roman Gaul.  At about the same time as these attacks were going on, another group of Alans (led by a man named Goar) crossed the Rhine, joined the Romans and settled in Gaul.  In time, the Alans in Gaul were eventually absorbed by the Franks and they ceased to have an independent existence, though they did not lose their tribal identity.  Some of them eventually ended up in Britanny on the northwest coast of France and were later spoken of in relation to events even into the Middle Ages. So, while they as a people may not have had an independent existence, they still had their identity for centuries after their absorption into the Frankish kingdom.  Some other Alans went into Spain and formed a kingdom with the Vandals.  In about 408 or so, one of the Alan kings, Attaces, was killed in a battle against the Visigoths when the Visigoths were attempting to extend their territory southwest from France into Spain.  Many of the Alans later joined with the Vandals and crossed into North Africa. 

Note that this creates an interesting situation because there were several different groups of Alans.  Some of these groups had their own king, while others voluntarily were parts of several groups that "shared" a king with them.  Still others were conquered and forced to accept a king they really did not want.  But what it all boils down to is that you have one tribe but several different kings.  If some power had come along and actually wiped out the entire tribe, they would have had to have removed several kings from several different locations to do so.  Of course, that did not happen because it is very difficult to accomplish something like that. If a horn is a tribe, this creates an interesting and difficult situation. What do you do with such a group? SDAs will say that the Alans were not listed among the ten tribes, so they do not need to worry about that. But why is it that they are not listed?  Clearly, they were a relatively smaller group compared to the Vandals, but they were in Roman Gaul in 476 and as a whole, they were probably just as large as any of the other large tribal groups.  Thus, they were there and there is little reason they could not have been a horn on the beast.  Why they have they not been considered a horn on the beast is puzzling.  This is something to think about. Somehow, there is something inconsistent with not counting them among the ten horns. And this points to the inconsistency of insisting that the number ten is literal only. It leaves out good candidates for the horns.

Most of the Alans living with the Vandals in Spain left and went into North Africa with the Vandals when they crossed in 429.  The Vandals left Spain because of the invasion of the Visigoths, which wiped out one of their two main divisions.  With only one division of their tribe left, their king was very concerned about their very survival, so when the offer was made that they could have North Africa in exchange for their help (as explained below), they left, apparently believing that they had a better chance of survival there than they did on the Iberian Peninsula.  According to Wikipedia, here is how the Vandal invasion and takeover of North Africa came about and proceeded:

"In 429, political maneuvering in Rome was to change the landscape forever. Rome was ruled by the boy emperor Valentinian III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinian_III, who rose to power at the age of 8), and his mother Galla Placidia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galla_Placidia). However, the Roman General Flavius Aëtius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavius_Aëtius), in vying for power, convinced Galla Placidia that her General Boniface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonifacius) was plotting to kill her and her son to claim the throne for himself. As proof, he implored her to write him a letter asking him to come to Rome so that she would see that Boniface would refuse. At the same time Aëtius sent Boniface a letter stating that he should disregard letters from Rome asking him to return for they were plotting to kill him. When Boniface saw the letter from Rome, and believed there was a plot to kill him, he enlisted the help of the Vandal King Geiseric. He promised the Vandals land in North Africa in exchange for their help. However, when it was known that the whole thing was a plot on the part of Aëtius, and Boniface was once again in Rome's favour, it was too late to turn back the Vandal invasion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion) "

"Geiseric crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Gibraltar) with the entire tribe of 80,000 and moved east, pillaging and looting as they drove more and more refugees toward the walled city of Hippo Regius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Regius). Geiseric realized that they wouldn't be able to take the city in a direct assault, so began a months long siege on the walls of Hippo Regius. Inside Saint Augustine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo) and his priests prayed for relief from the invaders, knowing full well that the fall of the city would spell conversion or death for many Roman Christians. On 28 August 430, three months into the siege, St. Augustine died, perhaps from hunger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation) or stress, as the wheat fields outside the city lay dormant and unharvested. After 14 months, hunger and the inevitable diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_disease) were ravaging both the city inhabitants and the Vandals outside the city walls.

"Peace was made between the Romans and the Vandals by means of a grant in 435 of territory in Northern Africa. In 439, the Vandals took and plundered Carthage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage) without a fight, entering the city while most of the inhabitants were attending the races at the hippodrome. Geiseric temporarily made it his capital, and styled himself the King of the Vandals and Alans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans), to denote the inclusion of the Alans of northern Africa into his alliance. Conquering Sicily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicily), Sardinia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinia), Corsica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsica) and the Balearic Islands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balearic_Islands), he built his kingdom into a powerful state, moving the capital to Saldae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saldae)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals)

Moving further along in time, consider the Rugians who were destroyed when the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy was destroyed in about 554 - 556.  Why do we not say that the Papacy caused their destruction?  That action, instigated by the Papacy, caused nearly the entire tribe to disappear afterwards, which is more than was accomplished by destroying some of the Heruls in the kingdom of Odoacer.  Of course, it is actually unknown what happened to them.  They are not believed to have been eradicated.  More likely they simply blended into the surrounding population and disappeared that way or maybe they moved away and dispersed.  Just the same, they did disappear altogether.  Why is nothing said about them?  There were other tribal groups in with the Ostrogoths.  Do we count them as separate horns also or do we count all of them as one horn?  How do we answer these questions? 

Maybe what is needed is a consistent method to determine who is a horn and who is not, but how do we develop such a method?

Biblically Based Criteria To Solve the Problems

To resolve these inconsistencies and difficulties, it is necessary to develop a Biblically based method of deciding who is a horn and who is not a horn. Some of that has already been done, but to continue that process, here we will detail the priority order of definitions given in the Bible. The first step done earliler was to establish that to be counted as a potential horn, a people group must have been within the boundaries of the Western Roman Empire in 476 when the decrees concerning the breakup of the Roman Empire were written.

As you can see from some of the examples already presented, it is quite difficult to accurately define who is a horn unless you have consistent criteria by which to do so, criteria which do not create confusion.  Fortunately, the Bible does give us information that tells us how to define who is a horn and who is not. 

According to Daniel 7:17, a beast is a king.  Here is what it says:

Dan 7:17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.

As stated before, beasts, heads, and horns all represent kings, which are also symbolic.  When Daniel 7:17 says that the four beasts are four kings, then it should tell you that one beast is one king.  But, each of these "kings" is actually representing a line of literal kings who occupied the same throne that their founder occupied.  To understand this, consider that Nebuchadnezzar could be considered the founder of his empire.  But, he was not the last king of Babylon to sit upon his throne.  There were others after him which constituted a line of kings that sat upon the same throne in Babylon until the Medes and Persians came, captured Babylon and ended the line of kings that had ruled Babylon.  In the case of Alexander the Great, he founded an empire and was the "king" that was the leopard beast.  Thus, the leopard beast is named for him as its founder but it is also true that he founded a specific line of kings named for him that were to rule his kingdom from his throne before the four successor generals/kings took over the kingdom.  Thus, his name is applied both to his own specific line of kings and to the leopard beast itself.

As stated before, beasts, heads, and horns all represent kings.  A beast can also represent a kingdom or nation, and because heads, horns and beasts all represent the same things, therefore heads and horns can also represent kingdoms or nations.  Here is how the Bible defines these things and in the order it defines them:

• First: A king.
• Second, a kingdom.
• Third, a nation.

Here are the verses which show that they are always defined in this order in Daniel 2, 7 and 8.  Let us begin with Daniel 2:

Dan 2:38 And wherever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven has he given into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all. You are this head of gold.

Dan 2:39 And after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to you, and another third kingdom of bronze, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

Note that in verse 38, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold.  This specifically identified the gold head with a specific person, which not only named it for him, but it also specified that the head of gold was a king, for that is exactly what Nebuchadnezzar was - a king.  Thus, there are several important points that this addresses:

• It specifically identifies the gold head as a king.
• It gave a name to the king that the gold head represented, which in this case was Nebuchadnezzar.
• Because the gold head represented the entire time line of the Babylonian kingdom from Nebuchadnezzar until the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians, the fact that the gold head was a king means that it cannot refer only to Nebuchadnezzar, but must refer to the entire time line occupied by all the kings of Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar until the fall of the Babylonian Empire. In other words, by saying that the gold head was a king and naming it, God was telling us that the term king refers to a line of kings.
• God named the line of kings for the person he considered to be the founder of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar. Thus, whenever we are told that a beast, head, or horn represents a king, we know that it has the name of its founder attached to it because that is the way God did things in Daniel 2.

God could have given us several more examples with the image, but did not. However, he drove the point home years later through the vision recorded in Daniel 8. In that vision, the angel explained to Daniel that the great horn between the eyes of the goat was the first king of Greece, which clearly refers to Alexander the Great. The angel all but named the first king of the empire that Alexander built. Clearly this would mean that the leopard beast of Daniel 7 was also named Alexander. Of course, the personal line of Alexander fell when Alexander's four successors divided the kingdom and was replaced by four unrelated lines of kings. Below is an illustration to make this easier to understand.

In verse 39, it specifically says that "after you shall arise another kingdom...."  This specifically stated that "after you", very likely meaning after the current king line of Nebuchadnezzar (it could not have likely referred to Nebuchadnezzar personally because the Babylonian kingdom did not fall to the Medes and Persians for some 20 years or so after his death, after several of his descendants had sat on his throne), it defined the next metal (the silver chest and arms) as a kingdom.

It is true that in verse 37, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that God had given him a kingdom. Verse 37 does nothing more than tell Nebuchadnezzar that he is a king only because God gave him a kingdom to rule.  In other words, without God's power by which he got his kingdom, he would not have it at all.  Verse 37 is not the definition of the gold head, something that came in verse 38. The definition continued because in verse 39 it said that "after you", meaning specifically the gold head because it had already been defined to be Nebuchadnezzar, a king.  Then it states what the next metal would be. Instead ,f stating the name of the next king line founder, which would have been Cyrus the Great, it said it was a kingdom. Now, in doing this, it is saying that the metal, silver, was now a kingdom. So, in doing this, first it says that a metal (gold) is a king, then says that a metal (silver) is a kingdom. So, it is giving us a succession of definitions for the metal such as the gold or the silver.

Since the metals of the image are the same as their corresponding beasts, the definitions must match. In Daniel 2, it specifically defines each metal as being first a king, and then a kingdom.  Then, in Daniel 7, it says:

Dan 7:17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. (the first definition)

Dan 7:23 Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. (the second definition)

Note that in this dream/vision, Daniel is again told first that the beasts are kings.  Then, in verse 23, it specifies that they (horns, but horns and beasts are equivalent) are kingdoms.  Note the same order as occurs in Daniel 2:38-39.  First they are defined as kings, then kingdoms.

Then in Daniel 8, it says:

Dan 8:22 As for that horn being broken, and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall stand up out of that nation, but not with its power. (definitions 2 and 3)

Here again, Daniel is told in verse 20 that the ram's horn's were kings (remember that beasts, heads, and horns always represent the same things).  In verse 21, it says that the goat is a king, and says that the great horn is also a king and specifies exactly who it is without actually naming him, thereby doing the same thing as was done in Daniel 2:38-39.  So, that repeats the first definitions found in Daniel 2 and 7.  Then, in verse 22, it specifies that the horns are kingdoms.  Finally, the last definition in verse 22 is that the great horn is a nation.  Again, the definitions are in the same exact order as those found in Daniel 2: first kings, then kingdoms, and finally nations.

Because the order is always the same in all three chapters, then a beast, head, horn (or metal in the case of the image of Daniel 2) is always defined first and foremost as a king.  This should always be the definition considered first for purposes of interpreting the beasts, heads, or horns or for deciding who is a beast, head, or horn. The fact that these definitions always occur in the same order in all three of these chapters indicates that this order is significant.  This order of things was done for a very specific purpose and should not be ignored.  God has an important message in that for us.

Therefore, it would seem that for a group of people to qualify as a horn, they must have a king or a leader of some type of their own choosing (not a foreign leader imposed over them) and likely with a defined territory, though perhaps a defined territory is not an absolute must.  But most importantly, the kings are to be counted first rather than tribes.  Logically, because a king or leader of some type is required, then some form of and degree of self-governance is required, though it does not necessitate that the control of a given king over his people or territory must be independent of control by others at a higher level.  There is nothing in the Bible that says they cannot be subordinate kings, and, in fact, it recognizes sub level kings . 

The most important point is this: Count the kings! Each and every one of the top level kings over any of the people groups must be counted so long as other criteria are met (the people group was within the borders of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and they affect God's people in some way, or in other words, they were Christian kingdoms). Count the top level kings if there are several kings per tribe (such as the Alani Tribe which was divided up into several groups, each of which had a separate king) or several tribes per king (such as the combination of the Vandals and the Alans in North Africa with one king over both groups). Count the kings, not the tribes. The tribe is not the criteria. Sub level kings may also need to be counted.

In the Bible we have several examples of kings who were at different levels.  There were kings at a higher level and also kings who were under the authority of those at a higher level.  We would probably call the lower level kings "sub kings".  In Daniel 2:37, Nebuchadnezzar is said to be a king of kings, implying that he was the top level king and there were other kings under his authority.  In Daniel 8, we have the example of the ram.  Daniel 8:20 explains that the two horns of the ram are the kings of Media and Persia.  The first horn would rise first and would initially be dominant over the second horn.  Daniel said that the second horn came up last and rose higher than the first horn, thereby indicating that the second horn would rise to power later than the first horn and would eventually become dominant over the first horn.

If you study the history of the Medes and Persians, you will learn that the Medes were in fact the larger of the two powers early in their history.  The Medes developed a substantial empire that they built up over time.  Eventually the Medes were the rulers of the Persians, but as time went by, the leader of the Persians, whose name was Cyrus the Great, went to war against the Medes, who were led by their king, Astyages.  In the last battle, the army of the Medes defected to the side of Cyrus the Great, so they gave the battle over to him.  Thereafter, Cyrus the Great allowed the Median king to live and apparently allowed him to continue as a sub level king until he died, after which Cyrus the Great became the king of both the Medes and the Persians but ruled as the king of the Persians.  Astyages apparently was not replaced upon his death, so that line did eventually end.  The point of all this, however, is that the Bible shows two horns upon the ram and says they represent the kings of Media and Persia and that one was a higher level king than the other.  Thus, from history and the Bible in Daniel 8, we know that God recognized both a top level king and a sub level king as horns on the ram. 

As a consequence of this, when counting kings, we should count both top level kings and, if needed, we should also count sub level kings.  This also means that when identifying the kings which are represented by the ten horns on the head of the dreadful beast, we must count not only the top level kings, but we must consider that sub level kings may be among them and should be counted as well if needed.  The possibility of that cannot be dismissed.  Sub level kings are more difficult to identify because we may have to dig into the details of history to find them.  The top level kings are generally easy to count because in most cases we need only to count the kingdoms to count the top level kings.  

The point of all this is that instead of counting the tribes, we should count the top level kings and sometimes sub level kings.  The kings are qualified to be counted as horns.  The tribes are not qualified.  You cannot count tribes and correctly understand the horns nor count them correctly.  Counting tribes is guaranteed to lead you down the wrong road, something that we have already seen with people trying to identify the ten leading or largest or most influential tribes.

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This section may seem to be a bit of a diversion from the main topic, but it will help you in your understanding of the entire issue if you take the time to go through it. After this section, we will return to the question of Biblical standards by which to judge who gets to be a horn, how you know whether a horn has been removed, and even count the kings.

There is the question of where the powers of Media and Persia rose from because these are represented by horns on the head of the ram of Daniel 8, the body and head of which must represent a power that God considered to be the power from which the kings of Media and Persia arose.  That is only logical because we know that the body of the leopard beast represented the kingdom run by Alexander the Great and his immediate successors, and the four heads were the four kings who divided his empire and ran it after Alexander's immediate successors.  In this case, one can say that the four heads arose from out of Alexander's kingdom. Likewise the same type of reasoning must be true in the case of the two horns on the ram. There is a kingdom from which they arose. The question is this: what is the name of that power?

When this beast is under discussion, most people mention the two horns but never ask the question concerning the identity of the beast upon whose head they sit.  But if you give it a little thought, to ask this question is sensible because it is no different than the ten horns on the head of the dreadful looking beast in Daniel 7, the body and head of which represented Rome.  We always want to know what the body and head of the dreadful looking beast represented (well, most of us want to know and we do know that Daniel certainly was puzzled by it and desperately wanted to know much more about it), so why not ask the same question about the ram?  Who did it represent?  Another question might be, why does nobody talk about this?

Of course, some people think that to ask this question is an act that is virtually sacrilegious because they do not understand the principles of interpretation.  They will insist that the body and horns of the ram are one power and one time period.  They fail to grasp the fact that their assumption is only that - an assumption - and not based in any known example presented in the Bible.  It is unfortunate that they think this way because they fail to fully understand what the Bible is trying to teach them as a result of their attitude.  There is evidence that this pattern is followed with both the leopard beast and the dreadful looking fourth beast of Daniel 7, so why should the same pattern not be followed in Daniel 8 in the case of the Ram? It is evident that the same pattern is used for the goat (with slight modification), so why should the ram be an exception without cause?

The body and head of the ram itself is not explained anywhere in the Bible, but research into history and use of a principle of interpretation named the Miller Principle (http://www.666man.net/rule.html#MillerPrinciple, which was named in honor of William Miller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher)) but has nothing whatsoever to do with his rules of interpretation) strongly points towards Assyria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria) as the power from which the Median and Persian kings are successor kingdoms.  This may be a bit of a surprise to some people, but please permit an explanation.

Before explaining the reasoning behind this, please note that Assyria was a power based in the region around the Tigris River (east of the Euphrates River) north of Babylon and south of Nineveh.  It tended to be in competition with Babylon for power in the region (introduction to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Assyrian_Empire).  Assyria is named for the city of Ashur (or Assur) that was within the Assyrian kingdom and its first capital.  For some basic history of this power, see these Internet web pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Neo-Assyrian_Empire, http://looklex.com/e.o/assyria.htm, http://www.allempires.com/empires/assyria/assyria1.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria.

In history you can learn that the Assyrians gained control of a rather large empire.  The greatest extent of this empire was reached in 671 BC under Esarhaddon when he succeeded in bringing Egypt under his control.  The maximum extent of the empire was maintained for a few years under his successor, Ashurbanipal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal, see the map of the Assyrian Empire at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Assyria.png), but Assyrian control over Egypt did not remain long.  The situation in Egypt was such that over the years previous to its conquest by the Assyrians, it had weakened considerably and was subsequently divided into 11 different kingdoms. Consequently, it was quite fractured when Assyria took it over.  Once Assyria gained control of it, the country was apparently administered as a divided kingdom rather than reuniting it and administering it as one.  It is known that the Assyrians appointed 20 local Egyptian princes to govern the country on their behalf. 

In time, one of these local rulers, by the name of Necho I, died in 664 BC and was succeeded by his son, a man by the name of Psamtik I (also called Psammeticus or Psammetichus or Psametik, see article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psammetichus_I).  Of course, at first he was able to hold office only because of the approval of his Assyrian overlords, but as time went on, he gained more power and was able to reunite Egypt and eventually drive out the Assyrians.  He was able to complete this process by 655 BC, though some sources suggest the Assyrians may have continued to assert their authority until 651 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Neo-Assyrian_Empire, an idea based on what is considered an unreliable source), but abandoned that effort in 651 BC because of attacks by the Elamites (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam).  In fact, in 655 BC, Psamtik I actually pursued the Assyrians all the way into Palestine, probably to drive home the point that he wanted them well away from his border (http://looklex.com/e.o/psametik_1.htm).  If the date of this is correct, then the Assyrians were not able to assert their authority over Egypt after 655 BC.  Once the Assyrians were driven out, Egypt was no longer part of the Assyrian empire. 

Beginning in 635 BC, the Assyrian empire began to collapse.  Over the years there were several moves by the Medes and the Babylonians to destroy the Assyrian empire and eventually, in 605 BC, through an alliance apparently put together by or before 612 BC, the process was completed.  You can read the short details of this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Assyrian_Empire#Assyria_falls.2C_627.E2.80.93605_BC.  Note that the main work of destroying the Assyrian Empire occurred in 612 BC when Nineveh (interesting information about Nineveh at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh) was destroyed by the alliance of the Medes and Babylonians, along with some Scythians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian), Urartians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu#Later_Period) and Susianians (Susiana is another word for Elam, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susiana).  There seems to be some discrepancy in the information presented on Wikipedia about the date for the battle of Megiddo, but it would appear that the best date is 605 BC because, when this battle took place, the battle the Egyptians were en route to was the battle of Carchemish, which apparently occurred in 605 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_(609_BC). 

Some sources suggest that Media formed its own independent kingdom in the early 8th century BC (possibly about 715 BC) and continued to 550 BC.  However, it appears that it was not independent for the entire time period for there is evidence of required payments to the Assyrians, something that would not have happened unless they became subject to them.  It appears that the Assyrians allowed the Median king to continue ruling as long as the required payments were made (http://looklex.com/e.o/media.htm), a situation in which a sub level king was allowed to rule under the higher level king. 

There is another reason to believe that the Medians were subjected to the Assyrians at least part of the time.  The kingdom of Media was situated in the northwestern part of what is today Iran.  The Assyrian Empire extended eastward as far as Western Iran, which means it would have had control of the Median Empire.  Note that the map shown on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Assyria.png shows the capital of Media, Ecbatana, well within the territory of the Assyrian Empire, which would represent conditions about 671 BC.  Thus, the Median Empire would have been "owned" by the Assyrians and they were not independent, a condition that apparently remained in place until 625 BC when the Median King, Cyaxares, apparently managed to drive the Assyrians out and reunited the Median Empire (http://looklex.com/e.o/media.htm).  You can see another map of the Assyrian empire at this web address: http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/UniversalHistory/THE_OLD_WORLD/ASSYRIA
/images/EmpireAssyria.gif.

Regarding the alliance that effectively destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC, such an alliance requires an agreement between the participating governments in order to coordinate their activities and enables them to peacefully divide the spoils of war after it is all over.  Such an agreement could also probably be called a decree, if you will, and such an agreement meets the condition for the Decree Transition Principle (http://www.666man.net/rule.html#Decree_Transition_Principle ).  This principle says that whenever there is a change from the body of a beast to several of its heads or horns (or from one head to several horns or several heads to several horns), there will always be a decree or agreement or change of government of some type to make it legal and which God marks so that everything is noted and dated from that point in time.  It will also answer a pending question that the participants have as to the destiny of the kingdom.  The agreement is the point at which God recognizes the change that has been made.  And in fact that is exactly what happened in the case of the rise of the Median and Persian horns on the ram.  There was an agreement between the Medes and Babylonians (and apparently included the Scythians, Urartians and Susianians) from which the rise of the Median and Persian horns could be marked, according to how God saw it.  The agreement and battle that followed in 612 answered the question of the destiny of the Assyrian Empire. 

This is comparable to how God handled the four headed leopard of Daniel 7.  The alliance agreement between Babylon and the Medes was made by their kings, Nabopolassar and Cyaxares respectively, for the purpose of coordinating their war against the Assyrian Empire and then dividing it after the war was won.  This also settled the question of what would happen to the Assyrian Empire, whether it would reassert itself or forever be divided.  It appears that the date of this agreement would have been just before they attacked Nineveh in 612 BC, though the agreement date itself is not available.  Yet this had to have been done or else there would not have been any coordinated activity against the Assyrian Empire.  It would have been virtually impossible.

The fact that the Babylonian kingdom came out of division of the Assyrian Empire after the events of 612 BC is the most prominent reason the lion of Daniel 7 had wings upon its back.  The wings certainly signified several different things, including speed of conquest.  As it happens, there was not a whole lot of conquest for Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar to conquer after the battles against the Assyrians because at least a third, if not half, of the Assyrian Empire was simply handed over to them by the agreement they had with the Medes after they managed to destroy Nineveh.  The Babylonian Empire just "suddenly" came into existence.  The conquest they had to do after the fall of the Assyrian Empire was over relatively quickly.  And, Nebuchadnezzar was not in the habit of losing battles, which certainly helped him.

The apparent reason for which there were no horns shown on the ram of Daniel 8 for the Scythians or Urartians is that they were never to affect the people of God.  In addition, nearly all the Assyrian Empire was divided between the Medes and Babylon which effectively placed the Scythians and Urartians completely out of touch with the Jewish nation.  It appears that the Scythians, Urartians and Susianians got little in the way of territory for their efforts, but did gain in other respects.  The Urartians were safer after the war because they had been threatened by the Assyrians many times, so that probably accomplished their main objective.  The Susianians of Elam were given their own territory back to them, but the empire of Elam which had existed before the Assyians conquered them in 645 BC never rose again (http://looklex.com/e.o/elam.htm).  See map of the Elamite Empire at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elam_Map.jpg and associated article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam).  You can see that the territory of Elam is apparently not included in the territory of the Persian Empire on the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes, but this map is as things were in about 600 BC.  However, Elamite independence did not last very long.  According to the article on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam, the Persians began their rule in Susa in 539 BC, which means that the Elamite kingdom was within the boundaries of the Persian Empire prior to that time.  In spite of such setbacks for them, it seems the Elamite culture survived for a long time and was even mentioned by writers as late as AD 1300.

Once the Assyrian Empire was destroyed, the Medes are believed to have taken their part of the Assyrian Empire, which consisted of the territory that extended from its western border (they were in what is today Iran) into what is today Southeastern Turkey, Syria, and Northern Iraq, and eventually expanded eastward beyond Iran into what once was called Bactria, which is part of today's Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.  Babylon took the plain of Susa down to the Persian Gulf.  Its territory formed an arc that was south of the territory taken by the Medes.  Starting at the Persian Gulf, it went northwest and then curved around to the southwest and south along the Mediterranean coast into Palestine towards Egypt.  Babylon had to use its military power to assert its claim over the region of Palestine.  

Some recent research by one author suggests that Babylon took the region of the Assyrian Empire from the heartland of Assyria westward into Turkey and south (see article at http://www.achemenet.com/ressources/souspresse/annonces/Rollinger-Iran.pdf and also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu), with the kingdom of Media taking everything east of that.  In this scenario, the Medes had no territory west of the heartland of Assyria, but this is questionable.  One other source, http://looklex.com/e.o/media.htm, states that the Assyrian Empire was divided into several Median kingdoms with Median rulers, a statement that may be true.  How accurate that information is remains to be seen.  Another source, http://members.tripod.com/historel/orient/06mesop.htm, without citing references (and is not written with the best English, probably because the writer may not be a native speaker of English), says that "the country was divided in two parts: the plain of Susa went to the Babylonians, whilst the Medes got the mountainous region of Anshan."  It would have been better had this person cited references because the information cannot be verified.  But it does suggest that things may not have been divided in the way it has been thought in the past. 

However, contrary to this new idea, it is known that in 585 BC the Medes (possibly under Cyaxares as he died in 585 BC) attacked the kingdom of Lydia (in what is today Western Turkey).  The Babylonians and Cilicians (these people apparently lived on the southern coast of today's Turkey) intervened and a peace treaty was negotiated setting the Halys River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halys_River) as the boundary between Media and Lydia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia).  If Babylon was the actual holder of the territory from the Assyrian heartland westward, then this battle could not have occurred because the Median kingdom border would have been far to the east of Lydia.  So, it appears that there is some information missing from our picture of history of that area and time period.  We possibly don't know all the details even yet.  Is it possible that Babylon actually did take the heartland of Assyria and west of that into Turkey, and later the Medes took it from them?  We do not know and apparently have no evidence that this happened, but it might have occurred without leaving some record of it behind.  However, it is known that the Medes and Persians later conquered the Babylonian Empire, so it is not impossible that they started out by first taking the Assyrian heartland all the way to the border with Lydia and then got into a battle with Lydia at a later time.  We just do not have information that this happened, but it seems reasonable that it did.  Until the facts are known, all we can do is speculate.

Now, this means that as a basic fact of history, there were two major powers that came up as successor kingdoms to the Assyrian Empire at the time of the agreement to divide the Assyrian Empire, which were the Medes and the Babylonians.  Therefore, it would appear that the ram in Daniel 8 should show two horns, one being the Babylonians, the other being the Medes.  However, the explanation is not what one would expect.  Instead, the angel explained to Daniel that the two horns represent the kings of Media and Persia.  Babylon is not mentioned.  Why is there no Babylonian horn?  Probably the best explanation for this is that the vision of Daniel 8 concerned history soon to take place, which was to be after the time of Babylon.  The basic details of Babylon had already been revealed through the visions recorded in Daniel 2 and 7, so was not needed in the vision of Daniel 8.  When this vision occurred, Babylon still existed as an empire, but was very soon to be a "has been" empire.  For this reason God did not show a Babylonian horn on the ram in the vision recorded in Daniel 8. 

The reason the body of the ram was shown is to give us the detail of the point of origin for the rise to power of the Medes and Persians.  The body of the ram does, of course, refer to the Assyrian Empire, something which is not represented by any other beast in Daniel. 

Another problem concerns Egypt, which became independent of Assyria by 655 BC.  There was no Egyptian horn on the Ram and it had not previously been shown as a metal on the image of Daniel 2 nor had it been shown as a beast in Daniel 7.  One could say that in the case of Rome, all of the territory of the Western Roman Empire that it ruled at one time or another was considered part of the empire from which the ten horns arose, so why should not Egypt be included as part of the territory from which successor kingdoms of the Assyrian Empire arose?  This is a logical question because Egypt certainly did affect God's people.  This appears to be one of those things where God made a choice about what he wanted to show for reasons that he has not fully revealed.  However, what can be said is that God had already revealed to Daniel that Babylon was the power that would affect the people of God.  At that time, most of the people of God lived either in the land of Judah or else in Babylon, not in Egypt.  If you recall from references above, the Assyrian Empire was largely destroyed in 612 BC and the remains of it was finished by 605 BC. 

In 605 BC, the army of Babylon came to Jerusalem and took the city, deporting many people to the city of Babylon, including four young Hebrew men whom we read about in the book of Daniel.  Once the agreement between the Babylonians and the Medes was created and Assyria was largely destroyed in 612 BC, then per the agreement, ownership of Palestine legally went to Babylon, not Egypt.  The Assyrians had owned and ruled it before (see map of Assyrian gains at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deportation_of_Jews_by_Assyrians.svg).  Thus, the empire that God had already said would affect his people was Babylon rather than Egypt.  It would appear that because of the very limited geographic localization of the people of God in that time period, God did not wish to confuse the picture by introducing the Egyptians as another power that would directly affect his people, though its effects would be relatively minor compared to the effect the Babylonians would have in that time period.  It is true that the king of Egypt came up through Israel while on his way to the battle of Carchemish (605 BC, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carchemish and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Megiddo_(609_BC) ) and the king of the Jews came out to do battle against him and was killed.  But because the legal title to the land was with the Babylonians according to the agreement of 612 BC, the Egyptians were apparently not given status of a horn on the Assyrian beast (the ram of Daniel 8).  God may have had other reasons not revealed to us.  We have historical evidence that in later times, the Egyptians did have a strong influence on the people of God because many of them went to live in Egypt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora).

A final problem is the fact that one of the two horns on the ram represented Persia.  It seems this should only happen if Persia somehow was a part of the empire of the Medes that came under their control and therefore became a part of that which the Assyrians controlled or had controlled. This had to have happened before the agreement of 612 BC between the Medes and the Babylonians because the Assyrian Empire was effectively destroyed in that year, with cleanup afterwards until 605 BC.  Given that the Medes kicked the Assyrians out of the heartland of the Median Empire by 625 BC, that may rule out the Persians being directly under the control of the Assyrians when the agreement dividing the empire was created in 612 BC.  It appears that the exact time when the Medes gained control over the Persians is not precisely known.  What is known is limited.  Herodotus (born about 484 BC and died about 430 BC -420 BC), who wrote the first serious history of the ancient world, wrote that the Median king Phraortes (reigned 675 BC – 653 BC) brought the Persians under his control.  If true, then the Persians would have been under the control of the Assyrians because the Assyrians had control of the Median Empire during this time.  This may be an accurate report as there apparently are some contemporary sources among the Assyrians suggesting this to be true.  If true, then the Assyrian Empire extended farther into Iran than is commonly shown on the maps of its empire.

It is also possible that the Median kingdom, which would have included the Persians, came about later under Cyaxares, a Median king who ruled from 625 BC to 585 BC.  If Cyaxares brought Persia under his control, it very likely would have happened when he united the Median kingdom in 625 BC or very soon thereafter.  In this case, it would have made the Persians subject to a power that had been under the control of the Assyrians, which would have made it, in a sense, one of the successor kingdoms of the Assyrians because the agreement dividing the Assyrian empire was not executed until the year 612 BC.  Because the agreement included the territory of the Medes, then with the Persians under their control, the Persians would have automatically been included.  Therefore, the Persians had to have been brought under the control of the Medes before the agreement of 612 BC in order for Persia to have been considered a part of the territory to be divided, a condition necessary for it to show up as a horn on the Assyrian beast (the ram) of Daniel 8.  While we do not know exactly when they were joined to the Medes, based on the historical information available to us, we should be able to say with reasonable confidence that the Persians were part of the Median Empire by the time of the agreement in 612 BC.  For more information, see the article subsection The kingdom of the Medes in the article "Iran, ancient." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009.

It is interesting that the article about the Median Empire on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_Empire) has this to say about Media and Babylon: "Although Herodotus considered Cyrus as grandson of Astyages, his account apparently was based on folk traditions and cannot be reconciled with historical data. Babylonian sources such as Dream Text of Nabonidus do not speak of him as the grandson of Astyages and his vassal. They refer to him only as the king of Anshan/Anzan (i.e., of Persia, the present-day Fārs), while Astyages (Ištumegu) is named the king of Umman-manda." (Their reference source for this information is: http://www.iranica.com/newsite/index.isc?Article=http://www.iranica.com
/newsite/articles/unicode/ot_grp10/ot_media_20060106.html).  However, to some extent, this is contradicted by contemporary Assyrian sources and other contemporary Babylonian sources.  Perhaps there is more for us to learn about this, but given that the Bible shows the Persian horn growing out of the beast that must be Assyria, it is clear that the Assyrian and other Babylonian sources are right about this much: Persia was part of the Median Empire.  The Dream Text of Nabonidus may simply not have reported everything known at the time about the Medes and Persians, so the information given there is incomplete.  The information that was incomplete may have included whether Astyages was the maternal grandfather of Cyrus the Great.

In the book The Persians (Gene R. Garthwaite, Blackwell Publishing, http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/history, Malden, Massachusetts, USA, copyright 2005 and 2007, page 28), the author claims that no actual sources say that the Persians were subject to the Medes when Cyrus the Great conquered the Medes in about 550 BC.  However, on the same page, he observes that Babylonian sources of the time reported that when this happened, the Persians were Vassals of the Medes.  Why does he disbelieve them?  That is uncertain and a bit puzzling. 

In conclusion, the body of the ram represented the Assyrian Empire from which the kingdoms of the Medes and Babylonians emerged.  It appears to be the only logical solution to explain how the two horns of Media and Persia sat on the head of a beast, a beast which clearly is their "ancestor". 

Because the Persians became more dominant later in the Median Empire, the second horn on the ram comes up later and rises higher than the first horn to show that it came to power later and eventually became the more dominant of the two.  Events would seem to then require that its appearance would have been by 612, with its growth and rising higher than the other horn to come after the agreement of 612. The first horn does not fall off once the second horn starts to come up (unlike the great horn on the goat of Daniel 8, which broke off to indicate that the previous line had died), but remains on the ram to show that the two horns remain together for at least a while. Thus, there were two levels of kings within the Persian Empire for a time.  Both were recognized by God and one was subordinate to the other.  Therefore, sub level kings can be horns on beasts.

There seems to be a central point in all the beasts, such as the leopard and dreadful looking beasts of Daniel 7 which is that the beasts, and any heads or horns they have are shown only if they will directly or significantly effect God's people.  And, they will be shown in the order in which they will have their effect upon God's people.  Thus, God's central concern in all the visions of Daniel and Revelation is the welfare of his people.

Do note that once the Medes regained their independence (625 BC), they began to extend their empire.  It is believed that they took territory eastward all the way into what was once Bactria, today part of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.  Eventually the Persians took on the Medes and defeated them but allowed their king, Astyages (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astyages), to continue to rule his people under the control of the Persians, though one source suggests he was held captive in the court of Cyrus until he died.  Whether that is true is uncertain but it seems unlikely based on other information.  Once he died, he evidently was not replaced, but instead, Cyrus the Great (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great) accepted the Median crown, but ruled as king of Persia.  From then on, it was the Persian Empire.  Eventually the Persians took on the Babylonian empire and conquered it in 539 BC.  Thereafter, Babylon ceased to exist as an empire and was just another province in the Persian Empire.

In summary, where several heads or horns exist on a beast, we can assume that the heads are probably independent of one another (and the horns are probably independent of one another also), but we have to keep in mind that there may be an exception to that.  It is possible for one head or horn to be subordinate to the other.  What this boils down to is that we should count the kings that will affect the people of God and be sure that we consider and possibly count sublevel kings as well as the top level kings.