...
"Ev'n to the utmost west he would have gone,
Where Tethys' lap receives the setting sun."
--"_Pharsalia._"
But in the prime of his years, Alexander was cut down, and Rome had yet
more time in which to develop its strength preparatory to the deciding
contest for the mastery of all the world. Sure it is that after Grecia,
there followed the Roman Empire, the strongest and mightiest and most
crushing of them all. This fourth universal empire the prophet proceeded
to describe, as represented by the legs of iron in Nebuchadnezzar's
dream of the great image.
Rome
"The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh
in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these,
shall it break in pieces and bruise."
How appropriately the iron of the image fits the character of the fourth
great empire! Gibbon, the historian, calls it "the iron monarchy of
Rome." It broke in pieces the kingdoms, subduing all, just as prophecy
had declared so long before. As iron is strongest of the common metals,
so according to the prophecy--"as iron that breaketh all these"--this
fourth kingdom was to be more powerful than any before it.
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