Daniel is the king's feast-companion and is glorious above all his friends. A What looking towards Bel they describe for us, Daniel. 5. Do you not see, he says, how much he eats and drinks? Good heavens, what a proof and indication of divinity, to eat and drink so much! Daniel did not say: Is this, I ask, God? The king was foolish, to be sure, but he was fattened by the abundance of his wealth. I speak to you of God, who created heaven and earth; but you offer to me a man who is the product of an avid belly? This cannot be God in any way: for God is not hungry, nor is he weary. But he himself does not wish to contend with arguments, but overcomes with facts. And he himself defined the punishment. That the affair of Bel was indeed what the Vulgate noted is clear from the fact that it is prefixed to chapter 12 in my Codex: this belongs, I think, to the history of Bel, and to the times of Cyrus, not to the history of Susanna and to Daniel's youth, but departs to the contrary, and little likely describes Daniel as having been then in the twelfth year of his age, who even Pseudo-Ignatius moves to error. Nor does anyone have to fear this diversity, in a matter especially so obscure.
B Palpably and before the eyes of all, he does not eat, but rather? How could the priests not perceive that they were about to be convicted through their own deception? When God ordains, you should marvel at nothing. And he killed them, he says. What then again regarding the dragon? Does someone worship a beast? And he slew this one too. You see how foolish, how cowardly are the kings of the Persians? 29. He handed over Daniel. For what reason, after the victory which was so brilliant? But Habakkuk, he says, brought lunch for Daniel. Behold the miracle. For was it not possible for it to be brought to him from elsewhere, but from Judea? This was agreeable to the prophet, so that he might not do the same things again, as in the case of the eunuch, and so that he might not, by supposing the table to be polluted, intensify his hunger. Whence did he know Habakkuk? From the affinity of language and voice. He was to be the herald of a most great miracle to those living in Judea. Who could fail to fear the beasts? This man indeed was eating, but those were fasting. Be it so, the righteous man's body was avoided—for what reason also the food? Just as some muzzle and bridle held them in.
TO THE FOLLOWING HOMILY
(...) he whose vigor, acuteness of mind, and dialectic skill men had often experienced. Hence, you admire the modesty, piety, and nobility of spirit of Flavian, who so willingly admitted before his own presbyter, subject to him, that he was surpassed in doctrine and eloquence. Chrysostom, however, as he was moderate and averse to his own praise, at the outset vehemently complains that a task had been laid upon him by his teacher, who was truly the fountain of doctrine, and who could properly undertake this province. But then he repels the argument of his adversaries so vigorously and so clearly that you do not know whether you should admire more his eloquence or the force of his dialectic.
It is certain, therefore, that this discourse was delivered in Antioch in the great church, as the title indicates, in the presence of Flavian, when Chrysostom already enjoyed great estimation among the Antiochenes. Hence it is that this other homily of Chrysostom, whose occasion for being delivered it was, and whose notes Chrysostom exhibits in some few places here—as we said above—does not now appear among those ten homilies which Chrysostom delivered against the Anomoeans at Antioch: those which we edited in the first volume, with the addition of the eleventh and twelfth, which were delivered at Constantinople, also against the Anomoeans. For those ten homilies were delivered in the year in which he himself was made presbyter and began to preach, namely the year 386, and in the following year 387. But this homily, like that which preceded it, was delivered after those, when Chrysostom had gained for himself by his assiduous duty of preaching the name of Antioch. Of the year, however, we have nothing at all.
We have edited our Latin translation by the faith of our Ottobonian exemplar.