A book of the *Evangelical Demonstration* are extant. For he, explaining the entire vision, speaks thus: "I think that these things differ in no way from the vision of the prophet. For as the prophet saw a great sea, so the king saw a huge statue. And again, as the prophet saw four beasts, which, interpreting them, he converted into four kingdoms, so the king, by means of gold and silver and bronze and iron, signified four kingdoms. And again, as the prophet saw the division of the ten horns [of the last] beast, and three horns crushed by one; and the king likewise perceived in the extremities of the statue a part of iron and a part of earthenware: and besides these, as the prophet, after the vision of the four kingdoms, saw the Son of Man having received authority and power and rule over all; so too the king appeared to himself to see a stone crushing the entire statue and becoming a great mountain and filling the sea. And rightly so. For it was fitting for the king, ensnared by the vanity of life and admiring the beauty of sensible objects as if they were a painted panel hung with inscriptions, to compare the life of all men to a great statue; but it was fitting for the prophet to call this great and manifold fluctuation of life similar to a vast sea. It was proper, I say, for the king, who looked up to the metals esteemed as precious among men—gold, silver, bronze, and iron—to liken to these materials the dynasties that were potent among men at various times; but it was not unbecoming for the prophet to designate the same kingdoms by the figures of beasts, B fittingly, to be sure, to the character of the empires. Finally, to the king, as is natural, being proud and puffed up by the long-standing domination of his ancestors, the conversion of things and the end of earthly kingdoms is shown: for the purpose of curing the swelling of his mind, and so that he might judge nothing among men to be stable, except the consummation of the kingdom of God over all mortals. For the first domination of the Assyrians, which the gold portended, was to be succeeded in the second place by the empire of the Persians, demonstrated by silver. Then a third, the kingdom of the Macedonians, which the bronze signified. After which the fourth, of the Romans, stronger than those which had preceded it: wherefore it is compared to iron, and it is said of it: *The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron.* And just as iron thins and tames all things, so this kingdom will crush and subjugate all things. After all these things, the kingdom of God is to be perceived in the stone that crushes the whole statue. Then the prophet, in harmony with these, does not see the universal kingdom of God that is to be in the last place, until the aforementioned four dynasties were described in the discourse by the figures of C four beasts. For I believe that the visions were presented to both the king and the prophet concerning these four kingdoms only, and no others, because the people of the Jews were oppressed in servitude by these kingdoms, beginning from the times of the prophet." D