Daniel 8:6,7 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

He came to the ram, &c.— In these two verses we have an account of the Grecians overthrowing the Persian empire. The ram had before, Daniel 8:4 pushed westward; and the Persians, in the reign of Darius Hystaspis and Xerxes, had poured down with great armies into Greece: but now the Greeks in return carried their arms into Asia, and the he-goat invaded the ram that had invaded him. And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power. We can hardly read these words without having some image of Darius's army standing and guarding the river Granicus, and of Alexander on the other side, with his forces plunging in, swimming across the stream, and rushing on the enemy with all the fire and fury which can be conceived. And I saw him close unto the ram: he had several close engagements or set battles with the king of Persia, and particularly at the Granicus in Phrygia, at the straits of Issus in Cilicia, and in the plains of Arbela in Assyria. And he was moved with choler against him, for the cruelties which the Persians had exercised against the Greeks, and for Darius's attempting sometimes to corrupt his soldiers to betray him, and sometimes his friends to destroy him; so that he would not listen to the most advantageous offers of peace, but determined to pursue the Persian king, not as a generous and noble enemy, but as a prisoner and a murderer, to the death which he deserved. And he smote the ram, and brake his two horns: he subdued Persia and Media, with other provinces and kingdoms of the Persian empire; and it is remarkable, that in Persia he barbarously sacked and burned the royal city of Persepolis, the capital of the empire; and in Media Darius was seized and made prisoner by some of his own treacherous subjects, who not long afterwards basely murdered him.—And there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: he conquered wherever he came; routed all their forces, took all the cities and castles, and intirely subverted and ruined the Persian empire. And there was none that could deliver him out of his hand; not even his numerous armies could defend the king of Persia, though his forces in the battle of Issus amounted to six hundred thousand men; and in that of Arbela, to ten or eleven hundred thousand; whereas the whole number of Alexander's was not more than forty-seven thousand in either engagement. See Bishop Newton, vol. 2: p. 13.