Around 333 BC, the Persian Empire was overcome by what had begun as an insignificant small kingdom. The kingdom was Greece.
The rise of Greece was so swift. In the vision of Daniel the nation was represented by a leopard and the swiftness of its conquests by four wings. But there was more strangeness to the form of the leopard: it had four heads!
6After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
What did these symbols mean? In chapter 8 Daniel narrated another vision about Greece which made clear the meaning of the four heads. That is covered in the next chapter of this book. But for now we can briefly explain that there was once a man called Alexander who made Greece to become a mighty empire. He conquered and subdued many kingdoms and thus presided over an immense empire. However, after Alexander died the empire got divided under the headships of his four generals – Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy.