In Daniel 8:2-6 he tells how a two-horned ram is attacked by a shaggy male goat that had a single horn, between its eyes. Daniel 8:7, 8 goes on to say:

¹⁶ “And I saw it coming into close touch with the ram, and it began showing bitterness toward it, and it proceeded to strike down the ram and to break its two horns, and there proved to be no power in the ram to stand before it. So it threw it to the earth and trampled it down, and the ram proved to have no deliverer out of its hand.

The ram that you saw possessing the two horns stands for the kings of Media and Persia. And the hairy he-goat stands for the king of Greece; and as for the great horn that was between its eyes, it stands for the first king.

18. After the downfall of what world power did the vision apply, who were the symbolic horns of the “ram,” and who was the symbolic single horn of the “goat”?

¹⁸ This prophecy begins to apply, therefore, after Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian brought about the downfall of Babylon in the autumn of the year 539 B.C.E. and the Medo-Persian Empire was established as the Fourth World Power of Bible history. This Empire, which grew to greater size than that of Babylon, eastward and westward and southward, continued its world domination from 539 to 331 B.C.E. (Dan. 5:1–6:28; 11:1, 2) Greece, under the leadership of Alexander the Macedonian king, finished the conquest of the Persian Empire by the year 331 B.C.E.