The Greek exists in two recensions, those of the Septuagint and Theodotion. Most scholars maintain a Greek original, but this is by no means certain. Marshall (Hastings’ Bib Dict. i. 268) argues for an Aramaic, and regards Gasters’s Aramaic text [Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology (1894), pp. 280-290, 312-317; (1895) 75-94] as of primary value in this respect, but this is doubtful.
Literature.—Fritzsche’s Handbuch zu den Apoc.; Ball in the Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 344 sqq.; Schürer,3 Gesch. iii. 332 sqq.; and the articles in the Ency. Bibl., Bible Dict., and Jewish Encyc.
The Greek text is best given in Swete iii., and the Syriac will be found in Walton’s Polyglot, Lagarde and Neubauer’s Tobit.
Song of the Three Children.—This section is composed of the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of Azariah, Ananias and Misael, and was inserted after iii. 23 of the canonical text of Daniel. According to Fritzsche, König, Schürer, &c., it was composed in Greek and added to the Greek translation. On the other hand, Delitzsch, Bissell, Ball, &c., maintain a Hebrew original. The latter view has been recently supported by Rothstein, Apocr. und Pseud. i. 173-176, who holds that these additions were made to the text before its translation into Greek. These additions still preserve, according to Rothstein, a fragment of the original text, i.e. verses 23-28, which came between verses 23 and 24 of chapter iii. of the canonical text. They certainly fill up excellently a manifest gap in this text. “The Song of the Three Children” was first added after the verses just referred to, and subsequently the Prayer of Azariah was inserted before these verses.
Literature.—Ball in the Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 305 sqq.; Rothstein in Kautzsch’s Apocr. und Pseud. i. 173 sqq.; Schürer,3 Gesch. iii. 332 sqq. (R. H. C.)
DANIEL (Danil), of Kiev, the earliest Russian travel-writer,
and one of the leading Russian travellers in the middle ages. He
journeyed to Syria and other parts of the Levant about 1106–1107.
He was the igumen, or abbot, of a monastery probably
near Chernigov in Little Russia: some identify him with one
Daniel, bishop of Suriev (fl. 1115–1122). He visited Palestine
in the reign of Baldwin I., Latin king of Jerusalem (1100–1118),
and apparently soon after the crusading capture of Acre (1104);
he claims to have accompanied Baldwin, who treated him with
marked friendliness, on an expedition against Damascus (c. 1107).
Though Daniel’s narrative, beginning (as it practically ends) at
Constantinople, omits some of the most interesting sections of
his journey, his work has considerable value. His picture of the
Holy Land preserves a record of conditions (such as the Saracen
raiding almost up to the walls of Christian Jerusalem, and the
friendly relations subsisting between Roman and Eastern
churches in Syria) peculiarly characteristic of the time; his
account of Jerusalem itself is remarkably clear, minute and
accurate; his three excursions—to the Dead Sea and Lower
Jordan (which last he compares to a river of Little Russia, the
Snov), to Bethlehem and Hebron, and towards Damascus—gave
him an exceptional knowledge of certain regions. In spite
of some extraordinary blunders in topography and history, his
observant and detailed record, marked by evident good faith, is
among the most valuable of medieval documents relating to
Palestine: it is also important in the history of the Russian
language, and in the study of ritual and liturgy (from its description
of the Easter services in Jerusalem, the Descent of the Holy
Fire, &c.). Several Russian friends and companions, from Kiev
and Old Novgorod, are recorded by Daniel as present with him at
the Easter Eve “miracle,” in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
There are seventy-six MSS. of Daniel’s Narrative, of which only five are anterior to A.D. 1500; the oldest is of 1475 (St Petersburg, Library of Ecclesiastical History 9/1086). Three editions exist, of which I. P. Sakharov’s (St Petersburg, 1849) is perhaps the best known (in Narratives of the Russian People, vol. ii. bk. viii. pp. 1-45). See also the French version in Itinéraires russes en orient, ed Me B. de Khitrovo (Geneva, 1889) (Société de l’orient latin); and the account of Daniel in C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, ii. 155-174. (C. R. B.)
DANIEL, GABRIEL (1649–1728), French Jesuit historian, was
born at Rouen on the 8th of February 1649. He was educated
by the Jesuits, entered the order at the age of eighteen, and
became superior at Paris. He is best known by his Histoire de
France depuis l’établissement de la monarchie française (first
complete edition, 1713), which was republished in 1720, 1721,
1725, 1742, and (the last edition, with notes by Father Griffet)
1755–1760. Daniel published an abridgment in 1724 (English
trans., 1726), and another abridgment was published by Dorival
in 1751. Though full of prejudices which affect his accuracy,
Daniel had the advantage of consulting valuable original sources.
His Histoire de la milice française, &c. (1721) is superior to his
Histoire de France, and may still be consulted with advantage.
Daniel also wrote a by no means successful reply to Pascal’s
Provincial Letters, entitled Entretiens de Cléanthe et d’Eudoxe sur
les lettres provinciales (1694); two treatises on the Cartesian
theory as to the intelligence of the lower animals, and other
works.
See Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, t. ii.
DANIEL, SAMUEL (1562–1619), English poet and historian,
was the son of a music-master, and was born near Taunton, in
Somersetshire, in 1562. Another son, John Daniel, was a
musician, who held some offices at court, and was the author of
Songs for the Lute, Viol and Voice (1606). In 1579 Samuel was
admitted a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he
remained for about three years, and then gave himself up to the
unrestrained study of poetry and philosophy. The name of
Samuel Daniel is given as the servant of Lord Stafford, ambassador
in France, in 1586, and probably refers to the poet. He
was first encouraged and, if we may believe him, taught in verse,
by the famous countess of Pembroke, whose honour he was
never weary of proclaiming. He had entered her household as
tutor to her son, William Herbert. His first known work, a
translation of Paulus Jovius, to which some original matter is
appended, was printed in 1585. His first known volume of verse
is dated 1592; it contains the cycle of sonnets to Delia and the
romance called The Complaint of Rosamond. Twenty-seven of
the sonnets had already been printed at the end of Sir Philip
Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella without the author’s consent.
Several editions of Delia appeared in 1592, and they were very
frequently reprinted during Daniel’s lifetime. We learn by
internal evidence that Delia lived on the banks of Shakespeare’s
river, the Avon, and that the sonnets to her were inspired by her
memory when the poet was in Italy. To an edition of Delia and
Rosamond, in 1594, was added the tragedy of Cleopatra, a severe
study in the manner of the ancients, in alternately rhyming
heroic verse, diversified by stiff choral interludes. The First
Four Books of the Civil Wars, an historical poem in ottava rima,
appeared in 1595. The bibliography of Daniel’s works is attended
with great difficulty, but as far as is known it was not until 1599
that there was published a volume entitled Poetical Essays,
which contained, besides the “Civil Wars,” “Musophilus,” and
“A letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius,” poems in Daniel’s
finest and most mature manner. About this time he became
tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the countess of Cumberland.
On the death of Spenser, in the same year, Daniel received the
somewhat vague office of poet-laureate, which he seems, however,
to have shortly resigned in favour of Ben Jonson. Whether it
was on this occasion is not known, but about this time, and at the
recommendation of his brother-in-law, Giovanni Florio, he was
taken into favour at court, and wrote a Panegyric Congratulatorie
offered to the King at Burleigh Harrington in Rutlandshire, in
ottava rima. In 1603 this poem was published, and in many cases
copies contained in addition his Poetical Epistles to his patrons
and an elegant prose essay called A Defence of Rime (originally
printed in 1602) in answer to Thomas Campion’s Observations on
the Art of English Poesie, in which it was contended that rhyme
was unsuited to the genius of the English language. In 1603,
moreover, Daniel was appointed master of the queen’s revels.
In this capacity he brought out a series of masques and pastoral
tragi-comedies,—of which were printed A Vision of the Twelve
Goddesses, in 1604; The Queen’s Arcadia, an adaptation of
Guarini’s Pastor Fido, in 1606; Tethys Festival or the Queenes
Wake, written on the occasion of Prince Henry’s becoming a
Knight of the Bath, in 1610; and Hymen’s Triumph, in honour
