2:41 kingdom shall be divided. The two divisions of the Roman empire, centered at Rome and Constantinople, respectively, continued for a long time, as suggested by the length of the legs. After the fall of political Rome, the empire continued in ecclesiastical form, as the Roman and Byzantine Catholic churches. In fact, in an extended sense, they continue even into the modern era, in the context, not of political unity, but of culture, language, legal structure, civilization and government. The change from political Rome to ecclesiastical Rome, at the knees of the image, as it were, became the Holy Roman empire in the west and the complex of Orthodox churches in the east. The western branch expanded throughout western Europe and into the Americas, the eastern into northern Eurasia, but the essential character of the old Roman empire persisted in both for many centuries.

2:42 partly broken. Gradually, the feudal economies of the various kingdoms began to disintegrate, with the king (or czar, or emperor, or other monarch) yielding more and more of his power to his subjects.

2:43 seed of men. The change of character and directions suggested by the change in the image from legs to feet apparently marks the rapid rise to dominance of the “seed of men” in the two divisions of the old empire of Rome. In the West, the American revolution was the first of many republics and democracies. In the East, the later emergence of communism had similar implications, but this also gave way to kingdoms “partly strong and partly broken,” continual conflict between totalitarianism and populism in the various nations.