I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. The Septuagint Version has been translated from the same text; but the word translated "because" is rendered τότε, "then," according to the usual meaning of the word.
Theodotion has a doublet. The Peshitta is much briefer, "I saw that this beast was slain, and its body destroyed, and it was cast into the flame of fire." The voice of the great words; that is, blasphemies.
The punishment of blasphemy among the Babylonians was burning. On account of the blasphemies of the little horn, the whole empire to which it belonged was destroyed. If we regard the fourth beast as Rome, and the little horn the imperial dignity, it was on account of its blasphemies that the empire really ceased.
The blasphemous claim to divinity wrought madness in the minds of such youths as Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus. The process might be a slow one. God had his purpose in the history of the race to work out by the Roman Empire; yet it was none the less the madness of the emperors that brought the empire down.
The way the provinces were harried by barbarians East and West could well be described as burning the body of it with fire.