An angry mob approaches the palace of King Cyrus to demand that the prophet Daniel be thrown into the lions' den as punishment for killing a dragon that the people had worshipped as a god. The king, having been accused of turning against his own people to become a Jew, gives in to the crowd and delivers Daniel. Medieval Christians saw the reluctant Cyrus turning a righteous man over to seemingly certain death as an Old Testament prefiguration of the New Testament story of Pilate and Jesus, seen on the facing page.