The adversaries" exaggerated their claim that all the rulers of the kingdom had concurred with their proposal. Obviously Daniel had not agreed to it. Nevertheless it was believable enough that Darius did not object or consult Daniel. Furthermore, the plan catered to the king"s vanity. The proposed statute evidently covered petitions of a religious nature-rather than requests of any type-since a general ban, even a permanent ban, would have been absurd. Perhaps the antagonistic rulers also aimed at impressing the Babylonians with the importance of remaining loyal to their new Persian king. In any case, they promoted humanism, the philosophy that puts man in the place of God. [source][source][source]
". . . this one king was to be regarded for the time being as the only representative of Deity." [1][source]
"Parsism [2] did not indeed require men to regard the king as a god in his own proper nature, but to pay him supreme homage as the representative of Ormusd." [3][source]
"The probability is that Darius regarded this act as a pledge of loyalty to himself and a token of their desire to respect his authority to the utmost." [4][source]
The Babylonians burned criminals alive (ch4), but the Persians, who worshipped fire, threw them to the lions. [5][source]