The difference between the ten horns of the Dragon and the ten horns of the Beast of the Sea, consists in the ten upon the Beast being diademed, while the ten upon the Dragon are not. This indicates that the Beast symbol represents things concurrent with the Horns in the exercise of sovereignty; while the Dragon, as far as old Rome is co concerned, had to do with the sovereignty of the heads before the horns ha received their kingdoms.

John in the wilderness saw the horns in what may be termed the Dragon-state, and writes of them thus, "the ten horns which thou sawest", said the angel to him, "are", or represent, "ten kings", sovereignties, "which have received no kingdom as yet" (Apoc. 17:12 )

This was their apocalyptic status until the Sixth Head of the Dragon had been wounded. After this had been slain almost to death, then we may look for the ascending of the Beast out of the abyss, in the dragon-horns receiving their kingdoms at the cost of the Dragon power (Apoc. 11:7; 13:1).

We have seen that the heads were interpreted to John by the revealing angel, topographically and politically; thus conferring upon them a two-fold signification. So it is with the Horns: they are to be interpreted chronographically and politically. Until they had received their kingdom, they were mostly chorographic appendages of the Dragon-empire; that is, they existed as provinces, territorial regions, of the dominion, upon which ten kingdoms were afterwards established by the barbarians, who founded the seventh head upon the seven mountains; wounded the Dragon's Sixth Head, which was afterwards "healed", and subverted the Dragon's jurisdiction over extensive regions.

Those regions were styled, by anticipation, horns - undiademed horns. In the time of John, they might be enumerated as, Greece, Moesia, Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhoetia, Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The Dragon had then, and afterwards, other provinces in the east; but those only are to be reckoned as horn-provinces upon which kingdoms "receiving power as kings one hour with the Beast's" eighth head, horns sustaining the Papacy, were established. The political organization of the peoples that was developed upon these Dragonhorn provinces, became the apocalyptic Beast of the Sea; while Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, remained to the Dragon, as at this day.