Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (16 page)

134.
event
: outcome.

141.
glory
: effulgence or brilliant, radiant light (see 63n, 117n).
Glory
is a word with a broad range of meaning in the poem (cp. in Book 1, ll. 39, 110, 239, 370, 594, 612; see Rumrich 1987, 3–52).
extinct:
(be) put out, extinguished.

144.
Of force
: perforce; cp. 4.813.

147.
support
: endure.

148.
suffice
: satisfy.

149–50.
thralls/By right of war:
slaves by conquest. “The effects and consequences of this right are infinite so that there is nothing so unlawful but the lord may do it to his slaves … there are no torments but what may with impunity be imposed on them, nothing to be done but what they may be forced to do by all manner of rigor and severity.” (Grotius,
Rights
481; cp.
CD
1.11).

152.
deep
: chaos; see 10n.

153–55.
The question crystallizes Satan and Beëlzebub’s developing awareness of their plight: what possible advantage is there in being a mighty entity eternally sustained only to absorb eternal punishment?

158.
Doing or suffering
: The Stoic counterpoise of suffering and doing was a literary commonplace, with suicide sometimes seeming the active option. So Hamlet ponders whether it is nobler “to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles” (3.1.56–58). The antithesis is regularly and variously invoked in the first two books (see, e.g., 2.199) and later approaches personification in the characters of the aggressively suicidal Moloch and the craven Belial.

167.
fail
: err.

172.
o’erblown hath laid
: having blown over (or, having blown down from above) has calmed.

178.
slip
: neglect, miss.

182.
livid
: black and blue, like a bruise; furious.

186.
afflicted
: struck down, routed.

196.
rood
: a measure of length that varies from 5.5 to 8.0 yards (5.0 to 7.3 meters); a measure of land equal to a quarter acre, or 40 square rods (0.1 hectare).

198–99.
Titanian … Typhon:
In Greek myth the Titans, children of Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia), were of the generation before the Olympian gods. The Giants, monstrous and huge, were also
Earth-born
. The Titans and Giants
warred
against the Olympian gods on separate occasions, but the two battles were often confused. See 50–52n.
Briareos
was a Titan with a hundred hands;
Typhon
, a hundred-headed Giant, “the Earth-born dweller of the Cilician caves,” in Aeschylus’s phrase (
Prom
. 353–54; cp. Homer,
Il
. 2.783, Pindar,
Pyth
. 1.15).

200.
Tarsus
: the capital of ancient Cilicia.

201.
Leviathan
: gigantic sea beast, symbolic of God’s creative power (Job 41), but in Isa. 27.1 a target of divine judgment, identified as Satan by commentators. Cp. 7.412–16.

203–8.
Tales of enormous sea creatures and of mariners who mistook them for islands were common, as were moral applications of such stories.

204.
night-foundered
: sunk in night.

207.
lee
: the side away from the wind and thus sheltered from it.

208.
Invests
: cloaks.

210–15.
Chained … damnation:
Cp. lines 239–41. Some readers regard this providential logic with disapproval. See Tennyson’s response, as recorded by his son Hallam: “I hope most of us have a higher idea in these modern times of the Almighty than this” (881).

224.
horrid
: bristling, spiky (as
pointing spires
suggests).

226.
incumbent
: pressing with his weight (cp.
recumbent
)
;
cp. Spenser’s description of the dragon’s flight, FQ 1.11.18.

230.
hue
: not simply color but also form or aspect. Cp. Shakespeare,
Sonnets
(20.7).

230–35.
as … winds:
Milton’s account of Etna erupting echoes Vergil in diction (
thund’ring, entrails
), but unlike Vergil, he describes a geological process rather than trace the eruption to a pent-up giant (
Aen
. 3.571–77). The seismic violence attributed to wind trapped underground is similarly described by Ovid (
Met
. 15.296–306) and Lucretius (On
the Nature of Things
6.535–607). Cp. 6.195–98;
SA
1647–48.

232.
Pelorus
: Cape Faro, promontory of northeastern Sicily, near Etna.

234.
fueled … fire
: combustible interior (
entrails
) igniting from the force of the wind and spreading.

235.
Vaporized (
sublimed
) by the intense heat of burning rock, the fuel-laden interior becomes hot mineral gas that augments the wind expelled from the
shattered side
of the mountain.

239.
Stygian flood
: body of water like the river Styx; the
fiery gulf
(52).

240–41.
Satan and Beëlzebub contradict the narrator’s explanation (ll. 210–15). Cp. Homer’s Aias, who, having been saved from the sea by Poseidon, “declared that it was in spite of the gods that he had escaped the great gulf” (
Od
. 4.504). Poseidon immediately kills him.

244.
change
: exchange.

252.
possessor
: one who occupies without ownership (a legal term).

253.
Cp. Horace, “the sky not the mind changes in one who crosses the sea” (
Epist
. 1.11.27). Young Milton adopted this as his motto (Hanford 98).

254–56.
The chiasmus concluding line 255 epitomizes Satan’s claim for the mind’s constitutive power. Cp.
Hamlet:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (2.2.249–50). That Satan’s condition is a function of his own unchanging psyche is later borne out, ironically and to his dismay; see 4.75, 9.118–23.

257.
all but less than
: This puzzling phrase is usually glossed as a combination of “only less than” and “all but equal to.” Satan is not conceding inequality, however, but asserting parity. He is anything but less than God, who triumphed because of superior armament—”his only dreaded bolt” (6.491).

263.
Cp. Plutarch’s account of Caesar riding past a sorry barbarian village, “I would rather be first here than second at Rome” (
Lives
469) or the sentiments of Euripides’ Eteocles, “When I can rule, shall I be this man’s slave?” (
Phoe
. 520). Satan’s specific preference has plentiful precedent, typically to the contrary: “I should choose … to serve as the hireling … of some portionless man … rather than to be lord over all the dead” (
Od
. 11.489–91); “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps. 84.10). See Abdiel’s similar declaration, 6.183–84.

265.
copartners
: equal participants (coheirs) in an inheritance.

266.
astonished
: shocked, thunderstruck;
oblivious:
producing oblivion; cp. 2.74.

268.
mansion
: abode; cp. John 14.2: “In my father’s house are many mansions.”

276.
edge
: critical moment; battle line (as at 6.108). Shakespeare’s Henry IV calls it “the edge of war” (
1H4
1.1.17).

281.
erewhile
: some time ago;
amazed:
stunned; a stronger term in Milton’s era than in ours.

284.
Was moving
: began to move; a classical use of the imperfect tense.

288–91.
Tuscan … globe:
Galileo is
the Tuscan artist
, the only contemporary to whom Milton in
PL
overtly alludes or names (5.262).
Artist
here signifies one skilled in a science. In
Areopagitica
, Milton claims that he visited Galileo while touring Tuscany (
MLM
950). Galileo was by 1638 already blind or nearly so, making it unlikely that Milton witnessed him using his telescope (
optic glass
) to view the moon. Yet the poet was obviously fascinated by the new technology and the vistas it opened to imagination (Nicolson).
Fesole
overlooks the Arno river valley (
Valdarno
) and the city of Florence—a landscape and a society that Milton idolized. Galileo describes the moon’s surface as mountainous in
Sidereal Messenger
.

292–94.
Homer’s Polyphemos, the Cyclops, wields “a staff … as large as is the mast of a black ship of twenty oars” (
Od
. 9.322). After he is blinded, “a lopped pine guides and steadies his steps” (Vergil,
Aen
. 3.659). Milton extends Homer’s comparison into a ratio that renders a great ship’s mast inadequate to indicate the size of Satan’s spear.

294.
ammiral
: obsolete spelling of
admiral;
a vessel carrying an admiral, flagship.

296.
marl
: rich, crumbly soil.

298.
vaulted
: The heavens are commonly described as an arched structure, or vault, like the ceiling of a cathedral. In Hell, even the sky is on fire.

299.
Nathless
: nonetheless.

302.
autumnal leaves
: Comparison of the dead to fallen leaves is commonplace; cp. Homer,
Il
. 6.146; Vergil,
Aen
. 6.309–10; Dante,
Inf
. 3.112–15. Milton’s description is distinctly echoed in Dryden’s 1697 translation of Vergil: “thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods” (
Aen
. 6.428).

303.
Milton likely visited the heavily wooded valley of
Vallombrosa
in the fall of 1638. The Italian place name literally means “shady valley.” Note its somber aural combination with
autumnal, strow, brooks
, and
embow’r
.
Etruria:
classical name for the Tuscan region.
Shades
is a metonymy for trees as well as a name for spirits of the dead.

304.
sedge
: botanical transition from the autumnal leaves of Vallombrosa to the Red Sea of Exodus. The Hebrew name for the Red Sea means “Sea of Sedge.”

305.
Orion armed
: constellation of a hunter with sword and club. Orion rising was associated with stormy weather.

307.
Busiris
: mythical Egyptian king often identified as an oppressor of the Hebrews but here as the scriptural Pharaoh whose army is engulfed after it pursues the Hebrews into the parted Red Sea (Exod. 14).
Memphian chivalry:
Memphis was the ancient capital of Egypt;
chivalry
refers to armed forces (cp.
PR
3.344).

309.
sojourners of Goshen
: Hebrews fleeing Egypt, the land of Goshen (Gen. 47.27).

320.
virtue
: strength, valor.

324.
Seraph
: singular of
seraphim
(on the model of
cherub/cherubim
).

325.
anon
: straightaway, instantly (not “in a little while”).

327.
tread us down
: trample us in triumph; cp. 2.79.

337.
The construction
obey to
is unusual but not unprecedented; see Shakespeare’s
Phoenix:
“to whose sound chaste wings obey” (4); cp. Rom. 6.16.

339.
Amram’s son
: Moses, who with his rod calls a black (
pitchy
) cloud of locusts to afflict Egypt (Exod. 10.12–15; cp. 12.185–86).

341.
warping
: floating and swarming.

345.
cope
: covering, vault, like that of the sky; cp. l. 298, 4.992.

348.
sultan
: ruler, despot, or tyrant.

351–55.
Alludes to barbarian hoards (Goths, Huns, Vandals) who from the third to fifth centuries poured into the southern Roman Empire. The Vandals crossed from Spain (
Beneath Gibraltar
) into Northern Africa (
Libyan sands
).

353.
Rhene … Danaw
: Rhine, Danube.

363.
Books
: On God’s condemnation as erasure (
razed
) from the roll of eternal life, see Exod. 32.32–33 and Rev. 22.5. The fallen angels’ previous identities no longer exist; cp. 84n.

372.
gay
: gaudy, wanton; cp. 4.942.

373.
That pagan gods were fallen angels was a Christian commonplace rooted in classical and scriptural thought, as Verity details (672–74). Cp.
Nat Ode
173–228,
PR
2.121–26.

376.
The catalog is conventional, as is the request of the Muse to supply it; cp. Homer,
Il
. 5.703; Vergil,
Aen
. 9.664. Invocation of the Muse, a pagan deity, may seem jarring here, though in the invocations to Books 1 and 7 Milton identifies his Muse with inspiration from God.

380.
promiscuous
: random, diverse.

386–87.
Sion … Cherubim:
Zion is the site of Solomon’s Temple, which houses the Ark of the Covenant. The throne of God’s invisible presence stands on top of the Ark between images of cherubim; see 10n.