Paradise Lost and the Classical Epic

Francis C. Blessington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429619533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This study, first published in 1979, explores the idea that all spheres of action - hell, heaven, and earth - of the classical epic is relevant to all parts of Paradise Lost. The author also examines the structure, style, and the narrator of the text. This title will be of great interest to students of Milton and English Literature.

1 ‘Pellax Ulixes’: the revaluation of the epic villain

Paradise Lost is perhaps the shortest route from the literature of England to that of Greece and Rome. It brings the reader into immediate contact with the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid while it reassesses them and lets the reader feel the energy that is constantly released by the interaction of classical source and Miltonic imitation. No other work, except the Bible, is as relevant to Paradise Lost or as persistently evoked. Since Milton intended his poem to be read as a gloss upon these predecessors, it was necessary for him to link the opening of his epic solidly to its poetic ancestry. For this purpose, he begins with Satan in full classical panoply, wearing the armor of Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas.

Here we shall first glance at Milton’s use of classical details that invoke all three epics; then we shall examine closely three phases of Satan’s classicism. What is most important is not what classical patterns Milton created but how they give his own poem meaning. He did not invoke the classical epic in order to displace it, as has often been maintained, but in order to show that Satan fails to be an epic hero even by the criteria of Homer and Virgil. In short, Satan is a parody of Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas.

The way in which Milton parallels all three major classical epics at once is evident in the council in hell. First it resembles the rigged council in the Iliad (II, 53–394) where Agamemnon tricks his followers into thinking that they are debating a return to Greece, though he secretly steers the argument into an attack on Troy through the machinations of Odysseus and the other Greek chiefs who bring the rank and file into line. Satan likewise tricks his followers into believing that they are having a free discussion, in this case, that they are considering any and all plans for the future of the struggle against heaven, but secretly steers the argument into revenge through the machinations of Beelzebub who sways the crowd. When Moloch, Belial, and Mammon suggest alternatives, Beelzebub offers Satan’s plan and quickly calls for a vote; when Thersites, like Belial and Mammon, argues against resumption of the war, he is struck down by Odysseus. The malcontents out of the way, both leaders do as they wish.

The debate reaches out to parallel the broader situation of the Iliad. The point of the debate is really whether to use force or guile for revenge against God. Moloch’s suicidal proposal for a frontal attack upon the citadel of heaven and Satan’s later wheedling plan of revenge seem to parody the straightforward tactics of revenge that Achilles uses in the Iliad and the subtle machinations of Odysseus in both Homeric poems. The debate in Paradise Lost centers upon which of these two, now perverted, classical modes of heroism will be adopted. If guile finally wins out, leading us to see Satan in the role of another Odysseus with a different kind of wooden horse, the motive of revenge brings him into the role of another Achilles avenging himself on another Agamemnon. The parallels between the destruction of Eden and the destruction of Troy are only suggested in these opening scenes; they become more fully developed later. The immediate result of the debate is that Satan sets off on an Odyssean journey which takes him by a monster who claims to be his daughter and who clearly resembles Circe. Thus he follows narrow passages of greater danger than ‘when Ulysses on the Larboard shunn’d/ Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steer’d’ (II, 1019–20).¹ If the Mediterranean has been displaced by the sea of Chaos, the underworld of the Aeneid has been displaced by the hell of Christianity. This parallel I shall develop in detail for another purpose later, but it should be noticed that the pattern of floating on a sea after a defeat, the discussion, the reconnoitring, and the adaptation to a new home for exiles is the same opening pattern in the Aeneid and in Paradise Lost. In fact, Moloch strengthens this parallel by alluding to the Aeneid, as B. A. Wright notes, by saying, ‘Th’ ascent is easy then’ (II, 81) which parodies Virgil’s ‘facilis descensus Auerno’ (VI, 126: ‘easy is the descent to hell’).²

Milton has so immersed himself in the three major epics that one detail could strike more than one epic at the same time. When Satan and his followers writhe on the Burning Lake ‘Nine times the space that measures Day and Night’ (I, 50) – just as they fell nine days from heaven (VI, 871) – editors usually note Hesiod’s fall of the Titans which takes nine days also (Theogony, 664–735). We should also note, however, that the Iliad opens with a plague of nine days and that Odysseus, when he founders at sea, seems destined to experience the same nine days (e.g., Od. IX, 82; XII, 447).

More important than the parallels themselves is the effect the invoked passage has upon Milton’s scene. After we are told that Satan has spent nine days on the Burning Lake, his first words, addressed to Beelzebub, echo the Aeneid: ‘if thou beest hee; But O how fall’n! how chang’d/ From him, who in the happy Realms of Light’ (I, 84–5). As Newton long ago footnoted, the parallel is to Virgil’s poem, where Aeneas has a vision of Hector returning from the dead, ‘ei mihi, qualis erat, quantum mutatus ab illo’ (II, 274; ‘alas, how changed from that which you were’). An allusion such as this is more than footnotes imply. The whole situation of Troy burning and Aeneas hastening into exile should be recalled. The parallel between the defeat of the Trojans and the defeat of Satan’s forces shows how Milton has extended the conception of the epic from the earthly to the spiritual realm, how hopeless the plight of the rebel angels is, how pagan and un-Christian their behavior, and how ignoble their subsequent action when compared to Aeneas’ and Hector’s, heroes who served as models for Christian behavior during the Renaissance. By looking at Hector, Aeneas has a vision of death and must learn to accept defeat at the hands of the Trojans. The same vision appears to Satan but it is now the look of spiritual, not physical, death on the face of his companion; yet Satan, unlike Aeneas, does not heed the message. Parallels to the major classical epics ripple out like this one in such a significant manner that to follow them out is almost never an unprofitable exercise. The habit of classical editors of Homer and Virgil to put in the parallels that Milton made to passages like the above, a habit unfortunately dying out, and his influence upon translators show how strongly classicists can feel Milton’s attempts at epic imitation and emulation and how Milton can be used to elucidate the classical poets.

If Satan cannot compete with his classical prototypes, he does adopt their philosophy – or at least he pretends to. When Satan first appears in the poem scarred by the lightning bolt, he looks more like the enemy of Zeus than the enemy of God, and the resulting pessimism revealed in hell is much like the futureless world of the classical epics. Like that world, the rebel angels believe, or choose to believe, that fate rules: Satan assures Beelzebub that ‘by Fate the strength of Gods/ and this Empyreal substance cannot fail’ (I,116–17). This idea culminates in Belial’s statement that ‘fate inevitable/ Subdues us’ (II, 197–8).³ It is fate that controls the action in the three major epic poems: the fate that dooms Hector and Sarpedon, that returns Odysseus to Ithaka, and that allows Aeneas to found Rome. Satan represents the Father as the crudest of classical godheads, one whom only ‘Thunder hath made greater’ (I,258). This kind of broad allusion is common in Paradise Lost and places Satan in the epic tradition, so that we are forced to evaluate him in the light of these earlier epics.

For this purpose it will help to see the patterns of classical references that Milton has woven around Satan. The interaction between Satan and his classical parallels falls, despite the myriad allusions to all three epics, into three distinct phases, each phase formed out of one of the former epics. When Satan first appears in hell, his major frame of classical reference is the Aeneid; later when Raphael relates the war in heaven, the frame is the Iliad; and when Satan appears on earth, the frame is the Odyssey. Only by examining the dynamics of these relationships can we fully appreciate Milton’s subtle use of the classical epic. In the first phase, Satan invokes Aeneas and his epic. For this purpose, Milton created his hell in the image of Virgil’s. At one point, the fallen angels take to singing their own deeds in heroic song:

Others more mild,

Retreated in a silent valley, sing

With notes Angelical to many a Harp

Thir own Heroic deeds and hapless fall (II, 546–9).

This passage probably parodies Orpheus’ appearance in the Virgilian underworld:

nec non Threicius longa cum ueste sacerdos

obloquitur numeris septem discrimina uocum,

iamque eadem digitis, iam pectine pulsat eburno (VI, 645–7).

(and the Thracian seer in a long robe plays an accompaniment with the seven different sounds, sometimes striking them with his fingers, sometimes with his ivory plectrum.)

But Orpheus is not singing his own heroic deeds; he is probably playing an accompaniment to the nearby dancers. The egotism of hell drives it to sing its own heroic song for it can think of little else. But it is not proper to see in this egotistical singing a condemnation of the classical epic in general, since the classical heroes did not sing their own deeds in epic form. The reference is to shorter heroic ballads that were sung by heroes, such as that sung by Achilles about his own sack of Thebe (II. IX, 186–91). Virgil’s classical warriors do not, even in the underworld, sing about themselves.

Hell has other Virgilian roots, too. Milton’s simile of the fallen angels lying in hell like fallen leaves has a particularly Virgilian color:

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t

Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks

In Vallambrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades

High overarch’t imbow’r (I, 301-4).

Of the many sources for this simile, the most often cited is that of the unburied souls, whom Charon will not ferry across the river of the underworld: ‘quam multa in siluis autumni frigore primo/ lapsa cadunt folia’ (VI, 309–10; ‘as many as the leaves that fall in the forest at autumn’s first frost’).⁴ The Italian landscape, the context of the underworld, and the accursed souls of Satan’s followers lead down to Avernus and enrich the texture of Paradise Lost by adding the Virgilian underworld. This parallel denigrates Satan by placing him at the bottom of the classical underworld – now one of the unburied pagans.

Milton’s use of his epic sources sometimes has an effect upon the reader when he returns to Virgil. After reading Milton’s parallels between the fallen angels and the revolt of the Titans against the Olympians and having seen Milton’s heavy Virgilianism in this part of the poem, a return to Virgil reveals that the Roman poet had also plunged the offenders of Zeus into his underworld:

‘tum Tartarus ipse

bis patet in praeceps tantum tenditque sub umbras

quantus ad aetherium caeli suspectus Olympum.

hic genus antiquum Terrae, Titania pubes,

fulmine deiecti fundo uoluuntur in imo.

hic et Aloidas geminos immania uidi

corpora, qui manibus magnum rescindere caelum

adgressi superisque Iouem detrudere regnis’ (VI, 577–84).

(‘Then Tartarus itself opens down and stretches beneath the shades, twice the distance one sees by looking up at the aetherial sky of Olympus. Here the ancient race of Earth, offspring of the Titans, hurled down by lightning, roll at the bottom of the pit. And here I saw the twin sons of Aloeus, monstrous forms, who undertook to break open great heaven with their hands and cast down Jove from his high power.’)

These rebels may, now that we have read Milton, be interpreted as the fallen angels. Milton has already pointed out this Virgilian perception and has given us the archetypes to look for in the Aeneid. Lest there be any doubt about the parallel, and few commentators have overlooked it,⁵ Milton locates his hell by the same compass as Virgil, if we subtract the emulation, Milton’s distance being much greater than Virgil’s:

Such place Eternal Justice had prepar’d

For those rebellious, here thir prison ordained

In utter darkness, and thir portion set

As far remov’d from God and light of Heav’n

As from the Center thrice to th’ utmost Pole (I, 70–4).

If Milton’s hell borrows the architecture, the lighting, the songs, the simile of the leaves, and the punishment of those who attempted to overthrow the godhead, it can borrow even ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Pellax Ulixes’: the revaluation of the epic villain
• 2 Above the Olympian Mount
• 3 ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’: the conflict in Eden
• 4 Equal in renown: structure, style, and epic voice
• Appendix
• Notes
• Select bibliography of secondary material
• Index