by John Milton
78. Endymioneae… deae [Endymion’s goddess] Selene, goddess of the moon.
83–4. Cnidon… Cypron Cnidos (on the coast of Asia Minor) and Cyprus were sacred to Venus, who was born from sea-foam at the Cypriot city of Paphos. The Simois flows from Mount Ida, where the Trojan Paris awarded Venus the prize for beauty in preference to Juno and Minerva.
85. pueri… caeci [blind boy] Cupid.
88. Molyos [Moly] the herb that saved Odysseus from being turned into a beast by Circe (Homer, Od. x 305). It was a traditional symbol of temperance. See A Masque 636n.
92. alternos… modos [alternate measures] the alternate pentameters and hexameters of the elegiac couplet.
Elegia Secunda. In Obitum Praeconis Academici Cantabrigiensis
[Elegy II. On the death of the Cambridge University Beadle]
Date: autumn 1626. The caption Anno aetatis 17 means ‘at the age of seventeen’ (not ‘in his seventeenth year’). Richard Ridding, Beadle of Cambridge University, died on or shortly after 19 September 1626. M. turned eighteen on 9 December 1626. M.’s method of dating was not unusual in the seventeenth century. See Parker (785) and cp. the dating of Elegia III and In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis.
1. baculo the Beadle’s mace, carried in academic processions.
2. Palladium… gregem [flock of Pallas] members of the university, seen as devotees of Athena, goddess of wisdom.
6. Jove assumed the shape of a swan when he raped Leda. The swan’s whiteness was proverbial. Cp. Spenser, Prothalamion (1596) 42–3.
7. Haemonio… succo [Haemonian drugs] Medea used drugs from Thessaly (Haemonia) to rejuvenate Jason’s father Aeson (Ovid, Met. vii 251–93). Cp. the herb ‘haemony’ in A Masque 638.
10. Coronides Aesculapius, god of medicine (the son of Apollo and Coronis). He restored Hippolytus to life at Diana’s request (Ovid, Fasti vi 743–56).
12. Phoebo… tuo [your Phoebus] the Vice-Chancellor.
13. Cyllenius Mercury (born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia). See Homer, Il. xxiv 336–467 for his message to Priam.
15. Eurybates one of two heralds sent by Agamemnon (Atrides) to seize Achilles’ captive, Briseis. M.’s reference is inaccurate. Far from delivering Atrides’ stern command, the heralds were too terrified to speak (Homer, Il. i 318–44).
17. Magna… regina [Great queen] Mors, goddess of death. Avernus (a lake near Naples) was a fabled entrance to Hades. Poets used the name for Hades itself.
Elegia Tertia. In Obitum Praesulis Wintoniensis [Elegy III. On the death of the Bishop of Winchester]
Date: late 1626. The caption Anno aetatis 17 means ‘at the age of seventeen’ (see previous headnote). Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, died on 25 September 1626. He was a staunch defender of the Anglican Church and one of the translators of the King James Bible. M. was later highly critical of him. In The Reason of Church Government (1641) he refutes Andrewes’ arguments defending episcopacy (YP 1. 768–74).
4. Libitina Italian goddess of corpses. Her temple at Rome contained registers of the dead. At least 35,000 Londoners (one sixth of the population) died in the plague of 1625.
9. ducis, fratrisque The leader and his brother are usually identified as Duke Christian of Brunswick (d. June 1626) and his ‘brother in arms’ Count Ernst von Mansfeld, who was killed while fighting for the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War (29 November 1626). Douglas Bush proposes King James I (d. March 1625) and his royal ‘brother’ Maurice, Prince of Orange (d. April 1625) as a more likely pair (Var. 1. 66–8).
12. Belgia Protestant leaders who died in the Low Countries included the Earls of Southampton (1624) and Oxford (1625), as well as Duke Christian and Prince Maurice. Breda fell to the Spaniards in May 1625.
16. Tartareo… Iovi [Tartarean Jove] Pluto, ruler of the underworld. See A Masque 20n.
20. Cypridu [Cypris] Venus (named Cypris because she rose from the sea near Cyprus).
26. Proteos Proteus was herdsman of Neptune’s seals (see Ep. Dam. 99n).
32. Roscidus the evening star.
33. Tartessiaco… aequore [Tartessian sea] the Atlantic Ocean. Tartessus was an ancient city in Spain.
41. Thaumantia proles [daughter of Thaumas] Iris, goddess of the rainbow.
44. Chloris the Roman goddess of flowers. Her name was changed to ‘Flora’ after she was wooed by Zephyrus, god of the west wind (Ovid, Fasti v 195–378). See PL v 341n and ix 441n on the miraculous gardens of Alcinous.
46. Tago [Tagus] a river in Spain and Portugal, famous for its golden sand.
47. Favoni [Favonius] Zephyrus, the west wind.
50. Lucifer (‘light-bearer’) is here the sun, whose palace was east of India (Ovid, Met. i 778–9).
54. Cp. the shining face of Moses (Exod. 34. 29–35).
64. Cp. Rev. 14. 13: ‘they may rest from their labours’.
67. Cephaleia pellice [Cephalus’s paramour] Aurora, goddess of the dawn. See Il Penseroso 124n.
68. Talia… mihi [May such dreams often befall me] M. daringly paraphrases Ovid, Amores I v 26 (also a last line). Ovid wishes that he may have many more sultry siestas like the one he has just spent in bed with Corinna.
Elegia Quarta. Ad Thomam lunium, Preaeceptorem Suum [Elegy IV. To Thomas Young, his tutor]
Date: March–April 1627? If the caption Anno aetatis 18 accords with M.’s usual method of dating, the poem should have been written ‘at the age of eighteen’ (i.e. between 9 December 1626 and 8 December 1627). Lines 33–8 date the poem to March or April.
Thomas Young (c. 1587–1655) was a Scottish schoolmaster and clergyman who acted as M.’s boyhood tutor from 1618 to 1620. He moved to Hamburg in 1620, where he was chaplain to the community of English merchants. In 1628 he returned permanently to England where he was presented to a Church living in Stowmarket, Suffolk. He became a prominent Presbyterian opponent of episcopacy, and was the ‘ty’ of Smectymnuus, the group of Puritan divines whom M. supported in his prose pamphlets of 1641–2. M.’s relations with him cooled thereafter. Young disapproved of M.’s views on divorce; M. disapproved of Young’s views on Church government (Young was nominated to the Westminster Assembly in 1643).
1. M.’s instructions to his letter imitate Ovid, Tristia III vii 1–2.
7. Dorida [Doris] wife of Nereus and mother of the fifty sea-nymphs, the Nereids.
10. Colchis [the Colchian] Medea, who fled from Jason in a chariot drawn by dragons after she had killed their children.
11. Triptolemus the hero chosen by Demeter to give agriculture to the world. Ovid tells how he arrived in Scythia in a chariot drawn by dragons (Met. v 642–61).
15. Hama a mythical Saxon hero slain by Starcaterus, a Danish giant.
19. pars altera [other half] See Plato, Symposium 189d-193e for the conceit that close friends are two halves of one soul. Cp. also Horace, Odes I iii 8 and PL iv 488.
23. doctissime Graium [wisest of the Greeks] Socrates. Cliniades is Alcibiades, son of Clinias. He claims descent from Telamon, Ajax’s father, in Plato, Alcibiades 121a.
25. Stagirites [the Stagirite] Aristotle (who was born at Stagira). Alexander the Great was his pupil.
26. Chaonis [woman of Chaonia] Alexander’s mother Olympias came from Chaonia in Epirus. Plutarch (Alexander 2–3) says that Zeus-Ammon fathered Alexander on her in the form of a snake. Cp. PL ix 508.
28. Myrmidonum Regi [king of the Myrmidons] Achilles. His two tutors were Phoenix, son of Amyntor, and the centaur Chiron, son of the nymph Philyra.
30. bifidi… iugi [twin-peaked mountain] Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, in Aonia (Boeotia). The Castalian spring, also sacred to the Muses, was at its foot. Pieria, near Mount Olympus, was the Muses’ birthplace.
31. Clio one of the Muses, in Roman times the Muse of history.
33. Aethon one of the horses of the sun (Ovid, Met. ii 153). Chloris (35) was the Greek name for Flora, whose festival at Rome began on 28 April. The sun has entered Aries three times since M. last saw Young, but Chloris has brought spring only t
wice. Hence the poem was written between 21 March (when the sun enters Aries) and 28 April.
36. Auster the south wind.
39. Eurus the east wind.
51. praelia [battles] of the Thirty Years War.
56. lento… viro [tardy husband] Odysseus.
74. Saxonicos… duces [Saxon leaders] the sons of Duke John of Saxe-Weimar. They had served with Mansfeld against the Imperial forces, and would soon join Gustavus Adolphus.
75. Enyo goddess of war, Homer’s ‘sacker of cities’ (Il. v 333).
78. Odrysios [Odrysian] Thracian. Thrace was the traditional home of Ares or Mars, the god of war (Homer, Od. viii 361).
80. diva [goddess] Eirene, goddess of peace.
81–2. virgo… iusta [virgin of Justice] Astraea, goddess of justice, the last of the gods to flee the earth. See Nativity 142n.
97. vates… Thesbitidis [Tishbite prophet] Elijah, who fled from Ahab and Jezebel (I Kings 19. 1–18).
102. Paulus… Cilix St Paul, from Tarsus in Cicilia, was scourged in Philippi in Macedonia (Acts 16. 22–40).
104. See Matt. 8. 28–34.
114. In II Kings 19. 35–6 God destroys Sennacherib’s Assyrian army before the walls of Jerusalem.
122. In II Kings 7. 6–7 God terrifies Ben-hadad’s Syrian army by causing them to hear ‘the noise of a great host’.
Elegia Quinta. In adventum veris [Elegy V. On the coming of spring]
Date: spring 1629. The caption Anno aetatis 20 presumably means ‘at the age of twenty’ (see headnote to Elegia II).
9. Castalis… cacumen [Castalian… mountain] See Elegy IV 30n.
10. Pirenen [Pirene] a fountain in Corinth, sacred to the Muses.
13. Delius [the Delian] Apollo (born on the island of Delos).
Peneide lauro [Daphne’s laurel] Daphne, daughter of the river-god Peneus, was changed into a laurel by her father so that she might escape Apollo. Apollo thereafter wore laurel leaves in his hair (Ovid, Met. i 452–567).
25. Philomela the nightingale.
30. perennis] 1673; quotannis 1645. M. changed the word after Salmasius (Responsio (1660) 5), pointed out the false quantity in 1645.
31. Aethiopas The sun flees the Ethiopians in spring because it then rises north of the equator (called ‘the Ethiop line’ in PL iv 282).
Tithoniaque arva [Tithonus’s fields] the east (Tithonus being husband of Aurora, goddess of the dawn).
35. Lycaonius [Lycaonian] northern. Lycaon, King of Arcadia, was father of Callisto, who became the constellation known as Ursa Major (the Great Bear) or the Wain (plaustrum).
40. Giganteum The Giants attacked the gods during the Iron Age, when Justice had fled the earth. See Ovid, Met. i 151f
46. Cynthia the moon-goddess Diana, Apollo’s sister.
50. effoeto… toro [bed of impotence] Tithonus, Aurora’s husband, was made impotent by old age. Aurora had granted him immortality, but he forgot to ask for eternal youth.
51. Aeolides Cephalus. Aurora loved him when she saw him spreading nets on Mount Hymettus (Ovid, Met. vii 700–713).
60. Paphiis [Paphian] Paphos, in Cyprus, was sacred to Venus.
62. Idaeam… Opim [Idaean Ops] Cybele, a Phrygian fertility-goddess (worshipped in Rome as Ops) was associated with Mount Ida, near Troy. She wore a turreted crown.
66. diva Sicana [Sicanian goddess] Proserpine, whom Pluto abducted in Sicily (Sicania). Pluto is ‘the Taenarian god’ because Taenarus, in Laconia, was a fabled entrance to Hades.
83. Tethy [Tethys] wife of Oceanus and mother of the rivers.
Tartesside lympha [Tartessian flood] the Atlantic Ocean. See Elegia III 33n.
91. Semeleia fata [Semele’s fate] Semele was destroyed by fire when Jupiter complied with her request that he make love to her in his full glory. See Ovid, Met. iii 252–315.
92. Phaetonteo… equo [Phaethon ‘s chariot] Phaethon, son of Apollo (or Helios), almost destroyed the earth when he tried to drive the chariot of the sun. Jupiter saved the earth by killing Phaethon with a thunderbolt. See Ovid, Met. ii 1–400.
101–2. Dianam… Vesta Diana and Vesta were virgin goddesses. Vesta’s priestesses were the vestal virgins.
104. Venus was born of sea-foam.
106. Hymen was god of marriage. The cry io Hymen Hymenaee is the refrain in an epithalamium by Catullus (lxi).
112. Cytherea a common name for Venus, who landed on the island of Cythera after being born from sea-foam.
114. Phyllis a stock pastoral name for a shepherdess. Cp. L’Allegro 86.
116. Dolphins were thought to be fond of music and known to be friendly to men. Cp. Pliny IX viii 24–8 and Ovid, Fasti ii 83ff., and see Lycidas 164n.
122. Silvanus, the Roman god of uncultivated land, wore cypress leaves in memory of the boy Cyparissus, whom he had loved, and who died of grief after Silvanus killed his pet deer.
125. Maenalius Pan [Maenalian Pan] Maenalus was an Arcadian mountain, sacred to Pan.
126. Cybele the great mother, identified with Rhea and Ops. See above, 62n. Ceres was her daughter.
127. Faunus a Roman wood-god. See PL iv 707–8n. An Oread is a mountain-nymph.
131–40. Contrast the banishing of the pagan gods in Nativity 173ff.
Elegia Sexta. Ad Carolum Diodatum, ruri commorantem [Elegy VI.
To Charles Diodati, staying in the country]
Date: from M.’s prose heading, and from the reference to the composition of Nativity (79–90), it is clear that this elegy was written a few days after Christmas, 1629.
8. claudos… pedes [limping feet] the alternating hexameters and pentameters of elegy. The joke about limping is borrowed from Ovid, Tristia III i 11 – 12.
18. The Nine are the Muses. Bacchus is called Thyoneus because his mother Semele was called Thyone. Euoe was the cry of Bacchic revellers.
20. See Elegy I 21n for Ovid’s banishment to the Black Sea. The Coralli were a local Germanic tribe. In Ex Ponto IV viii 80–83 Ovid complains that the Coralli have no wine, and in Ex Ponto IV ii 15–22 he admits that his poems have suffered.
21. Lyaeum Bacchus was known as Lyaeus, ‘the releaser’.
22. Teia Musa [Teian poet] Anacreon, a Greek lyric poet, born c. 570 BC in Teos on the coast of Asia Minor.
23. Teumesius Euan Boeotian Bacchus.
27. lyricen Romanus [Roman lyrist] Horace. Glycera and blonde Chloe both appear in his Odes (e.g. I xix and xxiii).
31. Massica Mount Massicus in Campania was famous for its wine.
37. Thressa… barbitos [Thracian lyre] Orpheus was a Thracian.
43. ebur… plectrum [ivory key] of the harpsichord or virginal, although the plectrum used to strike a lyre might also be meant.
48. Thalia the Muse of comedy and (according to Horace, Odes IV vi 25) lyric poetry.
51. Erato the Muse of lyric, especially erotic, poetry.
58. cane [dog] Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades.
59. Samii… magistri [the Samian master] Pythagoras, the ascetic philosopher born at Samos c. 580 BC.
68. Tiresian [Tiresias] the Theban prophet. He had been (at different times) a man and a woman, and Juno blinded him when he revealed that sex was more pleasurable for women than for men. Jove compensated him with prophetic powers.
Linon Linus, a mythical bard of Thebes (Ogygia), and Orpheus’ teacher.
69. Calchanta [Calchas] the Greek prophet in the Trojan War. M. follows medieval tradition in making him a Trojan who defected to the Greeks.
70. Orpheus tamed wild beasts after he had failed to rescue Eurydice from Hades. Virgil, Georg. iv 516, and Ovid, Met. x 79–82, say that he then shunned all women. (Ovid adds that he consoled himself with ‘tender boys’.)
71. Boccaccio had depicted Homer as living an ascetic life (De Genealogiis Deorum XIV xix). Contrast Horace’s view that Homer must have loved wine (Epistulae I xix 1–6).
72. The island of Dulichium was part of Odysseus’s realm.
73. Perseiae Phoebados [daughter of Phoebus and Perseis] Circe
, who turned Odysseus’s men into swine (Homer, Od. x 274–574).
76. Homer describes the Sirens’ song in Od. xii 184–92 and Odysseus’ descent to Hades in Od. xi.
89. Te quoque [For you too] My translation assumes that M. is still referring to Nativity in lines 89–90 and that quoque means that that poem is a gift for Diodati as well as for Christ. Carey thinks that quoque refers to some other poems that M. has written, and that these are the Italian sonnets composed in Diodati’s (not M.’s) ancestral language (patriis cicutis).
Elegia Septima [Elegy VII]
Date: summer 1628? The caption Anno aetatis undevigesimo is puzzling. M.’s usual method of dating would suggest that the phrase means ‘at the age of nineteen’ (see headnote to Elegia II). The caption is unique, however, in using the ordinal. M. normally employs arabic numerals. M. might therefore mean that the poem was composed in his nineteenth year (9 December 1626 – 8 December 1627). If (as seems likely) he is describing a real incident, the poem was written after May Day (14), perhaps in the summer when attractive young women were accustomed to walk in the fields in and around London (51). If Elegia VII was written in either 1627 or 1628 it must antedate Elegia VI. Parker (754) tries to save the 1645 chronology by arguing that undevigesimo is a misreading of M.’s manuscript uno & vigesimo, ‘twenty-one’.
1. Amathusia Venus, after her shrine at Amathus in Cyprus.
2. Paphio [Paphian] Venus had a temple at Paphos, in Cyprus.
11. Cyprius [Cyprian lad] Cupid, whose mother Venus was called ‘Cypris’ from her association with Cyprus. Classical authors do not apply the epithet to Cupid.
21. iuvenis Sigeius [Sigeian youth] Ganymede, the Trojan boy abducted by Jove to be his cupbearer. Sigeum was near Troy.
24. Hylas a beautiful youth loved by Hercules. Sent by the Argonauts to fetch water from a pool, he was dragged to the bottom by amorous nymphs (Theocritus xiii).
31. Having killed the monstrous Python with his arrows, Apollo taunted Cupid for presuming to use the bow. Cupid then turned his bow on Apollo, causing him to love Daphne (Ovid, Met. i 452–567).
36. Parthus eques [Parthian horseman] Parthian mounted archers were famous for their ability to shoot to the rear while feigning retreat. Cp. PR iii 322–5.