by John Milton
3. Oedipodioniam… noctem [Oedipean night] self-inflicted blindness. See Sophocles, Oedipus the King 1298f.
9. mater Ge, Mother Earth, the common ancestor of gods and men. Omniparens was one of her titles.
14–15. Cronos, son of Uranus and Ge (Heaven and Earth), devoured his children at birth. Cronos was sometimes identified with Chronos (Time), which devours its own offspring. M. imagines a decay so universal that Time runs backwards to devour its own father, Heaven.
19. sono… tremendo [tremendous crash] Cp. II Pet. 3. 10: ‘The heavens shall pass away with a great noise’.
22. Gorgone Pallas Athene wore the head of the Gorgon Medusa on her shield. Whoever saw it uncovered was turned to stone.
23. proles Iunonia [Juno’s son] Vulcan. See Elegia VII 81n.
25. tui… nati [your son] Phaethon. See Elegia V 92n.
27. Nereus the Old Man of the Sea, father of the Nereids.
29. Haemi [Haemus] a high mountain range in Thrace. Ovid says that it was burned by Phaethon’s chariot (Met. ii 219).
31–2. The Ceraunian mountains are in Epirus. M. might have confused these with the Thessalian mountains Pelion and Ossa, (see note to line 174, ‘In Quintum Novembris’). See Ovid, Met. i 151–5.
33–4. Pater omnipotens… Consuluit rerum summae [the omnipotent Father has consulted on the sum of things] echoing Ovid, Met. ii 300, where Earth begs Jove (Pater omnnipotens) to place the public interest first (rerum consule summae) and kill Phaethon so as to save the world from conflagration. Cp. PL vi 673.
37. rota prima [prime wheel] the primum mobile or ‘first moved’ in the Ptolemaic system: the outermost sphere of the universe which makes a complete revolution in twenty-four hours, imparting movement to all the lower spheres.
41–4. A supposed shift in the sun’s orbit was often cited as evidence that Nature suffered from decay. Thus Spenser claims that the sun had ‘declyned… Nigh thirtie minutes’ to the south in the 1,400 years since Ptolemy’s day (FQ V proem 7).
45–8. The planet Venus is both Lucifer, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star.
49. Delia Diana, goddess of the moon.
cornu both the moon’s ‘horns’ and the bow held by Diana, goddess of the hunt (50).
53. Corus the north-west wind.
55. Aquilo the north-east wind.
56. Pelori Pelorus (Cape Faro), near Mount Etna in Sicily. Neptune (the king of the sea) batters the region as god of earthquakes. Cp. PL i 230–37.
58. tubicen [trumpeter] Triton, Neptune’s herald.
59. Aegaeona a hundred-armed Giant, called Briareos by gods, Aegaeon by men (Homer, Il. i 403–4). Ovid depicts Aegaeon as clasping huge whales in his arms (Met. ii 9–10). M. likens Satan to Briareos and a whale in PL i 199–201.
61. Narcissus the beautiful youth transformed into a flower (Ovid, Met. iii 402–510).
63. Apollo’s beloved boy is Hyacinthus, whom Apollo transformed into a flower after he had accidentally killed him with a discus (Ovid, Met. x 162–216). Cypris is Venus. Her beloved boy is Adonis. She transformed him into an anemone after he was killed by a boar (Met. x 728–39).
67–9. The final conflagration is prophesied at II Pet. 3. 10.
De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit [On the Platonic form as Aristotle understood it]
Date: June 1628? See previous headnote. The poem is light in manner, but it has a serious subject: Aristotle’s critique (in Metaphysics I ix, VII viii) of Plato’s doctrine of the ideal Forms. M. poses as a literal-minded Aristotelian, asking where the ideal Form of man is to be found. M.’s irony is aimed at Aristotle, not Plato.
1. deae [goddesses] either the Muses, to whom Numa dedicated a grove (Livy I xxi 3), or Diana and her nymphs, who attend at births. Virgil calls Diana ‘guardian of the groves’ (Aen. ix 405).
2. noveni… numinis [ninefold deity] the Muses.
3. Memoria [Memory] Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses.
4–6. Cp. the cave of Time (an old man who keeps Jove’s records) in Claudian, De Consulatu Stilichonis ii 424–8 and Boccaccio, De Genealogiis Deorum I ii.
12. Pallas Athene sprang fully armed from the head of Jove.
20. The Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation is found in Plato, Phaedo
70–72 and Republic x 617–18. Virgil’s Aeneas sees crowds of souls waiting to drink from Lethe, river of forgetfulness, before being reborn (Aen. vi 710–15).
24. Atlante Atlas carried the heavens on his shoulders.
26. Dircaeus augur [Dircean seer] Tiresias, the blind Theban prophet. See Elegia VI 68n.
27. Pleiones nepos [Pleione’s grandson] Mercury. His mother was Maia, daughter of Atlas and Pleione.
29. sacerdos… Assyrius [Assyrian priest] perhaps one of the sages who informed Herodotus (I i) about the Assyrian king Ninus; but Carey plausibly suggests that M. is referring to the Assyrian priest Hierombalus – the ancient oral source of a lost history of Phoenicia, fragments of which survive in Eusebius, Praeparationis Evangelicae I ix and are quoted by John Selden in De Dis Syris (1617) 111.
30. Nini [Ninus] founder of the Assyrian monarchy.
31. Priscumque Belon [primeval Belus] See George Sandys, Relation of a Journey (1615) 207: ‘Belus Priscus, reputed a God and honoured with Temples, called Bel by the Assyrians, and Baal by the Hebrewes’. See also PL i 720n.
Osiridem [Osiris] an Egyptian god. See Nativity 216–20n.
33. Ter magnus Hermes [thrice-great Hermes] See Il Penseroso 88n.
34. Isidis cultoribus [worshippers oflsis] Egyptians.
35. Academi decus [glory of the Academy] Plato, who excluded poets from his ideal state on the grounds that fables are mere imitations (Republic x 595–607).
Ad Patrem [To his Father]
Date: much disputed. Suggested dates range from 1631 to 1645. The poem clearly arose from some kind of conflict between M. and his father about M.’s failure to choose a career. As Bush points out, the problem of a profession ‘would have come up between father and son before the son left Cambridge, certainly by his last year, 1631–32’. Bush feels that the present tenses in 71–6 tell for an early date, and concludes that the secessibus (seclusion) of 74 refers to Cambridge (which would date the poem before 1632). Others feel that the seclusion is that of Hammersmith or Horton (1632–8). Ad Patrem has been well described as M.’s ‘Apology for Poetry’.
1. Pierios… fontes [Pierian fountains] Pieria, in Macedonia, was the birthplace of the Muses.
3. gemino… vertice [twin peaks] of Mount Parnassus, which was sacred to the Muses. See Elegia IV 30n.
14. Clio one of the Muses, in Roman times the Muse of history.
20. Prometheae… flammae Prometheus stole fire from heaven and brought it to man. The fire was sometimes allegorized as philosophic wisdom. See e.g. Natale Conti, Mythologiae (1567) IV vi.
25. Phoebades priestesses of Apollo, especially the Pythia at Delphi.
Sibyllae prophetesses inspired by Apollo. The most famous was the Cumaean Sibyl, who guided Aeneas through Hades (Virgil, Aen. vi). Virgil describes her as pale and shaking while she prophesies to Aeneas (Aen. vi 46–51).
32-3. Cp. St John’s vision of the four and twenty elders wearing ‘crowns of gold’ (Rev. 4. 4), and playing harps (Rev. 5. 8). Cp. also Rev. 14. 1–5, where the 144,000 male virgins who ‘were not defiled with women’ sing a ‘new song’ accompanied by harps. Many critics have thought that the young M. made a pledge of sacrificial celibacy, but here he includes his father among those who will wear a crown and play a harp. In An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642) he remarks that the 144,000 virgins of Rev. 14 include married men, ‘For mariage must not be call’d a defilement’ (YP 1. 893). See Ep. Dam. 214n and A Masque 787n.
35. Spiritus identified by John Carey as M.’s own spirit, which has been released from his body to sing amid the stars. Carey traces the theory of this release to Macrobius’s commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis. See RES n.s. 15 (1964) 180–84. M. N. K. Mander (MQ 23, Dec
ember 1989, 158–65) agrees that Macrobius is the source, but argues that Spiritus is ‘unspecific’ so as to include ‘Milton, his father, and any bard reading the poem’ (162).
37. inenarrabile carmen [inexpressible song] Cp. Lycidas 176.
38. Serpens the constellation.
48. Reptantesque deos [crawling gods] The bard is presumably singing of the gods’ infancy.
glandes [acorns] Ovid says that men who lived during the Golden Age fed on acorns fallen from the tree of Jove (Met. i 106).
49. The Golden Age ended when Jupiter, armed with thunderbolts, dethroned Saturn. Virgil describes the Cyclopes forging thunderbolts in a cave under Etna (Georg. iv 170–75).
52–5. Orpheus entrances oak-trees with his song in Virgil (Georg. iv 510) and moves the ghosts to tears in Ovid (Met. x 41).
60. Arionii Arion saved himself from drowning when he charmed a dolphin with his lyre (Herodotus i 23–4). M.’s father was a talented musician.
64. Phoebus Apollo was god both of poetry and music.
75. Aoniae… ripae [Aonian stream] The fountains of Aganippe and Hippocrene, on Mount Helicon in Aonia (Boeotia), were thought to inspire those who drank from them. The Muses were called Aonides.
94. Austrian gazas the wealth of the Holy Roman Empire.
Peruanaque regna Spain conquered the fabulously wealthy Inca empire of Peru in the 1530s.
98. nato [son] Phaethon. See Elegia V 92n.
99. Hyperion was father of Helios, the sun. M. here follows Homer (Il. viii 480, Od. i 24) in calling Helios ‘Hyperion’.
102. hederas… laurosque [ivy and laurel] See Lycidas 1–2n.
111–14. Cicero argues that the way to pay a moral debt is to acknowledge it (Pro Plancio xxviii 68). Cp. PL iv 50–57.
118. Oreo [Orcus] Hades, the underworld.
Psalm CXIV
This is almost certainly the poem referred to in M.’s letter to Alexander Gill, dated 4 December 1634. M. tells Gill that he has recently translated one of the psalms into Greek heroic verse and is enclosing it with the letter (YP 1. 321). M. also apologizes for any errors that Gill might find, and points out that this is the first poem he has written in Greek since leaving school.
Philosophus ad Regem [A Philosopher to a King]
Date: unknown. This epigram may be a grammar-school exercise. If not written at St Paul’s, it was probably written after 1634, for M. in a letter dated 4 December 1634 says that Psalm CXIV was the first thing he had written in Greek since leaving school (see previous headnote). Parker (144) dates the poem in 1634 and conjectures (without evidence) that M. might be referring to Gill’s clash with Star Chamber and his pardon by King Charles (30 November 1630). M.’s epigram would be oddly belated if it were making a topical reference four years after the event.
4. 1673; 1645. The earlier version means: ‘and in time then you lament grievously, all in vain’.
Ad Salsillum poetam Romanum aegrotantem. Scazontes [To Salzilli,
the Roman poet, when he was ill. Scazons]
Date: late 1638 or early 1639. M. met Giovanni Salzilli in Rome, either during his first visit (October-November 1638) or his second (January–February 1639). The earlier date is more likely, for Ad Salsillum precedes Mansus in 1645, and M. implies that he has only recently arrived in Italy (10). Salzilli wrote an extravagant Latin quatrain in which he praised M. above Homer, Virgil, and Tasso. M.’s poem is a reply to this quatrain (which was printed in 1645 alongside other commendatory verses by M.’s Italian friends). Nothing is known about Salzilli’s illness. Salzilli had contributed poems to a volume called Poesie de ‘Signori Accademici Fantastici (Rome 1637).
Title. Scazontes. a modification of iambic trimeter in which a spondee or trochee takes the place of the final iamb.
1. claudum [lame] punning on the literal sense of ‘scazon’, which is Greek for ‘limping’.
2. Vulcanioque… incessu Vulcan was lame after his fall from heaven. See Elegia VII 81n.
4. Deiope Juno promised Deiopea, the loveliest of her nymphs, to Aeolus as a reward for harassing Aeneas’s fleet (Virgil, Aen. i 65–75).
22. Lesbium… melos [poetry of Lesbos] Alcaeus and Sappho were natives of Lesbos. Salzilli had evidently adapted their Greek lyric tradition to Latin or Italian.
23. Salus [Health] a Roman goddess.
Hebe goddess of youth.
25. Paean Apollo’s title as god of healing. Salzilli is his priest (sacerdos) because Apollo was also god of poetry. The Python was a monstrous serpent slain by Apollo.
27. Fauni Faunus, a Roman god of woods and pastures, identified with Pan.
28. Evandri sedes [Evander’s home] Evander was an Arcadian Greek who founded the city of Pallanteum on the site where Rome would later stand. He welcomed Aeneas and aided him in his war against the Latins (Virgil, Aen. viii 51–584).
34. Numa Numa Pompilius, the second of Rome’s legendary kings. He would frequent the groves where he met the goddess Egeria, who taught him divine wisdom (Plutarch, Numa 4).
38–9. The left bank of the Tiber was prone to floods. Horace tells how such a flood overwhelmed the monumento regis (Odes I ii 15). Ovid means the Regia, the official headquarters of the Pontifex Maximus. M. may have confused this with the Mausoleum of Augustus.
41. Portumni Portumnus was god of harbours. He is ‘curving’ because the shore curves, or perhaps because Ovid describes the sea as curvus (Met. xi 505).
Mansus [Manso]
Date: December 1638 – January 1639. M. sent Manso the poem before leaving Naples (see M.’s headnote). Giovanni Battista Manso (c. 1560–1645) was a generous patron of the arts, and a friend of the poets Torquato Tasso and Giambattista Marino. He also wrote his own volume of poems (1635), some philosophical dialogues (1608, 1618), and a Life of Tasso (1619). He addressed a Latin couplet to M., which was printed as one of the commendatory verses in 1645. M. recalled their acquaintance in Defensio Secunda (1654), where he relates that Manso received him with great warmth, conducted him over Naples, and visited him more than once at his lodgings. When M. left the city, Manso apologized for not showing him more attention, and said that he would have been a better host had M. been more guarded about his religious beliefs.
M. ‘s headnote. Tasso’s Gerusalemme Conquistata (1593) was a revised version of his Gerusalemme Liberata (1580–81).
1. quoque [too] Manso had received many other poetic tributes before M.’s.
2. Pierides the Muses, named from their birthplace, Pieria in Macedonia.
4. Galli Cornelius Gallus (d. 26 BC), a poet and friend of Virgil, who commemorates him in Ecl. vi and x.
Mecaenatis Maecenas (d. 8 BC), the famous literary patron and friend of Virgil, Horace, Propertius and others.
6. See Lycidas 1–2n on ivy and laurel as emblems of poetry. Cp. also Ad Patrem 102, with which this line is almost identical.
9. Marinum the poet Giambattista Marino (1569–1625).
11. Marino’s poem L’Adone (1623) is a version of the story of Venus and Adonis.
Assyrios Venus and Adonis were identified with the Semitic Astarte and Babylonian Thammuz. Cp. A Masque 1002 and PL i 446–57.
16. aere [bronze] Marino’s monument in Naples.
18. Orco [Orcus] the underworld.
21. Manso wrote a Life of Tasso (1619). His life of Marino (known only from M.’s lines) has not survived.
22. illius Herodotus, who was born at Halicarnassus, not far from the mountainous promontory of Mycale in Ionia.
23. Herodotus is not now credited with the Life of Homer. M. calls Homer ‘Aeolian’ because northern Asia Minor was settled by Aeolian Greeks.
24. Clius [Clio] one of the nine Muses.
26. Hyperboreo See Q Nov 95n.
30. Cygnos [swans] English poets. Jonson calls Shakespeare ‘Sweet swan of Avon’ in his famous tribute in the First Folio.
34. Tityrus Chaucer. The name, from Virgil’s Eclogues, had been given Chaucer by Spenser (Shep. Cal. February 92, June 81, December 4). Chaucer visited
Italy in 1372 and 1378.
37. Booten [Boötes] a northern constellation, the Wagoner (or Bear-Ward), driver of the Wain (or Great Bear).
38–48. Callimachus tells how the three Hyperborean maidens, Loxo, Upis and Hecaerge, brought gifts of corn to Apollo at Delos (Hymn iv 283–99). Cp. also Herodotus, iv 33–5.
43. See Lycidas 53n on the connection between Druids and Bards.
46. Corineida [daughter of Corineus] Corineus accompanied the Trojan Brutus to Britain, where he governed Cornwall. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae I xii. M. invents his parentage of Loxo.
55. Cynthius Apollo (from Mount Cynthius, on Delos, his birthplace).
57. Pheretiadai [Pheretiades] Admetus, son of Pheres and King of Pherae. When Zeus killed Apollo’s son Aesculapius, Apollo killed the Cyclopes who had forged Zeus’s thunderbolt. Zeus then punished Apollo by making him serve for a year as herdsman to Admetus.
58. Alciden [Alcides] Hercules. While staying as a guest in Admetus’s house, he rescued Admetus’s wife Alcestis, who had died in Admetus’s place. See Sonnet XIX 2n. Ancient sources (including Euripides, Alcestis) place this event after Apollo’s servitude. M.’s lines imply an earlier visit by Hercules.
60. Chironis Chiron the centaur, tutor of many Greek heroes. M. may have invented the story of Apollo’s visits to his cave.
66. Trachinia rupes [Trachinian cliff] Mount Oeta in Thessaly.
69. Cp. Euripides, Alcestis 570f., where Apollo, tending Admetus’s flocks, charms wild lynxes with his lyre.
72. Atlantisque nepos [grandson of Atlas] Mercury, god of eloquence. His mother Maia was Atlas’s daughter.
75. Medea restored Jason’s father Aeson to youth.
76. frontis honores [honours of your brow] Mansus’s hair. Mansus was bald by 1638, but he wore a wig, and M. may have been deceived by it.