Satan, and couldst thou faithful add? O name,
O sacred name of faithfulness profaned!
Faithful to whom? To thy rebellious crew?
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head;
Was this your discipline and faith engaged,
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to th’ acknowledged power supreme?
And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem
Patron of liberty,958 who more than thou
Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored
Heav’n’s awful Monarch? Wherefore but in hope
To dispossess him, and thyself to reign?
But mark what I aread962 thee now, avaunt;
Fly thither whence thou fledd’st: if from this hour
Within these hallowed limits thou appear,
Back to th’965 infernal pit I drag thee chained,
And seal thee so, as henceforth not to scorn
The facile967 gates of Hell too slightly barred.”
So threat’ned he, but Satan to no threats
Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied.
“Then when I am thy captive talk of chains,
Proud limitary971 Cherub, but ere then
Far heavier load thy self expect to feel
From my prevailing arm, though Heaven’s King
Ride on thy wings974, and thou with thy compeers,
Used to the975 yoke, draw’st his triumphant wheels
In progress976 through the road of Heav’n star-paved.”
While thus he spake, th’ angelic squadron bright
Turned fiery red, sharp’ning in moonèd horns978
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round978
With980 ported spears, as thick as when a field
Of Ceres981 ripe for harvest waving bends
Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind
Sways them; the careful plowman983 doubting stands
Lest on the threshing floor his hopeful sheaves
Prove chaff. On th’ other side Satan alarmed
Collecting all his might dilated986 stood,
Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved987:
His stature reached the sky988, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp
What seemed both spear and shield: now dreadful deeds
Might have ensued, nor only Paradise
In this commotion, but the starry cope992
Of Heav’n perhaps, or all the elements
At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn
With violence of this conflict, had not soon
Th’ Eternal to prevent such horrid fray
Hung forth in Heav’n his golden scales997, yet seen
Betwixt Astrea998 and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein999 all things created first he weighed,
The pendulous round Earth with balanced air
In counterpoise, now ponders1001 all events,
Battles and realms: in these he put two weights
The sequel each of parting and of fight;
The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam;
Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the fiend.
“Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know’st mine,
Neither our own but giv’n; what folly then
To boast what arms can do, since thine no more
Than Heav’n permits, nor mine, though doubled now
To trample thee as mire: for proof look up,
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign
Where thou1012 art weigh’d, and shown how light, how weak,
If thou resist. The fiend looked up and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more1014; but fled
Murmuring, and1015 with him fled the shades of night.
1–12. The most dramatic book of the epic opens like Shakespeare’s Henry V, with a wistful exclamation. Milton echoes Rev. 12.3–12, which prophesies an apocalyptic war in Heaven, defeat of Satan’s forces, and a retaliatory attack on Earth. The juxtaposition of the Apocalypse (future), the War in Heaven (past), Satan’s arrival in Paradise (the narrative present), and Milton’s own present as creator of the poem generates a dizzying temporal displacement, registered in shifting verb tenses around the repeated now of lines 5–9.
3. Then when: Cp. line 970.
10. Accuser: St. John identifies Satan not as the devil (diabolos) but as the tempter of Adam and Eve and accuser (kategoros) of Christians seeking salvation (Rev. 12.10).
11. wreck: avenge (wreak); cp. 3.241.
16. rolling: heaving, surging.
17. engine: cannon (see 6.470–91). Satan is repeatedly associated with gunpowder and artillery (cp. ll. 814–18), which he invents in Book 6. Both engine and invention (or even plot) can translate the Latin ingenium.
20–23. The Hell … place: Cp. 1.253–55. The narrator’s comment recalls Doctor Faustus 1.3.76; 2.1.121–22.
25. Cp. SA 22.
27–28. Eden … pleasant: Milton appears to have thought that Eden (now deemed Sumerian in origin) derived from the Hebrew for “delight.”
30. meridian: noon or zenith. Richardson traces to Vergil the image of the midday sun as in a tower (Culex 41).
31. revolving: deliberating. Milton’s word choice continues the characterization of Satan’s mental processes as circular, often viciously so (rolling, recoil).
32–41. Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew and biographer, claims that he was shown these lines “several years before the poem was begun” and that they were “designed for the very beginning” of a tragedy on the same subject (Darbishire 72). In the Trinity College manuscript, Milton outlines such a tragedy under the title “Adam Unparadised.” Satan’s soliloquy draws on Prometheus’ first speech in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.
45. Upbraided: reproached; cp. James 1.5.
50. ‘sdained: disdained, in a form reminiscent of the Italian sdegnare (to disdain). An attitude of romantic as well as religious import, “disdain” in Satan’s usage at line 82 is given allegorical agency antagonistic to “submission”; cp. line 770.
51. quit: usually glossed as “repay,” but the sense here more nearly approximates “to cease to be engaged in or occupied with” (OED I.5.a).
53–56. still: always.
56. By owing owes not: Acknowledgment of an obligation (“owning up”) satisfies it. Cp. Cicero, De Officiis 2.20; Pro Plancio 28.68.
61. power: a rank in the angelic hierarchy, here and in line 63 used loosely to mean any angel.
66–72. Satan interrogates himself (thou), and his replies corroborate God’s earlier self-justification (3.100–101).
75. myself am Hell: In the early 1660s, Louis XIV of France reportedly identified himself with the state—“L’Etat c’est moi”—a sentence long regarded as the epitome of royal absolutism. Satan dwells on the ramifications of his identification with Hell. See 20–23n.
79–80. no place/Left for repentance: Hebrews 12.17 is widely cited as the source for Satan’s phrasing. The quasi-allegorical expression of a psychological condition as a physical locality is general in this poem, however. Satan is irreversibly consigned to Hell, and his former place of bliss has been irreversibly estranged from him (5.615, 7.144).
87. abide: endure or persevere in; but the sense “remain in a place” is also present. See the preceding note.
90. advanced: exalted (referring to Satan on his throne).
94. act of grace: suspension of a legal penalty. While the reference to divine mercy is clear, Satan’s legalese recalls Charles’s phrasing in Eikon Basilike: “Is this the reward and thanks I am to receive for those many Acts of Grace I have lately passed?” (9.53).
97. violent and void: forced and therefore invalid.
110. Evil be thou my good: Satan later recognizes that the reverse also holds true (9.122–23).
115. pale: darkness, gloom (cp. 10.1009). The light drains from Satan’s disguised face three times (cp.
1.594–98). (Note that the Argument identifies fear, not ire, as the first of the three passions affecting him.) His disfiguration (l. 127) reverses scriptural accounts of Christ’s transfiguration, in which the mountaintop illumination of Jesus—his “face shone like the sun”—manifests his heavenly nature (Matt. 17.2).
123. couched: lying in ambush, lurking; cp. 405–6.
126. Assyrian mount: Niphates (3.742).
132–45. Eden … round: Milton describes Paradise as a walled garden situated on the level summit (champaign head) of a hill (steep wilderness) on the eastern border of Eden. The trees on the densely wooded hillside resemble ascending rows of seats in a theater.
136. grotesque: according to the OED, which cites this as the first such usage in English, “of a landscape: Romantic, picturesquely irregular” (B 2.b). The implied Miltonic innovation is dubious. The word had only recently entered English from the Italian grotesca. It referred to the style of painting and sculpture found in excavated Roman grottoes, which featured partial human and animal forms and interwoven foliage. It was an aesthetic term applied to antic, rugged, extravagant, or fanciful productions. The suggestiveness of Milton’s description of the “hairy” hillside wildly overgrown with tangled thicket, its imaginative amalgamations of human and vegetable, qualify this usage as an instance of the original meaning (cp. 5.294–97).
140. sylvan scene: forest backdrop; translates Vergil’s sylvis scaena (Aen. 1.164).
149. enameled: glossy, brilliant, as in coloring fixed by fire (cp. 9.525).
151. humid bow: rainbow (cp. Masque 992).
153. lantskip: landscape.
156. gales: breezes.
160–65. Cape of Hope … smiles: After rounding the southern tip of Africa (Cape of Hope), European trade ships bore northeast from Mozambique. Diodorus Siculus (3.46), on whom Milton appears to draw here and at lines 275–79, notes that the prevailing winds of spring carry fragrance from Saba (Sheba), a region in Arabia Felix (Araby the Blest; modern Yemen) renowned for the grateful (pleasing) smell of myrrh and frankincense. The phenomenon of the aromatic Arabian breeze scenting the ocean was by Milton’s time a commonplace expressive of remote knowledge: “So we the Arabian coast do know, / At distance, when the spices blow” (Waller, Night-piece 39–40; cp. Herbert, Prayer 13–14). A related olfactory phenomenon occurs in Heaven (3.135–37).
168–71. Asmodeus … bound: In Media (now northwestern Iran), according to the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the demon Asmodeus (cp. Asmadai, 6.365 and PR 2.151) kills seven husbands of Sarah. Tobias, son of the blind Tobit, becomes her eighth husband. On the advice of the angel Raphael, Tobias repels the jealous demon by burning the heart and liver of a fish (whence the fishy fume). Fleeing hastily (post) to Egypt to escape the smell, Asmodeus is captured by the angel and bound (cp. 5.221–23).
172. savage: wooded, wild.
176. had perplexed: would have perplexed.
181. bound … bound: another instance of paronomasia, jingling wordplay common in late Latin and Italian writers and characteristic of Hebrew Scripture. Cp. 1.642n.
183–87. wolf … fold: Cp. John 10.1–10, where Christ identifies himself as the proper entrance to the flock and calls those who circumvent him thieves and robbers. See 193n.
186. hurdled cotes: fenced shelters made of poles and intertwined branches.
188. unhoard the cash: undo a hidden reserve of money by removing its contents, in this case cash with a play on cache.
192. clomb: archaic past tense of climb.
193. lewd: base (with an ironic glance at the original meaning, “not of the clergy, lay”). In the Geneva Bible and AV, lewd can translate poneron, Greek for evil in general (e.g., Acts 17.5; cp. 1.490, 6.182). Christ scorns the “hireling,” who when a wolf attacks, “fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep” (John 10.13). Milton’s frequent criticisms of corrupt clergy allude to this parable and tend to merge the hireling and the wolf. Cp. 12.507–11, Lyc 114–29, Sonnet 1614.
194. Tree of Life: Gen. 2.9; Rev. 2.7.
196. cormorant: large, voracious seabird; figuratively, someone insatiably greedy, rapacious.
200. pledge: “anything … put in the possession of another … as a guarantee of good faith” (OED 2.a). The tree of prohibition is a corresponding pledge—of humanity’s obedience and faith (8.325; cp. CD in Yale 6:352). Satan though immortal has lost “true life” (l. 196) and now subsists in Hell, where death lives (2.624).
207. In … wealth: Cp. Barabas’s delight at “infinite riches in a little room” in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (1.1.37).
211. Auran: or Hauran; region south of Damascus, on Israel’s eastern border (Ezek. 47.16, 18).
212. Seleucia: city on the Tigris River near Baghdad, built by Seleucus, c. 300 B.C.E., one of Alexander’s successors and founder of a dynasty.
214. Telassar: ancient city within the boundaries set forth in lines 211–12, inhabited by “the children of Eden” but conquered by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E. (2 Kings 19.12; Isa. 37.12). See line 285.
222. “That doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil—that is to say, of knowing good by evil” (Areop in MLM 939); “since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil” (CD 1.10 in MLM 1220).
223. a river large: the Tigris, named at 9.71.
228. kindly: natural.
237. crispèd: wavy.
239. error: used in the primary sense of the Latin noun error, “a wandering.”
241. nice: fastidious, precise.
242. curious knots: flower beds of painstakingly intricate design; boon: bounteous.
246. Embrowned: darkened, per French and Italian usage (embrunir; imbrunire).
247. seat: local habitation, residence.
250. amiable: lovely (cp. Ps. 84.1 in the AV versus Milton’s translation, MLM 117); Hesperian fables: See 3.568n.
254. lap: a hollow among hills (OED 5.b; Milton antedates by nearly a century the OED’s earliest quotation of this usage).
255. irriguous: well watered (cp. Horace, Satires 2.4.16).
256. without thorn the rose: Thorns were commonly deemed a postlapsarian phenomenon (Gen. 3.18). “Before man’s fall the Rose was born/St. Ambrose says, without the thorn” (Herrick, The Rose).
257. umbrageous: shady.
258. mantling: covering, like a cloak; cp. 5.279; mantling vine: cp. Masque 294.
262–63. myrtle … mirror: Fowler notes that myrtle and mirror are iconographical attributes of Venus, goddess of love and gardens, often associated with Eve. See lines 454–65.
264. airs: melodies; breezes.
266. Pan: nature god. In Greek, pan means “all.”
267. Graces and the Hours: Sister goddesses (Euphrosyne, Aglaia, Thalia), the Graces dance in attending Aphrodite (cp. FQ 6.10.5–17). The Hours represent the seasons and in Hesiod crown Pandora with spring flowers (Works and Days 74–75).
268–72. eternal … world: Milton presents the seasons as a postlapsarian phenomenon (10.651–91). In classical myth, seasonal change owes to the rape of Proserpine. Ovid describes the Sicilian grove from which Dis abducts her (Enna) as a place of perpetual spring (Met. 5.385–91). While sorrowful Ceres, goddess of grain, seeks her daughter, the earth turns barren. Because Proserpine eats of a pomegranate while in Hades, she must return to Dis for part of each year, during which time Ceres mourns, and nothing grows. Cp. 9.395–96 and Milton’s 1637 letter to Diodati.
273–74. Daphne … spring: The laurel grove of Daphne by the river Orontes near Antioch had a spring inspired by Apollo and named for the Castalian spring of Parnassus. See Purchas 83. For the myth of Apollo and Daphne, see Ovid, Met. 1.450–565.
275–79. Nyseian … eye: The third stage of this four-layer simile follows Diodorus’s account of Ammon, King of Libya, his affair with Amalthea, and their son (Bacchus). Mother and son take refuge from Rhea, Ammon’s wife, on the island Nysa (3:67–70). Ammon was identified with the Libyan
Jupiter and with Ham (Cham), Noah’s son.
280–85. Abassin … garden: Heylyn describes Amara as being “a day’s journey high” and the site of palaces where, to prevent sedition, younger sons of the Abyssinian emperor were secluded and educated (4:64). Like Heylyn, Purchas comments on the identification of this African mount as the “place of our forefather’s paradise” (843).
300. front: forehead; sublime: lofty.
301. hyacinthine: like hyacinth petals, from Homer (Od. 6.231).
304–8. Women’s long hair was on St. Paul’s authority understood to imply subjection (1 Cor. 11.7, 14–15). Like Homer’s Aphrodite and Vergil’s Venus, Milton’s Eve is golden.
306. wanton: abundant, luxuriant; like the “mantling vine” of line 258.
310. coy: not demonstrative, shy.
311. reluctant: “struggling” (Hume). Cp. the fire of divine wrath struggling through “dusky wreaths” of smoke at 6.58. As uncomfortable as some readers may be with the suggestion of erotic struggle, the modern sense of reluctant as “unwilling” was not current in the seventeenth century, according to the OED.
312. mysterious: See 741–43n.
329. Zephyr: west wind; “the frolic wind that breathes the spring” (L’All 18).
331–36. Adam and Eve’s contented meal reverses the punishment of Tantalus.
332. Nectarine: sweet as nectar; compliant: yielding.
334. damasked: many colored.
337. gentle purpose: well-bred conversation.
338. Wanted: were lacking.
341. chase: unenclosed land, game preserve; also, animals to be hunted.
343. ramped: reared, as if climbing.
344. Dandled: played with; cp. Isa. 11.6; ounces, pards: lynxes, leopards.
348. Insinuating: artfully working into company, winding; Gordian: like the famously complicated knot.
352. ruminating: chewing the cud.
353. prone career: downward course, as of a galloping horse.
354. ocean isles: identified at line 592 as the Azores; ascending scale: ladder, stairway (OED n3, I.1.b), or more likely, the rising scale of a figurative cosmic balance “weighing night and day, the one ascending as the other sinks” (Newton). In the equinoctial Garden, day and night are counterpoised. At the vernal equinox, the sun is in Aries, opposite Libra (the Scales), the constellation in which the evening stars would rise (cp. Vergil, Georg. 1.208).