Notes to Chapter 1Fisher, “Why is Paradise Regained So Cold?” MS 14 (1980), 195–217.
106 See p. 493 and note 17.
107 See Knoppers, Historicizing Milton, 13–41.
108 See the Loeb Virgil, ed. H. Rushton Fairclough (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1960),
I, 240–1: “Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena / carmen, et egressus silvis
vicina coegi / ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono, / gratum opus agricolis; at nunc
horrentia Martis / Arma virumque cano... .” (“I am he who once tuned my song on
a slender reed, then, leaving the woodland, constrained the neighboring fields to serve
the husbandmen, however grasping – a work welcome to farmers: but now of Mars’
bristling. Arms and the Man I sing.”).
109 Among them are Sannazaro’s De Partu Virginis, Vida’s Christiad, and Giles Fletcher’s
Christ’s Victorie and Triumph (1610), the second book of which treats Christ’s tempta-
tion in the wilderness as Spenserian allegory. See Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton’s Brief
Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence and London, 1966),
3–129.
110 See Job 1:6–12. The character Job is named on six occasions (PR 1.147, 369, 425;
3.64, 67, 95); the book is quoted twice (1.33–4, 368). And either the book or the
tradition of commentary on it are alluded to on at least ten other occasions.
111 Lewalski, “Time and History in Paradise Regained,” in The Prison and the Pinnacle, ed.
Balachandra Rajan (Toronto, 1972), 49–81.
112 See Elizabeth M. Pope, Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem (Baltimore, 1947).
113 Here as in De Doctrina Christiana (CPW VI, 430–7) Milton conceives that office and its
three functions as many Protestant exegetes do.
114 See chapter 11, pp. 388–9.
115 Jesus cites the judges Gideon and Jephtha, as well as heroes of the Roman republic,
Quintius, Curius, Fabricius, and Regulus (PR 2.445–9).
116 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IV.ii.1123b, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass., and
London, 1926). For Milton’s praise of Queen Christina of Sweden for relinquishing a
kingdom see Defensio Secunda, CPW IV.1, 605–6, and see above, chapter 9.
117 This tirade is reminiscent of Michael’s denunciation of the Giants who sought fame by
slaughter and conquest (PL 11.640–99).
118 For the echoes throughout this episode of Cicero, Seneca, and various Stoic–Christian
texts denouncing Alexander and Caesar for seeking false renown conferred by the
multitude and for the impiety of seeking divine honors, see Lewalski, Milton’s Brief
Epic, 236–41.
119 Knoppers, Historicizing Milton, 123–41; see chapter 12, p. 404.
120 CPW VII, 463; and see chapter 11, p. 397.
121 Cf. John Lightfoot’s exegesis of the kingdoms temptation: “The object that the Devill
presented Christ withall in this spectacle, was Rome, her Empire and glory. For 1.
That Empire is called by the very name of all the world, Luke 2.5.... When Satan
cannot at the entrance of the Gospel perswade Christ by all the pompe at Rome, to do
like Antichrist, he setteth up Antichrist at Rome, to bee an enemy to the Gospel in all the
continuance of it”: The Harmony of the Foure Evangelists, 2 vols (London, 1644–7), II,
30–2.
122 See chapter 2, pp. 42–5, 51–2, and chapter 3, p. 82–3. And see B. Douglas Trevor,
“Learned Appearances: Writing Scholarly and Literary Selves in Early Modern Eng-
Notes to Chapter 14