Chapter Characters of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

This recalls the argument against monarchy in The Readie and Easie Way of what would happen to England if the Restoration was allowed to proceed. The tyranny of Satan in hell is likened by Milton to the despotism of the "great Sultan" (l.348) in "great Alcairo" (l.718), itself analogous to the perceived tyranny and arbitrariness of Charles I’s reign. Satan’s size, strength and his heroic accoutrements are all used for evil ends – for destruction and corruption. His followers also have their noble attributes, yet they are all described with contempt.

Satan’s speech to his troops (V.772-802) is based on Milton’s most esteemed civil principles, dignity and liberty. Milton asserted in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates that divine right monarchy is incompatible with the liberties of the subject. Satan refuses to pay "knee-tribute" (V.782)

Paradise Lost

and Empire

Though denied by Samuel Johnson, Paradise Lost is - in part - an epic of empire. The opening of the poem, though not Virgilian or Homeric, places the text as an imperial epic. More precisely, Paradise Lost is a poem concerning exploration and colonial plantation; hence the invocation of du Bartas’s "Les Colonies", in which Milton describes his epic as "mine adventurous Rime".

With only two exceptions "adventure" in Paradise Lost is used by Milton for the designs of Satan and his followers, designs which are the enterprises of fallen pride. Though Milton’s own design to produce "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme" is itself "adventurous". Satan’s voyaging, in other words the story of his colonization of the New World, took inspiration from Camoens’ Lusiads (the only ten-book epic before Paradise Lost in its initial form). The prose additions of 1668 clarified Milton’s allusions to the conquest and expansion in the New World.

After the expulsion from Heaven, Satan’s most immediate promise to his followers is of new territory. In the first part of Book II the fallen angels debate in Pandaemonium the wisdom of such expansion: it is in Machiavellian terms: viz. whether Hell should be a commonwealth of expansion or one of preservation.

Mammon proposes, in a speech littered with classical republican rhetoric, that Hell should become a Sparta, "preferring | Hard liberty before easy yoke | Of servile pomp" and arguing for "the settled state | Of order" (II.255-7; 279-80). This counters Moloch’s previous advice that the fallen angels should attempt to storm Heaven, "Armed with hell flames and fury all at once | O’er heaven’s high towers to force restless way" (II.61-2).

Beelzebub takes the cold Machiavellian line and argues that if it were possible to build an empire from Pandaemonium, it would eventually be consumed by the forces of Heaven, that it was inevitable that God would "over hell extend | His empire" (II.326-7). Beelzebub argues for Hell to remain a commonwealth would invite disaster, thus the moment should be seized and expansion pursued. As it is realised that Heaven is too dangerous an arena for conflict, Beelzebub reasons that the fallen angels should take the conflagration into "another world, the happy seat | Of some new race called Man" (II. 345-6).

The debate in hell can be read with direct allusion to the political developments of the mid-1650s, in which republicanism was renounced for the quasi-monarchism of the Protectorate. Under Cromwell’s rule Britain faced the dilemma of whether to become a ‘Sparta’ or a ‘Rome’: a commonwealth for expansion, or for preservation. The republican James Harrington in Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) attempted to resolve this dilemma with a vision that re-imagined Britain; however this was less a utopian formula than an attempt at political persuasion.

Machiavelli warned of the danger for the republican form of government regarding expansion; and Sallust demonstrated that although in the short term expansion might bring greatness to the republic, over a prolonged period it breeds ambition, luxury, destruction and then tyranny.

Perhaps the clearest evidence that Milton was considering Cromwell when composing his account of satanic expansion in the New World is Satan’s appeal: