[Previous: lines 100-120]
The scene shifts from Judea down into Hell, where Satan addresses his followers.
Interea longe mundi regnator opaci,
infelix monstrum, penitus non inscius, illam
iam prope adesse diem, superi, qua maximus ultor
imperio patris, infernis succederet oris
manibus auxilio ac sedes vastaret opertas. [125]
Sollicitus partes animum versabat in omnes,
si qua forte potis regno hanc avertere cladem
molirique deo letum meditator; ea una
denique cura animo sedet, haec saepe una resurgit.
Demens, qui id propter tantum non viderat ipsum [130]
demissum coelo iuvenem, quo sponte piaret
morte obita, veterum culpam et scelus omne parentum.
Protinus acciri diros ad regia fratres
limina, concilium horrendum, et genus omne suorum
imperat. Ecce igitur dedit ingens buccina signum, [135]
quo subito intonuit caecis domus alta cavernis
undique opaca, ingens; antra intonuere profunda,
atque procul gravido tremefacta est corpore tellus.
Continuo ruit ad portas gens omnis et adsunt
lucifugi coetus varia atque bicorpora monstra, [140]
pube tenus hominum facies, verum hispida in anguem
desinit, ingenti sinuata volumine cauda.
Gorgonas hi Sphingasque obscoeno corpore reddunt,
Centaurosque, Hydrasque illi ignivomasque Chimaeras,
centum alii Scyllas, ac foedificas Harpyias, [145]
et quae multa homines simulacra horrentia fingunt.
At centum geminus flammanti vertice supra est
arbiter ipse Erebi, centenaque brachia iactat
centimanus, totidemque eructat faucibus aestus.
Omnes luctificum fumumque, atrosque procaci [150]
ore, oculisque ignes, et vastis naribus efflant.
Omnibus intorti pendent pro crinibus angues,
nexantes nodis sese ac per colla plicantes.
In manibus rutilaeque faces, uncique tridents,
quis sontes animas subigunt, atque ignibus urgent. [155]
Nec minus illi etiam diversis partibus orbis
conveniunt properi, qui terris omnibus errant
hortantes scelera, ac variis mortalia ludunt
pectora imaginibus, rectique oblivia suadent.
Necnon ventorum tempestatumque potentes, [160]
nubivagum genus, haud certa regione locati,
nimborum in media consueti nocte vagari.
Ergo animis prompti, atque opibus coiere parati
una omnes: fremitu vario sonat intus opaca
regia; rex donec nigram igne tricuspide dextram [165]
armatus, coetu in medio sic farier orsus:
“Tartarei proceres, coelo gens orta sereno,
quos olim huc mecum superi inclementia regis
aethere deiectos flagranti fulmine adegit,
dum regno cavet, ac sceptris multa invidus ille [170]
permetuit, refugitque parem. Quae praelia toto
egerimus coelo, quibus olim denique utrinque
sit certatum odiis, notum, et meminisse necesse est.
Ille astris potitur, parte et plus occupat aequa
aetheris ac poenas inimica e gente recepit [175]
crudeles. Pro sideribus, pro luce serena,
nobis senta situ loca, sole carentia tecta
reddidit ac tenebris iussit torquere sub imis
immites animas hominum, illaetabile regnum;
haud superae aspirare poli datur amplius aulae. [180]
Ingens ingenti claudit nos obiice tellus;
in partemque homini nostri data regia coeli est.
Nec satis. Arma iterum molitur, et altera nobis
bella ciet, regnisque etiam nos pellit ab imis.
Id propter iuvenem aetherea demisit ab arce, [185]
seu natum, sive alitibus de fratribus unum.
Iamque aderit, fretusque armis coelestibus ille
sedibus exitium vehet his, et regna recludet
infera, concessasque animas nostro eximet orbe.
Fors quoque nos, nisi non segnes occurrimus, ipsos [190]
arcta in vincla dabit vinctosque inducet Olympo
victor, ovans; superi illudent toto aethere captis.
Iste autem quamvis mortalia membra caducus
induerit, tamen est nostris imperditus armis.
Nempe ego saepe adii coramque interritus urgens [195]
tentavi insidiis nequicquam (non ea me res
falsum habuit, neque enim nunc primum talia cerno).
Quas non in facies, quae non mutatus in ora
accessi incassum? semper me reppulit ipse,
non armis ullis fretus, non viribus usus, [200]
sed tantum veterum repetito carmine vatum,
irrita tentamenta, dolos et vim exiit omnem.
Ergo, quae mihi nunc surgit sententia, pandam.
Ille iter antiquas Solymorum instaurat ad arces,
sit licet invisus magnae primoribus urbis; [205]
quippe sacerdotes odiis ingentibus illi
infensi insidias, ut cuique est copia, tendunt,
solliciti veterum pro relligione parentum,
ut ferro incautum superent, et funere mulctent,
quandoquidem ille novos ritus, nova sacra per urbes [210]
instituit, priscasque audet rescindere leges.
Hic opibus vestris opus. En nunc confieri rem
tempus adest! In eum cuncti maioribus illos
inflammate odiis, et vera, et prava canentes,
pestiferumque animis furtim inspirate venenum. [215]
Ne victi oblitique iras corda aspera ponant,
sed saevi magis, atque magis, stimulisque, subacti
acribus, absistant numquam, nisi caede paracta,
Si vero, siquis sociis ex ipsius unum
bis senis capere atque dolis pervertere possit, [220]
res confecta; metus penitus sublatus et omnis.
Praecipitate moras; fluxis succurrite rebus.
Nunc tectis opus insidiis, nunc viribus usus.”
Vix ea fatus, ubique ruentes jussa facessunt
auctores scelerum, portisque ex omnibus alte [225]
diversi rumpunt; tremit abdita murmure tellus.
Incubuere auris, crinitas anguibus alas
obscurum per inane movent terrasque capessunt.
Non tam olim densa sublimes nube per auras
florilegae glomerantur apes aestate serena [230]
nubifugo Borea et madidis cessantibus Austris,
si quando exorta est inter discordia reges
saevaque collatis invadunt proelia signis.
Vae, quibus institerint terris, quibus orbis in oris
dira cohors, quantas populis feret illa ruinas? [235]
Meanwhile, far off, the king of the dark lands,
baleful monster, could no longer hide the fact
the day approached when the mightest of avengers
would, at his divine father’s behest, scour hell
save the desolate and lay waste to that hidden land. [125]
Anxiously he turned his thoughts in every direction
looking for some way to avert his realm’s collapse
plotting—somehow—to murder God. Obsessed!
The impossible thought kept returning to him.
Crazy: he could not see it was precisely for this [130]
that heaven had sent this man, freely to expiate
with his death all our first parents' sin and guilt.
Hurriedly he summoned his dire brotherhood
and all their kin to his royal palace: horrid
council! A vast and dreadful trumpet blared, [135]
shaking to its deepest caverns this high-roofed house
this mass of shadowed darkness; huge caves echoed
and the gravid earth trembled to its limits.
The whole horde came rushing at the summons
light-averse monsters, weird bicorporeal things, [140]
creatures human down to the groin but ending as
snakes in huge sinuating and barbed coils. Some
shaped themselves as obscene Gorgons and Sphinxes,
others Centaurs, Hydras, fire-belching Chimaeras,
hundreds more were Scyllas and foetid Harpies— [145]
every shape of horror mankind might imagine.
On a flaming summit hundreds of spans above the rest
the lord of Erebus stood, waving his hundred arms
(each hundred-handed) belching from many mouths.
All present vaped baleful smoke from their impudent [150]
mouths, shot fire from their eyes and gaping nostrils.
All had dangling, wriggling serpents instead of hair,
twisting themselves into knots, writhing at their necks.
Hands clasped the burning brands and jagged tridents,
they used to stamp damned souls down in the fire. [155]
Not forgetting those who travel the wide globe
accosting all who rush careless on their way
tempting them to sin, beguiling their hearts
with seductive fictions to forget righteousness.
Also there were the Powers of Wind and Tempest, [160]
a stormroaming species, without specific home on earth,
wont to wander with the clouds at midnight.
So, all eager readiness, they came thronging
one and all: the dark palace shuddered with their
varied clamour. Their king, his black hand burning with [165]
triple fire, rose in their midst and began to speak:
“Tartarean princes! born in the serenity of heaven,
cruelly cast down from there by the upper king
expelled from that ether by his blazing lightning,
down to this place—how his sceptre trembled with fear! [170]
He left me, one he knew his equal. Total war!
We hoped to win heaven, how hard fought it was,
hatred on both sides: let us never forget it!
He now rules the stars, taking more than his share
of the sky and exacting onerous penance from us [175]
unfairly. Instead of stars and the bright serene
he grants us this wasteland, this sunless vault
and orders us, in this dismal place, to torture
the wayward souls of men who pour into this realm;
no hope we'll ever see again heaven’s high halls. [180]
An immense barrier, earth’s immensity, holds us here;
and our realm is given as a prize to—mankind!
And more: again he takes up arms against us, again
he wages war, to drive us deeper even than here.
He sends down into battle a youngster, [185]
maybe his son, or else one of the angel tribe,
but coming, make no mistake: with heaven’s weapons
he’ll rain destruction on us, blast open our
infernal realm and steal the souls that belong to us.
It may be, unless we defend ourselves, he’ll [190]
even bind us in tight chains and haul us to Olympus
with much clamour, all heaven mocking our captivity.
The thing is: although he has taken on mortal form
mere human, yet he is impervious to our attack.
I myself have gone to him often, tempting him [195]
every way I know how: nothing! (unexpected, this:
it’s not the first time I have perverted a human!)
What faces I asssumed, how I changed my shape!
In vain. Every time he turned me away,
not with weapons, not by physical strength, [200]
but by repeating the old words of scripture and so
all my temptations, pain and power was thwarted.
So: here's what I propose we do. He's travelled
to the ancient city gates of Jerusalem.
Many of that city's great ones truly loathe him; [205]
the priests in particular, and many are already
lying in wait to snare him in their various traps,
to defend the ancient religion of their ancestors,
clap him in iron chains and punish him with death
on account of the new rites, the new religion he has [210]
established, daring to rescind the old laws.
This is our chance! Now let us assemble all
our best efforts! Go amongst that multitude
and spread your hatred: truths and falsehoods both,
go furtively and fill their souls with pestilence. [215]
Don't let them forget their hearts' rough anger,
ever more savage, more and more, jabbed by
your sharp taunts, don’t let them stop til he is dead,
Truly, if one of his twelve followers could
be turned, perverted with our deceit, the thing, [220]
would be done; and all our fear would be lifted.
No delay! Let us seize this initiative.
The time is now! for guile and outward force!”
As soon as he had spoken they scrambled to obey:
authors of sin, bursting through every gateway [225]
scattering everywhere; the world rumbled and shook.
Striding through air they beat their hairy wings
through the black void until they reached upper land.
No cloud as dense was ever formed, not even when
bees swarm hungrily upon the summer flowers [230]
when cloudbusting Boreas and rainy Auster grow calm,
and the warlike kings of the hives charge out
hurrying to battle under their opposing flags.
Woe! Which countries and regions will they visit
that dire cohort, what ruin will they bring? [235]
There's no question but that the Christiad finally picks itself up and flies at this point: after 120 lines of blandly pious versification, suddenly we have all these splendid demons. You can see the Blakean ‘true poet, and of the devil's party without knowing it’ vibe that Milton took on board. In some cases, indeed, he more than just absorbed influence; he directly lifted. So Vida's
The whole horde came rushing at the summonsbecomes
light-averse monsters, weird bicorporeal things,
creatures human down to the groin but ending as
snakes in huge sinuating and barbed coils. Some
shaped themselves as obscene Gorgons and Sphinxes,
others Centaurs, Hydras, fire-belching Chimaeras,
hundreds more were Scyllas and foetid Harpies—
every shape of horror mankind might imagine.
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,Vida's light-averse, lugifugus, is used in Vergil's Georgics to describe insects, lucifugis blattis, light-fleeing beetles (although this is a touch tautological, since ‘blatta’ actually means ‘any insect that shuns the light, e.g. cockroach, moth, bookworm, mantid’). Milton also lifts (I'm steering clear of the plagiary word) Vida's striking bee simile:
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. [Paradise Lost 2:622-27]
As soon as he had spoken they scrambled to obey:... which in Paradise Lost becomes:
authors of sin, bursting through every gateway
scattering everywhere; the world rumbled and shook.
Striding through air they beat their hairy wings
through the black void until they reached uppers land.
No cloud as dense was ever formed, not even when
bees swarm hungrily upon the summer flowers
when cloudbusting Boreas and rainy Auster grow calm,
and the warlike kings of the hives charge out
hurrying to battle under their opposing flags.
they anonThat academics can spend entire articles discussing from whence Milton derived his devils-as-bees simile [as, for instance, Jason P. Rosenblatt, ‘Milton's Bee-Lines’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 18:4 (1977), 609-623] without so much as mentioning Vida's name suggests that scholars have lost sight of just how important the Christiad was to Paradise Lost. (‘Cloudbusting Boreas’, I concede, is a touch more Kate Bush than the original merits: Vida has nubifuga Boreas, the north wind who makes the clouds flee, that is; blows them away. But it's my translation and I'm sticking with Kate Bush.)
With hunderds and with thousands trooping came
Attended: all access was throng'd, the Gates
And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall
... Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,
Brusht with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees
In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth thir populous youth about the Hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank,
The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel,
New rub'd with Baum, expatiate and confer
Thir State affairs. So thick the aerie crowd
Swarm'd [PL 1: 759-76]
There's one important difference, I suppose. Milton's Satan is, for all his vast size and diabolic form, man-shaped, a singular voice and identity. Vida's Satan not only leads myriad monstrous devils, he is myriadform himself: many-mouthed, hundred-armed and hundred-hundred handed, more grotesque but also rather harder to picture, to imagine. His voice is identifiable, it's true; and we can see from where Milton takes his Satanic rhetoric, its seeming-reasonableness, its ‘both sides’ faux-balance, as if he and God were two tribal chieftans competing over territory rather than the fundamental principles of right and wrong as such. But ten thousand hands is too many hands to visualise. (Mind you, by line 165 he seems to have only the two hands, one of which he holds up, ‘black, burning with triple fire’).
The image at the head of this post is a detail from the fresco known as ‘Descent of Christ to Limbo’ (1365) by Andrea Bonaiuti da Da Firenze, in the Cappella Spagnuolo, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy.
[Next: lines 236-299]
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