John Milton - Poemata - Latin, Greek and Italian Poems

Phaeton, who fled from the chariot of the Sun while driving it.

Venus.

The North–east promontory of Sicily.

The Hyacinth, favorite of Apollo. The Anemone, favorite of Venus.

Goddess of Memory and mother of the Muses.

Pallas Athena.

Waters of oblivion and forgetfulness.

Tiresins. See Milton's Sixth Elegy, line 68.

Hermes (Mercury).

Perhaps the legendary Phoenician sage, Sanchuniathon.

A legendary Assyrian king. Belus is the Assyrian god Bel.

Hermes Trismegistus, author of Neo–Platonic works must esteemed.

Plato.

A fount sacred to the Muses.

The Muse of History.

The Serpent, a constellation.

Bacchus, or Wine.

John Milton Sr. was a fine musician. Arion was a lyric poet of Methymna, in Lesbos, who was saved from drowning by dolphins which he charmed with his song.

Aonia is a plain in Boeotia.

France.

The Old Testament Scriptures.

Translated from the Latin, and not Milton's Greek poem. Milton's own English version, presented below, was done, he tells us, "at fifteen years old."

See Exodus, chapter 17.

Abraham.

Egyptian.

Greek lines placed by Milton beneath the engraved portrait of himself by William Marshall in the 1645 edition of his poems. The handsome Milton disliked Marshall's picture and took revenge with this epigram, which Marshall, ignorant of Greek, engraved beneath the portrait.

The original is written in a measure called Scazon, which signifies limping, and the measure is so denominated, because, though in other respects Iambic, it terminates with a Spondee, and has consequently a more tardy movement. The reader will immediately see that this property of the Latin verse cannot be imitated in English.—W.C.

Diopeia was one of Juno's nymphs.

The Aventine hill. Evander, great–grandson of Pallas, King of Arcadia, migrated to Italy about sixty years before the Trojan War.

Milton's Account of Manso, translated.

The Muses.

Cornelius Gallus, Roman eleist. See Virgil (Eclogue vi, 64–66, and x). Maecenas. Roman patron of letters. See Horace (Odes, i,1),

Author of the Adone, a poem on the story of Venus and Adonis.

Herodotus, to whom The Life of Homer is attributed.

Chaucer, called Tityrus in Spencer's Pastorals.

The maidens who brought offerings to Delos. Loxo, descended from the ancient British hero, Corineus; Upis, a prophetess; and Hecaerge.

Admetus was King of Thessaly. Apollo was for a year his shepherd.

See Homer (Il. xi, 830–831) and Ovid (Met. ii, 630).

Mt. Oeta, between Thessaly and Aetolia.

See Ovid (Met. x, 87–106), where the trees crowd the hear Orpheus sing.

Hermes.

The wreaths of victors, made from the laurel, which grew on Mt. Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, and the myrtle, sacred to Venus, a shrine to whom was at Paphos in Cyprus.

A river in Sicily.

Subject of Theocritus's Lament for Daphnis (Idyl i) in which Thyrsis is the mourning shepherd. Hylas was taken away by nymphs who admired his beauty and Bion is the subject of Moschus's Epitaph of Bion (Idyl iii).

Goddess who was protector of the flocks. Faunus is god of the plains and hills around Rome.

Characters in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

A river near St. Albans. Cassivellaunus was a British chieftan who opposed Caesar. See Gallic War (v, xi.)

Medicine. Diodati took medical training at Cambridge.

Milton's planned epic opened with the Dardanian (i.e. Trojan) fleet, under Brutus, approaching England.

Brennus and Belinus were kings of Brittany who, according to Spencer's Fairie Queen, "rasackt Greece" and conquered France and Germany. Arviragus led the Britons against Claudius.

See Malory's Morte d'Arthur.

A river in Oxford.

Goddess of the Dawn.

This Ode consists of three strophes and the same of antistrophes, concluding with an epode. Although these units do not perfectly correspond in their number of verses or in divisions which are strictly parallel, nevertheless I have divided them in this fashion with a view to convenience or the reader, rather than conformity with the ancient rules of versification. In other respects a poem of this kind should, perhaps, more correctly be called monostrophic. The metres are in part regularly patterned and in part free. There are two Phaleucian verses which admit a spondee in the third foot, a practice often followed by Catullus in the second foot. [Milton's Note, translated—W.C. This Ode is rendered without rhyme, that it might more adequately represent the original, which, as Milton himself informs us, is of no certain measure. It may possibly for this reason disappoint the reader, though it cost the writer more labour than the translation of any other piece in the whole collection.—W.C.

Italian.

The Muses, who dwelt on Mount Helicon in Aonia.

See Euripides' Ion.

Translation of a simile in Paradise Lost, "As when, from mountaintops, the dusky clouds Ascending, etc.—"(ii. 488)—W.C.

It has ever been thought difficult for an author to speak gracefully of himself, especially in commendation; but Milton, who was gifted with powers to overcome difficulties, of every kind, is eminently happy in this particular. He has spoken frequently of himself both in verse and prose, and he continually shows that he thought highly of his own endowments; but if he praises himself, he does it with that dignified frankness and simplicity of conscious truth, which renders even egotism respectable and delightful: whether he describes the fervent and tender emotions of his juvenile fancy, or delineates his situation in the decline of life, when he had to struggle with calamity and peril, the more insight he affords us into his own sentiments and feelings, the more reason we find both to love, and revere him.—W.C.