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received many foreign colonists since the abduction of the Ten Tribes, the Samaritans were not a pure Hebrew race.

361-385. "Between two such opposing enemies, Roman and Parthian," etc. Satan now more fully discloses his purpose in having brought Jesus to the mountain-top and enabled him to survey the great Parthian or Eastern Empire. On the assumption that Christ's ambition is political, and that he has begun to meditate the means of restoring the independence of the Jews, and re-establishing that Kingdom of David which once extended from Egypt to the Euphrates, he has a plan to explain, as follows:-There were then only two great powers in the world, the Roman and the Parthian; and only by the help or connivance of one of those powers in opposition to the other could Jesus hope to succeed in his enterprise. Now, circumstances were such as to recommend, in the first place at least, as the Devil thought, an application to the Parthians. Since B. C. 65 the whole of Syria, with Palestine included in it, had been part of the Roman Empire; and, though the Romans had for some time permitted the native dynasty of the Asmonæans or Maccabees (see note, 165-170) to govern in Palestine under them, and had then caused that dynasty to be supplanted by the Idumæan dynasty of Antipater and his son Herod the Great, they had at length (A.D. 7) abolished all nominal sub-sovereignty in Judæa and Samaria, and converted those two sections of Palestine into a regular Roman province, to be governed by "procurators" under the Prefect of Syria. Pontius Pilate had just been appointed Roman procurator of the province (A.D. 26), while Herod Antipas, called "the Tetrarch," one of the sons of Herod the Great (this was the Herod that beheaded John the Baptist), was suffered still to rule for the Romans in Galilee. All these changes had been of great interest to the Parthians; to whose empire Syria adjoined, separated from it only by the Euphrates, and who had long been trying to wrest that whole region from the Romans, so as to advance the Parthian boundary from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. They had interfered again and again in Jewish affairs under the later Maccabees, and also under the Idumæan dynasty. Especially they had backed Antigonus, one of the Maccabee family, in his contest for the throne against his uncle Hyrcanus II., whom the Romans kept there. They had actually "carried away old Hyrcanus

bound, maugre the Roman" (B. C. 40),—not doing the same for Antigonus, as Milton's words seem to imply, but sustaining him on the throne of Palestine, with Parthian help, till B.C. 37, when the Romans overpowered him and put him to death, to make way for Herod the Great. Remembering these facts, might not Jesus draw the inference? Syria was still the debateable-land between the Romans and the Parthians, the Romans sometimes attacking the Parthians thence, and the Parthians sometimes retaliating by covering Syria with a cloud of their horse. What more likely, therefore, than that, if the Parthians heard of a native claimant for the throne of David, who was no mere Maccabee, but the lineal descendant of David, they would find it their interest to do for him against the Romans even more than they had done for Antigonus, the last of the Maccabees? Jesus, it is hinted (lines 368-385), need not cultivate the Parthian alliance longer than he finds it useful; nay, ultimately, a subversion of the Parthian power itself might be the true policy. For (and here is another subtle ingenuity suggested by historical knowledge) was not the very instrumentality by which the Hebrew monarchy could most easily and most nobly be restored lodged in the heart of the Parthian Empire? Was it not "in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2 Kings xviii. 11) that Shalmanezer, the King of Assyria, had put the Ten Tribes of Israel when he had carried them away captive; and would not the liberation of those lost Tribes in their Parthian fastnesses be at once a great exploit in itself, and the arming of an agency for the rest of the work?

377. "Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph." The ten captive tribes of Israel were those of Reuben, Simeon, Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Ephraim, and Manasseh, the first eight being Jacob's sons, and the last two Joseph's. It has been objected that the text is therefore incorrect that it should have been " Eight sons of Jacob, two of Joseph." But it is correct enough. Joseph, being represented in Ephraim and Manasseh, brings the number of Jacob's sons concerned up to nine; and the tenth is Levi, many of whose descendants, the Levites, were, of course, carried away, mixed with the other tribes.

384. "From Egypt to Euphrates." Gen. xv. 18, and Kings iv. 21.

409-412. "When thou stoodst up his tempter," etc. Chron. xxi. 1-14.

415-431. "fell off from God to worship calves," etc. I Kings xvi. 32 and xi. 5; 2 Kings xvii.

BOOK IV.

10-14. "as a man who had been matchless held," etc. It is a shrewd guess of Dunster's that Milton may have thought here of his own antagonist Salmasius.

25. "to the western side": for the vision is now to be in that direction.

27-42. "Another plain," etc., i.e. the whole long strip of Italy west of the Apennines, with the Tiber and Rome visible in it. The vision was procured either by magical means, causing some "strange parallax,” or apparent elevation of distant objects, or by some arrangement of optical instruments. There had been much speculation on the point among Biblical commentators.

31. "thence," i.e. from the Apennines.

The

32, 33. "off whose banks on each side," etc. original gives "of whose banks on each side," etc. I have little doubt that Milton dictated "off"; which, indeed, is but an emphatic form of "of."

33-39."an imperial city," etc.

Rome.

The city is, of course,

50-54. "Mount Palatine, the imperial palace turrets. glittering spires." Here again Milton makes poetry overbear chronology and history. It was not till Nero's time that there was any such very splendid palace on the Palatine; and "turrets" and "spires' were hardly features of Roman architecture.

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66. "turms," troops, coined from the Latin turma. 68, 69. on the Appian road, or on the Emilian." former led south, the latter north.

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69-79. some from farthest south, Syene," etc. Another of Milton's geographical enumerations. Syene, in Egypt, on the borders of Ethiopia, was accounted the southernmost point of the Roman Empire; Meroe was a celebrated island and city on the Nile in Ethiopia, far beyond Syene, and within the Tropics, so that twice a year shadows of objects

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there would change their direction; "the realm of Bocchus," was Gætulia in Northern Africa, where king Bocchus had been the father-in-law of Jugurtha, King of Numidia; and this Numidia, with Mauritania, etc., constituted the rest "to the Blackmoor sea." Asia also sends her embassies (observe the dexterity of the remark that the Parthians themselves send ambassadors to Rome), so that even the Golden Chersoness," i.e. Malacca, and "the utmost Indian isle, Taprobane," i.e. Ceylon, are represented. All Europe, of course, is represented, from the west, where the city of Gades or Cadiz stands for Spain, to the Germanic north, and the Scythian east, as far as "the Tauric pool," or sea of Azof. "both ways";

70. "both way." We should now say but, as the word "falls" follows, Milton probably desired to get rid of the s.

It is the

76. "turbants." So in the original, and it is a frequent form in old writers. Milton uses it in his prose. Italian form, turbante: the form turban is French. 90. "This Emperor." Tiberius.

95. "a wicked favourite." Sejanus.

115. "citron tables or Atlantic stone." Citron - wood, from Mount Atlas, was much prized for the beauty of its veining and polish. Atlantic stone is probably Numidian marble.

117, 118. "Their wines," etc. The first three kinds of wine mentioned were native Italian, grown near Rome; the others were Greek.

119. "myrrhine," porcelain.

136. "Peeling," i.e. stripping or pillaging.

142. "scene," theatre.

175-177. "It is written," etc.

201. "Tetrarchs."

the four Elements.

Matt. iv. 10.

So called as sharing among them

234. "idolisms," peculiar opinions or prejudices: a word apparently of Milton's own coining.

236. "this specular mount." Compare Paradise Lost, XII. 588, 589.

240. "Athens, the eye of Greece." The phrase is attri buted to Demosthenes.

241, 242. "native or hospitable," i.e. either producing them or giving them welcome.

244. "the olive-grove of Academe."

This famous school

of Plato was a garden, less than a mile beyond the walls of Athens, and derived its name from the fact that it was near ground consecrated to the Hero Akadêmus.

245. "the Attic bird," the nightingale.

247-249. "Hymettus," etc. A mountain near Athens, famous for its honey.

The

"Stoa," a

249, 250. "Ilissus rolls his whispering stream." scene of Plato's Phædrus is on the banks of the Ilissus. 253. "Lyceum," the school of Aristotle ; portico in Athens, decorated with paintings, which became the school of Zeno, the founder of the Stoics. The Lyceum, however, was not "within the walls."

257. "Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes": Greek lyric poetry generally.. Alcæus and Sappho used the Æolian dialect, Pindar and other lyrists the Doric.

259. "Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called." He was called Melesigenes on the idea that he had been born on the banks of the Meles in Ionia; the name Homer was supposed to be a contraction of three Greek words meaning "the blind man.

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260. "Whose poem Phœbus," etc. In a Greek epigram, quoted by Bishop Newton, Apollo is made to say, ""Twas I that sang: Homer but wrote it down."

261-266. "the lofty grave Tragedians," etc. Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, are, of course, all in recollection; but in one of the phrases Milton may have been thinking most of his favourite Euripides.

267-271. "the famous Orators," etc. Pericles and Demosthenes are the two most in view in the passage.

273, 274. "the low-roofed house of Socrates." One of the jests of Aristophanes at Socrates was that he lived in "a little bit of a house."

275, 276. "the oracle pronounced wisest of men." Socrates is himself made, in Plato's Apology of Socrates, to tell the story of this oracular response. His friend and admirer Chærephon had gone to the oracle of Delphi to ask the question whether any one was wiser than Socrates of Athens, and had received the answer that none was wiser. 277-280. "all the schools of Academics old and new," viz. the original Academy of Plato (died B. C. 347), the middle Academy of Arcesilas (died B.C. 271), and the

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