Paradise Lost Book 2 and 3
Page 1850
Lines 1-5
High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd [ 5 ]
To that bad eminence
Book 2 opens with a bit of tortured logic
We are taken to the council in pandemonium, where the devils are going to decide what
the next course of action will be.
The image we get here is Satan as the prince of hell
Then he starts to address the assembly and tell them what is going on
Page 1850
Lines 11-35
Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heav'n,
For since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigor, though opprest and fall'n,
I give not Heav'n for lost. From this descent
Celestial vertues rising, will appear [ 15 ]
More glorious and more dread then from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate:
Mee though just right, and the fixt Laws of Heav'n
Did first create your Leader, next free choice,
With what besides, in Counsel or in Fight, [ 20 ]
Hath bin achievd of merit, yet this loss
Thus farr at least recover'd, hath much more
Establisht in a safe unenvied Throne
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heav'n, which follows dignity, might draw [ 25 ]
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Formost to stand against the Thunderers aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is then no good [ 30 ]
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From Faction; for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence, none, whose portion is so small
Of present pain, that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. What he is saying is that this is Satan version of the fortune of fall he says that we are
fortunate in the absence of good which they have lost, there will be no strife here, that I,
who sits on this throne, am the closest to danger to you
Twisted logic: We are all equal here, but here I sit here on the throne, with bad eminence
therefore, he is not being straight we everybody, therefore he is being false with
everybody (patently false).
They are all going to figure out what to do next
Moloch is the first to speak, and he has a long discourse on page 1851
o He is the fighter, and he wants to challenge God again
o He would rather not exist than be somebody who was defeated therefore, in
glory, we either triumph or lose. We have nothing to lose.
Next is Belial, who is very much like Satan, who has a deceitful rhetoric style, described
below by Milton:
Page 1852
Lines 109-118
Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not Heav'n; he seemd [ 110 ]
For dignity compos'd and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his Tongue
Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest Counsels: for his thoughts were low; [ 115 ]
To vice industrious, but to Nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas'd the ear,
And with perswasive accent thus began.
Belials council idea is not to fight heaven again this would be a very bad idea
(disagrees with Moloch). The only way that it will end is with someone worse for us.
This council has better things than moments ago when they were in a burning lake; now
in Pandemonium, let us wait to see how things go
Therefore, he is exercising patience and calm
Next, we have Mammon speaking (close to Miltons own voice in some ways) on Page
1854, who is the god of money/Wall Street
o He says that there is no way we could win (it will all be in vain)
o Even if we were to go back into heaven, we would never be able to worship god
anymore anyway (because of the shame, and it will always be there with us and
we cannot outlive that)
o Therefore, he suggests that they should make a heaven out of hell, literally, and
basically make an Earth (or approximate an Earth) here since there is a lot of ore
here, and we can make a lot of monuments
Page 1856
Lines 290-295
Such applause was heard [ 290 ]
As Mammon ended, and his Sentence pleas'd,Advising peace: for such another Field
They dreaded worse then Hell: so much the fear
Of Thunder and the Sword of Michael
Wrought still within them;
The idea is that Milton is giving us a quite dramatic situation after the poem starts as a
plague that he is writing, and the others are applauding what Mammon is doing, but not
because they think its a great idea, but that they are so afraid of going back to heaven
and so they support him
And this takes the ground out of the fact that these guys are glorified revolutionaries
they dont have this kind of spirit within them
The final devil takes Satans idea, and he is Beelzebub, his right-hand man, and his idea
is that we cannot go against heaven, but let us prevent this being that is going into
existence (mankind), and what you get here is the motivation for spite or the great
creator.
o There is nothing great about what this council wants to do, it is just spite that
motivates them
o This
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