How Paradise Lost drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: John Milton demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Paradise Lost
John Milton · 1667
RenaissanceRelevance
8/10
On Paradise Lost’s page
- Paradise Lost is Milton's bid to surpass Homer — the invocation, the in-medias-res opening, and the War in Heaven all reach straight back to the Iliad
- The roll call of devils answers the Catalogue of Ships; the similes are Homeric machinery turned to Christian ends
- Read the Iliad first and you'll catch what Milton is doing with Satan: dressing him in Achilles' martial glory in order to expose it as damnation
On The Iliad’s page
- Milton 'had his Homer by heart' and wrote Paradise Lost as a Christian epic meant to outdo him
- The catalogue of fallen devils is patterned on the Catalogue of Ships, the great speeches on Homeric speeches, the similes repurposed wholesale
- Satan's martial heroism is the Achillean ideal deliberately put on trial — Milton borrows Homer's grandeur precisely to overturn it