The oracles of the classical Greek and Roman world were notorious for prophecies that were extremely obscure and often led to destruction when they seemed to point to good fortune.
One famous example of this is in the work of Greek historian Herodotus. In book one of his Histories, Herodotus tells the story of Croesus, a powerful king of Lydia who consulted the oracles of Apollo at Delphi to see if he should attack the rising empire of Persia. The oracles replied that if Croesus attacked Persia, he would destroy a mighty empire—but it turned out to be his own, as he was defeated by Cyrus and the Persians. Herodotus puts the blame for this on Croesus, who misinterpreted the ambiguous prophecy and was thus destroyed for his hubris.
Another example, even closer to real deception, is found in the Latin epic The Aeneid. The hero, Aeneas, journeys to the underworld, where he meets his friend Palinurus, who had been lost overboard during their voyage. Aeneas says,
Speak, hurry! For, not found deceitful to me before,
With this one response Apollo deluded my spirit,
Who prophesied you would be unharmed at sea and come
To Ausonian borders. See, is this his promised faithfulness?
(Book 6, lines 343–346, my translation)
It turns out that Apollo's prophecy was technically true: Palinurus fell into the sea but didn't drown. Instead, he floated for three days before he caught sight of Ausonia, another name for Italy. He was washed to shore, where, just as he grabbed the rocks to climb onto the land, he was attacked and killed by the inhabitants. So, he did arrive at Ausonia unharmed—but for Apollo, the god of prophecy, to be barely correct on a technicality doesn't really seem like "faithfulness."
Part of Milton's point here is that Jehovah, the god of the Old Testament, is faithful: rather than toying with mortal human beings, using double meanings and technicalities, he clearly promised his Messiah, without double meanings, and the promise is truly and completely fulfilled at the Nativity, the birth of Christ.
When John Milton said 'the oracles are dumb' and 'deceiving', he was asserting that his own religion, Christianity, held more truth or legitimate dominance over, for example, Greco-Roman polytheism, or what's often referred to as Hellenistic religion. Milton demonstrates his strong faith in his own Protestant Christianity with his statement about the oracles, which is one based on Plutarch's own words about how the oracles 'fell silent'. Milton was, ultimately, using his familiarity of particular pagan beliefs or rituals to denounce them.
Milton was a Renaissance artist, often described as puritanical, and therefore he regularly applied Christian theology to the classical motifs, and often critically. This is supported by his next line in the poem, which is 'Apollo from his shrine: Can no longer divine', meaning the Greco-Roman god of the Sun could no longer offer salvation through worship in light of Jesus Christ and Christianity being supreme.
He goes on to say: 'With hollow shriek, the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.' Milton is referencing the Delphic Oracle practice and Plutarch's words again here specifically, along with the actual location of Delphi, in order to say that the site and its practices are both physically and spiritually abandoned for being unwholesome or mystical. When Milton writes 'prophetic cell', he means that the practice of seeking an oracle has the trappings of superstitious or delusional thinking, and therefore Milton is expressing the need to reject this form of suffering in favor of a Christian perspective.
RESOURCES:
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poem1442.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_John_Milton
As both a devout Christian and a great scholar steeped in classical learning, Milton is well-placed to judge the respective merits of the two traditions. And though much of Milton's work draws extensively upon the intellectual and mythological heritage of the ancients, he nevertheless asserts the superior truth of Christianity.
In this particular stanza of the poem, Milton is insisting that all the ancient oracles of antiquity—such as the Delphic Oracle—have now been rendered silent (or "dumm," to use Milton's word) by the birth of Christ. Pagan oracles and soothsayers were unable to predict the nativity; they simply had no inkling of what it could possibly mean. Now that God's son has been born, the falsity of the pagan gods has been exposed once and for all. The oracles' prophecies were all based on deception, as the ancients had not been exposed to the truth of the Christian message. They could not help but deceive, yet deceive they did, though all were equally deceived in the time before the birth of Jesus Christ.
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/nativity/text.shtml
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