University of North Carolina Press

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172643 .

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Studies in Philology.

http://www.jstor.org

MILTON'S REFERENCES
By

TO PLATO AND SOCRATES

IRENE SAMUEL

The importance of Platonism to Milton's growth in philosophical and poetic power has needed *further study. While the subject hitherto has not been neglected, a glance at the appended
table of references made by Milton to Plato and Socrates will
show how far even clear signs of his indebtedness have escaped
scholarly notice. From these references I have ventured to draw
some conclusions on the importance of the debt. But first I wish
to thank Dr. Herbert Agar for permission to build upon the useful
discoveries recorded in his book on Milton and Plato. My method
of distinguishing new matter in the table is intended to acknowl.
edge fully the debt that I with other scholars owe to his initial
research. The Index to the Columbia edition of The Works
of John Milton appeared after I had compiled my own list of
references, but has proved a helpful check.
References to Socrates and Plato from the pen of John Milton
are, of course, hardly matter for surprise. An Englishman of the
seventeenth century, trained at St. Paul's and Cambridge, at home
in the academies of Italy, in correspondencewith the learned men
of his time, who had not found occasion to mention Plato and
Socrates would astonish us. And yet time and place will not wholly
account for these references by one who so constantly and resolutely as Milton transcended the mental barriers of era and locality. Again, the mere frequency of allusion might seem enough to
explain why such an astute reader as Coleridge called Plato ' Milton's darling.' But Coleridge's complaint, that commentators have
heeded too little Plato's influence on Milton,' rightly suggests that
these references are no less important than numerous. Why labor
the point? As early as his student years at Cambridge Milton was
calling Socrates the 'wisest of the Greeks)2 and Plato 'divine.' 3
As late as Paradise Regained Socrates was still for Milton 'the
"S. T. Coleridge, Letter to W. Sotheby, dated September 10, 1802, in
Letters, ed. by Ernest Hartley Coleridge (Boston, 1895), I, 406.
' See Eleg. IV, 23-4.
a Prolus. VII. See the Coluimbia edition of The Works of John Milton
(hereafter referred to as C. E.). XII. 262-4.
50

Irene Samuel

51

wisest of them [i. e., the pagans] all' and Plato 'the next '-in
wisdom, we may guess, as in time.
But since such epithets may be conventional, and were so in
Milton's age, as often in our own, and often conventional with those
who know little more of Plato than that he may,be called divine and
of Socrates that he was called the wisest of men, they need suggest
no unusual Platonism in Milton's thought. Indeed Milton's early
references to both Socrates and Plato are of this kind; commonplaces of the schools and society, they indicate learning, but rather
learning about than learning from Plato. Milton surely read in
the Dialogues at college, if not earlier, used materials from them,
and knew something of Platonic 'theories.' But he read, and used,
and knlew,we may surmise, in the way of a highly gifted collegian
dealing with an ancient philosopher. Plato was as remote as high.
The early references, both in the Cambridge and even early in
the Horton period, might come from any one of similar training.
They are vague; 4 they reveal no special insight into Plato's
thought; they have no connection with the writer's own serious
belief. The like may be said even of the verses De Idea Platonica,
in which Aristotle's denials are tossed about on Milton's frolicsome
Pegasus.5 So too with 11 Penseroso, where Plato is to be unsphered
for such work as had better have been left to Hermes Trismegistus.6 These familiar uses of Pla.to show interest and learning,
even affection, but hardly deep understanding. They reflect the
contemporary zest for Platonism, but reveal little of AMilton.
The allusions of his middle years are decidedly different.
Whether inspired by the Platonizing talk in the Italian academies
he had visited or pressed by the needs of political controversy, or
4 Note the impossibility of relating any of them to a particular writing
of Plato, or indeed with certainty to any source at all.
E. H. Visiak has raised the question 'how far Mi'lton understood
Plato's conception when he wrote this academic exercise; whether he had
. . .as yet come into the enthusiasm for Plato's philosophy which he
afterwards expressed.'
See Milton's Lament for Damon and his other
Latin Poems (London, 1935), p. 66. And another commentator, Walter
Mac Kellar, while accepting the poem as Platonic, feels the need to suggest
for it sources other than Plato and Aristotle,
See The Latin Poems of
John Milton (New Haven, 1930), p. 51.
6 In 'A
Note on Il Penseroso,' MLN., XXXIII
(1918), 184-5, E. C.
Baldwin observed that the whole passage bears far more resemblance to
the Hermetica than to any writing of Plato.

52

Miltones References to Plato and Socrates

whenever and however moved, Milton apparently was a careful

student of the Dialogues during the years of England's civil war.
In his various treatises, allusions and citations are specific and
detailed, so much so that a scholar must still read Plato's words as
carefully as Milton did in order to find the exact source.7 But
even more striking than this exactness is the manifest wish to grasp
Plato's thought and hold it steadily in view. The reference, while
imbedded in argument, often has a bit of commentary attached;
that is, Milton comments not merely on its relevance to the argument, but on the reasonableness of the position taken by Plato.8
Most important of all, these citations of Plato's authority show not
understanding alone, but an incorporation of the thought into Milton's own doctrine: they do not simply add the prop of a great
name to the argument, they guide it.
And because Milton was thus steadily assimilatiing the thoughts
of the Dialogues and Epistles, or assimilating his own thoughts to
them, with his latest allusions we once more have difficulty in
naming the precise origin.9 Here again, as in the early references,
is vagueness, but with a difference. Now particularity is absent
because absorbed in general understanding. Thus the growing
infrequency of allusions to Plato and Socrates in Milton's later
work means not a waning familiarity, but a fully accomplished
assimilation, showing not less interest in Plato's writings, but a
more perfect appropriation of their content.
7 For example, the passage in the letter to Buommattei, quoted below
on p. -, is surely an allusion to Laws, VII, 797-8; but Agar writes, 'If
Milton had any particular passages in mind, they were perhaps the eighth
and ninth Books of the Republic.' See Herbert Agar, Milton and Plato
(Princeton, 1928), p. 69. Again, Ronald B. Levinson has demonstrated
that a reference in Chzurch-Gov. (C. E., III, 264) is to Plato's Sophist 230,
not, as Agar says, to Gorgias 524-5. Cf. Agar, p. 61, with Levinson, 'Milton
and Plato,' MLN., XLVI (1931), 85-91. One further illustration: in his
first Defensio (C. E., VII, 158) Milton paraphrases Republic, V, 463;
Agar gives as the source Laws, IV, 715.
8 See, for example, the Preface to Church-Gov. (C. E., III, 181-2) and
the discussion below on pp. -.
Similarly Milton comments on Plato'a
words in a number of passages, among them: Church-Gov. (C. E., III,
264); D. D. D. (C. E., III, 458-9); Tetrach. (C. E., IV, 655); Def. (C. E.,
VII, 348-50).
9 In the Logic Milton had, of course, particular reasons for taking from
Downham, or himself supplying, the name of the Dialogue referred to.
See the table of references.

Irene Samuel

53

So much we may learn by tabulating these references and their

sources, explicitly given or implied. And Milton's use of Platonism, as we hope to show in further papers, confirms this view.
Where the early poems are dotted with native stars and love-inspiring beauties and spheric harmonies, all in the manner of the
Platonizing Renaissance, the later poems incorporate Platonic
theories in their argument. And again, while the works of his
middle vears reveal their debt to Plato in more, and more specific,
passages, the latest works are more steadily and intrinsically Platonic in their theoretical basis.
While we cannot precisely date Milton's first reading in the
Dialogues nor define its course and effect, something can be said
about the reason for the change we find from the early references
to those of his middle years. A letter to Diodati, written from
London on September 23, 1637, contains Milton's earliest 'scholarly' citation of Plato:
Though I know not God's intent toward me in other respects, yet of this

I am sure, that he has imbued me especially with a mighty passion for

Beauty.

[8ecv&6,uot apwvra, e('rep

71 dXXCp70V

icaXoi E'vaorae.] 10 Ceres never

sought her daughter Prosperine (as the legend tells) with greater ardour
than I do this Idea of Beauty [roV KaXOI 8iaV] 1L like some image of loveliness; ever pursuing it, by day and by night, in every shape and form

(" for many forms there are of thinigs divine"), and following close in its
footprints as it leads."' And so, whensoever I find one who spurns the
base opinions of common men,18 and dares to be, in thought and word and
deed, that which the wisest minds throughout the ages have approved;
whensoever, I say, I find such a maii, to him I find myself impelled
forthwith to cleave.... 14
What am I thinking about? you ask. So help me God, of immortality.15
What am I doing? Growing wings [7rTepoov(Z] and learning to fly; 16
but my Pegasus can only rise on tender pinions as yet, so let my new
wisdom be humble.17
Cf. Phaedrus 249 d-e.
Plato does not use this termn,but it is an obviously Platonic substitute
for those he does use in Phaedrus to express the concept.
12 Cf.
Phaedrus 250 a-c.
13 Cf. ibid. 249 c-d.
14 Cf. ibid. 251 b- 252
c, 256 d.
5 Cf. ibid. 245 ff.
16 Cf. ibid. 249 d-e, 251 b- 252 c, 256 d.
17
Trans. by Phyllis B. Tillyard, Milton: Private Correspondence and
Academic Exercises (Cambridge, 1932), p. 14. The insertions are from the
text of Milton's letter, C. E., XII, 26.
'I
2'

Milton's References to Plato and Socrates

54

Phaedrw is not named; Diodati is expected to place the quotation. Evidently Milton had known an Italian Platonist before
ever he entered an accademia. But this is somehow different from
such use of roi xaAoi i&e'ovas Ficino or Pico della Mirandola or
Bembo had popularized. Here is no mistress praised as the very
incarnation of that glorious idea, but a friend told that he, but not
he alone, is loved because this 'Idea of Beauty' leaves its print on
many shapes and forms, and especially on the spirit of an uncommonly good man. The friend is even told his use: by his aid the
soul grows its wings, and to its own end-immortality, that it may
bave vision of the very 'image of loveliness ' and fly its Pegasus,
For
if it be a poet's soul, to the rim of heaven itself-hereafter.
the present the pinions are but growing; the flight must not yetbe, we gather, unaided.
We have in this letter to Diodati the authentic note of ardent
Platonism. But was it Milton's first sounding of that note? In
Comus, written some three years earlier, there occurred a passage
of similar quotation and paraphrase from Plato."8 And surely
much in Comus may be traced directly or indirectly to the Dialogues, and much is ardent. But is it exactly Platonic? We must
reserve for another time a discussion of the Platonism of Comus,
but may here suggest a way of putting the question: Is the conversation of the mask such a dialogue as Plato might have written
on the subject? Is the saintly Lady in her awesome self-righteousness a second Diotima versed in the deep mysteries of Love?
No more than Comus with his bestiality resembles the Aristophanes
of Plato's creation. The theories of the mask, like its men and
women, are such as the Platonic Spenser loved to present, but not
Plato. The 'divine Philosophy' of Plato had begun to 'charm'
Milton long before; it had not yet pervaded his thought.
Doubtless the youthful writer of Comus did not set himself to
expound Plato's doctrines, but, like poets from Homer to Kipling,
simply used what in doctrine, as in image, legend, myth, he found
to his purpose. A great deal of what he found useful came originally from Plato, some of it directly; but genuine Platonism like
the words to Diodati we can scarcely call it. The Platonism of
Comw is still largely conventional because the author, though
Lines 470-5 of Comut are adapted from Phaedo 81. There are, of
course, many other reminiscences of the Dialogues in the mask.
I'

Irene Samuel

55

familiar with the Dialogues and even partially under their sway,
was not immediately concerned with Plato. What the letter to
Diodati reveals is not, then, in all probability, a new acquaintance
with any dialogue, but a new grasp of the relevanee of Plato's
thought to Milton's own life.
Milton himself twice stated that his mature reading in Plato
had greatly influenced him. From these two passages we learn
explicitly what we have inferred from the letter to Diodati. Some
time before publishing his youthful Elegies in 1645, Milton
appended to them 19a postscript:
Haec ego meiite olini laeva, studioque supino,
Nequitiae posui vana trophaea meae.
Scilicet abreptum sic me malus impulit error,
Indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit;
Donec Socraticos umbrosa Academis rivos
Praebuit, admissum dedocuitque iugum.
Protinus, extinctis ex illo tempore flammis
Cincta rigent muilto pectora nostra gelu;
Uiide suis frigus metuit puer ipse sagittis,
Et Diomedeam vim timet ipse Venus.20

The lines, somewhat like a recantation, have an evident purpose.

At a definite time in Milton's life, we are to understand, Plato
with his Socratic teaching profoundly altered the thoughts and
feelings of the poet. Once he hadl been content to write in an
amorous vein very like, we note, that of conventional Platonism;
then upon reading, or rather rereading, Plato, he discovered that
the doctrine of love there taught was of grave significance, not
only in itself, but for him. If this doctrine were simply the arming of the heart against Cupid's shafts, we might suppose that the
experience had preceded and prompted the writing of Comus, where
we could find fully expressed the new understanding. But the
Apology for Smectymnuus records the event more completely:
Or to the last of them.
'
These vain trophies of my idleness I once set up in foolish mood and
with supine endeavor. Injurious error, forsooth, led me astray, and untutored youth was a bad teacher; until the shady Academy offered its Socratic
streams, and freed me from the yoke to which I had submitted. At once
these flames were extinguished, and thenceforth my breast has been stiff
with en6ircling ice, whence Cupid has feared a frost for his arrows, and
Venus fears my Diomedean strength.'
The text and translation are taken from Mac Kellar's edition of Milton's
Latin Poems.
19
20

56

Milton's References to Plato and Socrates

Thus, from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless
round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but
chiefly to the divine volumites of Plato and his equal Xenophon: where,
if I should tell you what I learnt of chastity and love, I mean that which
is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand
to those who are worthy; (the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating
potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about;)
and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul,
producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and
virtue.
With such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth
your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time,
when there shall be no chiding.21

Since Milton wrote this passage years after Comm had been performed, clearly he himself did not feel that his mask told what he
had learned about chastity and love from the Dialogues. Far from
it. Those 'divine volumes' have supplied him with matter for
work yet unborn. And now, be it noted, the epithet 'divine' is
no longer merely conventional, but granted by a disciple to the
'abstracted sublimities' into which he has himself been initiated.
For this is the language of an initiate, of one for whom the heart
of an ethical doctrine has come alive. Knowing that Milton had
never since his student days been unacquainted with Platonism, we
recognize this experience of his 'riper years' as the winning of a
new insight. The letter to Diodati, the postscript to the Elegies,
the words in the Apology, all bear the mark of emotion, the two in
prose, a strong emotion as well as clear understanding; they
suggest, as it were, a philosophical conversion.
But we need not dwell on the emotional phase of Milton's Platonism. The bare references of his middle years alone warrant our
finding in the Dialogues a major source of his theories on all the
many problems of human life witlh which he then was dealing.
Thenceforth, at any rate, the authority of Plato assumed everincreasing importance. In the letter to Diodati, Milton had quoted
from Phaedrus without giving his source; a year later he was more
explicit. He wrote to Buommattei:
It is Plato's opinion that an alteration in the style and fashion of dress
portends grave disorders and changes in the State.22

That is Plato's opinion in the Laws;

21 C. E., III, 305.
22 Trans.
by Tillyard, p. 16.
23 See Laws,
VII, 797.

23

the illustration of clothes

Irene Samuel

57

is given only once, but in connection with a doctrine basic to the

Laws as a whole, that unnecessary and careless change, like all
instability, is at once cause and sign of decadence. Milton, though
it may seem strange for one who was to advocate divorce and regicide, accepted the principle, reapplying it here to language as earnestly as Plato had applied it to dress. Indeed it became for Milton
a constant principle, too little observed by readers of his tracts on
religion, politics, and marriage, who naturally are more struck by
its more striking corollary, that needed and deliberate corrections
of evil signify and produce vitality.
Milton's political writings make frequent use of various Platonic theories. For example, The Reason of Church-Government
opens with the words:
In the publishing of human laws, which for the most part aim not
beyond the good of civil society, to set them barely forth to the people
without reason or preface, like a physical prescript, or only with threatenings, as it were a lordly command, in the judgment of Plato was thought

to be doneneithergenerouslynor wisely.24

The advice of Plato is then explained in detail and moreover confirmed by the practice of Moses. A little later in the Preface, Plato
is called 'the wisest of the heathen; ' 25 and throughout the tract
Milton consistently applies to the problems of church-governtment
the wise doctrine he had found repeatedly expressed and applied
in Plato's Laws: persuasion educates; coercion merely restrains.
Milton's interest at the time in political theory would naturally
lead him to careful study of the two great political theorists of
antiquity. Plato, however, unlike Aristotle, had presented his
politics as an integrated part not only of his ethical, but of his
entire body of thought. Inevitably Milton would consider works
other than the Republic and Laws in order to grasp the full meaning of Plato's doctrines on the state. Thus we find in the Reason
of Church-Government allusions to other Platonic dialogues, not
primarily political. 'I read,' says Milton,
of no sophister among the Greeks that was so dear, neither Hippias nor
Protagoras, nor any whom the Socratic school famously refuted without
hire.26
24

Preface to Church-Gov.,C. E., III, 181.

25C. E., III, 182.

E6C. ., III, 202; and see the table for other references in The Reason
of Church-Government.

58

Milton's References to Plato and Socrates

Milton's very use of the term 'Sophist'-and

he uses it with
growing frequency and scorn in his controversial writings-apparently comes from his reading in the Dialogues, though the word
was surely in his time, as now, a commonplace. At any rate, in his
Apology for Smectymnuus, he again associates refutation of sophistry with the Socratic method,27 and elsewhere repeats Plato's
objection that those who deal in truth for hire cannot be true
teachers.2
From the Apology for Smectymnuus we further learn that Milton did not always feel the aversion to 'Atlantic and Utopian polities ' that he later expressed in Areopagitica. Here he praises
that grave and noble invention which the greatest and sublimest wits in
sundry ages, Plato in Critias, and our own two famous countrymen, the
one in his Utopia, the other in his New Atlantis chose, I may not say as
a field, but as a mighty Continent wherein to display the largeness of
their spirits by teaching this our world better and exacter things than
were yet known, or used.'6

Areopagitica is the one work in which Milton ever disparaged any

writing of Plato; and even there Plato remains ' a man of high
authority indeed,' though 'least of all in his Commonwealth,in the
book of his laws.' 'I Since Milton often used the authority of that
very book to support his own arguments, we may suppose that not
the Laws in its entirety, but only its advocation of censorship roused
his dissent; and surely many another Platonist has found it as
hard to reconcile himself to some of the legal constraints Plato
seemingly urged. But Milton, be it noted, ends his discussion of
the censorship in the Laws by commending in its place another
principle from the same work:
Nor is it Plato's licensing of books will do this [i. e., mend our condition], which necessarily pulls along with it so many other kinds of
licensing; . . . but those unwritten, or at least unconstraining laws of
virtuous education, religious and civil nurture, which Plato there mentions, as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pillars and the
sustainers of every written statute; these they be, which will bear chief
sway in such matters as these.31

Plato naturally has a large part in the treatise Of Education,

not only among the books to be given to students, but in the theory
27

2R
24

C. E.) III, 293-4.

See, for example, Pro Se Defensio, C. E., IX, 284-6.
'0 C. E., IV, 316.
C. E., III, 294.
a1 C. E., IV, 318.

Irene Samuel

59

and plan of instruction there set forth. And later works show how
large a part the Dialogues had in Milton's own self-education.
Tetrachordon cites Plato three times; the first D'efensio repeatedly
turns to the Laws and Eighth Fpistle for confirmation of its political theorv; and in the Defensio, nine years after the Apology for
Smectymnuus, Mlilton reasserts his old judgment by naming Plato
among the 'best and wisest men of old' and calling him once more
'divine.'32

The Dialogues, once carefully studied, kept their hold upon

Milton. Others have noted with what relative lightness Plato
escapes Jesus' attack on classical learning in Paradise Regained.
We need only add that Milton's words are not a very serious accusation for a poet to make of a philosopher: if Plato 'fell' to 'fabling and smooth conceits,' his fall was from philosophy to poetry.
And Milton did indeed think Plato poetical, recognizing in him
the 'grave and noble' facultv of invention. He thought Plato a
master of comic invention too,33 a master of educational theory,34
a model of literary decorum,35an expert in law; 38 in short he did
most seriously accord to Plato a position far above any other author,
pagan or Christian, save the authors of Holy Scripture. Never to
Augustine, his favorite amolng Church-Fathers, to Spenser, his
favorite among English poets, to Cicero, Erasmus, or Bacon, did
he apply the epithet he granted to Plato. And far from merely
adopting a conventional term of praise,37 Milton showed that he
independently approved the common judgment, explaining that
Plato 'for those his writings hath obtain'd the surname of Divine.' 38
We see that Milton was well equipped by study to confirm and
explain the ancient judgment. Note in the table of references how
often he alludes to a specific passage in Plato; note from how wide
a range in the Dialogues and Epistles his allusions are drawn, and
with what precision he refers to the Laws and Epistles, the least
generally read of Plato's works. If the references he took from
sa C. E., VII, 350.
" See Ap. Smect., C. E., III,
293-4; Tetrach., C. E., IVy 76.
O4 f Ed., C. E., IV, 287.
36 See Pro Se Def., C. E., IX, 176.
"I See D. D. D., C. E., III, 458.
37 At
least as early as Athenaeus he was 6 OEcoLraros
Deipnosophists, x, 440b.
38 Ap. Smect., C. E., III, 293-4.

lXarwv.

See

60

Milton's References to Plato anrdSocrates

Downham's commentary on Rlamus should not be counted as Milton's own, the choice at least is his, since he omitted innumerable
others in condensing Downham's work. And two changes he made
in Downham's citations are clear proof that what he took unchanged,
he took with full knowledge of the works alluded to. Once, where
Downham had omitted the specific source, Milton supplied Phaedrus; ' and again, to Downham's illustrative phrase, 'philosophus
pro Aristotle,' Milton significantly added 'aut Platone.' 40
From the two amendments we may learn, first, Milton's ability
independently to supply the precise dialogue of Plato when his
source failed to name it, and further his unwillingness to have the
term 'the philosopher' stand, even in one short phrase, for any
other alone without mention of Plato. Briefly, both amendments
confirm Milton's thorough knowledge of and enthusiastic admiration for Plato's work. What that knowledge and enthusiasm meant
in his own thought and writing we have as yet hardly begun to
probe. For put Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained to the same
test as we put Comus earlier, and we get a startlingly different
result. Suppose Plato dealing with the loss of human happiness,
would he give the same explanation as Milton in the tale of man's
fall? On the whole, we may say yes. True, he would conceive of
no such perfect providence watching-and waiting to relievemankind's errors. And Plato, to be sure, never tarried so long in
Hell as Milton. Doubtless the Hebraic view of life brings to its
disciples greater struggles as well as greater aspirations than Hlellenism at its best. But if we look aside from Hell and Heaven to
Earth, where Milton after all wished us to fix our gaze most steadily,
and discern in the struggle there ensuing the meaning as Milton
discerned it, we can see that, however little the words and acts
resemble those of a Platonic dialogue, the underlying argument is
largely Plato's. And when we turn to Paradise Regained, where a
bolder Sophist than any opponent of Socrates defies a more glorious
seeker after truth, even if the very dialectical method of Jesus'
victory did not point to the Dialogues as a model, the themes and
arguments are, we conceive, very nearly what Plato would have
written had he-as in the nature of things he could not havetreated a like subject.
aoSee

in the appended table the note to the reference Logic, C. E., XI,

*22.
4" See the note to Logic, C. E., XI, **334.

Irene Samuel

61

We can see and we conceive-but only after careful comparison

of Milton's thought with Plato's; and while the reader awaits that
comparison, he may grant the need of it from the number and
variety of Milton's references.

A TABLE OF MILTON'S REFERENCES TO SOCRATES AND PLATO"

Passage
S Eleg. 4. 23-4

Date
1627

Source
I
?t Aloib., 103ff., 135

Quoted
Agar 15

1628

passim; esp. ?Phaedo,

?Phaedr., ?Sym., ?Rep.

Agar 16

?Rep. 10. 616-7

Agar 76

Idea Plat.

or later
P Prolus. 2, C. E. 12. 150 1625-9
Prolus. 6, C. E. 12
1625-9
S

*218
*238
Prolus. 7, C. E. 12
262-4
*280

S
P
S

P II Pen. 87-96

?Apol. 20-3
passim

1625-9
Agar 77
passim

1631-4

?Tim. 41-2

Agar 5

The symbols used in the table are as follows:

S and P indicate references to Socrates and Plato.
Parentheses are
used to distinguish implicit references, as in the letter to Diodati, where
Milton quotes Phaedrus, but does not name his source.
The single asterisk marks a reference not given in Agar's Milton and
Plato. The double asterisk marks a reference given neither in the Columbia
Index nor by Agar.
.0. B. with Arabic numbers following refers to the Columbia edition of
The Works of John Milton, volume and page. The numbers in parentheses
correspond to Milton's own divisions.
A question nmark before a title indicates uncertainty in assigning the
allusion to any specific work of Plato.
The number after Agar refers to the passage in the Appendix of Agar's
volume where the selection is quoted.
The page-number after Downham marks the place in the work of George
Downham, Rami Dialecticae Libri D1uo cum Comm entariis (London, 1669),
which is the source of Milton's reference. Milton, of course, used an earlier
edition of Downham's commentary.
The list does not include those passages in the Logic where Socrates is
named merely as a convenient Everyman of argument.
2 The most likely
source is Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates, 36-8.
See also Xenophon's Banquet 2. 10. Diogenes Laertius seems to take the
statement of the oracle from Plato's Apology and the character of
Xanthippe from Xenophon.
1

62

Milton's References to Plato and Socrates

Passage

[P] To Dio., C. E. 12. 26

P To Buom., C. E. 12. 32
P Of Ref., C. E. 3. 39
S
P
S

*Animad., C. E. 3. 161
Church-Gov., C. E. 3
*181-2 (Preface)
*202 (1. 5)

264 (2. 3)
Ap. Smect., C. E. 3
PS
293-4
P
*294
P
305
D. D. D., C. E. 3.
PS
398 (1.4)
P
441 (2.3)

Date
1637
1638
1641
1641
1642

Phaedr.
Laws 7. 797-8
?Rep., esp. 4. 420;
?Laws, esp. 5. 739
(Xenophon)3

Quoted
Agar 72
Agar 73
Agar 53

Laws 4. 718 ff.

passim; esp. Protag., ?Hipp.
Jfin.
Soph. 230; '?Gorg. 476ff.
Agar 54

P
P

Source

1642
passim
Critias
passim; esp. Phaedr., Sym.

Agar 55

Sym. 203
passim; esp. Thaws 1. 644-5;
99-100
WMenro
Laws 4. 719
Protag. 354 e, 355-8; et al.
Cf. Memo 77-8, Tim. 86
Gorg. 482-4, 488-510

Agar 58

Agar 57

1643

*458-9 (2.9)
464 (2.11)

SP
500-1 (2.21)
1644
Judg. Bucer, C. E. 4
P
*24 (17 on Matth. v. 19)
1644
Areop., C. E. 4.
P
299
P
316
p
317
P
318
1644
Of Ed., C. E. 4
S
281
P
284
P
286
P
287
before
[PIS Eleg. 7, Postscript
1645
1645
Tetrach., C. E. 4

Agar 60
Agar 61
Agar 62

(Bucer) 5 ?Rep., ?Laws

Rep., Laws
Rep. 3; Laws 2, 7
Rep. 4; Laws 1, 7

passim
passim; esp. Phaedr., Gorg.
passim and Laws 1. 634-5
passim; esp. Phaedr., Sym.

Agar
Agar
Agar
Agar

44
46
47
48

Agar
Agar
Agar
Agar

66
67
68
69

s This is the sole reference to Socrates in which Milton uses Xenophon

alone as the authority.
See Xenophon, Apology, 26; Memorabilia I. 2.
1-8; I. 6. 11-3.
' The first part of the reference comes from Diogenes Laertius, Life of
Plato, 18; the second from Milton's own reading of the Dialogues. 'That
detractor in Athenaeus ' is probably Pontianus in Deipnosophists II. 504 b509 e.
IApparently
taken from Martin Bucer, Of the Kingdom of Christ,
Chap. 17.

63

Irene Samuel
Date
Passage
*70 (To Parl.)
*76 (on Gen. i. 27)
81 (on Gen. i. 28)
*157-8 (on Matth. xix. 7-8)
1651
Def., C. E. 7.
P
158 (3)
166-8 (3)
P
P
304-6 (5)
P
*348-50 (6)
S
Def. Sec., C. E. 8.192 1654
1655
Pro Se Def., C. E. 9.
S
*52
S[P] *112
PS
*176
p
*180-2
before
P
P. L. 3. 471-3

S
P
P
P

Grammar,C. E. 6
**329 (2. Of the Concords)
SP *1349 (2. of the Conjunctions)
Logic, C. E. 11.
P
*10 (Preface)
**12 (Preface)
P
P
*18-20 (1.1)
P
*22 (1. 2)
*58 (1. 7)
PS

Quoted

Source
?Apol. 19
Sym. 189-93
Laws 6. 773-6, 783-5
Rep.
Rep. 5. 463.
Laws 4.715;
VIII Epist.
VIII Epist.
?A.pol. 20-3

Agar 63

Cf. Laws 4. 715

Agar 40
VIIIEpist.354
Agar 41
355
354-5

?Apol.
passim
passim
Agar 18

1667
1669

P
*66 (1. 8)
P
*96 (1.11)
S [PI *140-2 (1. 16)
P
*150 (1. 18)

1670
Theaet. 202 e
Gorg. 448
Crat., IAlcib. 129 c
Phaedr. 235-6, 264
passim (and Diogenes
Laertius)
Phil. 54
Rep. 3. 405 7
Crito 44

Downham.
Proleg., p. 19
Proleg., p. 22
pp. 3-4
p. 15 5
p. 79
p.88
p.122
p. 164
p. 177

" Milton gives the source as Phaedrus where Downham had simply said,
'Atque hanc distributionem ]Plato videtur primus attigisse.'
7 Milton's translator
in the Columbia edition, Allan H. Gilbert, makes
a serious mistake here. Quoting Downham, Milton writes: 'Hoc argumento Plato miseras civitates auguratur, quae medicorum et judicum
multitudine indigeant, quia multum quoque et intemperantiam et injustitiam in ea civitate versari necesse est.' The translation given is: ' By
means of this argument Plato conjectures that " those states are wretched
which lack a multitude of physicians and judges, since necessarily much
intemperance and injustice will be practised in such a state." ' Clearly
Plato says the very opposite in the Republic 3. 405, and Milton's ' multitudine indigeant' must mean 'are poor with their multitude.'

64

Milton's References to Plato and Socrates

Passage

S
P
S
S
P

Date

*166 (1.18)
*200 (1. 21)
204 (1.21)
*228 (1. 25)
*228-30 (1. 25)

Laws 3, Phaedo 92
(Aristotle)
?Phil. 16-8,
?Statesm. 287
passim and Meno 72-7
Statesm.
Rep. 5. 473
Crat. ?431

S
P
P
P
P
P
P
P

238 (1. 27)

*240 (1.27)
#286 (1.33)
*308 (2.3)
?*334 (2.4)
*470 (2.17)
474 (2.17)
**494 (Praxis)
P.R.
S
3. 96-9

Source

Phil. 16
?Phaedr., ?Statesm.
?Tim.

Quoted
p.209
p. 212
p. 242
pp. 243-4
pp. 249-50
p.251
p.290
p.324
p.365
p.472
p.428
p. 47

1671

P
4. 244-7
S [P] *4. 272-8
4. 293-5
BP
t
?On Worthy Master
Shakespeare, C. E. 18. 361
P
**15-8

passim; esp. ?Apol. 2931, 36-42; ?Crito,

?Phaedo

Agar 35

Agar 37
?Apol. 20-3
passim

Agar 38

Tim. 39

@Downham had written, 'ut Poeta pro Homero aut Virgilio: philosophus pro Aristotele: orator pro Demosthene aut Cicerone.' Milton inserts
Plato as one for whom philosophus may stand: 'ut poets pro Homero
aut Virgilio, Philosophus pro Aristotele aut Platone et similia.'