Conclus

) 3. 176; Animadv. (14. 139) 3. 239; Eikonocl. Divorce (1. 13) 4. 53; Tetrach. (Deut. 24. 1, 2) 4. 185; Education 4. 381 True Relig. 5. 412; Easy Way 5. 426; 1 Defens. (2) 6. 36 (twice); (4) 6. 83; 2 Defens. 6. 2’58; Logic (1. 24) 7. 78. (28) 3. 518, 527 (4 times);; An ancient city on the Euphrates. The direct references of Milton to Babylon are all dependent on the Bible. He identifies the Tower of Babel with Babylon, e. g., in P. L. 12. 343, which refers to the narrative in P. L. 12. 38-47, partly founded on Genesis 11. 1-9. On the authority of Genesis 10. 10 Milton makes Nimrod the builder of the Tower, and hence the founder In making him the builder of the Tower, Milton of Babylon. follows the common opinion of the Middle Ages, recorded thus ’* by Dante: I saw Nimrod at the foot of his great toil, as though bewildered, and the nations looking on who were proud with him inShinar.” (Purgatory 12. 34:-7.) Modern travelers whose narratives were acce ible to Milton believed that they saw the ruins of the Tower of Babylon; for example we read in Purchas the following: ” In this place stood the olde mighty city of Babylon, many olde ruines whereof are easily to be scene by day-light, which I John Eldred have often beheld at my good leasure. Here also are yet standing the ruines of the olde tower of Babel, which being upon a plaine ground seemeth a farre off very great,... but the nerer you come to it, the le er and le er it appear eth. Sundry times I have gone thither to see it, and found the remnants yet standing above a quarter of a mile in compa e, and almost as high as the stoneworke of Pauls steeple in London, but it sheweth much bigger. The bricks rehiaining in this most ancient monument be halfe a yard thicke, and three quarters of a yard long, being dried in the Sunne onely, and betweene every course of bricks there lieth a course of mattes made of canes, which remaine sound and not perished, as though they had bene layed within one yeere” (Hak. 2. 269). Many opinions of contemporary scholars on Babylon and the Tower of Babel are given by Bochart (pp. 27-72). Milton sometimes disagrees with him. For example, Bochart supposes that the builders of Babel came from Mount Ararat, while Milton says that they came from Eden (P. L. 12. 40), a statement for which no source has been found. P. L. 12. 41-3, telling of the lake of asphalt near Babylon, and of its use in building (cf. P. L. 10. 298), depends first on Genesis 11. 3, yet there are later po ible sources. from the thunderbolt, Servius, for “Bitumen is said to be produced instance, gives the following: for which reason near Babylon, where thunderbolts often fall, a lake of it overflows to such a degree that they build walls of it.” (On Eclogues 8.82.) A traveler at the end of the sixteenth century thus describes what he saw: “By the river Euphrates two dayes journey from Babylon at a place called Ait, in a see: field neere unto it, is a strange thing to a mouth that doth continually throwe foorth against the ayre boyling pitch with a filthy smoke, which pitch doth runne abroad into a great field which is alwayes full thereof. The Moores say that it is the mouth of hell. By reason of the great quantitie of it, the men of that country doe pitch their boats two or three inches thicke on the outside, so that no water doth Marlowe refers several enter into them.” (Hak. 2. 251.) times to the lake of asphalt in 2 Tamhurlaine (e. g., 4129), but apparently confuses it with the Dead Sea (see Asphaltic Pool). Milton sometimes uses the word Babylon figuratively for Rome, as the seat of the Pope. Baca. (Cf. Revelation 14. 8.) Ps. 84. 21. Probably not an actual place. Fuller’s discu ion runs thus: “Some render it appellatively ‘the vale of weeping,’... but if you be pleased to take this vale for a proper place, I embrace the opinion of the learned Ains worth on the text, that this Vale of Baca, or mulberry trees, for so it also sign if i eth, was near to out of the tops of which trees God sounded the alarm to David when he conquered the Philistines (2 Samuel Jerusalem; 5. (Pp. 599-600.) 23).” P. R. 3. 285. ch053.xhtml b 58