Comment on the fallen angels who are addressed by Satan in Paradise Lost Book I

Or, Comment on the fallen angels who are addressed by Satan in Paradise Lost Book I.

Answer: In the opening scene of Paradise Lost Book I, we find Satan and his horrid crew rolling on the lake of fire. Though Satan and his followers were made of heavenly essences, they were overwhelmed as a result of God’s anger. Satan threw his glances all and stupefied around and discovered only sights of woe and huge afflictions. Then he found another devil who was next only to him in power and sin, and who was later known as Beelzebub. Then Satan and Beelzebub made exchanges of dialogues.

Satan’s objective was to wage by force or guile eternal war against Almighty God. Beelzebub, at first, seemed reluctant to take against the Omnipotent power of God but being furiously lashed at by his jeer for his cowardice, he conceded to his decision. Then Satan tried to rouse his legion the horrid crew from their stupor. Beelzebub reposed great faith in Satan’s leadership, and he hoped that the moment Satan spoke, his followers, the fallen devils would respond to his call and rally around him. Satan at once with his huge shield hung at his back, started moving towards the fallen angels who were lying dazed and stupefied. No sooner had they heard the stirring voice of their beloved leader than they felt ashamed of their timidity and stood before him with arms, waiting for his order. By means of epic similes, the poet gives us an idea of their great number.

Then the poet gives a long list of the names and characters of the chief of the fallen angels, identified with the heathen gods. The epic catalogue which follows is furnished as a counterpart to Homer’s catalogue of the ships and Virgil’s list of warriors. Milton selects as the chief devils those who afterwards, in the forms of heathen deities, had the audacity to establish their worship in Palestine, close to the land and Temple of Jehovah, the only one true God. The poet mentions some of them such as Moloch, Chemos, Thammuz, Belial, Mammon, etc. as the wicked gods who were worshipped on earth because their names had been removed from the Book of Life in Heaven. Moloch was the god whom Ammonites worshipped. It is said to have been a brazen statue with the face of a calf, which was heated with fire and the children were sacrificed by being placed in its fiery hands. Moloch means king and is another name for Baal, the sun god. Next to Moloch was Chemos, the chief god of the Moabites, a canonize nation inhabiting the country east of the Dead Sea and south of Ammon. He was also worshipped by the Ammonites, and Solomon built a shrine to him, as he did to Moloch. Along with Moloch and Chemos, came Baalim and Ashtoreth, male and female

deities respectively, who were worshipped in Canan bounded by the river Euphrates on the north and by Besor on the south which separates Egypt from Syria. Then Thammuz, a Syro-Phoenician god, equivalent to Adonis of the Greeks was worshipped by the Jewish virgins with love songs. Of the rest, there were Dagon, Rimmon, Osiris, Isis, and Orus, who cheated people with their false religion. Among the devils, Belial came at the end. Of all the fallen angels Belial was the most lustful and the most repulsive. He loved vice for its own sake. He was not worshipped openly as a god, but he lurked in the innermost recesses of the main heart.

To sum up, like other epics Milton gives us a long list of the fallen angels identified with the heathen gods and being worshipped by the idolaters in different parts of the world. Satan and his followers (Beelzebub, Belial Moloch, etc.) are all conceived by the lofty imagination of the poet and they enhance the epic quality of Paradise Lost.