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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The classical conception of the “urbs æterna,” voiced by a long line of Rome's poets and orators, is an element in Milton's Paradise Regained which deserves recognition particularly since it serves to bring to light the strong possibility that in composing Paradise Regained Milton may have levied on the poetry of the Roman panegyrist Claudianus (fl. 400 a.d.).
1 For an introduction to Claudian, see Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Latin Writers of the Fifth Century (New York: Holt, 1930), Chap. 2, pp. 17-50.
2 A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), chapters 13 and 15 but especially p. 262.
3 Herbert Fisher, The Mediaeval Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1898), I, chapter 1, “The Survival of the Imperial Idea,” James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (London, 1904), chapter 2, “The Roman Empire before the entrance of the Barbarians,” and passim.
4 William Hammer, Latin and German Encomia of Cities. University of Chicago diss.; privately printed (Chicago, Ill., 1937).
5 Virgil, Æneid, vi, 851-853, ed. Greenough and Kittredge (Boston 1895), p. 184. “Roman, be this thy care—these thine arts—to bear dominion over the nations and to impose the law of peace, to spare the humbled and to war down the proud,” tr. J. Jackson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921), p. 258.
6 vi, 781-784 (ibid., p. 181); “Look, my son, and know that under his [Romulus'] auspices shall glorious Rome bound her empire by earth, her pride by Olympus, and one in self, circle with her battlements the seven hills, blest in a warrior race” (ibid., p. 256).
7 Loc. cit. “Caesar Augustus, child of deity, who shall establish again the age of gold in Latium, through the fields where Saturn erewhile was king, and shall enlarge his sway past the Gramant and Indian, to the land beyond the stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where heaven-sustaining Atlas upholds on his shoulder the fiery-gemmed sphere. Even now, at dread of his coming, the Caspian realms and Maeotian land tremble to the divine response, and wavering and confusion reign by the mouths of sevenfold Nile.”
8 [Pseudo-] Bede, Exceptiones patrum in Opera paraenetica, Migne, Patrologia latina, xcvi, col. 543; a mere glance at the indexes in Migne s.v. “Rome” will indicate the spread of this idea; see also Arturo Graf, Roma vella memoria e velli immaginazioni del medio evo, 2 vols. (Torino, 1882), vol. i, chapter 1.
9 Tibullus, Elegies, ii, 5, 23, ed. Kirby F. Smith (New York, 1913), p. 143; “Not yet had Romulus traced the walls of the Eternal City wherein was no abiding for his brother Remo,” tr. J. Cranstoun (London, 1872), p. 60.
10 Qvid, Fasti, iii, 71-72, ed. Sir James George Frazer (London, 1929), i, 118; In the Amores, we read: “Roma triumphati dum caput orbis érat,” that is, Sophocles, Ennius, Varro, etc. shall be read “as long as Rome shall be capital of the world she triumphs o'er”—meaning forever.
11 Livy, History, 28, 28, 11, Loeb Classics, ed. B. C. Foster (London, 1922), “the city built under the auspices and sanctions of the gods to last forever”; in 4,4,4, Livy thinks it impossible to question whether Rome was built for eternity: “Quis dubitat quin in aeternam urbe condita, in immensam crescente,” etc.
12 Tacitus, Annals, iii, 6, Loeb Classics, ed. John Jackson (London, 1931), ii, 530, “Whatever may be the fate of noble families, the state is eternal.”
13 Spenser, “Ruines of Rome,” Complaints, ed. W. L. Renwick (London, 1928), Stanza 29; Stanza 26.
14 Ibid., Stanza 6.
15 Stephen Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure, EETS, orig. series, Vol. 173, ed. W. E. Mead (London, 1928), p. 47, ll. 1093-96.
16 Justus Lipsius, Two Bookes of Constancie, Englished by Iohn Stradling (London, 1594), ed. Rudof Kirk (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1939), Book i, Chap. xvi, p. 109.
17 Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum, xvi, 15 ff., Loeb Classics, ed. J. Rolfe, i, 251; “but when he came to the Forum of Trajan, a construction unique under the heavens, as we believe, and admirable even in the unanimous opinion of the gods, he stood fast in amazement, turning his attention to the gigantic complex about him, beggaring description and never again to be imitated by mortal men.” For the specific phrase “urbs æterna,” see xvi, x, 14 and xv, vii, 1.
18 Geraldus Cambrensis, “Itinerary through Wales,” Historical Works, ed. Th. Wright (London, 1913), p. 372. I am indebted for the reference to F. J. E. Raby, Secular Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), p. 325.
19 Horace, Odes, iii, 3, ed. Chas. E. Bennett (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1934), p. 60:
20 Rutilius Namatianus, De Redit u Suo, ed. L. Mueller (Lipsiae: B. G. Teubner, 1870), pp. 3-4; translated by E. S. Duckett, op. cit., p. 37:
21 Claudian, On Stilicho's Consulship, ii, 1 ff., Loeb Classics, ed. M. Platnauer, p. 43. “Behold, O Rome, the hero whose presence the cries of thy people and the voice of thy nobles has long demanded… . Behold the warrior successful in every field, the defender of Africa, the conqueror of Rhine and Danube.”
22 iii, 14 ff., p. 43. “Should he wish in accordance with the ancient custom to display the picture of his labours and show to the people the tribes he has subdued, crowns of laurel from north and south would contend in equally matched rivalry. Here is a triumph rich with the spoils of the Germans, there with those of the South; here would pass the Sygambri with their yellow locks, there the black-haired Moors.” An interesting recollection of Claudian's black-haired Moors is found in a play dated 1607, entitled Caesar's Revenge. Two other chracteristic ideas in the genre are revived, Rome as of divine origin and the provinces trembling before Rome's power:
23 iii, 130 ll., pp. 53-54. “Consul, all but peer of the gods, protector of a city greater than any upon earth the air encompasseth, whose amplitude no eye can measure, whose beauty no imagination can picture, whose praise no voice can sound, who raises a golden head amid the neighbouring stars and with her seven hills imitates the seaven regions of heaven, mother of arms and of law, who extends her sway o'er all the earth and was the earliest cradle of justice, this is the city which, sprung from humble beginnings, has stretched to either pole, and from one small place extended its power so as to be co-terminous with the sun's light. Open to the blows of fate while at one and the same time she fought a thousand battles, conquered Spain, laid seige to the cities of Sicily, subdued Gaul by land and Carthage by sea, never did she yield to her losses nor show fear at any blow, but rose to greater heights of courage after the disasters of Cannae and Trebia, and, while the enemy's fire threatened her, and her foe smote upon her walls, sent an army against the further Iberians. Nor did Ocean bar her way; launching upon the deep, she sought in another world for Britons to be vanquished. 'Tis she alone who has received the conquered into her bosom and like a mother, not an empress, protected the human race with a common name summoning those whom she has defeated to share her citizenship and drawing together distant races with bonds of affection. To her rule of peace we owe it that the world is our home, that we can live where we please.”
24 Paradise Regained, iv, 43-47 (Cambridge edition):
25 iv, 47-54.
26 iv, 69-79.
27 iv, 80-84.
28 iv, 146-151.
29 Quoted and discussed by F. J. E. Raby, History of Christian-Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), pp. 233-234.
30 Prudentius, Peristephanon, “Hymnus ii” (Amstelodami: Elzevir, 1567), p. 58.
31 Raby, Secular Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934), i, 324.
32 In addition to the passage previously cited, see Lactantius, Div. Instit. 7, 14-15; Ambrosius, Expos. in Lucam., iv, iv, and discussion by H. Fischer, “Belief in the Continuity of the Roman Empire among the Franks of the 5th and 6th Centuries,” Catholic Hist. Rev., iv, n.s. (1925), pp. 536-553.
33 St. Augustine, Civitas Dei, v, 1, ed. B. Dombart (Leipzig, 1877), i, 190. “The cause then, of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither fortuitous nor fatal… . In a word, human kingdoms are established by divine providence.”
34 Ibid., v, 15 (i, 220-221). “They were honored among almost all nations; they imposed the laws of their empire upon many nations, and at this day, both in literature and history, they are glorious among almost all nations.”
35 Ibid., v, 18 (i, 227-228). “Wherefore, through that empire, so extensive and of so long a continuance, so illustrious and glorious also through the virtues of such great men, the reward which they sought was rendered to their earnest aspirations, and also examples are set before us, containing necessary admonition, in order that we may be stung with shame if we shall see that we have not held fast those virtues for the sake of the most glorious city of God, which are, in whatever way, resembled by those virtues which they held fast for the sake of the terrestrial city.” (Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, 2 vols., Edin. 1884, i, 214.)
36 Lacantius, Div. Instit., vii, 15, in Opere (Leipzig, 1739), p. 940.
37 Prudentius, Contra Symmachum ii, 511-516 (op. cit., p. 298).
38 Tertullian, Apologia, cap. 32, ed. Wm. Reeves (London, n.d.) pp. 95-96. “But there is another and more prevailing reason which determines us to intercede with heaven for the emperor, and for the whole estate of the empire, and their prosperity. And it is this, that we are of opinion that the conflagration of the universe which is now at hand, and it is likely to flame out in the conclusion of this century, and to be such a horrid scene of misery, is retarded by this interposition of the Roman prosperity; and therefore we desire not to be spectators of dissolving nature; and while we pray for it to be deferred, we pray for the subsistence of the Roman Empire.”
39 “That the working of unspeakable grace might be spread abroad throughout the whole world, Divine Providence prepared the Roman Empire.” Quoted by Grant Showerman, Eternal Rome, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1924), 1, 185.
40 Quoted by James Westfall Thompson, Feudal Germany (Chicago, 1928), p. 367.
41 F. Schneider, Rom und Romgedanke im Mittelalter (Munich, 1926; P. E. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio (Leipzig, 1929); Walther Rehm, Der Untergang Roms (Leipzig, 1930); F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, 8 vols. 4th edn. (Stuttgart, 1886-96), also available in translation; see espec. volume one.
42 Ottonis Episcopi Frisingenses Chronica sive Historia de duabus Civitatibus, ed. Adolfus Hofmeister (Leipzig, 1912), Prologus, Lib. v, p. 227. “Regarding human power—how it passed from the Babylonians to the Medes and the Persians and then again to the Greeks under the Roman name—I think enough has been said. How it was transferred from the Greeks to the Franks, who dwell in the West, remains to be told in the present book” (tr. C. C. Mierow, The Two Cities (New York, 1928), p. 322.
43 iv, 23, p. 226; in Mierow's translation, p. 322: “as Rome fell, Francia arose to receive her crown.”
44 Dante, Tutte le Opere, “De Monarchia,” ii, 9, ed. E. Moore (Oxford U. P. 1904), p. 360. “From all which things it is manifest that when all were contending for empire of the world the Roman people prevailed. Therefore it was by divine judgment that it so prevailed; and therefore it obtained such empire by the divine judgment; which is to say that it obtained it by right,” tr. Philip H. Wicksteed (London, 1904), ii, 199.
45 The entire discussion of Daniel's prophecy and the “translatio” was easily available to Milton in George Joye's The exposicion of Daniel the Prophete (1545) University Microfilms, no. 1623. The account begins (pp. 10-11) with a “briefe supputacion of the ages and yeris of the world,” describing the four monarchies. Joye carries the “translatio” one step further, from the French to the Germans, meaning the German Protestant reformers: “But this is trewth. He [God] once translated the empyre from the east to the weest and from the Frenche men to the Germans” (p. 103).
46 Op. cit. “Prologus,” Lib. iii, p. 134. “But why He bestowed this boon [eternity] upon that people or that city rather than on others we cannot even discuss … but if any man is contentious let him hear that it is ‘in the power of the potter to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor‘” (Mierow, p. 221).
47 See Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v. “Eschatology.”
48 Harrison F. Fletcher, Milton's Semitic Studies (Chicago, 1926), does not discuss the “urbs æterna” complex.