The Fall of Tydeus and the Failure of Satan: Statius' Thebaid, Dante's Commedia, and Milton's Paradise Lost

Throughout Paradise Lost (1667 and 1674), Milton contrasts the classical heroism of Satan with the Christian heroism of the Son. The most important classical model for Milton's epic was Virgil's Aeneid (ca. 19 B.C.), in which the hero Aeneas dutifully obeys his father and the gods, valiantly fights his enemies, and triumphantly gives birth to the Roman world. As Mario A. Di Cesare has summarized, "Nobody would quarrel with the view that Vergil's Aeneid is the major 'literary model' for Paradise Lost."¹

Central to the Aeneid is the conflict between Aeneas and Turnus, through which Virgil contrasts pietas and impietas. In Milton's reworking of the Aeneid, the Son becomes an imitation of pius Aeneas, while Satan becomes an adaptation of impius Turnus. While such an interpretation of Paradise Lost is generally valid, it is also simplistic. Milton did not slavishly imitate Virgil, and he had many other epics from which to borrow. One such epic is Statius' Thebaid (ca. A.D. 90), a poem heavily indebted to the Aeneid. But while the Aeneid is the story of the triumph of Aeneas and the founding of Rome, the Thebaid is about the destruction of Thebes. In its story of fratricidal strife, the Thebaid reflects a much more troubled and chaotic world than that of the Aeneid, and it is far more pessimistic in tone and outlook. James D. Garrison has remarked that "the fundamental conflict in Roman history between pietas and impietas receives epic treatment in this version of the seven against Thebes," and that "the triumph of furor over pietas evident in the broad design of the poem is also apparent in particular episodes."² If the Aeneid is a celebration of pietas, the Thebaid might be considered an examination of impietas. Milton could thus turn to the Thebaid to underscore the impietas of Satan. In the Thebaid, Tydeus, the king of Calydon, exhibits the same classical heroism as Satan and Aeneas do. But unlike Aeneas, Tydeus transgresses the conventions of pietas at the time of his death, and his heroism is ultimately a failure. The fall of Tydeus was later utilized by Dante in the Commedia (ca. 1314–1321), and thus it was further popularized throughout the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In Paradise Lost, Milton equates Satan with Tydeus to emphasize the devil's faulty heroism and punishment. In doing so, Milton makes use of both the Thebaid and the Commedia.

One of the earliest accounts of Satan's rebellion and impietas in Paradise Lost is the Leviathan simile, in which Milton compares the fallen angel to several figures from classical and biblical mythology. The vanquished devil

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' Ocean stream:
Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam
The Pilot of some small night-founder'd Skiff,
Deeming some Island, oft, as Seamen tell,
With fixed Anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night
Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delays:
So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay.

(PL 1.196–209)³

Erasmo di Valvasone had previously described Satan in terms of Briareos in his L'Angeleida (1590), a poem about the war in heaven, and Milton may have known Valvasone's work.⁴ Milton's commentators have generally pointed to Hesiod's Theogony (ca. 750 B.C.E.) as the principal source for Milton's allusion to Briareos. In a gloss on the passage in his edition of Milton's...