Milton's Epitaphium Damonis: The Debt to Neo-Latin Poets

Abstract

Epitaphium Damonis, Milton's lament for his friend Charles Diodati, is usually described as most strongly indebted to Theocritus’ idylls, to Virgil's eclogues, and to Ovid's lament for Tibullus. However, closer examination reveals that Milton was even more closely indebted to Neo-Latin poets such as Sannazaro, Buchanan, Castiglione, Mantuan, and Zanchi. Whereas there are lines in Epitaphium Damonis that resemble those in Virgil and Ovid, there are just as many that resemble those in Neo-Latin poets. Although a pastoral, the tone and atmosphere of the epitaph resemble more its Renaissance contemporaries than its more distant Latin and Greek forebears. This is especially evident in the intimate tone Milton assumes in addressing Damon-Diodati and in the elaborate digression he incorporates into the poem when he confides to his dead friend his plans for a future epic on an Arthurian theme. Milton's attempt to wed a Christian sensibility to a classical form also signals his indebtedness to his Renaissance predecessors, who similarly used classical pastoral to express Christian consolation.

Notes

1. See T. P. Harrison, “The Latin Pastorals of Milton and Castiglione,” PMLA 50 (1935): 480–93; Lawrence V. Ryan, “Milton's Epithaphium Damonis and B. Zanchi's Elegy on Baldassare Castiglione,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 30 (1981), 108–23. Also see Gordon Campbell, “Imitation in Epitaphium Damonis,” in Milton Studies 19: Urbane Milton: The Latin Poetry, ed. James A. Freeman and Anthony Low (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 165–77; Janet Leslie Knedlik, “High Pastoral Art in Epitaphium Damonis,” in Freeman and Low, Urbane Milton, 149–63; Leonard Grant, Neo-Latin Literature and the Pastoral (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); Ellen Zetzel Lambert, Placing Sorrow: A Study of the Pastoral Elegy Convention from Theocritus to Milton (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976); Sukanta Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral and Its English Developments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

2. See Theocritus, Idylls 5 and 7 for Himera. Daphnis is the shepherd lamented in Theocritus, Idyll 1; Hylas is the companion of Hercules whom the nymphs drowned (see Theocritus, Idyll 13); Bion is the young poet mourned by Moschus in the pastoral “Lament for Bion.”

3. All quotations of Epitaphium Damonis are from John Milton, Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). The translation of Epitaphium Damonis is by Lawrence Revard and from the same text.

4. For Ovid's influence on Epitaphium Damonis, see “Milton's Dialogue with Ovid: The Case for the Amatoria,” in John Milton: “Reasoning Words,” ed. Charles W. Durham and Kristin A. Pruitt (Susquehanna, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2008).

5. Balthassar Castiglione, “Alcon,” in Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum (Bergamo, 1754), 89–93.

6. See particularly T. P. Harrison, “The Latin Pastorals of Milton and Castiglione,” PMLA 50 (1935): 480–93, who most forcefully makes the case for Alcon, pointing out that it was a poem that Milton was likely to have known. Also see the commentary on Epitaphium Damonis in A Variorum Commentary on The Poems of John Milton, The Latin and Greek Poems, ed. Douglas Bush (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 285–86.

7. See, for example, Zanchi's eclogue for Pontano, “Meliseus,” in Poemata (Rome, 1540), 61r–64v.

8. See Basilio Zanchi, “Damon,” in Poemata, 65r–67v.

9. See “Lycidas,” in Peplus, Illustrissimi Viri D. Philippi Sidnei (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1587). Also see William Gager, “Daphnis,” in Exequiae Illustrissimi Equitis D. Phillipi Sidnei Gratissimae Memoriae (Oxford, 1587), another pastoral elegy on Sidney.

10. In “Lycidas” the shepherd-swain expresses a similar wish—that, as he is remembering Lycidas in verse, “So may som gentle Muse / With lucky words favour my destin’d Urn” (19–20).

11. Michele De Filippis, “Milton and Manso: Cups or Books,” PMLA 51 (1936): 745–56. Also see Ralph W. Condee, “The Structure of Milton's ‘Epitaphium Damonis’,” Studies in Philology 62 (1965): 577–94.

12. For commentary on the cups, see Stella Revard, Milton and the Tangles of Neaera's Hair (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 230–34.