“To Warn Proud Cities”: a Topical Reference in Milton’s “Airy Knights” Simile (<i>Paradise Lost</i> II.531-8)

Abstract

In Paradise Lost II.531-8 modern editors often see an allusion to Josephus’ account of armies appearing in the sky shortly before the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, reports of spectral soldiers and aerial battles were quite common in seventeenth-century English pamphlets, such as Mirabilis Annus and Five Strange Wonders. Airy apparitions do not seem to have held much fascination for Milton. But this does not mean that he could not exploit their popular appeal and their political symbolism in Paradise Lost