Notes on Milton's Nativity Ode. 313 



When, like the stars, the singing angels shot 

 To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes 

 To see another Sun at midnight rise. 



At times the stars seem, like angels, to be ministers of God's pur- 

 i:»oses, or to rejoice in His deeds. Thus Judg. 5. 20 : ' They fought 

 from heaven ; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.' 



hi Job 88. 7, it is generally thought that the ' morning stars ' and 

 the ' sons of God ' are identical, though this has been questioned : 

 ' When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 

 shouted for joy.' ^ 



Finally, we have in Rev. 9. 1, 11 the actual identification of angel 

 with star : ' I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth : and to 

 hint was given the key of the bottomless pit.' ' And they had a 

 king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit.' In Jude 

 18, ungodly men are called 'wandering stars, to whom is reserved 

 the blackness of darkness for ever.' 



Analogous to these conceptions are those of the Book of Enoch. 

 Thus, 14. 13-16: 'And what I saw there was horrible— seven stars 

 . . . like spirits. . . . The angel said : " This is the place where heaven 

 and earth terminate ; it serves for a prison for the stars of heaven 

 and the host of heaven. And the stars which roll over the fire are 

 they which have transgressed the commandment of God before 

 their rising, because they did not come forth at the appointed time." ' 

 Cf. also (ed. Charles) 21. 1-12; 82. 9-20; 86. 1, 3; etc. 



Among the Greeks the stars were believed to be animate. ' That 

 the stars were divine beings was,' says Aristotle, ' a traditional belief 

 among the Greeks.' In his Nicomacliean Ethics 6. 7, he declares: 

 ' There exist things far more divine than is the human, such as are, 

 to take a most obvious example, those heavenly bodies of whose 

 harmony the universe is composed.' According to Zeller {Arist. 1. 

 507) it is for this reason that ' he attributes a priceless value to 

 the smallest iota of knowledge which we can boast to have acquired 

 about them.' Cf. De Ccelo 1. 1; 2. 12; Part. An. 1. 5 init. ; Met. 6 

 (E). 1. 18. 1026 a. 18. For the souls of the stars, cf. Aristophanes, 

 Peace 882 ; Plato, Rep. 621 B, and the other references in Dieterich, 

 Nekyia, p. 24, n. 1. The general subject of the stars as animate is 

 treated by Piper, Mythologie der Christlichen Kiinst 2. 202 ff., with 

 references ranging from Anaximander, through Origen, to Dante. 

 Two quotations from Ovid are representative : 



* On the early Hebre^w and Babylonian beliefs concerning the identity 

 of stars with angels, see Gunkel, Genesis, pp. 99, 100. 



