Notes on Milton's Nativity Ode. 361 



Diffugiunt, lucemque timent, ceduntque diei. 

 Attoniti vates illis responsa diebus 

 Nulla dabant, stabatque oculos immotus aruspex. 

 Sparsa sacerdotes timido legere deorum 

 Frusta ministerio ; ccepit tunc perdere vires 

 Caeca superstitio, verique exurgere Patris 

 Cultus, et occulto superum latrea favore, 



Even Milton's ' unshowered grass ' might have been suggested — 

 though he could not have been ignorant of the classical authorities 

 on the subject — by Mantuan's (1. 81a) 



yEgyptus pluviam nescit. . . . 

 Cf. Crashaw (ed. Turnball, p. 47) : 



He saw^ the falling idols all confess 

 A coming Deity. 



226—8. The implication here is that Christ slew, or routed, 

 Typhon, as Hercules strangled serpents in his cradle. There seems 

 also to be an allusion to the obscure legend according to which 

 Hercules, and not Zeus, or perhaps Zeus with the assistance of 

 Hercules, overcame Typhon. 



The following description of Typhon is from Apollodorus 1.5.3: 

 ' When the gods had overcome the giants, Ge, still more enraged, 

 submitted to the eml^races of Tartarus, and gave birth to Tj'phon 

 in Cilicia. Typhon was of twofold nature — half man and half beast, 

 and in size and strength superior to all those that Ge had l)orne 

 hitherto. Down to the waist he was a man of gigantic stature, 

 rising higher than all mountains, and with a head that now and 

 again touched the stars. One of his hands reached to the setting, 

 and the other to the rising, of the sun, and above them towered a 

 hundred dragon-heads. Below the waist were enormous serpent- 

 coils, whose convolutions clustered with a tremendous hissing about 

 his very crest. His whole body was feathered. His shaggy hair 

 and beard were blown about by the winds, and fire flashed from 

 his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon. Snatching at masses 

 of rock, he would hurl them up to the sky, while through it all 

 resounded fierce clamor and hissing, and seething flames shot from 

 his mouth.' 



For snaky twine, cf. Manilius, Astr. 4. 579 : 



Anguipedem elatis humeribus Typhona furentem. 



Virgil {^n. 8. 297—8) implies a conflict of Hercules with Typhon, 

 or Typhoeus : 



