John Milton (1608–1674)
The beginning of Book I sets firmly in place Milton’s theodicy—his attempt to justify and articulate the ways of God—which is the prime purpose of Paradise Lost. The opening lines of its ‘adventrous song’ set up echoes with the openings of Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Odyssey. Milton thus makes a claim for his poem’s status alongside these ancient epics. He also, in this fashion, raises the question of how his protagonist, Adam (and possibly his antagonist Satan too), might measure up against heroes such as Aeneas and Odysseus.