Tertullian's Pandora and John Milton'sThe Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

Abstract

John Milton alludes the classical myth of several times in his writings. His earliest reference is in his third prolusion, On the Harmony of the Spheres, which he wrote while student at Christ's College, Cambridge, between 1625 and 1632. fact that we are unable hear this harmony, says Milton, seems certainly be due the presumption of that thief Prometheus, which brought so many evils upon men (CPW 1:238-39). Though Milton does not mention by name, her eventual role in the Fall is implicit in his remarks (CPW 1:239n15). His first explicit allusion is in his fourth prolusion, the Destruction of any Substance there can be no Resolution into First Matter, which he begins by saying: This is not the place in which enquire too nicely whether Error escaped from Pandora's box, or from the depths of the Styx, or lastly whether he is be accounted one of the sons of Earth who conspired against the gods (CPW 1:249). Milton makes his final reference in Paradise Lost (1667 and 1674), where he compares the unfallen Eve the character from classical myth. Eve is [...] more adorn'd, More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods Endow'd with all thir gifts, and O too like In sad event. (4.713-16) Between his Cambridge years and Paradise Lost, Milton mentions in the 1644 second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. In that greatly expanded version of the 1643 first edition, he alludes illuminate the Fall and absolve God of responsibility for creating sin: Yet considering the perfection wherin man was created, and have stood, no decree necessitating his free will, but subsequent though not in time yet in order causes which were in his owne power, they [the Jesuits and Arminians] might, methinks be perswaded absolve both God and us. Whenas the doctrine of Plato and Chrysippus with their followers the Academics and the Stoics, who knew not what consummat and most adorned was bestow'd upon Adam be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happinesse and I mean his native innocence and perfection, which have kept him from being our true Epimetheus, and though they taught of vertue and vice be both the gift of divine destiny, they could yet find reasons not invalid, justifie the counsels of God and Fate from the insulsity of mortall tongues: That mans own freewill self corrupted is the adequat and sufficient cause of his disobedience besides [i.e., other than] Fate; as Homer also wanted not [i.e., did not fail] expresse both in his Iliad and Odyssei. (CPW 2:293-94) The above passage has yielded conflicting interpretations. Milton alludes a consummat and most adorned Pandora given Adam, and some critics have read his words as reference Eve. Such reading, in turn, makes Milton seem more charitable toward women in his divorce tract. Others, however, have challenged the interpretation that Eve was given Adam to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happinesse and perseverance, and also that she might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus. So, too, Eve had been condemned in patristic writings, thus making her an unlikely moral guardian. While Milton's allusion in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce has generated debate, the meaning of the passage becomes clearer in light of the writings of the Church Father Tertullian, with whose works Milton was well acquainted. Tertullian denounces Eve and associates her with Pandora, but he also treats as rhetorical figure denoting the perfect combination of all good gifts. The myth of originated with Hesiod, who says in the Theogony (c. 720 B.C.) that at Zeus' command Hephaestus made her avenge Prometheus' theft of fire. Athena adorned her, and Hephaestus crowned her. …