[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Most of the original visuals for Satan, demons, and hell seems to have come from (what was to the early Christians, their largest opponent), Roman and Greek mythology but perverted. Hence demons and Satan look like satyrs, Hell is known as Hades and surrounded by Styx, and guarded by the three headed dog (kerberos?)
[/QUOTE]
Milton indeed used pagan gods for the names of many of his fallen angels, and used Greek and Roman mythological elements when it suited him–for example, the language used in recapping the"giant race" story of Genesis echoes thes story of the Greek titans. Paradise Lost is also an attempt to do in English something like (and a homage to) Virgil’s Aeneid, with its invocations of classical muses, etc. Here’s Milton using the pagan dogs you mentioned in his hell:
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide CERBEREAN mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen.
By Milton’s time, he was not so much fighting pagainsim (though no doubt he would have had he thought it necessary) as coopting the best of its literary traditions to support his vision.
I know y’all just are waiting for more long-assed quotations from Paradsie Lost, yes? Here are a couple more that adddress the OP’s specific questions:
Here’s the fire lake–but there’s also a freezer burn torment that goes with it (this passage too shows Milton’s use of Greek and Roman underworld myths):
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred STYX the flood of deadly hate,
Sad ACHERON of sorrow, black and deep;
COCYTUS, nam’d of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce PHLEGETON
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
LETHE the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land
Thaws not,
…
Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of Fire.
Thither by harpy-footed Furies hail’d,
At certain revolutions all the damn’d
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce,
From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice
And here’s why Satan decides he’s had enough and ain’t gonna take any more–it’s that pride thing–God declares his Son lord over the angels:
Hear all ye Angels, Progenie of Light,
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vertues, Powers,
Hear my Decree, which unrevok’t shall stand.
This day I have begot whom I declare
My onely Son, and on this holy Hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your Head I him appoint;
And by my Self have sworn to him shall bow
All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord:
Under his great Vice-gerent Reign abide
United as one individual Soule
For ever happie: him who disobeyes
Mee disobeyes, breaks union, and that day
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Into utter darkness, deep ingulft, his place
Ordaind without redemption, without end.
…
the first Arch-Angel, great in Power,
In favour and praeeminence, yet fraught
With envie against the Son of God, that day
Honourd by his great Father, and proclaimd
MESSIAH King anointed, could not beare
Through pride that sight, and thought himself impaird.
Deep malice thence conceiving & disdain,
Soon as midnight brought on the duskie houre
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolv’d
With all his Legions to dislodge, and leave
Unworshipt, unobey’d the Throne supream
Paradise Lost more than any other book is the source of the English-speaking world’s background knowledge that it thinks it knows about this stuff.
