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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2019
The doctrine of Milton's Comus is elaborately Platonic, but the introduction of the idea of chastity at the center of the Platonic argument is generally supposed to be Milton's innovation. That virtue, by that name, is not commonly recognized as a subject of Plato's thought though his speculation on divine love necessarily includes comparable notions. But in Milton the idea stands out, not only as the subject of the masque, but for the difficulty of understanding what he means by it. He distinguishes explicitly, but without explanation, between chastity and virginity; at times he uses chastity to signify temperance, and at other times continence; at one or two places, as in the epilogue, he implies its identification with virtue generally, and as a primary means of attaining immortality.
Read at the meeting of the Central Renaissance Conference at St. Louis 21 March 1958.
1 In a previous study, On A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle (Ann Arbor, 1954), I developed an analysis of the meaning of the masque and suggested that the idea of chastity with its magic power conformed to the ideas of St. Augustine, and that that doctrine was philosophically the same as the doctrine of sophrosyne expressed in the Charmides (p. 72, note 47). What I did not see at that time was that Milton was translating the word.
2 Plato's Charmides (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 5-8.
3 P. 8 (from Die nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens, Niirnberg, 1857, p. 230).
4 P. 90.
5 P. 91.
6 Omnium Angeli Politiani operum (quœ quidem extare nouimus) tomus [Paris, 1519], sig. Qiiv. Professor Kristeller has informed me that a fragment of Poliziano's translation is to be found in the Lyons 1537 edition of the Opera, II, 322-326.
7 Kristeller, P. O., Supplementum Ficinianum (Florence, 1937), I, lxi Google Scholar.
8 Marsilii Ficini opera (Basel, 1576), pp. 1304-1307. If Milton read the Charmides in Ficino, rather than in Greek, he would have done so in the folios that contain Ficino's translations of Plato (1484, 1491, 1517, etc.).
9 Compare In Phœdonem: ‘Proinde improbat illos qui temperantiam esse putant abstinere à minoribus corporis uoluptatibus, ut maiores deinde uoluptates corporis consequantur’ (Opera, p. 1391).
10 Ficino elsewhere expresses this same doctrine in terms still closer to Milton's: ‘Existimant enim sanctam animi puritatem esse quasi symbolum characteremque diuinum, quo custodians adeò ut nihil patiaris ab illis quibus ipse propinquas dum eos sacrificando concilias. Quando enim contra sis affectus atque illi quibus sacrificia operaris, sisque purior ideoque diuinior, te & corpore, & animo indemnem perseuerare, pura scilicet sanctimonia uelut arce munitum. Quamobrem fascinatoribus etiam ueneficisque necessaria uisa est eiusmodi cautio per quam sint à discrimine tutiores, neque tamen penitus tuti esse possunt, lasciuia; namque gratia consueuerunt dasmones improbos compellare. Quapropter non ueneficorum incantatorutnque propria est puritas atque sanctimonia, sed diuinorum certé uirorum contemplantiumque diuina. lam uerò castitas abstinentiaque suas passim obseruatores contra malos daemones diuina familiaritate tuetur’ (Epistolarum, Liber VIII [Opera, p. 878]).
11
Plotini Platonkorum facile coryphœi operum phihsophkorum omnium libri (Basel, 1580), p. 465. Plotinus's words, 
(Enneads, IV.7.10) are a quotation of the Phaedrus 247 D. The good images had come into the Lady's mind after the bad ones, phantasies and airy shapes, had been dispelled. Platonic doctrine and Ficino's interpretation of that explain this as part of the nature of the activity of demons in the world and the imagination: ‘Primo quidem à perturbationibus per moralis disciplinae purgationem, deinde à sensibus atque ipsa imaginatione per contemplationis ipsius intentionem. Medici sapientes duplici utuntur purgatione, prima quidem leniendo… . Non enim interiores imaginationis morbos, id est, deceptiones extirpat. Sequitur purgatio speculatrix imaginationis quandoque pro uiribus discutiens nebulas…. Sed cum multa quae a corpore animo inferuntur incommoda numerasset, subiunxit extremum maximumque malorum esse fallaciam illam, qua imaginatio mentem ad incorporea se eleuantem, interim ad imagines quasdam corporum saepissime distrahit, cogitque ipsa modo quodam corporeo cogitare’ (In Phœdonem epitome, pp. 1390-1391).
12 Compare also In Protagoram epitome: ‘Vnde intimus in nobis præsidet iudex, inextinguibile rationis lumen, rectum ueri falsique & boni malique examen, ineuitabihs conscientiae stimulus. Per hanc Deus infusam omnibus legem omnes ita ferme ad commune dirigit bonum, ut omnes flammas leuitate erlgat ad superna … Quem uero primo appellauit pudorem, deinde temperantiæ nominauit. Est enim pudor ingenitus temperantiae fundamentum’ (Opera, pp. 1298-1299).
13 Liber de Platonis definitionibus (Opera, p. 1963).
14 Ed. Carmide, Liside, Alcibiade (Venice, 1945), p. 89: ‘la coperta identificazione della specie d'amore con la specie d'armonia interiore o temperanza'.
15 See Arthos, , On A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle, p. 44 Google Scholar.
16 See Kristeller, P. O., II Pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (Florence, 1953), p. 339 Google Scholar.
17 De vita caelitus comparanda (Opera, p. 561).
18 157 A-B (translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library).
19 Ennéades v, ed. Emile Bréhier (Paris, 1931), p. 73, note I (Enneads, V, 3).
