Inverted allusion

Milton describes Satan’s spear as “equal which the tallest Pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast / of some great Ammiral.”

In his translation of the Iliad , Pope describes the death of Sarpedon: “as some mountain Oak, or Poplar tall / or pine (fit mast for some great Admiral) / Nods to the Ax . . . Thus fell the King.”

So, we get Homer borrowing a line from Milton, who had originally borrowed it from Virgil’s description of Polyphemus ( Aeneid 3) and perhaps also from Abraham Cowley’s description of Goliath in his Davideis (“His Spear the Trunk was of a lofty Tree / Which Nature meant some tall Ship’s Mast to be”).