The Tempest in Paradise Lost

In Vergil's Aeneid and Homer's the Odyssey there are a lot of times when the hero has to deal with problems at sea. For example, Aeneas's crew deal with the whirlwind sent by Aeolus who is asked by Juno and Odysseus's crew facing the Scylla. Milton uses similes to the ocean in order to recreate the tempest that appear in his predecessors' works. In Book 2, after Satan gives his speech to the council declaring that he will be the one to go to Eden and disturb God's new creation man, there is a simile of the sea after a tempest. This simile reminded me of Juno's fury in the Aeneid when she attacks his fleet using Aeolus. The simile in Paradise Lost talks about the sound of winds still remaining on the rocks and the state of the sailors who survived the sea's fury (2.285-290). This simile shows the intensity of Satan's speech being like a tempest and it shows that his power over speech is as strong as Juno's fury which results in the tempest in the Aeneid.

Also when Satan is going through chaos and trying to get to the realm of man, he is compared to Odysseus when the narrator says "Or when Ulysses on the larbord shunned Charybdis and by the other whirlpool steered" (2.1019-1020). This simile makes the realm of chaos seem like the massive ocean which Satan is trying to persevere through. As Odysseus survived the whirlpool of the Scylla, Satan also survives the whirlpool, that is Chaos's wild abyss.