Apologies for my indolence in not updating you on my reading challenge and where I intend to take the thread in future. Consider the following post as a figleaf for my embarrassment or small recompense...enjoy.





Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña (Spanish: [anˈdɾes seˈɣoβja ˈtores]) (21 February 1893 – 2 June 1987),[1] known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Spain. He has been regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Many professional classical guitarists today are students of Segovia, or students of his students.[2]

Segovia's contribution to the modern-romantic repertoire not only included commissions but also his own transcriptions of classical or baroque works. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive musical personality, phrasing and style.

Asturias (Leyenda) is a musical work written by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz.

It was originally written for the piano and set in the key of G minor. It was first published in Barcelona, by Juan Bta. Pujol & Co., in 1892 as the prelude of a three-movement set entitled Chants d'Espagne.

The name Asturias (Leyenda) was given to it posthumously by the German publisher Hofmeister, who included it in the 1911 "complete version" of the Suite española, although Albéniz never intended the piece for this suite. Despite the new name, this music is not considered suggestive of the folk music of the northern Spanish region of Asturias, but rather of Andalusian flamenco traditions.[1] Leyenda, Hofmeister's subtitle, means legend. The piece is noted for the delicate, intricate melody of its middle section and abrupt dynamic changes.

Digger's clue of the day
US agent is above suspicion as a plant (9)

US agent can be:
Fed
CIA
less common
FBI
Gman

this time it is
N A R C

next

is = I S

above suspicion = S U S

ANSWER = N A R C I S S U S

Which is not only a mythical boy in love with his own image but also..



Narcissus /nɑrˈsɪsəs/ is a genus of mainly hardy, predominantly spring-flowering, bulbous perennial plants in the Amaryllidaceae (amaryllis) family, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. Various common names including daffodil,[notes 1] daffadowndilly, narcissus (plural narcissi), jonquil and Lent (or Lenten) lily are used to describe all or some members of the genus.

The flowers of Narcissus are conspicuous and brightly coloured, with a basal segment of six petal-like tepals surmounted by a bowl-, cup- or trumpet-shaped corona, often referred to as the 'trumpet'. The flowers are generally white or yellow (rarely green), extending to orange and pink in garden hybrid cultivars, and may be uniform in colour or have contrasting tepals and corona. Species of Narcissus were well known to the ancients both medicinally and botanically, although the genus was not formally described until Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum in 1753. The exact taxonomy remains relatively unsettled, but generally the genus is considered as having about ten sections with approximately 50 species. The number of defined species has ranged widely depending on the authority, with the exact number depending on how they are classified. The disparity is due to similarity between species and hybridization between them. The genus Narcissus appears to have arisen some time in the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene eras, in the Iberian peninsula and adjacent areas of southwest Europe.

The exact origin of the name Narcissus is unknown, but it is often linked to a Greek word for intoxicated (narcotic) and the myth of the youth of that name who fell in love with his own reflection. The English word daffodil appears to be derived from asphodel, with which it was commonly compared.


A giant of Science whom you may not be aware of

[IMG]http://linnaeus.****************/img/linnaeus.jpg[/IMG]

Carl Linnaeus (/lɪˈniːəs/;[1] 23 May[note 1] 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné (About this sound listen (help·info)),[2] was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern biological naming scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).

Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University, and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and '60s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, and published several volumes. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe.

The Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth."[3] The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly."[3] Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist".[4] Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists), "The Pliny of the North," and "The Second Adam".

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Edited by John Leonard

This is an epic poem. My reading of it shall be slowly paced. This will not be an academic reading but I will attempt to give you some links to accompany my thoughts on the poem. Before we begin, I would like to thank my local library for purchasing this book. Every two or so weeks I will need to return the item but I am not in a hurry. Which should act as a warning for readers who like variety because I expect that 'slowly paced' might be too slow for some.

The Author

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

Tommorrow I will start on The Verse which prefaces the poem..

Paradise Lost reading #1

The Verse

Milton chooses to directly address his readers with a forewarning and comment about the style of his poetry through a preface titled as: The Verse. The warning commentary within centres upon the need or otherwise of rhyme in poetry. Milton posits that rhyme limits the possibility of meaning creation and communication; he also, criticises Medieval culture that has prioritised stylistic features of rhyme over other, presumably, more important goals of poetry such as: understanding the physical world, the metaphysical and the state of 'man' in the world.
Milton's blank verse style was the most controversial part of his poem, and without knowing when 'The Verse' was written in the timeline of publications of the poem, it seems that this is a direct response to the cultural norms that favoured rhyme as a criteria for measuring the merits of any given poem. Milton buttresses his choice of style by invoking Homer and Virgil, as predecessors, of this blank verse style. Our reading will draw many conclusions through the comparison between Homer and Virgil with Milton's poem; in so doing, I hope to gain an insight into the tradition within which Milton has identified himself: that being that of the 'epic'.

My starting point for this comparison will begin with The Argument and the 'epic tradition - starting tommorrow.

Speak to you then.

Primer: The Argument

wiki:
An argument in literature is a brief summary, often in prose, of a poem or section of a poem or other work. It is often appended to the beginning of each chapter, book, or canto. They were common during the Renaissance as a way to orient a reader within a large work.

John Milton included arguments for each of the twelve books of the second edition of Paradise Lost, published in 1674 (the original ten-book edition of 1667 did not include them). They present a concise but often simplified account of what happens in the book, though they seem not to be intended to have interpretive value, and they have been only sporadically referenced by critics. The first begins:

This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac't: Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the great Deep.

The argument could also be in verse, as in Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso or William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Most arguments included in poems are written by the authors themselves, but in other cases they could be added subsequently by a printer or publisher to an earlier work.

A Useful link that I will be exploring about Milton and his poem. If my pace is not to your liking feel free to go ahead and explore...

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/rea...nts/text.shtml

The Argument

This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac't


To understand Milton's Paradise Lost, it is necessary to have knowledge of both Christian mythology as well as Milton's 17th century England. 'The whole Subject, Mans disobedience' when considering only Christian mythology and its metaphysical structure: directly points the reader toward Adam's, and hence our, fall from grace into a state of fallenness. Man's disobedience is the reason why Earthly paradise has disappeared and why we have evil in the world.
Yet, there is no small irony when reflecting upon Milton's political life and the concept of 'disobedience'. Milton, having been a high official (Latin Secretary) during the revolutionary period of England in the mid 17th century, had been radically disobedient toward the political and social norms of English society. As the final drafts of the poem were written after the fall of the Puritan Republic and the subsequent Monarchical Restoration, a deep reflection upon the rights and wherefores of 'disobedience' could not help but be seen in this poem. Whilst a 21st century reader might find the ethics and cosmology of Milton deeply traditional, within a society where the King as God's representative on Earth has been executed with Biblical justifications and all Monarchy declared tyrannical - Milton in his contemporary society was a revolutionary thinker.

Hence one way of reading Paradise Lost is to interpret how Milton reimagines mythological disobedience and reflect upon his own disobedience in the light of the realities of the shortcomings of the Puritan experiment and the aftermath Milton endured.

Another context we should consider, when reflecting upon the world that Milton lived and the tradition from which his ideas spring from, is: the Reformation and its response in Europe and England.




As we will find out, Puritans like Milton wanted obedience themselves (they were not anarchic) but it was to whom one to is obedient that is of primary importance. For more than 100 years since Luther - England and Europe had been aflame with the contest between various forms of authority. Revolutionary protestantism, obscurantist Counter reformations, contests between papal authority and regal authority - the structures of power and authority was a contested space in the 16th and 17th Centuries right upto and including Milton's life with the Thirty years War.

The Thirty Years' War was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618–1648.[14] It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, and one of the longest.

Initially a war between Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmenting Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers of Europe,[15] becoming less about religion and more a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence.

Against this background, it is less suprising that 'the whole Subject, is Mans disobedience' when disobedience is the rule of thumb in 17th century Europe.

Thus, it is evident even before reading the body of the poem - four common seams or parallels of disobedience that we should be aware of.

(1) Adam's disobedience and the fall of man from Paradise
(2) Satan and his Angels' disobedience and the creation of Hell
(3) Milton's social radicalism and his abetting of regicide - actual civil disobedience
(4) Milton's disobedience from the epic/poetic tradition in his deviation from the rhythmic couplets used in the traditional epic form and the comtemporary expectations of his readers

Over the weekend we will start on Book 1.

If you like Milton - viewing Prof John Rogers (Yale) on Paradise Lost - open education is great stuff. Video 9/10 will be on topic for the immediate future of this thread.

The cottage Milton lived in, iirc, late in his life when he was blind, was in the next door village to mine growing up. I think I only went there once, and my abiding memory of it was how small it was. More recently there was a pretty decent curry house opposite it called The Milton's Head.

Life update

1) I have not heard from the University. If I had of checked my previous acceptance in 2012 - I would have noticed the date as 17th of December. That would have saved me a couple of weeks sweating the letterbox and emailbox waiting for approval. Given the week following has Christmas in it and the aforementioned in mind, I expect to hear from the University this week.

2) I have an interview for a good part-time job tommorrow. Having done the courses and sent out about 30 emailed resumes, filled out about a dozen online applications and seen a couple of clubs/pubs in person - I was just getting into the swing of job searching when I got a friend recommending me to another associate that got me an interview. Who you know not what....yada yada. Its a supermarket type gig instead of booze/slot machines - so that is good. Everything indicates that the interview is a formality but lets not count our chickens.

3) My student got her first 90% in an English assessment. She was really pleased. I believe in feedback - so I provided a set of questions and the opportunity for the parents and the student to give me feedback. Apart from posing too many rhetorical or imprecise questions and a habit of interrupting - everything is going well.

4) 2 and 3 together probably means (assuming I get the job and get accepted) I have only the accomodation to sort out for next year. So if this week goes well - I will be pleasantly suprised given my expectations had myself scrambling right up until February getting things together.

5) Been reading abit of Book 1 - going over the first couple of hundred lines. Will get to a reading sometime tommorrow night or Tuesday.


Hope things in your world are going well too.

Think of me this week and have your fingers crossed I get the job and position in the Masters course - it can't hurt can it?

Positive thoughts coming your way.

Book 1

Where to begin?

Milton's narrator is the poet infused with the Holy Spirit as his Muse. This is quite traditional in a couple of ways. The invocation of a Muse is a standard device for the epic poet, in part to enable the poetic voice to bear witness to the 'non-real' (the future, the distant past, the spiritual or a faraway place) and it also empowers the poetic voice with an authority that might not otherwise be credited to the poet alone. It is also traditional in another way; the invocation of the Holy Spirit as a medium for divine knowledge is the traditional means for Judeo-Christian prophets to access their spiritual vision.

Whilst the narrator's construct has these traditional elements, its perspective is radically ambitious and innovative. From the outset of the poem, Milton's poetic voice is a witness to pre-creation cosmology. A pre-time, primordial Chaos where the Holy spirit is portrayed as a hermaphroditic brooder upon Chaos before the unleashing of Light and substance.

And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant:

I am not a Christian theologian but I think the metaphor of a brooding dove engenders the Holy Spirit in a radically new way. It is also theologically radical because the prophetic perspective inherently infers Milton as the First prophet through this temporal device. This ambitious claim surpasses even Dante the supernatural pilgrim of Heaven and Hell; and is breath-taking.

+1

Life update.

Perhaps you saw it coming...I got accepted, I think for the supermarket type job. Well that is no suprise, I guess given 16 year olds qualify for that job. But did you foresee that I would get a call back from a club as well? So I have a small dillema - I have an interview Tuesday afternoon with a club and I sign-up for the supermarket job on Wednesday morning.

Dilemma you say? Just pick the best one if you get offered both.

Yeah - I know of none of the terms or conditions of either. Likely hours, type of role, rate of pay - what the job actually entails, employees etc.
If I had have known more about the supermarket job - given I was confirmed over the phone (we will discuss it all then when you sign up)....then I would have something to compare it with the answers to questions I ask on Tuesday.

meh...I guess there are worse problems that deciding between two jobs....which would be to have received no calls.


Anyway - your crossed fingers, lucky horse shoes, rabbit-foots, karma incantations and Hail Mary's worked - thanks for the lucky thoughts - my cup doth overflowth.

Book 1

The Devil or Satan functions like a fallen Hero within Paradise Lost. He is a great figure who has fallen from grace. After the initial scene establishing the temporal setting, the Muse and its relationship with the poetic voice; we are introduced to Satan and a succession of his fallen Angel comrades discussing their current state in Hell. They are defeated and appear downcast with their fate. I could not help but feel some sympathy, in parts, as they comtemplated the manner of their fall and the consequences of their rebellion. This sense is felt, in spite of, their still ambigious motives for their revolt and their unrepentant attitude in the aftermath. We are of course hearing it from Satan's point of view but perhaps some of the feeling of sympathy comes from the intransigent and uncomprimising fate that has been alloted to them. Satan's fate appears to echo that of Prometheus in the Hellenic tradition.

If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais'd impious War in Heav'n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie [ 45 ]
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [ 50 ]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]
Torments him

Perhaps it is the compromising position that Milton evokes in his reader's relationship to Satan, that in part, is one reason we should admire the courage of his vision. Though, as mentioned earlier, his readers were more concerned with lack of rhyme than a heretical depiction of the Archetype of evil. This depiction was more than a whim of a provacative poet - I think that it probably relates to Milton depicting some aspect of Civil War through Satan and his cohorts' account of the Fall.

Congrats on the good news!

posting to subscribe and to remind myself to read into this

diggah

Life update

So I went for the interview - I answered all their questions in the first two minutes. Specifically, why someone with my resume wants a starting position in a club - glass collector and drink server. The sticking point was: number of shifts I would be available for. I could not commit, not knowing my possible timetable, so I did not lie about it or promise too much; consequently, I did not get that job.
Unsuprisingly, I accepted the 'bird in the hand' - and I have my first shift on the 5th. When I told them I had my RSA (responsible service of Alcohol) I went from nightfilling shifts to straight off training on a cash register, I assume for their bottleshop. You might think of Digger how terribly middle class of me when I mention that this will be the first time I use a register....so there you go.

I went into the University to find out the status of my application. I chose to go in person to cover the fact that it might have been 'lost in the mail' and also to ask as many questions as possible. Well to keep it short, there is no reason re: placement numbers, stipend qualifitication, distinction between part-time and full-time or any other reason for me to believe that the extra numbers that had dealyed processing would make it less likely that I get accepted. Which is a complicated way of saying: that I should still expect getting accepted in spite of some things changing between my 2012 and 2014 applications. I will find out 9/1/2015 - which is a deadline I think I believe because it came from the guy who processes these things own mouth.

I did not get up to much over the holidays - Xmas dinner with dad at home (nice chicken roast) and Boxing Day lunch with my cousins and their family ( a measly roast beef - only one slice ). I do not expect to do much over New Year's - too old to be hanging out with people getting pissed and too single to gather with friends and their little 'uns watching fireworks.

January plans: to look for shared accomodation. I think that I will not be able to afford living with myself. In case you did not already know, Sydney is one of the most expensive places in the world to live - even more so than London and New York. The position I have is part-time guaranteed 10 hours a week + tutoring + a weekly allocated dividend of the stipend prolly does not add up to me being able to rent by myself. I do not want to rely on shifts or cutting it too fine. I guess January will also tell me - given I will get a handle on how many pick-up shifts are available whether I get 10 hours or 20 will be the usual from them. Which also might force my hand on giving up the gaspers (cigs), I suppose my future self might want 10 hours and better lungs but right now the prospect of moving, studying/working on top of giving up smokes seems terrible.


Been a bit lazy on the reading, I have finished Book I of Paradise Lost. I will make a couple of more posts about it in the next 48 hours.
Hope every other thing in your life is good over the shopadays...speak to you soon. And have a happy New Year if I do not hear from you until then.

Satan

Although I do not completely rely upon the author's world and perspective for interpretation - it can be periodically useful. From the 21st century Western world, a world of science and technology where poet's speak of inner life or aesthetically re-present a honed subjective view or confined to social and poltical commentary, the earnest ambition of Milton maybe obscured. In the 17th century, a period of religious flux, cultural upheaval with the re-introduction of prominent Classical thinkers and individual or non institution mass production of ideas through the printing press - it was deadly dangerous to express views that might provoke established norms. Milton's ambition, of giving an account of pre-Creation and to re-tell the Bible, was up there with Luther and his confrontation with the Catholic hieracrhy.

If we are to see how this is realised in the text - the grand ambition - we can see it in the characterisation of Satan. To give weight to the cosmic stakes of the narrative - the villian (or perhaps Hero) Satan must be given a stature worthy of a being that had waged war on God. Milton uses an extended simile to give you a picture of the Arch-Fiend:

He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, [ 285 ]
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, [ 290 ]
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.
His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,

One element that is brilliant about this simile - is that resists pre-emptive interpretation. As soon as we feel we have a handle on the size of Satan - the comparative is used to enlargen Satan even further. The largest imaginable tree - that of a great mast on a flagship - is but a wand in the hand of the Enemy.

It is not just the stature of the Enemy that gives gravity and scale to the conerns of the poem, but also the number of the Fallen Angels that were defeated on that Ethereal battlefield. Again, introduced to us via simile:

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.

The Land of Goshen (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן‎ or ארץ גושן Eretz Gošen) is named in the Bible as the place in Egypt given to the Hebrews by the pharaoh of Joseph (Genesis 45:9 - 10), and the land from which they later left Egypt at the time of the Exodus. It was located in the eastern Delta.

According to the Joseph narrative in the Book of Genesis, the sons of Jacob (Israel) who were living in Hebron, experienced a severe famine that lasted seven years. Since word was that Egypt was the only kingdom able to supply food, the sons of Jacob (Israel) journeyed there to buy goods. In the second year of famine,[3] the Vizier of Egypt, Joseph,[4][5] invited the sons of Israel to live in Egyptian territory. They settled in the country of Goshen.[6] Goshen is described as the best land in Egypt, suitable for both crops and livestock. It has been suggested that this location may have been somewhat apart from Egypt, because Genesis 46:34 states, "Ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians." After the death of Joseph and those of his generation, the following generations of Israelites had become populous in number. The Egyptians feared potential integration or takeover, so they enslaved the Israelites and took away their privileges.

Approximately four hundred and thirty years later,[7] Moses was called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, from Goshen to Succoth,[8] the first waypoint of the Exodus. They pitched at 41 locations crossing the Nile Delta, to the last station being the plains of Moab.

One theological (almost practical ) question that a religion with universal appeal like Christianity has to have an answer for is: if there is only one God and he is revealed, accessible for all, where did all the other beliefs come from? Unlike Judaism, which appears to a lay outsider like myself, to have an exclusive relationship between God and his chosen people; Christainity offers salvation to all, has to have an answer for this conundrum.

Milton answers this question by imagining that all false idols are the work of Satan. We see this grand deception in the second half of Book I. For the next couple of posts - I will introduce some of the Fallen angels and the gods they were deceiving 'us' with.

wow you have a blog, diggeridoo you didnt report that, I'm in, maybe I'll also read something here and there, much love to you dude, bro.

Here is Milton's explanation for other religions. He ends with the invocation of the Muse to be able to identify each Fallen Angel and their idolic manifestation.

Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band
The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
Thir great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; [ 360 ]
Though of thir Names in heav'nly Records now
Be no memorial blotted out and ras'd
By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, [ 365 ]
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
God thir Creator, and th' invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform [ 370 ]
Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn'd
With gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold,
And Devils to adore for Deities:
Then were they known to men by various Names,
And various Idols through the Heathen World. [ 375 ]
Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last,
Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof?

Fallen Angels: Moloch

First Moloch, horrid King besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud
Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire [ 395 ]
To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart [ 400 ]
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove
The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell.

Moloch, also known as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Melek, Molock, Moloc, Melech, Milcom, or Molcom (representing Semitic מלך m-l-k, a Semitic root meaning "king") is the name of an ancient Ammonite god.[1] Moloch worship was practiced by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.

As a god worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry (Leviticus 18:21: "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch"). In the Old Testament, Gehenna was a valley by Jerusalem, where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6).



William Blake, 1809 The Flight of Moloch

Note the child sacrifice...

Gehenna is the Greek for Hinnom (hebrew)



Like most cities: the outer edges were where the trash was disposed of. I have no idea or reason to believe that this was known to Milton...but its an interesting factual overlay.