The great champion was degraded to do a woman’s work, work which when performed for others was considered to be the meanest servitude. Milton pictures the fallen hero as describing himself thus—

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze

To grind in brazen fetters under task

With this Heaven-gifted strength. O glorious strength

Put to the labour of a beast, debased



Lower than bond slave! Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.”)

Milton shall again expound for us—

Those two massy pillars

With horrible convulsion to and fro

He tugg’d, he shook, till down they came and drew

The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder



Upon the heads of all who sat beneath

Lords, ladies, captains, counsellers, or priests

Their choice nobility and flower, not only

Of this but each Philistian city round.



O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!

Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d

The work for which thou wast foretold

To Israel, and now ly’st victorious



Among thy slain, self-killed

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold

Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin’d

Thee with thy slaughter’d foes.”