Elegia secunda. English translation. Back to Latin text. Open Latin text in new window.

Introduction. This poem eulogizes Senior Esquire Beadle Richard Ridding, M.A. of St. John's College who died in October or early November of 1626, during Milton's third (but second full) year at Christ's College, Cambridge. He had served the university for thirty years and was probably regarded, somewhat like the university carrier Milton eulogizes in a sonnet, as a fixture.

Milton was almost eighteen at the time of Ridding's death, so he did not write this poem in "his seventeenth year" as some editors translate "anno aetatis 17;" in his seventeenth year Milton would have been sixteen. During the same term at Cambridge, Milton also composed the first selection in Sylvarum, "Anno aetatis 16, In obitum procancellarii medici," an elegy on the death of the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Dr. John Gostlin. He died on October 21, 1626. No one knows the exact date of Beadle Ridding's death. Milton was neither in his sixteenth year nor sixteen years old when he wrote that elegy. He was seventeen, almost eighteen.

The translation follows that of Walter MacKellar with a few changes based on consulting The Columbia Milton and Merritt Y. Hughes.

Beadle. The OED offers this as its third definition for beadle: "An apparitor or precursor who walks officially in front of dignitaries, a mace-bearer; a. spec. in the English universities (at present conventionally spelt bedel, −ell,) the name of certain officials, formerly of two ranks distinguished as esquire bedels and yeomen bedels, having various functions as executive officers of the University. Their duties are now chiefly processional: at Oxford there are four, the junior- or sub-bedel being the official attendant of the Vice-chancellor, before whom he bears a silver staff or mace; at Cambridge there are two, called esquire-bedells, both of whom officially walk in front of the Vice-chancellor with maces." This poem eulogizes Senior Esquire Beadle Richard Ridding, M.A. of St. John's College who died in October or early November of 1626, during Milton's third (but second full) year at Christ's College, Cambridge. He had served the university for thirty years and was probably regarded, somewhat like the university carrier, as a fixture.

Palladian band. Since Pallas Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, university students would be considered her followers, a "Palladian band." In Areopagitica, Milton speaks of the oil students burn in their lamps as "Palladian oyl."

Jove disguised himself. Edmund Spenser tells the story, in the Faerie Queene 3.11.32 (Find "snowy Swan"), of Jove disguising himself as a snow-white swan in order to court Leda.

Haemonian potion. In Ovid's Metamorphoses 7.263-93, we read the story of how Medea rejuvenates of Aeson using a brew of Haemonian roots: she "took her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat; then, letting all his old blood out of him she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir. As he received it through his lips or wound, his beard and hair no longer white with age, turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed, appeared in all the vigor of bright youth, no longer lean and sallow, for new blood coursed in his well-filled veins."

Coronis's son. Aescalapius, son of Coronis, is the god of healing arts.

your Apollo. Presumably the beadle's "Apollo" would be the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor of the University.

wing-footed Cyllenius. Hermes or, in Latin, Mercury, born on Mount Cyllene, would be the beadle or messenger of the gods. He is the son of Zeus, chief of all the Gods. See the Britannica article.

Eurybates. Chief herald of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and general of the Greek forces in the Trojan war. See Homer's Iliad 1.320.

queen of sepulchres. Death personified.

Avernus. A lake near Naples traditionally used to represent the entrance into Hades, the land of the dead.