Homer, Virgil and Milton Homer, Virgil and Milton’s use of allusion in their literature is apparent and most likely educational. They all have clear and recurring parallels between their works.
Particularly complex are the allusions to Achilles, which appear in the portrayals of both Aeneas and Turnus. W. S. Anderson, in his influential article1 on Vergil's use of the Iliad, has argued that although Achilles is initially invoked as a model for both Aeneas and Turnus in Aeneid, as the poem progresses Vergil establishes Aeneas as the true heir to Achilles, while Turnus becomes a new Hector or Paris. Book 9 opens with Iris urging Turnus to take advantage of Aeneas' absence by attacking the Trojan camp, a clear reference to Iliad where Iris rouses Achilles to drive the Trojans from the Greek camp. Anderson has argues that “Vergil uses this allusion to support Turnus' own false notion that he is a new Achilles,” a delusion which is gradually dispelled in Book 10 after the reappearance of the real successor to Achilles, Aeneas. The resemblance of the attack of the Latins on the Trojan camp to the attack of Hector and his companions on the Greek camp in Iliad Book 8 and 12 seems to support such a view, placing Turnus in the role of Hector and not Achilles. Later, however, the issue is complicated further as in his slow retreat before the Trojans Turnus is reminiscent of Ajax in Iliad. Finally, just at the end of his retreat, Turnus turns and just jumps into the river, like Achilles' two leaps into the river in Iliad. The use of three different Homeric models for Turnus in Book 9 must initially qualify any identification of him with one particular character from the Iliad but it is plain to see the similarities between Homer and Vergil. Satan is not the only character in Paradise Lost in whom Aeneas finds expression either—the behavior of Adam or the Son is often successfully compared with that of Aeneas. Studies tend to focus only on one scene from the Aeneid, however: the battle for control of Latium in Book 12. The richest comparison is that of Aeneas's slaying Turnus with the Son's throwing Satan out of heaven, which imposes the ambiguity of Turnus's death onto Satan's demise. Obviously, Aeneid is outside the scope of those studies; in fact, the very relevance of the crucial drama between Aeneas and Dido to Paradise Lost has been questioned. However, such skepticism is characteristic of the minority, as the multiple similarities between Eve and Dido have been the object of much discussion since they first surfaced in 17122. From the catalogue of textual and thematic similarities between Dido and Eve, the cave scene and the Fall, readers have drawn a range of conclusions. Eve is, like Dido, doomed, and Adam is succumbing to Eve and eating the apple as evidence that he is not as strong as Aeneas was in leaving Dido. By contrast, comparing Aeneas and Adam deems the situation of Adam and Eve much more positive than that of Aeneas and Dido. Following suit, the few critics who have compared Aeneas and Satan at any length have arrived at somewhat disparate conclusions. Although the Son most closely resembles Aeneas, Aeneas's basic character qualities are found in Satan. Satan is a parody of Aeneas as a whole, rather than an expression of his negative traits.
These are just a few examples of the complexity discovered through the process of tracing classical references in Paradise Lost. Attempts to define precisely Milton's reworking of classical literature are often thwarted because of the tension between his evident admiration for the gravity and splendor of classical epics and his contention that, as non-Christian literature, their assessment of the human condition is ultimately inadequate. Rather than seeking to resolve that tension, Milton preserves it, and his many allusions pay Virgil a back-handed compliment or a genuine one. Milton clearly wished to Christianize his pagan sources, but this does not necessarily imply that he saw his text as in competition with its predecessors. Protesting this, one might cite passages in which Milton claims to supersede the classical epic, such as his declaration that the demonic army is unrivaled by any that the classical world has produced but such claims have less to do with the artistic merit than with content. Poetically speaking, it is probably accurate to say that Milton aspired to be Virgil's peer, not his better. And even as concerns his “superior” subject matter, Milton knowingly oversimplifies the classical heroic ethos in order to advertise his own. In short, he must have seen the pious classical hero as more laudable than his Satan, whose deliberate inversion of good and evil renders him emphatically impius. And Milton's incorporating of Aeneas's speech and behavior into the character of Satan provides a great deal of insight regarding his attitude toward the relationship between his epic and those from which its form derives.

Works Cited 1. Anderson, W. S. "Vergil's Second Iliad," TAPA 88, 1957. 17-30. Print. 2. Bowra, C. M.” From Virgil to Milton,” London: Macmillan, 1945. 326-400. Print. 3. "Milton and Homer." Project MUSE. Web. 17 Sept. 2015. <https://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780820705774>.