SOURCE: Teague, Frances. “Milton and the Pygmies.” Milton Quarterly 20, no. 1 (March 1986): 31-32.

In the following essay, Teague traces Milton's comparison of Satan and his army to pygmies in Paradise Lost to several passages in the Metamorphoses.

In Book 1 of Paradise Lost, Milton twice mentions Pygmy warriors. Describing the army of fallen angels, he writes:

… For never since created man, Met such imbodied force, as nam'd with these Could merit more than that small infantry Warr'd on by Cranes … 

(1.573-76)

In other words, the fallen angels are so grotesquely enormous that in comparison to them all other armies look like the Pygmies who fought with the cranes. But the army can also become grotesquely little. Later Satan's army shrinks until they are smaller than “that Pigmean Race / Beyond the Indian Mount” (1.780-81). Clearly the lines that mention the Pygmies comment ironically on the fallen angels. By comparing the devils...