ABSTRACT
In classical literature, the incompatibility of tyranny and friendship is proverbial: tyrants are depicted as fearing true friendship, and, as Aristotle observes, 'in a tyranny there is little or no friendship'. Milton provides a crucial counterexample and evidence that the discourse of friendship could help to legitimate revolution and fashion an alternative to monarchical government. Martin Dzelzainis traces Milton's republicanism to his investment in the classical civic virtues and 'the moral economy of the commonwealth', while Thomas Corns finds it expressed in his language: 'the cause of English republicanism is a language. Milton also saw Scipio as an embodiment of republican virtue: in Paradise Regained, he makes the 'young African' a positive point of comparison to Jesus. The heroes of Milton's political tracts maintain their masculinity and proper political agency-and thus the imago Dei in which they were created-by cultivating the classical virtues.
