ABSTRACT
The idolatrous Israelites are paired with the politically degenerate Romans and their respective sins appear to be causally related. The episode of the temptation of the kingdoms contains a further series of buried political allusions – clustered around the pivotal reference to David Quint’s census at the end of Book III. Like the allusion to Lucan’s Pompey, Jesus’ evocation of the sin of David’s census provides a connecting link between the alternative temptations of Parthia and Rome. Royal power is identified with the state’s ability to place its population under bureaucratic scrutiny and control; David’s reliance upon the military strength and human resources of his kingdom rather than upon God. The lost tribes of Israel which Satan calls upon Jesus to restore with Parthian arms have been associated by critics of Paradise Regained with John Milton’s backsliding compatriots, the adherents of the Good Old Cause who made their settlement with Charles II.
