Now, Mammon is perhaps the demon I most looked forward to
reading about. I know of Mammon from the comic-con world as Satan’s son. He was
supposed to be the Devil’s response to God and Jesus. The Devil felt that if
God was to have a chosen Son, so would he. Basically the response “anything you
can do, I can do better” which is pretty fitting to what we’ve read of Satan,
in Milton’s world at least.
So reading Mammon in Paradise Lost was actually a bit of a
disappointment. I wanted Satan’s son, instead I get a demon content with the
realms of hell. Belial and Mammon seem to be on the same page as each other,
both content to sit around and not do much…well at least Mammon wants to make
hell a little more “homey.”
Mammon is the deity of greed.
In Book One of Paradise
Lost, Mammon is described as:
“Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific. By him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid.”
This version is found online at http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jmilton/bl-jmilton_plost_1.htm
I of course wanted to find visual representations of this
demon. The Mammon I expected was
The Mammon images that better fit Milton’s ideal are
These images fit what Milton describes because, as he
states, Mammon was evil from the get-go. His view was already downcast. He
likes hell because he never liked heaven to begin with. I still would’ve liked
the Constantine comic version though…
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