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Samson

“Death doth make all enmity to cease” in the examples offered here, by uniting opponents in the shared experience of death. The story of Samson, who pulls down the Philistines’ temple, killing them and himself, is Pulter’s final example of how the weak, low, or outnumbered can conquer the strong and how death resolves conflict. Here is an excerpt from John Milton’s play about Samson, Samson Agonistes (1671), in which the Chorus reflects on how Samson has united self-killing and slaughter.

John Milton, Samson Agonistes
  • Chorus: O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
  • Living or dying thou hast fulfilled
  • The work for which thou wast foretold
  • To Israel, and now li’st victorious
  • Among thy slain self-killed,
  • Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
  • Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined
  • Thee with thy slaughtered foes in number more
  • Than all thy life had slain before.
John Milton, Samson Agonistes in Milton’s Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Jason P. Rosenblatt (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), lines 1660–68.