Late in the Defence of Himself against Alexander Morus Milton taunts his opponent with an ill-judged reliance on irrelevant testimony. Morus has quoted the magistrates of Amsterdam as saying that during his conduct of public office there he had committed no disgrace (nihil admisisti). Milton retorts that since Morus had committed outrages before that time, the testimonials can have little weight, despite being ancile tuum.¹

While the Columbia editors omit Milton's Latin phrase from their translation (CW 9: 260-61),² Paul W. Blackford, responsible for the English translation for the Yale Complete Prose Works, renders it “your divinely-sent shield,” without annotating the allusion, but rather incorporating some exegesis into the English phrase (CPW 4.2.: 812). In translating ancile for the forthcoming Volume 7 of the Oxford Complete Works, we considered modernizing ancile as “flak-jacket” or “bullet-proof vest,” before simply retaining ancile, so as to impel the reader into the note which would explain and interpret. The pungent, erudite sarcasm needs it.

The ancile was a small figure-of-eight shield used in religious processions. The military battle-shield (scutum) was much stronger and weightier—so Milton's ancile imputes flimsiness or futile decorativeness to Morus's testimony. On the other hand, Blackford's phrasing shows that it had sacred standing. So sacred, indeed, that it was kept safe by the Salii (priests) by being hidden among eleven more such shields “so that if the genuine was lost, the fact could not be known” (Lewis and Short, s. v. ancile). Thus Milton's quip might suggest that Morus is playing for safety by hiding behind the cover-up by a sly priesthood.³ Other ancient references speak of ancilia, plural, heaven-sent protectors which fell from the sky (meteorites?); but their plural makes it more likely that a singular ancile is the thing on Milton's mind. The allusion connotes obfuscation, hocus pocus, and priestly cover-up.

The name itself, ancile, is found in Virgil, Livy, Ovid, Lucan, and Tacitus, all mainstream authors for the humanist reader. The thing and its sacred status would be not unfamiliar. The concealment story in particular is told in Ovid's Fasti 3, a work much read and much enjoyed. On the other hand, the full felicity and bite of the image may not be so widely felt. Some readers would register only erudition, impressive perhaps but not endearing. A few might be teased or tantalized into looking the reference up. Many more would recall reading and enjoying the Fasti, and very likely appreciate the quip.

So how erudite is Milton being in alluding to the Fasti? How much does he expect of readers? And how much of the denotation and connotation do his readers register, in what is after all a quick parenthesis within its sentence, a mere byblow—and, one might add, coming late in his least-read apologia? Does it show Milton appealing to fellow-readers of standard authors? Or does its obscurity show an involuntary display of erudite verve?

In the end, Milton may not have expected it to do much in way of persuasion. He is entertaining those who have read this far (who were certainly not numerous) by indulging an involuntary eruption of his own erudition in the service of sarcastic wit. His selection of Ovid's ancile from among testimony to plurality is apt and acute. Ancile is the conceit of an erudite self.