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And it was rather thoughtful, after all, of the despoiling Bishop Lucifero to leave two of the forty-eight columns standing upright on the spot, as a sample of the local Doric style. One has fallen to earth since his day. Nobody would have complained at the time, if he had stolen all of them, instead of only forty-six.
An exception to this dull magnificence in death was a marble slab, newly set against the wall, in memory of a Lucifero one of that family, still eminent, to which belonged the sacrilegious bishop. The design was a good imitation of those noble sepulchral tablets which abound in the museum at Athens; a figure taking leave of others as if going on a journey.
We are told that as late as the sixteenth century the building remained all but perfect, with eight-and-forty pillars, rising there above the Ionian Sea; a guide to sailors, even as when AEneas marked it on his storm-tossed galley. Then it was assailed, cast down, ravaged by a Bishop of Cotrone, one Antonio Lucifero, to build his episcopal palace.
The character of Milton's Satan, with the various facets of pride, envy, vindictiveness, despair, and impenitence which go to form that harmonious whole, are already clearly mapped out in the Lucifero of Salandra. For this statement, which I find correct, Zicari gives chapter and verse, but it would take far too long to set forth the matter in this place.
The speeches of Lucifero, to be sure, read rather like a caricature it must not be forgotten that Salandra was writing for lower-class theatrical spectators, and not for refined readers but the elements which Milton has utilized are already there. Here is a coincidence: Here we may reign secure . . . Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.