- Title: Satan Tempting Eve
- Author: John Martin
- Date: 1826
- Medium: Mezzotint
- Condition: Excellent
- Inches: 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 [Image]
- Centimeters: 27.31 x 19.05 [Image]
- Product ID: 4268
From The Paradise Lost of John Milton (pub. 1846), Book 9, Line 780
Finding Eve alone in the Garden, Satan speaks to her in the form of the serpent, flattering her by commenting on her great beauty. Eve is amazed by the serpent's alluring appearance, and by the fact that it can speak. Satan tells her that he gained the ability to speak by eating from the forbidden tree. Though Eve is reluctant at first, she eventually believes Satan's promises that eating the fruit will grant her previously-unknown power.
"So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for Eve
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought.
Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death..." (Paradise Lost IX.780-92)