"My wife! my traitress! let her not come near me:"
and his reply to her offer of penitence, affection and help, begins with the daringly expressive line—
"Out, out, hyaena! these are thy wonted arts."
A long and telling debate follows, in which {236} Dalila makes very good points, one of them recalling the scene in which Eve reproaches Adam for indulging her instead of exercising his right to command and control the weakness of her sex. To this argument Dalila receives the stern, characteristically Miltonic reply—
"All wickedness is weakness: that plea, therefore
With God or man will gain thee no remission,"
He refuses her intercession with the Philistine lords, forbids her even to touch his hand;
"Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake
My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint,"
and drives her to remind him defiantly that, whatever he and his Hebrews may say of her, she appeals to another tribunal of fame—
"In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,
I shall be named among the famousest
Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
Living and dead recorded."
So she goes out, and the Chorus make Miltonic meditations on the unhappiness of marriage and the divinely appointed subjection of women.