Using Hannah Arendt?s account of the Greek polis to explain Milton?s fascination with the idea of public speech, this book reveals what is distinctive about his conception of a godly, republican oratory and poetics. Setting Milton?s poetry and prose in the context of Civil War polemic; classical political theory and its early modern reinterpretations; and Renaissance writing on rhetoric and poetic language, the volume culminates in an Arendtian reading of his ?Greek? drama Samson Agonistes.