The Poet As Suicide Bomber?

Was 17th Century poet John Milton a terrorist? Since September, the pages of a venerable British Times Literary Supplement have rung with the charge: “that Milton’s verse play ‘Samson Agonistes’ is ‘an incitement to terrorism’ and that its hero, the blind Israelite champion, who pulled down the pillars of the Philistines’ temple, killing himself along with thousands of citizens, ‘is, in effect, a suicide bomber’.”