His description of the diminishing of once-great and powerful (and beneficent) gods and their transmutation into their own opposites provides us with an epistemological microcosm of Milton's world. (Milton would no doubt argue that this is also a microcosm of God's world
. The Gnostics honored Eve and the serpent for providing the essential knowledge that made human beings human (Walker 527)
Instead, Milton echoes a theme that has been one in Shakespeare's Sonnets as well, that the words and ideas of his art, and the readers that appreciate these, are what creates a monument for the artist (Poetry Foundation, 2011). In this way, Shakespeare's words and readers combine to provide for him a fitting and immortal monument (Hunter, 1986, p