The group in the Physics Department in Rome symbolizes the unity of scientific and humanist culture
Luca Peliti 
Galileo and Milton
Sometime in 1638, John Milton visited Galileo Galilei in Florence.
The great astronomer was old and blind and under house arrest,
confined by order of the Inquisition, which had forced him to
recant his belief that the earth revolves around the sun, as
formulated in his “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
” Milton was thirty years old—his own blindness, his own arrest, and
his own cosmological epic, “Paradise Lost,” all lay before him. But
the encounter left a deep imprint on him. It crept into “Paradise Lost,”
where Satan’s shield looks like the moon seen through Galileo’s
telescope, and in Milton’s great defense of free speech, “Areopagitica,”
Milton recalls his visit to Galileo and warns that England will buckle
under inquisitorial forces if it bows to censorship, “an undeserved
thraldom upon learning.”
Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Universita' "Federico II"
Complesso Monte S. Angelo, 80126 Napoli (Italy)