An Ancient Hell

"The Star Plunderer."

"They herded us aboard a tender after dark. It was like a scene from some ancient hell -..." (p. 330)

This hell is night, scores of houses burning like torches and guards kicking stumbling prisoners.

Later, on the ship, the three rebel leaders, having killed several Gorzuni, stolen their guns and switched off the anti-gravity and the lights, are about to free the male slaves:

"...I could dimly see the tangle of free-floating naked bodies churning and screaming in the vast gloom. A scene from an ancient hell. The fall of the rebel angels. Man, child of God, had stormed the stars and been condemned to Hell for it.
"And now he was going to burst out!" (p. 351)

I was interested in the repetition of "scene from an ancient hell." Epic poetry, originally oral, relied on repetition of phrases like Homer's "wine-dark sea." (I think that some sword and sorcery authors also repeat phrases, e.g., about "ichor"?) Anderson practices repetition to epic effect. His phrase, "The fall of the rebel angels...," echoes another epic, John Milton's Paradise Lost.