# Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral — Character guide

> Key figures in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley.

- [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): This voice opens the collection by addressing Maecenas directly, confessing that the same ardors that fired Virgil and Terence burn in her soul but die fault'ring on her tongue. She is at once humble before the great poe
- [Niobe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/niobe.md): Niobe stands in the collection as the mythic figure of a parent undone by loss, her grief so total it becomes stone. The poems return to her when consolation must reckon with sorrow that refuses easy comfort, as in elegi
- [Mneme](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/mneme.md): Mneme appears as the sacred spring where contemplation finds its source and where heavenly music makes the arches ring. She is both the faculty that preserves what is loved and the muse who lends the poet her voice when 
- [Goliath of Gath](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/goliath.md): Goliath of Gath is the towering threat whose boasts and curses fill the battlefield until David's sling silences him. His defeat is not merely military but moral: fury quenched by death, the load of armour stripped and d
- [David](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/david.md): David enters the poem as an unknown youth, so great in prowess though in years so young that Saul must ask whose son he is. He answers humbly — the son of Jesse, of a small tribe and small city — yet he carries Goliath's
- [Phillis Wheatley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/phillis_wheatley.md): Wheatley is the enslaved Boston poet whose master's letter testifies that she read the most difficult parts of Scripture within sixteen months of arrival and taught herself to write. She inscribes her book to a countess,
- [Susanna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/susanna.md): A virtuous woman falsely accused, from the biblical apocrypha.
- [Britannia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/britannia.md): Britannia is the personified island the poet sails toward, a motherland whose fame and beauty are invoked with longing and reverence. Yet the same voice warns against her 'fatal train' of temptation, asking heaven to shi
- [Alphenor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/alphenor.md): One of Niobe's sons slain by Apollo in the mythological poem.
- [George Whitefield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/george_whitefield.md): Whitefield is the era's most famous preacher, a man whose sermons 'in unequal'd accents flow'd' and whose prayers wrestled with God by night. His death leaves Americans, orphans, and the Countess of Huntingdon to grieve 
- [Leonard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/leonard.md): A character mentioned in a poem, possibly a friend or relative.
- [Aurora](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/aurora.md): The Roman goddess of dawn, personified in hymns.
- [Bosrah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/bosrah.md): A biblical place personified in a poem about divine judgment.
- [Ismenus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/ismenus.md): One of Niobe's sons killed by Apollo.
- [Thomas Amory](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/thomas_amory.md): A clergyman whose sermons are praised in a poem.
- [Fancy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/fancy.md): A personification of imagination and creativity.
- [Apollo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/apollo.md): Apollo presides over the classical pantheon Wheatley calls on in her opening address to Maecenas, the patron whose favor she courts. He embodies the impossible standard — Homer, Virgil, Terence — against which she measur
- [Jesus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/jesus.md): Central figure of Christianity, referenced in religious poems.
- [Phoebus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/phoebus.md): Another name for Apollo, the sun god.
- [Latona](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/latona.md): Mother of Apollo and Diana, invoked in the Niobe poem.
- [Damon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/damon.md): A pastoral character, possibly a shepherd or lover.
- [Maro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/maro.md): A reference to the Roman poet Virgil, used as a poetic figure.
- [Sol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/sol.md): The Roman sun god, personified in hymns.
- [Aeolus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/aeolus.md): God of the winds, invoked in a poem about a voyage.
- [Samuel Marshall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/samuel_marshall.md): A clergyman whose death is commemorated in a poem.
- [Afric](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/afric.md): Personification of Africa, referenced in poems about the poet's origins.
- [Sewell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/sewell.md): A clergyman whose death is mourned in a poem.
- [Israel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/israel.md): The nation of Israel, personified in biblical poems.
- [Jove](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/jove.md): The Roman king of the gods, invoked in classical allusions.
- [Amphion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/amphion.md): A mythical musician who built Thebes with his lyre.
- [Cadmus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters/cadmus.md): Founder of Thebes, mentioned in the Niobe poem.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poems_on_various_subjects_religious_and_moral_se/characters