As the prototype of industrious improvement, Mammon leads the excavation crew for Pandemonium, the capital city of Hell, and they erect “a Temple … with Golden Architrave.” As Milton makes clear, the construction of Pandemonium is the paradigm for later human despoliation of the earth. Just as Mammon fractures the soil and mountains of hell for building materials, so men, “by his suggestion taught,” seek to plunder and desecrate creation: They have “ransacked the center, and with impious hands / Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth / For treasures better hid.”35
