Miltonic Cinema in Paradise Lost: Flaming Swords

As I was rereading Paradise Lost, I came across a passage in book 1 that was so powerful and haunting that I had to share it with my friends.
After Satan speaks to his defeated troops (book 1, lines 622–662) on the necessity of War, open or covert, against the Monarch in Heaven, the fallen angels respond:
He spake, and to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumin’d hell: highly they rag’d
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clashed on thir sounding Shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the Vault of Heav’n.
— Book 1, lines 663–669
The practice of Roman legions beating their swords on their shields as a form of applause is transmuted, nay, transfigured into the vision of the fallen angels in a world that has “no light but rather darkness visible” beating flaming, fiery red swords against their shields, while the sound of weapons and shields gives an aural tremor and terror mixed with the hellish cries of the fallen angels.
I see this could be filmed as a wide shot that can show a huge train of angels, in a dark setting showing traces of red fire and lava, with their swords showing fire, and the shields being visible only by the beating of the swords (otherwise, the shields would be barely visible due to the dark hellish surroundings).
An extreme wide shot — to use film vocabulary — would work to help engulf the fallen angels so they seem like one large Roman army—after all, Milton was a learned poet who used classical reference in subtle and overt ways to enrich his poetry—engulfed in a universe, where they are one deadly force.
Chiaroscuro, extreme wide shot are two techniques.
Now where would Satan be? He would be “like a tower” on an upraised surface, looming in a position that imposes itself on the crowd while bearing signs of weariness — perhaps Satan could be a little bent, leaning on his spear, while the moon-like shield weighs him down. His form would likely be visible, but by a kind of outline of darkness—darkness visible, so to speak—where his form is visible without him being visible.
