The Latin poem Mansus, composed by John Milton in reply to an epigram written by the elderly Giovanni Battista Manso, offers thanks to Manso for the hospitality he extended during Milton’s visit to Naples. The poem also gives Milton the opportunity to comment on the meeting of English, Italian and classical cultures that his travels to Italy in 1638 and 1639 made possible. The poem involves travel through time as well as space; in Mansus one can see Milton, the aspiring epic poet, forecasting for himself a future poetic career that will put him in conjunction not only with the poets of the English past such as Chaucer and Spenser, and with Italian poets such as Tasso, whose patron Manso was, but also with great poets of the classical epic tradition, Homer and Virgil. In Mansus one can see Milton deeply involved in questions about language and translation, in particular about the vernacular and its use with regard to literary art.