HERO of a poem or romance, is the principal personage, or he who has the chief part in it. Thus the
hero of the Iliad is Achilles; of the Odyssey, Ulysses; of the Æneid, Æneas; of Tasso's Jerusalem, Godfrey of Boulogne; of Milton's Paradise Lost, Adam; though Mr Dryden will have the devil to be Milton's hero, because he gets the better of Adam, and drives him out of Paradise.