In comparison with his defiance of an enemy infinitely superior to himself, Satan's sneak attack on a foe notably inferior to himself in native intelligence and strength seems unworthy of the antagonist of heaven. The devil appears most heroic (as the majority of readers confess) when he is hurling epic boasts and blasphemies at his divine enemy from the opposite corner of the universe, not when he is bombarding the faithful angels with cannon balls and puns in frontal attack or triumphing over Eve by guile. Though these heroic formulas are illusory, most of them have precedents in classical and Renaissance epic or history. Satan consistently maintains the false appearance of heroism, but (in the eyes of the reader and to a degree in his own view) the sequence of heroic masks-general to king to spy seems progressively less