Satan

Also known as: Adversary / Apostate / Chief / Envier / Fiend / Lucifer / Monarch / Prince of Hell / Prince of darkness / Serpent / Tempter / Th’ Arch-Enemy / adversary / false Arch-Angel / grand foe / prince of air / satan / the Arch-Fiend / the Archangel / the Devil / the Fiend / the Tempter / the apostate Angel / the great Commander / the lost Archangel · Family: Hell · Role: fallen archangel and commander · First appears: Book 1

In Book I, God casts Satan and the rebel angels from Heaven into Hell. There, with Beelzebub, his nearest mate, he resolves to keep opposing God and convenes the infernal council at Pandemonium. He rejects submission—“Peace is despaired; For who can think submission? War, then, war”—and, when the council approves a mission to the new World, volunteers to go alone. In Book II he crosses the Abyss, receives directions from Chaos, and continues toward the World.

In Book III, disguised as a young Cherub, Satan deceives Uriel and learns that Paradise is Adam’s abode. In Book IV he enters Eden, overhears the prohibition against the tree of knowledge, and plans to use it to bring about Adam and Eve’s ruin. Ithuriel exposes him beside Eve; after Zephon rebukes him and a sign from above reveals his weakness, he flees Paradise. In Book V he resolves to leave Heaven with his legions and draws a third of Heaven’s host into rebellion. In Book VI, Abdiel strikes him and Michael wounds him; Satan then devises artillery, which the rebels use against Heaven’s angels.

In Book II, Sin tells Satan that she sprang from his head and that he became enamoured of her; she identifies him as her sire and Death as their son. Satan later sends Sin and Death as his substitutes on Earth. In Book IX he chooses the Serpent as the vessel for his fraud and enters it to possess its mind. In Book X, he returns to Hell and announces that humanity and the world have been delivered to Sin and Death; he then transforms into a serpent, as does the infernal host. In Book XII, the poem names the Son as the one who will crush Satan’s strength, defeating Sin and Death.