Hero

(he'ro.) [ From Gr. heros.] (Lit.) The principal character or personage in the actions or events narrated in a poem, romance, and the like; thus, Uly es, is the hero of Virgil's Ody ey: - its feminine equivalent is termed heroine.-(Myth.) One of a cla of illustrious mortals, supposed to partake of immortality, and after his death to be placed among the gods, and the worship of whom dates between the Homeric era and the battle of Marathon. In the Hesiodic Theogony, the H. are represented as a race of demigods who existed between the Brazen and the Iron Age, and as such are spoken of by Pindar.- Also the name of a prieste of Venus, at Sestos, to visit whom Leander used to swim acro the Hellespont from Abydos. [s. 452]