Belial

alternative Beliar

1. human sciencesA wicked demon in Christian and Jewish apocrypha.

   Here, too, the poet calls attention to Belial's role as one who blurs the borderline between essence and appearance: Belial himself seems fair (physically attractive), but is empty inside, and Milton was surely aware that in Hebrew the first syllable of the fallen angel's name means without.

   2016 February 24, Nancy Rosenfeld, The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester, Routledge, →ISBN, page 93