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As late as the sixth century A.D., in a mosaic in Ravenna depicting the Last Judgment, the devil was still portrayed as a haloed, winged being, standing at the left hand of Christ. Satan is dressed in blue, not red, robes. (Red was the color of the upper ether, closest to God, from which Satan was expelled; blue, the color of the closest heaven humankind could see.) By the Middle Ages, however, Satan had become a beast. His horns and hooves come from his commingling with beliefs banished by a victorious Christianity. The devil's appurtenances derive from the great Greek god Pan -- half-man, half- goat -- and from association with the cult of the forest deity Cernunnos of northern Europe. Relegated to the shadows, the pagan gods were absorbed by the master of darkness, the demigod on the margins.
There is no possibility of redemption for Satan and his minions. Unlike Adam and Eve, the fallen angels were not tempted to sin but chose it out of untrammeled free will. They have no excuse for disobedience. And as the ages roll, heaven grows further away. "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell," Satan moans in Paradise Lost. Even in majestic ruin, Satan is certain only of the dark path he is doomed to pursue with seraphic fortitude. "Farewell remorse," says the angel who can no longer look homeward to heaven. "All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good."