If you have ever heard stories of nights fighting fire-breathing dragons, or superhumans doing unbelievable feats of strength and will, congratulations, you know what an "Epic Hero" is.
Traditional epic heroes are heroes wrote about in long poems called, you guessed it, epics. These epics were popularized by Greek poets like Homer of the 8th Century BC, writer of "little known" stories, "Iliad" and "Odyssey".
Epic heroes are easily the simplest type of hero in literature as they really only have one requirement to be considered an "epic hero", they must do something epic. This epic feat often is a result of a quest that the hero must go on, ending in some spectacular event in which the hero uses their particular set of skills or supernatural abilities to best their opponent.
If this sounds familiar at all, that is because this is the foundation of most heroic stories even today.
A beautiful, more modern, example of this is the story of a particular bloodline "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
(Spoilers from 1977)
Blessed with a supernatural "sensitivity" to "the force", Luke is set of on a journey to save the galaxy. In the first movie, "Episode IV: A New Hope", Luke's "epic" moment is when he uses his sensitivity to make a supposedly impossible shot, to blow up the Death Star.
Homer's works, if he even existed in the first place, are some of the most influential pieces of literature ever, and acting as the cornerstone of heroism in literature. What we now know as heroes in literature has developed from these very old and relatively simple stories.
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