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If Lord Byron created Don Juan as a response to the lack of heroes and heroic subjects, then perhaps he is stating that the time for writing about heroes such as were covered in books by Virgil and Homer is gone forever because we now understand that those kinds of heroes never really existed in the first place. Juan is in no way relative to the heroic figure of past literature; Don Juan's greatest accomplishment is to bed another man's wife. And while this feat-apart from the fact that it's hardly comparable to winning a great battle or stealing fire from the gods-isn't totally unrelatable to actions taken by previous heroes, the difference here is that Juan runs away when caught and apparently makes no effort to come back and save Julia from her appointed destiny with a nunnery. Juan expresses no heroic features and perhaps that is Byron's point. Heroes in reality are those who rise to the occasion presented them. In fact, they are acted upon and heroically respond to unexpected situations. But in point of fact, few people do respond heroically, preferring to take the easy way out. And in a time in which the Poet Laureate of the nation took the easy way out and turned his back on the radical beliefs of his youth, Byron may be saying that it's only the truly exceptional man (or woman) who turns out to be heroic. And very few of those exist during any age. So perhaps it's time to turn one's attention in poetry to the person who isn't heroic, but who instead actually resembles the true nature of the majority of mankind. It might be that Don Juan is literature's first anti-hero and maybe that's what Byron was attempting to create by returning to the heroic form to write about such an obviously non-heroic character.