Hero

Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, who loved and was beloved by a beautiful youth named Leander, whose home was at Abydos, on the opposite shore of the Hellespont. Hero's position as a priestess, and the will of her parents, were obstacles to their union, but Leander every night swam across the Hellespont to visit his beloved, directing his course by a lamp that burned on the top of a tower on the seashore. But one tempestuous night the light was extinguished, and Leander was drowned. Hero, when she saw his dead body washed ashore at daybreak, threw herself down from the tower into the sea and perished. A poem on this theme has come down to us under the name of Musæus; the romantic story is alluded to by Ovid, Virgil, and Statius; and in modern times Marlowe, Schiller, and Leigh Hunt have retold it in verse, whilst Grillparzer has made it the subject of a drama.