Hero and Leander is the Greek myth relating the story of Hero, a priestess
of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the
Hellespont, and Leander, a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the
strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the
Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to
guide his way. Succumbing to Leander's soft words and
to his argument that Venus, as the goddess of love, would scorn the worship
of a virgin, Hero allowed him to make love to her. These trysts lasted through
the warm summer. But one stormy winter night, the waves tossed Leander in the
sea and the breezes blew out Hero's light; Leander lost his way and was
drowned. When Hero saw his dead body, she threw herself over the edge of the
tower to her death to be with him. Cultural references
The myth of Hero and Leander has been used extensively in literature and the
arts: Ancient Roman coins of Abydos: Septimius
Severus Caracalla The narrative is treated in the Double
Heroides, 18 and 19, an exchange of letters between the lovers. Leander has
been unable to swim across to Hero in her tower because of bad weather; her
summons to him to make the effort will prove fatal to her lover.
Francisco Quevedo mentions Leander in "En crespa tempestad del oro undoso"
Byzantine poet Musaeus also wrote a poem; Aldus Manutius made it one of his
first publications after he set up his famous printing press in Venice.
Musaeus's poem had early translations into European languages by Bernardo
Tasso, Boscán and Clément Marot. This poem was widely believed in the
Renaissance to have been pre-Homeric: George Chapman reflects at the end of
his completion of Marlowe's version that the dead lovers had the honour of being
'the first that ever poet sung’. Chapman's 1616 translation has the title
The divine poem of Musaeus. First of all bookes. Translated according to the
original, by Geo: Chapman. Staplyton, the mid-17th century translator, had
read Scaliger's repudiation of this mistaken belief, but still could not
resist citing Virgil's 'Musaeum ante omnes' on the title page of his
translation. Renaissance poet Christopher Marlowe
began an expansive version of the narrative. His story does not get as far
as Leander's nocturnal swim, and the guiding lamp that gets extinguished, but
ends after the two have become lovers); George Chapman completed Marlowe's poem
after Marlowe's death; this version was often reprinted in the first half of the
17th century, with editions in 1598; 1600 and 1606; 1609, 1613, 1617, 1622;
1629; and 1637. Sir Walter Ralegh alludes to the story,
in his 'The Ocean's Love to Cynthia', in which Hero has fallen asleep, and fails
to keep alight the lamp that guides Leander on his swim.
Shakespeare also mentions this story in the opening scene of Two Gentlemen of
Verona, in a dialogue between Valentine and Proteus:
VALENTINE: And on a love-book pray for my success?
PROTEUS: Upon some book I love I'll pray for thee.
VALENTINE: That's on some shallow story of deep love: How young Leander cross'd
the Hellespont. PROTEUS: That's a deep story of a deeper
love: For he was more than over shoes in love.
VALENTINE: 'Tis true; for you are over boots in love, And yet you never swum
the Hellespont. Hero and Leander are again mentioned in
Two Gentlemen of Verona in Act III Scene I when Valentine is tutoring the Duke of
Milan on how to woo the lady from Milan. The story has also been alluded to in
Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, both when Benedick states that Leander
was "never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love" and in the name
of the character Hero, who, despite accusations to the contrary, remains
chaste before her marriage. It was also briefly alluded to in
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in the form of a malapropism
accidentally using the names Helen and Limander in the place of Hero and
Leander, as well as in Edward III, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.
The most famous Shakespearean allusion is the debunking one by Rosalind, in Act
IV scene I of As You Like It: "Leander, he would have lived many a
fair year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer
night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and
being taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish coroners of that age
found it was 'Hero of Sestos.' But these are all lies: men have died from time to
time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair features a puppet show of Hero and
Leander in Act V, translated to London, with the Thames serving as the
Hellespont between the lovers. It is also the subject of a novel by
Milorad Pavić, Inner Side of the Wind; Leander is also the subject of Sonnet
XXIX by Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega of the 16th Century;
In the collection of short stories and essays by Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly
Japan, the author is told the popular story of a girl that swims to her lover
guided by a lantern, and he comments on the similarities with the western story:
"—"So," I said to myself, "in the Far East, it is poor Hero that does the
swimming. And what, under such circumstances, would have been the
Western estimate of Leander?" "; John Donne has an elegant Epigram
summing up the story in two lines: Leander is mentioned in Dion
Boucicault's play 'The Colleen Bawn'. Corrigan refers to Hardress Cregan and
his nocturnal boat rides to his secret wife as being, 'like Leander, barring
the wetting' The myth is central to John Keats' 1817
sonnet, "On an Engraved Gem of Leander." Myths and Hymns, by Adam Guettel,
contains a song titled after the pair. Robert Schumann is said to have
perceived his "In der Nacht" from Phantasiestücke as depicting the story
of Hero and Leandros. Lord Byron references Leander in
"Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos."; the myth of Hero and Leander
inspired his own swim across the Hellespont in May, 1810. Byron also
alludes to his feat, with further reference to Leander, in Don Juan, canto
II, stanza 105. Franz Grillparzer's 1831 tragedy Des
Meeres und der Liebe Wellen is based on the tale.
Friedrich Schiller wrote the ballad Hero und Leander based on the tale.
Georg Friedrich Handel's 1707 solo cantata in Italian, Ero e Leandro, is
based on the tale. Alfredo Catalani composed a tone-poem,
Ero e Leandro, based on the tale. Arrigo Boito composed an opera, Ero e
Leandro, but destroyed it. Diana Wynne Jones's meta-fantasy novel
Fire and Hemlock makes an early reference to Hero and Leander, both to
foreshadow the plot and as a namesake for the heroine's alter-ego.
Rudyard Kipling started his poem "A Song of Travel" with words: "Where's the lamp
that Hero lit / Once to call Leander home?"
Alfred Tennyson's poem "Hero to Leander" has Hero begging her lover not to leave
until the morning when the sea has calmed "Thou shalt not wander hence
to-night, I'll stay thee with my kisses" Poem XV of A.E. Housman's More Poems is
devoted to the myth. It describes how, "[b]y Sestos town, in Hero's tower | On
Hero's heart Leander lies..." References
External links Hero and Leander, full text
Annotated text of Marlowe's poem with illustrations
"Hero. A priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos.". New International
Encyclopedia. 1905.