HERO AND LEANDER  , two lovers celebrated in antiquity . Hero, the beautiful priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, was seen by Leander, a youth of Abydos, at the celebration of the festival of Aphrodite and Adonis . He became deeply enamoured of her; but, as her position as priestess and the opposition of her parents rendered their marriage impossible they agreed to carry on a clandestine intercourse . Every night Hero placed a lamp in the top of the tower where she dwelt by the sea, and Leander, guided by it, swam across the dangerous Hellespont . One stormy night the lamp was blown out and Leander perished . On finding his body next morning on the shore, Hero flungherself into the waves . The story is referred to by Virgil (Georg. iii . 258), Statius (Theb. vi . 535) and Ovid (Her. xviii. and xix.) . The beautiful little epic of Musaeus has been frequently translated, and is expanded in the Hero and Leander of C . Marlowe and G . Chapman .

It is also the subject of a ballad by

Schiller and a drama by F . Grillparzer . See M . H . Jellinek, Die Sage von Hero and Leander in der Dichtung (189o), and G . Knaack " Hero and Leander " in Festgabe fur Franz Susemihl (1898) . A careful collection of materials will be found in F . Koppner, Die Sage von Hero and Leander in der Literatur and Kunst des Allertums (1894) .