Герой и Леандр: Трагическая любовь у Геллеспонта

Greek myth about tragic lovers

Hero and Leander ('/h//iː//ɹ//oʊ///, /l//iː/'/æ//n//d//əɹ/) is the Greek myth relating the story of Hero (Ἡρώ, Hērṓ; ), a priestess of Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont, and Leander (Λέανδρος, Léandros; or Λείανδρος), a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander falls in love with Hero and swims every night across the Hellespont to spend time with her. Hero lights a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. Leander's soft words and charms—and his argument that Aphrodite, as the goddess of love and sex, would scorn the worship of a virgin—convince Hero, and they make love. Their secret love affair lasts through a warm summer, but when winter and its rougher weather looms, they agree to part for the season and resume in the spring. One stormy winter night, however, Leander sees the torch at the top of Hero's tower. He attempts to go to her, but halfway through his swim, a strong winter wind blows out Hero's light, and Leander loses his way and drowns. When Hero sees his dead body, she throws herself off the tower to join him in death. Their bodies wash up on shore together, locked in embrace, and are then subsequently buried in a lover's tomb.

Scholarship indicates that the myth is attested in Ovid's Heroides, in Virgil's Georgics and in poet Mousaios' (or Musaeus') epic poem. The Double Heroides (attributed to Ovid) treats the narrative in 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.

Peter Paul Rubens painted a picture named "Hero and Leander" in 1604 based on the tale. William Etty painted "Hero, Having Thrown herself from the Tower at the Sight of Leander Drowned, Dies on his Body" in 1829. He later said he considered the painting the "finest of my fine pictures". Cy Twombly completed a painting in Rome in 1985 inspired by the story as told by Christopher Marlowe. The painting is entitled Hero and Leander (To Christopher Marlowe). Evelyn De Morgan painted "Hero Holding the Beacon for Leander" in 1885.

In folkloristics, the myth of lovers Hero and Leander becomes the Aarne Thompson Uther tale type ATU 666*, "Hero and Leander". Variants of the tale are also attested in Japan, where they appear as a local legends. In Hiroko Ikeda's index of Japanese folktales, the type is known as Tarai bune no Momoyo Gayoi. Philologist and folklorist Julian Krzyżanowski, establisher of the Polish Folktale Catalogue according to the international index, located variants of the lovers' myth in Poland, which he classified as T 667, "Hero i Leander" ("Hero and Leander"). The myth seems to have inspired a literary version by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola in his work The Facetious Nights of Straparola.

There have been six ships of the Royal Navy named HMS Leander with battle honors at the Nile, Algiers, Crimea, and the Kula Gulf. LMS express steam locomotive 5690 is named "Leander", named after the ship "HMS Leander". It was built in 1936 and has survived into preservation, and still operates on the main line in Britain. Numerous private ships have been named for Leander, including that of Sir Donald Gosling, whose yacht Leander G was chartered by the royal family following the decommissioning of the royal yacht Britannia. There have been numerous ships named Hero, although it's unclear if they were named for Leander's Hero, or the classical definition of one who does heroic deeds. However the 1970s television drama series Warship specifically identifies its fictional HMS Hero, a Leander class frigate, in honor of Leander's Hero.