HERO AND LEANDER, one of the world's unforgotten stories of ill-fated 1pve, probably began as a legend of Sestos and Abydos on the Hellespont, in explanation of some immemorial local cult of swimmer, torch and tower. Its literary possibilities may have attracted a poet — perhaps Callimachus at Alexandria, where many such aetiological legends were versified; and his poem, now lost, seems to have taken the tale to Rome. Leander is the one human example cited by Virgil ((Georgics' iii 258f f.) in proof of the irresistible might of desire. Ovid invents two of the lovers' letters (
Renaissance (editio princeps, 1484, Aldus) as sumed the author to be that early semi-mythical Muszus who is associated in legend with Or pheus and Linus. Uncritically accepting as primitive the work of a post-classical gram marian, it proceeded to emphasize the Ovidian or Alexandrian traits of his poem. Marlowe's unfinished 'Hero and Leander) (published 1598 with an ending by Chapman) retains Musmus's scenario, but expands his simple speeches and brief imagery into passionate tirades and long voluptuous descriptions. Chapman, at once more Puritanical and more °conceited," is stodgily concerned for the legality of the lovers' marriage, sermonizes about their passion, adds episodes, allegories, emblems, and other irrele vancies, and ends by metamorphosing the lovers into birds.
Chapman also made a faithful and complete translation of Musmus (1616; reprinted 1858) ; other English translations are by Sir Robert Stapylton (1647), the Rev. Francis Fawkes (1789), and it Edwin Arnold (1888). There are poems and extended allusions by Byron, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Moore, Hood, Rossetti, and Ten nyson, a ballad by Schiller, and a five-act trag edy by Grillparzer. Consult Rohde, Erwin, griechische Roman and seine Vorlaufer)(Leip zig 1914) ; Palmer, Arthur (ed.), 'Ovid's Heroides' (Oxford 1899) ; Jellinek, M. H., 'Die Sage von Hero and Leander in der Dich tung' (Berlin 1890) ; Chabalier, Leonce, 'Hero et Leandre) (Paris 1911).
SA hi UEL LEE WOLFF.