Leander
A youth of Abydos. He was passionately in love with Hero, a young girl of Sestos. He was in the habit of swimming across the Hellespont to visit her, in doing which, on a tempestuous night, he was drowned. Lord Byron performed the same feat in 1810, an exploit which he has celebrated in verse in his Occasional Pieces. He expresses surprise that, as the truth of Leander's story had been questioned, no one had hitherto tested its practicability.