HERO. The story of Hero and Leander is one of the best known in the whole mythology of Greece. The myth, in its simplest form, is as follows:—Hero was a priestess in the service of Venus at Sestos, and her lover, Leander of Abydos, used nightly to swim across the strait of the Hellespont to pay his court to her. One stormy night he was drowned, and in the morning the billows washed his body ashore to the feet of his betrothed, who, when she saw it, threw herself into the sea, and perished by the same fate as her lover.