Remembering Leander: the long history of the Dardanelles Swim

Abstract

The story of Hero and Leander has been remembered across time both on account of its powerful themes, of love and death, and on account of its setting. Even today the story is not forgotten. The young lovers are remembered each year in a swimming competition held on the Hellespont, near Sestos and Abydos, the towns associated with their names. This article traces the history of the tale’s transmission and reception from the end of the Byzantine world, when links between landscape and the traditional tales of the Greek-speaking world began to weaken, and when travellers began visiting the region and strove to identify, often incorrectly, the sites associated with the lovers, until the present, when swimmers from many nations make their way across the strait in an annual challenge. As I follow this history, my focus will be not only on the story itself, dramatically embedded in its physical setting, but also on the agents and instruments that have served to keep this story alive in collective memory.