Hero and Leander.

    The ill-fated lovers Hero and Leander lived on opposite sides of the Hellespont in Asia Minor. Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite (Venus) in Sestos, a city on the European shore. Every night she lit a torch in a tower to guide Leander as he swam across from Abydos, on the Asian shore, to visit her. During a violent storm, the torch was extinguished and Leander drowned. Finding his body, the grieving Hero threw herself into the sea.
    The story is best known from Musaeus’s Greek poem of the late fourth or early fifth century CE. Treatments of this theme in the postdassical fine arts most commonly depict Leander braving the Hellespont as Hero watches for him, and the dead Leander borne by Nereids.