Leontion

Ill. from De mulieribus claris
"Leontium" redirects here. For the ancient town, see Leontium (Achaea).

Leontion (Latin: Leontium, Greek: Λεόντιον; fl. 300 BC) was a Greek Epicurean philosopher.

Biography

Leontion was a pupil of Epicurus and his philosophy. She was the companion of Metrodorus of Lampsacus.[1] The information we have about her is scant. She was said to have been a hetaera – a courtesan or prostitute.[2]

Diogenes Laërtius has preserved a line from a letter that Epicurus evidently wrote to Leontion, in which Epicurus praises her for her well-written arguments against certain philosophical views (which aren't mentioned in Diogenes' quote).[3] According to Pliny, she was painted by Aristides of Thebes in a work entitled "Leontion thinking of Epicurus."[4]

According to Cicero, Leontion is said to have published arguments criticizing the famous philosopher Theophrastus:

Leontium, that mere courtesan, who had the effrontery to write a riposte to Theophrastus – mind you, she wrote elegantly in good Attic, but still, this was the licence which prevailed in the Garden of Epicurus.[5]

This anecdote was later adopted by Pliny, in the preface of his Naturalis historia.[6]

Notes

  1. ^ Diogenes Laertius, X.23
  2. ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII.588, XIII.593
  3. ^ Diogenes Laertius, X.5
  4. ^ Pliny, Nat. Hist., XXXV.36.99
  5. ^ Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I.33.93.
  6. ^ Pliny, Nat. Hist., praefatio, 29.