- Leontion
Leontion (or Leontium) ( _el. Λεόντιον), was a Greek woman who achieved fame sometime around
300 BC .She was a follower of
Epicurus and his philosophy. She was the life companion of Metrodorus of Lampsacus. The information we have about her is scant. She was said to have been ahetaera - a courtesan or prostitute. This might be anti-Epicurean slander, ormisogyny aimed at an independent minded woman in the male-dominated society ofAncient Greece .Epicurus' school was unusual in that it allowed women and even slaves to attend. We know that
Themista of Lampsacus was another woman who attended Epicurus' school. (Although a century earlier we hear of two women - Axiothea and Lastheneia - attendingPlato 's school.)Diogenes Laërtius seems to have preserved for us a line from a letter that Epicurus evidently wrote to Leontion, in which the master praises her for her well-written arguments against certain philosophical views (which aren't mentioned in Diogenes' quote). According to Pliny, she was painted byAristides of Thebes in a work entitled "Leontion thinking of Epicurus"." [Pliny, "Nat. Hist.", 35.99.]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. [Cicero, "De natura deorum" i.33/93.]
Pliny also wondered at how a woman could possibly write againstTheophrastus . [Pliny, "Nat. Hist." Praefatio, 29.] Writing in the14th century ,Boccaccio wondered if Leontion was the stronger of the two of either dragging philosophy down to her level or if philosophy was the weaker because of her having an enlightened heart to be dominated by her disgraceful acts. [Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s "Famous Women", pages 124 - 125; Harvard University Press, 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9]Notes
References
*Diogenes Laërtius, Book X.
*Pliny, "Nat. Hist.", 35.99; praefatio, 29.
*Cicero, "De natura deorum" i.33.93.
*Athenaeus, "Deipnosophistae", xiii, 588, 593.
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