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Leontion ( la, Leontium, el, Λεόντιον;

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

300 BC) was a Greek Epicurean philosopher.

Biography

Leontion was a pupil of

Epicurus Epicurus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκουρος ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced ...

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

Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Ancient Greece, Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a ...

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). According to Pliny, she was painted by

Aristides of Thebes Aristides of Thebes ( grc-gre, Ἀριστείδης ὁ Θηβαῖος), was an ancient Greek painter. Life He lived in the 4th century BC. He had a reputation for expressiveness: for example, a picture of his representing a dying mother's fear ...

in a work entitled "''Leontion thinking of Epicurus''." According to

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

, Leontion is said to have published arguments criticizing the famous philosopher

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routledge ...

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.

An anecdote that was later also adopted by Pliny in the preface of his ''Naturalis historia''.Pliny, ''Nat. Hist.''
praefatio, 29

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leontion 4th-century BC births 3rd-century BC deaths 3rd-century BC women writers 3rd-century BC writers 3rd-century BC philosophers Ancient Greek women philosophers Greek female prostitutes Hetairai Epicurean philosophers Hellenistic-era philosophers 3rd-century BC Greek women