Leaena
Λέαινα
(Λέαινα).
1. An Athenian hetaera, beloved by Aristogeiton, or, according to Athenaeus, by Harmodius. On the murder of Hipparchus she was put to the torture, as she was supposed to have been privy to the conspiracy; but she died under her sufferings without making any disclosure, and, if we may believe one account, she bit off her tongue, that no secret might be wrung from her. The Athenians honoured her memory greatly, and in particular by a bronze statue of a lioness (λέαινα) without a tongue, in the vestibule of the Acropolis. (Paus. 1.23; Athen. 13.596e; Plut. de Garr. 8; Polyaen. 8.45.) Pausanias tells us (l.c.) that the account of her constancy was preserved at Athens by tradition.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.