Leontium
Λεόντιον
(Λεόντιον), an Athenian hetaera, the disciple and mistress of Epicurus. She wrote a treatise against Theophrastus, which Cicero characterises as written scito quidem sermone et Attico. According to Pliny (Praef.) the audacity of the attempt gave rise to the proverb suspendio arborem eligere. Pliny mentions a painting of her by Theodorus, in which she was represented in a meditative attitude. Among her numerous lovers we also find mentioned Metrodorus, the disciple of Epicurus, and Hermesianax of Colophon. She had a daughter, Danae, who was also an hetaera of some notoriety. (D. L. 10.4; Athen. 13.588a. b. 593, b. 597, a; Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1.33; Plin. Nat. 35.11.)
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.