Leos
Λεώς
(Λεώς), one of the heroes eponymi of the Athenians. He is said to have been a son of Orpheus, and the phyle of Leontis derived its name from him. (Phot. s.v. Suid. s.v. Paus. 1.5.2, 10.10.1.) Once, it is said, when Athens was suffering from famine or plague, the Delphic oracle demanded that the daughters of Leos should be sacrificed, and the father's merit was that he complied with the command of the oracle. The maidens were afterwards honoured by the Athenians, who erected the Leocorium (from Λεὼς and κόραι) to them. (Hieronym. in Jovin. p. 185, ed. Mart.; Aelian, Ael. VH 12.28; Plut. Thes. 13; Paus. 1.5.2; Diod. 15.17; Demosth. Epitaph. p. 1398; Schol. ad Thuc. 6.57.) Aelian calls the daughters of Leos Praxithea, Theope, and Eubule; and Photius calls the first of them Phasithea; while Hieronymus, who mentions only one, states that she sacrificed herself for her country of her own accord.
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.