Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/748

734 LEO. the emperor Nero. (Tac. Ann. xiv. 20 ; Frontin. Aquaed. 102.) 43. Lentulus, an actor in mimes, and also a writer of mimes, which must have been of consi- derable celebrity, as they are referred to several times by subsequent writers. He is said to have been a man of high rank ; but his age is quite un- certain, except that he must have lived before the end of the first century of the Christian aera. (Schol. ad- Juv. Sat. viii. 187 ; Tertull. Apolog. 1 5, de Pallio, 4 ; Bothe, Poet Lat. Scenic. Fragm. vol. ii. pp. 269, 270.) LEO or LEON (Aec^v), historical. 1. Son of Eury crates, 14th king of the Agid line at Sparta. In his time the Spartans were worsted in their war with Tegea. His son was Anaxandrides, the contemporary of Croesus (Herod, i. 65 ; Pans. iii.3. §5). [A.H.C.] 2. An Athenian, was sent out with ten ships, in B.C. 412, to act with the squadron under Diomedon, and we find the two commanders asso- ciated, both in naval operations and in political movements, down to the declaration of the Athe- nian army at Samos against the revolutionary government of the Four Hundred, B.C. 411 [Dio- medon]. According to the common reading in Xenophon, Leon was one of the ten generals appointed to supersede Alcibiades in B. c. 407, and, as well as Erasinides, was with Conon when Callicratidas chased him into Mytilene (Xen. Hell. i. .5. § 16, 6. 16). Xenophon, however, in two other passages {Hell. i. 6. § 30,7. $ 2), omits Leon's name and mentions Lysias instead ; and Diodorus has Lysanias ( an error probably of the copyists, for Lysias) in his list of the generals, saying nothing of Leon, and afterwards speaks of Lysias as one of those who returned to Athens after the battle of Arginusae (Diod. xiii. 74, 101), Schneider, accord- ingly, would reject the name of Leon, from Xeno- phon substituting for it that of Lj'sias, in Hell. i. b. ^ 16, and that of Archestratus, in Hell. i. 6. § 16 (see Palm, and Wess. ad Diod. xiii. 74). But these alterations are unnecessary, if we adopt bishop Thirlwall's conjecture {Greece., vol. iv. p. 110, note 2), that Leon was originally elected among the ten, but that he fell into the hands of Callicratidas, in one of the gallies which Conon sent out from Mytilene, and that Lysias was appointed to fill his place (comp. Xen. Hell. i. 6. §§ 19—21). 3. A Spartan, one of the three leaders of the colony founded at Heracleia, in B. c. 426. (Thuc. iii. 92 ; Diod. xii. 59.) 4. One of the three ambassadors sent from Sparta to dissuade the Athenians from the alliance with Argos, in B. c. 420. (Thuc. v. 44.) It seems doubtful whether we should identify him with the father of Antalcidas (Plut. Artaoc. 21), and again with the ephor i-ndlivvixos in the fourteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, B. c. 418 (Xen. Hell. ii. 3. $ 10), and also with the Leon who was sent out with Antisthenes, in B.C. 412, as eTngaxTjs (whatever that may mean), and was appointed on the death of Pedaritus to succeed him in the com- mand. (Thuc. viii. 39, 61 ; comp. Arnold and Goeller, ad Loc.) The father of Pedaritus (Thuc. viii. 28) was probably a different person, though Krueger thinks he was the same with the officer af Antisthenes and was appointed to succeed his son. 5. A native of Salamis and a citizen of Athens, •was put to death by the thirty tyrants, who or- dered Socrates, with four others, among whom was LEO. Meletus, to bring him from Salamis, whither he seems to have retired to escape the cruelty and rapacity of the new government. Socrates would not execute the command, which was, however, carried into effect by the remaining four. From the speech of Theramenes, in Xenophon, we learn that Leon was a man of worth and respectability {Ikolvos wrip), and chargeable with no crime ; and Andocides tells us that he was condemned without a trial. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3. § 39 ; Plat. Apol. p. 32, c, d ; Stallb. ad loc. ; Lys. c. Et-at. p. 125, c. Agorat p. 133 ; Andoc. de Myst. § 94.) 6. An Athenian, was joined with Timagoras, in B. c. 367, as ambassador to the Persian court, where envoys also from Thebes, Sparta, and other Grecian states presented themselves at the same time. Pelopidas obtained for Thebes, from Arta- xerxes, all that he asked, and Leon protested in vain against the article in the royal decree which required the Athenians to lay up their ships. Ti- magoras, however, had gained the king's favour by taking part with the Thebans, and had studiously separated himself from his colleague during the embassy. For this conduct he was impeached Jay Leon on their return home, and put to death. (Xen. Hell. vii. 1. §§ 33, &c. ; Dem. de Fals. Leg. pp. 383, 400, ad fin. ; Plut. Pelop. 30, Artaoc. 22 ; Val. Max. vi. 3, Ext. 2.) 7. An Athenian of the Roman party, who, in B. c. 192, accused ApoUodorus of fomenting a revolt from Rome to Antiochus, and caused him to be sent into exile. ( Liv. xxxv. 50.) We may perhaps identify him with Leon, son of Icesias, who, in B.C. 189, supported before the Roman senate the prayer of the Aetolians for peace. (Liv. xxxviii. 10 ; Polvb. xxii. 14.) [Damis, No. 2.] [E. E.] LEO I., FLA'VIUS, sumamed the GREAT, and THRAX, emperor of Constantinople (a. d. 457 — 474), was of barbarian origin, and was bom about A. D. 400, in the country of the Bessi, in Thrace, whence he received the surname of " the Thracian." At the death of the emperor Marcian (457) he was an obscure tribunus militurn, and held the command of Selymbria. The powerful patrician, Aspar, despairing to seize the crown without creating a civil and religious war, which might have proved his downfall, resolved upon re- maining in power by proclaiming emperor a man whom he thought equally weak and obedient ; and he consequently contrived the election of Leo, who was recognised by the senate on the 7th of Fe- bruary, 457. Leo was crowned by Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople ; and this is the first instance of a Christian sovereign having received his crown from the hands of a priest, a ceremony which was afterwards adopted by all other Chris- tian princes, and from which the clergy, as Gibbon justly observes, have deduced the most formidable consequences. Shortly after Leo's accession, reli- gious troubles broke out in Egypt, which afforded the new emperor an opportunity of showing that he did not intend to be a tool of his minister. The Eutychians of Alexandria slew the orthodox bishop Proterius, and chose one of their own creed, Elu- rus, in his stead, who was protected by the Arian, Aspar, in spite of the emperor's authority. Leo, however, did not give way, and in 460 he had Elurus deposed, and superseded by an orthodox bishop, to the great annoyance of Aspar. This minister, finding himself checked in many other instances by the man whom he had raised from the