Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/757

LEO. and that professedly on the authority of Leo him- self. Toup (see note to Gaisford's Suidas, s. v. Aewv) suspects that the passage in Athenaeus is corrupt. Of the death of Leo there are two ac- counts. According to Hesychius of Miletus he died during the war, and before the arrival of Chares with the Athenian fleet. According to Suidas, Philip, after his repulse, charged Leo with having offered to betray the city to him for a sum of money ; and the Byzantines, believing the charge, assailed the house of Leo, who, fearful of being stoned to death by them, hung himself. Both these accounts are, however, inconsistent with the statement of Suidas himself, that Leo wrote a history of Alexander, at least if by that name we are to understand Alexander the Great ; and are hardly consistent with the ascription to him of a history of Philip's attack on Byzantium, unless we suppose this to have been a contemporary record or journal of the events of the siege. The writings of Leo are thus enumerated by Suidas and Eudocia: . Ta Kara ^'iKnnvov kcu to Bh^cij'- Tiov^ fii§ Alois ^, Res Philippicae et Byzaniinae^ Lihris vii. ; 2. TevBpaviKov, Teuihranicum, or TivQpavTiiiov^ Teuihranticum : a history apparently of Teuthrania, or of Teuthras, king of Mysia ; 3. Tlepl Brjo-aAou, or Bvcraiov, De Besalo^ or Besaeo, probably on the oracle of Besa ; 4. 'O Upos 7rJe- fios, BeUum Scccrum; 5. Uepl (TTaaecov, which some render De Seditionibus, but others De Statibus, i. e. a rhetorical treatise on the statement of questions or propositions ; 6. Tti Kar ^AKi^auSpov, Jies Gestae Alcxandri. These works are not extant, and are known to us only through the authors above mentioned. It has been already observed that Nos. 4 and 5, at least works under the same or nearly the same titles, are also ascribed both by Suidas and Eudocia to Leo of Alabanda. [No. 4.] Tliis leads us to doubt the correctness of the list in other particulars ; and if the accounts given above of the death of Leo be correct. No. 0" and probably No. 1 are incorrectly ascribed to him. Plutarch, in his De Fluviis {de Jsmeno), quotes from a work of Leo of Byzantium, which he calls Tci BoiwTia/ca, De Rebus Boeoticis ; and again, in the same treatise {de Tiffvide), he quotes from the third book of a work of Leo, Ilepl iroraixdiv, De Fluviis. Some, with prob^ibility, identify Leo (supposing that the name has been corrupted) with the Cleon mentioned by Plutarch ( Vila Pkodon^ c. 14) as an eminent Byzantine at the time of Philip's invasion, who had been a fellow student of Phocion under Plato. Whether Leo of Byzan- tium was the Leo, father of Melantes and Pan- creon, the legatees of Theophrastus (Diog. Laert. v. 5, 8ic. de Theoplirasto) is doubtful. (Plut. Opera, voh X. pp. 714, 801, ed. Reisk. ; Suidas, s. v. Aiwv ; Eudocia, Violetum, s. v. Aewv ; Hesych. Miles. Ori- gines (s. Res Patriae) Constantinop. c. 26 — 28, Opuscula, pp. 66, &c., ed. Orelli ; Philostr. Vitae Sophist, i. 2., ed. Kayser ; Voss. De Hist. Graec. i. 8. ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vii. p. 715.) 8. Of Byzantium. [Nos. 28 and 29.] 9. Of Caloe. [No. 13.] 10. Of Caria. [Nos. 4 and 15.] 11. Of Chalcedon. Fabricius {Bill. Graec. vol. xi. p. 665), inaccurately states that a synodical letter of Leo, who was archbishop of Chalcedon in the time of Alexius I. Comnenus (a. d. 1081 — 1118), was published by Montfaucon. {Biblioth. Coislm. Catalog, p. 103, &c.) The document, as LEO. '43 Fabricius elsewhere more accurately describes it {Bibl. Graec. vol. vii. 716), is the record of a synod held to determine some questions relating to the worship of images, on which Leo in a letter (which Montfaucon does not give) had used some hetero- dox language. 12. Of Constantinople. [Nos. 28 and 29.] 13. DiACONus or the Deacon, a Byzantine historian of the tenth century. What little is known of his personal history is to be gleaned from incidental notices in his principal work, and has been collected by C. B. Hase in the Praefatio to his edition of Leo. Leo was born at Caloe, a town of Asia, beautifully situated on the side or at the foot of Mount Tmolus, near the sources of the Caystrus, in Asia Minor. He was the son of Ba- silius, but his father's condition or calling is not known. (Leo Diac. Historiae, i. 1.) The young Leo was at Constantinople, pursuing his studies, a. d. 9QQ, when he was an admiring spectator of the firmness of the emperor, Nicephorus II. Phocas, in the midst of a popular tumult (iv. 7.) As he describes himself as a youth {fieLpoKiov) at the time of this incident, Hase places his birth in or about A. D. 950. He was in Asia about the time of the deposition of Basilius I., patriarch of Constanti- nople, and the election of his successor Antonius III., A. D. 973 or 974, and relates that at that time he frequently saw two Cappadocians, twins, of thirty years old, whose bodies were united from the aim- pits to the flanks (x. 3). Having been ordained deacon, he accompanied the emperor Basilius II. in his unfortunate campaign against the Bulgarians, A. D. 981; and when the emperor raised the siege of Tralitza or Triaditza (the ancient Sardica), Leo narrowly escaped death or captivity in the head- long flight of his countrymen (x. 8). Of his his- tory after this nothing is known ; but Hase ob- serves that he must have written his history after A. D. 989, as he adverts to the rebellion and death of Phocas Bardas (x. 9), which occurred in that year. Both this event and the Bulgarian campaign are noticed by him by anticipation, in a digression •respecting the evils which he supposed were por- tended by a comet which appeared just before the death of Joannes I. Tzimisces. He must have lived later than Hase has remarked, and at least till A. D. 993, as he notices (x. 10) that the em- peror Basilius II. restored "in six years" the cupola of the great church (St. Sophia) at Constan- tinople which had been overthrown by the earth- quake (comp. Cedren. Compend. vol. ii. p. 438, ed. Bonn) of a. d. 987. The works of Leo Diaconus comprehend 1. 'Itr- TQpia ^L§iois V, Historia Libris decern ; and 2. Oralio ad Basilium Imperaiorem ; and 3. (unless it be the work of another Leo Diaconus) Homilia in Mi<;haelem Arcliangelum. The two last are ex- tant only in MS. The history of Leo includes the period from the Cretan expedition of Nicephorus Phocas, in the reign of the emperor Romanus II., a. d. 959, to the death of Joannes I. Tzimisces, a. d. 975. It relates the victories of the emperors Nicephorus and Tzimisces over the Mohammedans in Cilicia and Syria, and the recovery of those countries, or the greater part of them, to the Byzantine empire ; and the wars of the same emperors with the Bul- garians and Russians. The style of Leo is de- scribed by Hase as vicious : he employs unusual and inappropriate words (many of them borrowed