Leaena

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Leaena ("lioness"), probably Greek, was a prostitute and the mistress of Aristogeiton the Tyrannicide, a homosexual lover of tyrant Harmondius.[1]

Contents

[edit] Life

When Anaxandridas II was king of Sparta in the 6th century BC, Harmodius and Aristogeiton were compelled to overthrow the tyranny of Hippias and Hipparchus.[2]

Among those captured in the plot to murder Hipparchus was Leaena who Aristogeiton was in love with.[3] She was tortured to get information about the perpetrators' involvement.[4] Leaena then rose to the occasion to be virtuous, in spite of her "occupation", and bit her tongue off so she would not be capable of revealing detrimental information.[5]

According to Pausanias, the Athenians set up a bronze lioness on the Acropolis in her memory.[6]

This brass lioness statue at the entrance was without a tongue.[7]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ The Deipnosophists of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Book XIII Concerning Women
  2. ^ The Death of Hipparchus
  3. ^ Athenaeus: Deipnosophists - Book 13(c)
  4. ^ Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book I, Chapter 3
  5. ^ Beginning of the Consuls of the Romans
  6. ^ Pausanias 1.23.1–2.
  7. ^ Plutarch, The Morals, volume 4.

[edit] References

[edit] Primary sources

[edit] Secondary sources

  • Plutarch, The Morals, volume 4, trans. William W. Goodwin w/ Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1878) The Online Library of Liberty
  • The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens By Eva C. Keuls, p. 194, University of California Press (1993), ISBN 0520079299
  • Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book II. by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Project Guttenberg
  • Eusebius, Chronicon, ed R. Helm (Leipzig, Germany 1913), 106.1-7