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]
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[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
[edit] References
[edit] Primary sources
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History VII.23.87, 34.19.72
- Eusebius, Chronicon 106.1-7
- Plutarch, De garrulitate 505E
[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
