Leo
7. Of BYZANTIUM, a rhetorician and historical writer of the age of Philip, and perhaps of Alexander the Great. Philostratus says he was a disciple of Plato; but according to Suidas and Eudocia some statements made him the disciple of Aristotle; and both Suidas and Eudocia call him a Peripatetic.
He appears to have occupied a leading position in the Byzantine commonwealth at the time it was attacked by Philip of Macedon.
According to Hesychius of Miletus, he was strategos or general of the Byzantines. Philostratus has recorded a curious anecdote in reference to this invasion. Leo sent to demand of Philip the reason of the invasion; and when Philip replied that the beauty of the city had made him fall in love with it, and that he came as a suitor, Leo retorted, that weapons of war were not the usual instruments employed by lovers.
The city was almost taken by Philip; but the obstinate resistance of the citizens, and the arrival of succours from Athens, under Chares (B. C. 340), and subsequently under Phocion, compelled him to withdraw. Leo was sent as ambassador to Athens, whether during the siege or at some other time is not clear; and an anecdote recorded by Philostratus and Suidas in connection with this embassy shows the same ready wit as his reply to Philip.
The dissensions of the Athenians retarded their movements; and when Leo, on his appearance in their assembly, was received with shouts of laughter, on account of his corpulence, "What do you laugh at, Athenians?" said he; "Is it because I am fat, and of such a size ? I have a wife fatter than myself; yet when we agree the bed will hold us; but when we disagree, the whole house will not." Plutarch (
Praecepta Politica. Opera, vol. ix. p. 207, ed. Reisk.) relates the anecdote with a variation, which makes Leo remarkable, not for his corpulence, but for his diminutive stature: and Athenaeus (xii. pp. 550, 551), relates the story of another Byzantine, Pytho, and that professedly on the authority of Leo himself. Toup (see note to Gaisford's Suidas,
s. v. Δέων) suspects that the passage in Athenaeus is corrupt. Of the death of Leo there are two accounts.
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: 1.
Τὰ κατὰ Φίλιππον καὶ τὸ Βυζάντιον,
Βιβλίοις ζ Res Philippicae et Byantinae, Libris vii.; 2.
Τευθρανικόν,
Teuthranicum, or
Τενθραντικόν,
Teuthranticum : a history apparently of Teuthrania, or of Teuthras, king of Mysia; 3.
Περὶ Βησάλου, or
Βησαίον,
De Besalo, or
Besaeo, probably on the oracle of Besa; 4.
Ὁ ἱερὸς πόλεμος,
Bellum Sacrum ; 5.
Περὶ στάσεων, which some render
De Seditionibus, but others
De Statibus, i. e. a rhetorical treatise on the statement of questions or propositions; 6.
Τὰ κατ᾽ Ἀλέξανδρον,
Res Gestae Alexandri. 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.] This 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. 6 and probably No. 1 are incorrectly ascribed to him. Plutarch, in his
De Fluvüs (de Ismeno), quotes from a work of Leo of Byzantium, which he calls
Τὰ Βοιωτιακά,
De Rebus Boeoticis; and again, in the same treatise (
de Tigride), he quotes from the third book of a work of Leo,
Περὶ ποταμῶν,
De Fluvüs. Some, with probability, identify Leo (supposing that the name has been corrupted) with the Cleon mentioned by Plutarch (
Vita Phocion, 100.14) as an eminent Byzantine at the time of Philip's invasion, who had been a fellow student of Phocion under Plato. Whether Leo of Byzantium was the Leo, father of Melantes and Pancreon, the legatees of Theophrastus (
D. L. 5.51, &c.
de Theophrasto) is doubtful. (Plut.
Opera, vol. x. pp. 714, 801, ed. Reisk.; Suidas,
s. v. Δέων; Eudocia,
Violetum, s. v. Δέων; Hesych. Miles.
Origines (s. Res Patriae) Constantinop. 100.26-28,
Opuscula, pp. 66, &c., ed. Orelli; Philostr.
Vitae Sophist. 1.2., ed. Kayser; Voss.
De Hist. Graec. 1.8.; Fabric.
Bibl. Graec. vol. vii. p. 715.)
