Leontion had become, as fax aa sSa^ ^^^lax^xv^^



XUD



THE EPICUREAN BROTHERHOOD. 55

<!oiiIdy the wife, r.^., techniGallj or legally, the concn-
bine of Metroddrus,. whose mother and sister sait
congratakftions on the occasion of the marriage.^
Btit Leontion was not, according to various chroni-
clers, the only lady to be found among the disciples
of Epicurus. Marmarion (or, as she seems more pro-
bably named in the manuscripts of Herculaneiun,
Mammarion or Mammaron),^ Hedia (Sweet), Erotion
(Loveling), and Nikidion (Victorine), are the names
given by one writer; another adds Boidion; and a third
erroneously inserts Philaenis, among the ** young and
handsome women," who, as it is phrased, " haunted
the garden." Scandal fastened with avidity on these
circumstances. Partly, it seems, through the agency
of a Stoic, called Diotimus, who bore the Epicureans
a bitter grudge, there appeared a collection of fifty
letters^ purporting to be the correspondence between
Epicurus and his mistresses. Leontion was the chief
victim of these libels, which human nature unfortu-
nately is inclined to believe must have something in
them, once they have been published. What Leon-
tion was like we know not But we do know that
there were two portraits of her known to the historian
of ancient art, the elder Pliny. The first is not
specially described. But the other depicted Leontion
in the attitude of thought^ With Mammaron and

^ V T n tmh, Non posse su(wker7jwi secundum Epicuyum^ c. 16.
^ Vdum, Herculanens, Collect. Altera,, torn. I. p. 149 ; eL
Oxford Tracings, Pap3rnis 1005 ; Spengel in PhUologus Suppl.,
vol. ii.p. 534.
^ PUny, JSTa/. Hist,, XXXV, 99 and 144.
56 EPICUREANISM.
