Leontides

The three daughters of Leos. During a famine at Athens, the Delphic oracle stated that relief would come only with human sacrifice, and the three were subsequently sacrificed. The maidens were afterwards honored by the Athenians, who erected the Leocorium (from Λεὼς and κόραι) to them.

Aelian calls the daughters of Leos Praxithea, Theope, and Eubule; and Photius calls the first of them Phasithea; while Hieronymus, who mentions only one, states that she sacrificed herself for her country of her own accord.

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References

Sources

  • Aelian. Varia Historia xii, 28.
  • Demosthenes. Epitaph, p. 1398.
  • Diodorus Siculus. Historical Library xv, 17.
  • Hieronymus. Adversus Jovinianum, p. 185 (ed. Mart.).
  • Pausanias. Description of Greece i, 5.2.
  • Plutarch. Theseus, 13.
  • Scholiast on Thucydides, vi, 57.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.