Leonidas of Alexandria (; ; Latin: Leonidas Alexandrinus; ) was a Greek epigrammatist active at Rome during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian. Some of his epigrams are preserved in the Greek Anthology, and in one he lays claim to having invented the isopsephic epigram.Anth. Pal. 9. 356.Hunter 2012.
Life Leonides was a native of Egypt: he describes himself as "Nile-born" (Νειλογενής)Anth. Pal. 9.355. and some of his poetry was evidently written in Egypt.e.g., Anth. Pal 6.328, the dedication of his third book of epigrams. See Page 1981, pp. 503–504. He claims that he was originally an astrologer or astronomer,"astrologer": Hunter 2012; "astronomer": Albiani 2006; the two terms were not clearly distinguished in antiquity, and Leonides himself (Anth. Pal. 9.344) says only that he began as a follower of Urania, rather than Calliope. See Page 1981, pp. 503 note 1, 527–529. but that once he devoted himself to poetry, he became more successful and was "well-known to Italians in high society".Anth. Pal. 9.344; Page 1981, p. 503. He eventually obtained the patronage of the Roman imperial family, and flourished during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian.Page 1981, p. 503 He wrote birthday poems for Agrippina the Younger and Poppaea, among others.
Works The poems of Leonides were originally collected in at least three books.Albiani (2006). Today some forty-two epigrams survive, preserved in the Greek Anthology. These are variously attributed to "Leonides of Alexandria", "Julius Leonides", or simply "Leonides"; in a few cases they are wrongly ascribed to Leonidas of Tarentum, or the attribution is otherwise uncertain.Page 1981, pp. 510-512, with a detailed discussion of the attributions. Almost all of them are isophepic epigrams, in which the alphanumeric values of the Greek letters (α=1, β=2, etc.) are carefully balanced, so that the sums of the numerical values in each verse (in two-line epigrams), or in each couplet (in four-line epigrams), are precisely the same.Page 1981, pp. 508–510. Leonides claimed to be the originator of the isopsephic epigram,Anth. Pal. 9.356; Hunter 2012. and while he did not invent the principle of isopsephia itself, he appears to have been the first to apply it to poems of this type.Page 1981, p. 504 note 2
Notes
References
Sources Albiani, Maria Grazia. (2006). "Leonides of Alexandria", Brill's New Paully. Hunter, Richard L. (2012). "Leonidas or Leonides, of Alexandria". The Oxford Classical Dictionary (online ed.). 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 24 April 2023. Page, D. L. (1981). Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp 503–541.
Further reading
Fabricius, Johann Albert, ed. (1795). Bibliotheca Graeca. Vol. 4. New ed. Hamburg: Carolum Ernestum Bohn. pp. 479–480. Jacobs, Friedrich, ed. (1814). Anthologia Graeca. Vol. 13. Lipsia: Dyckiano. pp. 908–909. Leventhal, Max (2022). "Leonides of Alexandria's Isopsephic Epigrams". In Poetry and Number in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge Classical Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 73–112. . Meineke, Albert Christian, ed. (1791). Prolusio ad utriusque Leonidae Carmina. Lipsia.