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This is so exactly the case, that even with the beautiful and authentic money of Leontium before us, we did not land at Lentini! There is nothing so utterly confounding as the contemplation of money, every piece of which is a gem, on spots where no imagination can conceive the city that coined it.

There was not a free lady of Greece, Leontium and Phryne, Lais, Danae, and Lamia, the Egyptian girl Thonis, respecting whom he could not tell you as many diverting tales as if they were ladies of Loretto; not a nook of Athenseus, not an obscure scholiast, not a passage in a Greek orator, that could throw light on these personages, which was not at his command.

When the latter expatiated upon the small quantity of cheese he required to have better cheer than usual, I believe they did not lack reason. When they say he philosophized with Leontium, they say well; when they say that Epicurus diverted himself with her, they do not lie.

The celebrated Abbé de Châteauneuf, in his "Dialogues on Ancient Music," refers to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos under the name of "Leontium," a name given her by le Maréchal de Saint-Evremond, and in his eulogy upon her character, lays great stress on the genius displayed in her epistolary style.

Ninon de l'Enclos was of the order of the French "hetaerae," and, as by her beauty and her talents, she attained the first rank in the social class, her name has come down to posterity with those of Aspasia and Leontium, while the less distinguished favorites of less celebrated men have shared the common oblivion, which hides from the memory of men, every degree of mediocrity, whether of virtue or vice.

Leontium was an Athenian woman who became celebrated for her taste for philosophy, particularly for that of Epicurus, and for her close intimacy with the great men of Athens. She lived during the third century before the Christian era, and her mode of life was similar to that of Mademoiselle de l'Enclos.