Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Leonidas (literary) 1.

LEO′NIDAS or LEO′NIDES, literary. 1. Of Tarentum, the author of upwards of a hundred epigrams in the Doric dialect. His epigrams formed a part of the Garland of Meleager. In Brunck's Analecta, some of the epigrams ascribed to Leonidas of Tarentum belong properly to Leonidas of Alexandria; and on the other hand, some, which are found in other parts of the Anthology, should be restored to Leonidas of Tarentum. Jacobs (Anth. Graec. vol. xiii. pp. 909, 910) points out the necessary corrections; Meineke (Delect. Poet. Anth. Graec. pp. 24-52) has re-edited and re-arranged the epigrams of this writer, the number of which he makes 108. The epigrams are chiefly inscriptions for dedicatory offerings and works of art, and, though not of a very high order of poetry, are usually pleasing, ingenious, and in good taste. Bernhardy not unhappily characterises them as being "in a sharp lapidary style" (Grundriss. d. Griech. Litt. vol. ii. p. 1055). All that we know of the poet's date is collected from his epigrams, and the indications are not very certain. He seems, however, to have lived in the time of Pyrrhus (Jacobs, l. c.). From one of the epigrams ascribed to him (No. 100, Br. and Jac., No. 98, Meineke), and which may either have been written after his death, or by himself for his own epitaph, we learn that he was born at Tarentum, and after many wanderings during which the Muses were his chief solace, he died and was buried at a distance from his native land.