A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. An Athenian, was sent out with ten ships, in B. C. 412, to act with the squadron under Diomedon, and we find the two commanders associated, both in naval operations and in political movements, down to the declaration of the Athenian army at Samos against the revolutionary government of the Four Hundred, B. C. 411 [DIOMEDON]. According to the common reading in Xenophon, Leon was one of the ten generals appointed to supersede Alcibiades in B. C. 407, and, as well as ERASINIDES, was with Conon when Callicratidas chased him into Mytilene (Xen. Hell. 1.5.16, 6. 16). Xenophon, however, in two other passages (Hell. 1.6.30,7.2), omits Leon's name and mentions Lysias instead; and Diodorus has Lysanias ( an error probably of the copyists, for Lysias) in his list of the generals, saying nothing of Leon, and afterwards speaks of Lysias as one of those who returned to Athens after the battle of Arginusae (Diod. 13.74, 101). Schneider, accordingly, would reject the name of Leon, from Xenophon substituting for it that of Lysias, in Hell. 1.5.16, and that of Archestratus, in Hell. 1.6.16 (see Palm. and Wess. ad Diod. 13.74). But these alterations are unnecessary, if we adopt bishop Thirlwall's conjecture (Greece, vol. iv. p. 110, note 2), that Leon was originally elected among the ten, but that he fell into the hands of Callicratidas, in one of the gallies which Conon sent out from Mytilene, and that Lysias was appointed to fill his place (comp. Xen. Hell. 1.6. §§ 19-21).