Pietro Luigi M. Leone

Born in Pisticci in the Matera province,^[2] Leone enrolled in the University of Naples and graduated in classics from there in the early 1960s, tutored by Vittorio De Falco.^[3][4][5] After some years of teaching at the "Emanuele Duni" high school in Matera, in his native Basilicata,^[6] he obtained an assistantship at the University of Naples;^[2] since 1975 he was Professor in Byzantine studies at the University of Salento, where he taught for the rest of his career.^[4] In 1980, he chaired the IV Italian Congress of Byzantine Studies (Lecce – Calimera) and edited the proceedings.^[7] In 1982 he chaired a congress in memory of Nicola Festa, held in Pisticci.^[8]

Leone retired from teaching in 2010 and was made Emeritus. He had one brother, Antonio "Nino", who served as master of the local middle school,^[2] and two sisters named Lidia and Silvia.^[9][10] He died in 2023 aged 86, in his native village.^[2] The civic museum of his native town has been named after him.^[11]

Leone was primarily a textual critic and an editor of unpublished (or badly published) Byzantine texts, and worked on texts written in the Byzantine learned language (the so-called Hochsprache).^[4] He unearthed new works by the rhetor and philosopher Nicephorus Gregoras (fl. 14th century) and published several prose works of the same: two speeches to the emperor Andronikos II Palaiologus,^[12] a speech to Hugh of Cyprus,^[13] philosophical dialogues and treatises against Barlaam of Seminara,^[14] hagiographical works^[15] – including his biography of the emperor Constantine the Great^[16] –, and his whole letters collection.^[17] He also wrote exegetical essays of some difficult passages of Gregoras' philosophical works.^[18]

The Byzantine author whom Leone studied the deepest and longest, however, was John Tzetzes (fl. 12th century). Leone provided the first modern edition of Tzetzes' most important works: the Historiae, an extensive commentary in verses on his own correspondence (of which he also studied the textual history, the manuscript tradition, the notes by the author himself, and various textual and exegetical aspects);^[19] the Letters themselves, which he published in the Teubner collection;^[20] the Carmina Iliaca, a re-telling of the Trojan War;^[21] and the Theogonia.^[22] Additionally, Leone published — often in editio princeps — other poems and minor works by Tzetzes.^[23] He also studied the manuscript tradition of Tzetzes' works and their fortune throughout the Byzantine millennium.^[24]

Leone edited the fictional epistles of Claudius Aelianus (fl. 2nd-3rd century),^[25] the letters of the Byzantine philologist Maximus Planudes^[26] and those of the Greek humanist Theodorus Gaza;^[27] he studied the Byzantine scholia to and the Byzantine paraphrases of the Alexandra by Lycophron (which he also critically edited),^[28] and studied the manuscript transmission of Johannes Zonaras' Epitome historiarum.^[29] In the 1970s, he revised the text of Aeschines' speeches – focusing on the papyri and their contributions – and published it with facing Italian translation for UTET.^[30]

A lesser part of his scholarship was dedicated to the 11th/12th-century judge and poet Michael Haploucheir,^[31] to the manuscript tradition of the minor works of George-Gregory of Cyprus (fl. 13th century),^[32] to the 14th century Byzantine statesman Nikephoros Choumnos,^[33] to Tryphiodorus (3rd or 4th century),^[34] to Stesichorus (6th century BC)^[35] and to the humanist Julius Pomponius Laetus.^[36] He also edited rhapsodies 1 and 22 of Homer's Iliad for a non-scholarly audience.^[37]

Belgian Byzantinist Alice Leroy-Molinghen once described his indefatigable research and scholarship as an "activité devourant" (a devouring activity).^[38]

The following bibliography is adapted and augmented from the list edited in the Festschrift in Leone's honor.^[39] Abbreviations follow the standards set by L'Année philologique,^[40] adding:

• ALF(Le): Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e di Filosofia. Lecce (various places and publishers; 1965–1980).
• ALF(Mc): Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e di Filosofia. Macerata (various places and publishers; 1968–2010).^[41]
• ALF(Na): Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e di Filosofia. Naples (Naples: various publishers; 1952–1980).
• RB: Rivista di Bizantinistica (Milan: CUSL; 1991–1994).^[42]
• RSBS: Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Slavi (Bologna: Patron; 1981–1983).