feasts or sacrifices celebrated among the ancients in honour of the sun.—They were called Leontica, and the priests who officiated at them Leones, because they represented the sun under the figure of a lion radiant bearing a tiara, and gripping in his two fore paws the horns of a bull, who struggled with him in vain to disengage himself.

The critics are extremely divided about this feast. Some will have it anniversary, and to have made its return not in a solar but in a lunar year; but others hold its return more frequent, and give instances where the period was not above two hundred and twenty days.

The ceremony was sometimes also called Mithraic, Mithras being the name of the sun among the ancient Persians. There was always a man sacrificed at these feasts, till the time of Hadrian, who prohibited it by a law. Commodus introduced the custom afresh, after whose time it was again exploded.