[1] He was a pupil of Rabbi Meir, whose teachings, both halakhic and aggadic, he transmitted.
R. Yom Tov Asevilli claims that there were two different Tanna sages with the same name of Simeon ben Eleazar, one in the previous generation to R. Meir, and the other in the following generation to R. Meir, and in that he had resolved the maze of Maimonides' statement.
[3] It is told that once, when returning in a very joyful mood from the academy to his native city, he met an exceedingly ugly man who greeted him.
The man thereupon said to them, "If this is a rabbi may there be few like him in Israel," and told them what had occurred; he, however, forgave Simeon when the people begged him to do so.
Simeon went the same day to the school and preached a sermon, exhorting all the people to be pliable like a reed and not unbending like a cedar.