Leto

About Leto in brief

In Greek mythology, Leto is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria. She is the mother of Apollo and Artemis. The island of Kos is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus, in 2. 47 states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos. Leto’s Roman equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun. In Greek inscriptions, the children of Leto are referred to as the national gods of the country. Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos, predated Hellenic influence in the region, however, and united the Lycian confederacy of city-states. In Delos and Athens she was worshipped primarily as an adjunct to her children. She was also worshipped in Crete, whether one of certain Cretangoddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form. As Leto Phytia she was a mother-deity. Pindar calls the goddess Leto Chryselakatos, an epithet that was attached to her daughter Artemis as early as Homer.

Her cult image as sitting on a wooden throne, clothed in a linen chiton and a linen himation, records her cult image of her as a matronly figure. According to Hyginus, when Hera banned Leto from giving birth on mainland Zeus banned the island of firma, any place at sea, or any place under the sun, from being given birth to Apollo or Artemis. She sought out the floating island of Delos, which she brought forth first Artemis, by the help of the midwifery of Artemis, nine days later, Apollo gave birth to Artemis. In 20th-century sources Leto has been identified as the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized. The goddess was worshipped in the form of Wadjet, the cobra-headed goddess of Lower Egypt, which also included a temple to an Egyptian god Greeks identified by interpretatio graeca as Apollo.