Latona

Latona (in greco antico: Λατώ, Lātṓ) o Leto (in greco antico: Λητώ, Lētṓ) è un personaggio della mitologia greca, figlia dei titani Febe e Ceo.
Possedeva i poteri del progresso tecnologico, vegliando sulla tecnologia e sui fabbri e i suoi poteri erano molto simili a quelli di Efesto.

Genealogia

Sorella di Asteria, fu madre dei gemelli Apollo e Artemide avuti da Zeus.

Mitologia

Spesso accostata al continente originario degli abitanti dell'Iperborea, un popolo nordico emigrato in diverse ondate dalle zone artiche fino all'Europa e all'Asia.
Esiodo narra che Zeus, temendo le ire e la gelosia della moglie Era, l'allontanò poco prima che essa partorisse e che nessuno voleva darle ospitalità poiché temeva le ritorsioni di Era. Così Latona, inseguita dal serpente Pitone e vagando attraverso il Mar Egeo trovò rifugio presso l'isola egea di Ortigia dove nacquero Artemide e Apollo.
In seguito Apollo uccise Pitone sul monte Parnaso per vendicare le sofferenze inflitte alla madre il quale l'aveva perseguitata quando era incinta.
Leggermente diversa la versione fornita da Igino secondo cui Orione, accorso in difesa di Latona, ebbe la peggio e morì in uno scontro con Scorpione, avverso alla dea. Resta il fatto che, partoriti Apollo e Artemide, quest'ultima chiese a Zeus un segno di gratitudine e così la costellazione fu stabilita in modo tale che quando Scorpione si alza, Orione tramonta.
A Delo esisteva un santuario dedicato a lei dove una palma di bronzo ricordava l'albero a cui si era aggrappata al momento di partorire i due gemelli e la loro nascita era celebrata il sesto e il diciassettesimo giorno del Targelione.

Dediche

Gli asteroidi 68 Leto e 639 Latona prendono il loro nome da questo personaggio.

Bohemia, circa 1742 Sculpture Alabaster Given anonymously in honor of Anna Bing Arnold (M.78.86) European Sculpture

Lazar Widmann (Bohemia, 1699-1769)

Leto

In Greek mythology, Leto (/ˈliːtoʊ/; Greek: Λητώ Lētṓ; Λατώ, Lātṓ in Doric Greek) is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria..
The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and her search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera in her jealousy caused all lands to shun her. Finally, she found an island that was not attached to the ocean floor so it was not considered land and she could give birth. This is her only active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. In Roman mythology, Leto's Roman equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun.
In Crete, at the city of Dreros, Spyridon Marinatos uncovered an eighth-century post-Minoan hearth house temple in which there were found three unique figures of Apollo, Artemis and Leto made of brass sheeting hammered over a shaped core (sphyrelata). Walter Burkert notes that in Phaistos she appears in connection with an initiation cult.
Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards with the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized. In Greek inscriptions, the Letoides 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. The Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified, was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia. There was a further Letoon at Delos.
Leto's primal nature may be deduced from the natures of her father and mother, who may have been Titans of the sun and moon.^{[citation needed]} Her Titan father is called "Coeus", and though H. J. Rose considers his name and nature uncertain, he is in one Roman source given the name Polus, which may relate him to the sphere of heaven from pole to pole. The name of Leto's mother, "Phoebe" (Φοίβη "pure, bright"), is identical to the epithet of her son Apollo, Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων, throughout Homer.

Etymology

Several explanations have been put forward to explain the origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη lḗthē (lethe, oblivion) and λωτός lotus (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one".
In 20th-century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada, "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian lada may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα Leda. Other scholars (Paul Kretschmer, Erich Bethe, Pierre Chantraine and R. S. P. Beekes) have suggested a Pre-Greek origin.

Mythology

Birth of Artemis and Apollo

According to Hyginus (Fabulae) when Hera, the most conservative of goddesses – for she had the most to lose in changes to the order of nature —discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she realized that the offspring would cement the new order. She was powerless to stop the flow of events. Hera banned Leto from giving birth on "terra firma", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun.
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus (Biblioteca) "Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo."
Antoninus Liberalis is not alone in hinting that Leto came down from Hyperborea in the guise of a she-wolf, or that she sought out the "wolf-country" of Lycia, formerly called Tremilis, which she renamed to honour wolves that had befriended her for her denning. Another late source, Aelian, also links Leto with wolves and Hyperboreans:

Wolves are not easily delivered of their young, only after twelve days and twelve nights, for the people of Delos maintain that this was the length of time that it took Leto to travel from the Hyperboreoi to Delos.

Most accounts agree that she found the barren floating island of Delos, still bearing its archaic name of Asterios, which was neither mainland nor a real island and gave birth there, promising the island wealth from the worshippers who would flock to the obscure birthplace of the splendid god who was to come. The island was surrounded by swans. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and later became sacred to Apollo.
Callimachus wrote that it is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail.
By contrast, according to the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, Leto labored for nine nights and nine days for Apollo, in the presence of all the first among the deathless goddesses as witnesses: Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis and the "loud-moaning" sea-goddess Amphitrite. Only Hera kept apart, perhaps to kidnap Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor. Instead, Artemis, having been born first, assisted with the birth of Apollo. Another version, in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and in an Orphic hymn, states that Artemis was born before Apollo, on the island of Ortygia, and that she helped Leto cross the sea to Delos the next day to give birth there to Apollo.

Witnesses at the birth of Apollo

According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to be witnesses at the birth of Apollo were responding to a public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment. The dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymn's hearers. The dynasty that is so concerned about being authenticated in this myth is the new dynasty of Zeus and the Olympian Pantheon, and the goddesses at Delos who bear witness to the rightness of the birth are the great goddesses of the old order. Demeter was not present and Aphrodite was not either but Rhea attended. The goddess Dione (in her name simply the "Goddess") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona). If that was the case, she would not have assembled here.

Chthonic assailants

Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became the enemies of Apollo and Artemis. One was the giant Tityos, a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.
Another ancient earth creature that had to be overcome was the dragon Python, which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.

Lycian Letoon

Leto was intensely worshipped in Lycia, Anatolia. In Delos and Athens she was worshipped primarily as an adjunct to her children. Herodotus reported a temple to her in Egypt supposedly attached to a floating island called "Khemmis" in Buto, which also included a temple to an Egyptian god Greeks identified by interpretatio graeca as Apollo. There, Herodotus was given to understand, the goddess whom Greeks recognised as Leto was worshipped in the form of Wadjet, the cobra-headed goddess of Lower Egypt.

Leto in Crete

Leto was also worshipped in Crete, whether one of "certain Cretan goddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form, influenced by the Minoan goddess". Veneration of a local Leto is attested at Phaistos (where it is purported that she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis at the islands known today as the Paximadia (also known as Letoai in ancient Crete) and at Lato, which bore her name. As Leto Phytia she was a mother-deity.

Leto of the golden spindle

Pindar calls the goddess Leto Chryselakatos, an epithet that was attached to her daughter Artemis as early as Homer. "The conception of a goddess enthroned like a queen and equipped with a spindle seems to have originated in Asiatic worship of the Great Mother", O. Brendel notes, but a lucky survival of an inscribed inventory of her temple on Delos, where she was the central figures of the Delian trinity, records her cult image as sitting on a wooden throne, clothed in a linen chiton and a linen himation.

Lycian peasants

Leto's introduction into Lycia was met with resistance. There, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia. The peasants there refused to allow her to do so by stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond. Leto turned them into frogs for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers.
This scene, usually called Latona and the Lycian Peasants or Latona and the Frogs, was popular in Northern Mannerist art, allowing a combination of mythology with landscape painting and peasant scenes, thus combining history painting and genre painting. It is represented in the central fountain, the Bassin de Latone, in the garden terrace of Versailles.

Niobe

Niobe, a queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto had only two. For her hubris, Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, and Artemis killed her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Zeus after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and either turned to stone as she wept or killed herself. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death when the gods themselves entombed them.
The Niobe narrative appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VI) where Latona (Leto) has demanded the women of Thebes to go to her temple and burn incense. Niobe, queen of Thebes, enters in the midst of the worship and insults the goddess, claiming that having beauty, better parentage and more children than Latona, she is more fit to be worshipped than the goddess. To punish this insolence, Latona begs Apollo and Artemis to avenge her against Niobe and to uphold her honor. Obedient to their mother, the twins slay Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, leaving her childless, and her husband Amphion kills himself. Niobe is unable to move from grief and seemingly turns to marble, though she continues to weep, and her body is transported to a high mountain peak in her native land.

Genealogy

Leto's family tree

Uranus

Gaia

Pontus

Oceanus

Tethys

Hyperion

Theia

Crius

Eurybia

The Rivers

The Oceanids

Helios

Selene

Eos

Astraeus

Pallas

Perses

Cronus

Rhea

Coeus

Phoebe

Hestia

Hera

Poseidon

Zeus

LETO

Asteria

Demeter

Hades

Apollo

Artemis

Hecate

Iapetus

Clymene

Themis

(Zeus)

Mnemosyne

Atlas

Menoetius

Prometheus

Epimetheus

The Horae

The Muses

Latona with the infants Apollo and Artemis, by Francesco Pozzi, 1824, marble - Sculpture Gallery, Chatsworth House - Derbyshire, England

The Rape of Leto by Tityos (c. 515 BC). Leto is third from left.

Phintias - Jastrow (2007)

The rape of Leto by Tityos: Apollo (on the left), his bow and quiver hanging behind him, tries to stop Tityos while Artemis, holding a bow and a arrow, motions him to stop. Side A from an Attic red-figure amphora, ca. 515 BC. From Vulci.

Apollo piercing with his arrows Tityos, who has tried to rape his mother Leto (c. 450–440 BC)

Polygnotos - User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-06-01

Apollo piercing with his arrows Tityos, who has tried to rape his mother Leto. Side A from an Attic red-figured pelike, ca. 450–440 BC.

Latona and the Lycian Peasants, ca. 1605, by Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Paolo Farinati, Latona con i figli Apollo e Artemide. 1590 circa, affresco, Villa Nichesola-Conforti, Ponton di Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella (Verona).

Giuseppeconforti - Opera propria

Paolo Farinati, "Latona con i figli Apollo e Diana", 1590 circa, affresco (restaurato nel 2016).

Kupferstich (1795) von Tommaso Piroli (1752 – 1824) nach einer Zeichnung (1793) von John Flaxman (1755 – 1826).

H.-P.Haack - Antiquariat Dr. Haack Leipzig

Rilievo votivo rappresentante Apollo seduto sul Tripode di Delfi tra la sorella Artemide e la loro madre Leto. Da Atene, secolo V a.C. Esposto nella stanza 19-20 del Museo archeologico nazionale di Atene. Foto di Giovanni Dall'Orto, 10 novembre 2009.

Giovanni Dall'Orto - Opera propria

Annibale Carracci Latona Kromeriz

XVI sec.

Hierapolis Müzesinde sergilenen ve 2. yüzyıl sonuna tarihlenen Artemis, Leto ve Apollon heykelleri.

Cobija - Opera propria

National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. --- Εθνικό Αρχαιολογική Μουσείο. Αθήνα.

Tilemahos Efthimiadis from Athens, Greece - Bas-relief of a pedestal, marble (Mid-fourth century av. J.-C.) Uploaded by Marcus Cyron

Brauron - Relief of the Gods

420 - 410 a.C.

Brauron - Votive Relief

340 a.C.

urbino, pittore di marsia di milano, tondino con latona e i lici 1525-1535 circa

Dirk Dalens I Landscape with Latona

tra il 1615 e il 1676

Adam Elsheimer - Latona und die lykischen Bauern

1607/1608 circa

Favola di Latona (Latona trasforma i pastori di Licia in rane)

Orazio De Ferrari - Collezione privata - Olio su tela, cm. 193 x 261

Tra il 1638 e il 1642

Latona und die in Frösche verwandelten Bauern, flämische Schule; Gouache, mit Goldfarbe gehöht; 15,6 x 20,2 cm

18th/19th century (?)

Marco Antonio Franceschini: Latona, Kupferstich; 1829, gestochen von Friedrich John

Gillis van Coninxloo - Landscape with Leto and Peasants of Lykia
seconda metà del XVI sec.

Le Giocatrici di astragali, da Ercolano, dipinto su marmo, opera firmata da Alessandro di Atene (ALEXANDROS ATHENAIOS EGRAPhEN - Alessandro ateniese dipinse - nell'angolo in alto a sinistra), oggi nel Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples) (inv. 9562). I nomi scritti in greco accanto alle diverse figure permettono di identificare con sicurezza la scena: si tratta di Febe che cerca di pacificare Latona e Niobe, mentre a terra due delle niobidi, Hilearia e Agle, continuano a giocare con gli astragali, inconsapevoli della loro imminente morte.

Olivierw - Opera propria

Italienische Landschaft mit Latona

Latona turning the Lycian peasants into frogs

Unknown Painter, XVIII sec.

Jacopo Tintoretto - Latona e i contadini della Licia
tra il 1545 e il 1548

Gabriel Guay, Latone et les paysans 1877 château du roi René Peyrolles en Provence

Latone fuyant les persécutions de Junon emporte ses enfants Apollon et Diane

Latone Vengée Baléchou Jean-Joseph Cathelin 1787

Leto (Latona).

Illustrated by Engravings on Wood. - A Smaller Classical Mythology: With Translations from the Ancient Poets, and Questions Upon the Work by William Smith. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1882. P.59

Leto (divine mother of Apollo and Artemis), unfortunately poorly preserved torso. Perhaps torso of cult statue. Ivory and gold. Finding in Delphi, probably Ionian work, around 550 BC. Archaeological Museum of Delphi.

Zde - Opera propria

Marcantonio Franceschini
1692-1709 circa

Metropolitan Richart Latona

William Henry Rinehart (1825–1874) - Opera propria by Ad Meskens.

Latona turns four bathers into frogs for muddying the water she wishes to drink

Othea's Epistle (Queen's Manuscript)

Anonimo: XV sec.

Parc de Versailles, parterre de Latone, Latone et ses enfants Diane et Appolon (bassin de Latone), par Gaspar et Baltazar Marsy.

Magdalena van de Passe - Latona and the Lycian peasants (Fogg Museum)

Pesaro, latona, 1545 ca..

File:Philippe Thomassin Antiquarum statuarum Urbis Romae libri ubs

Engraving from Antiquarum statuarum Urbis Romae libriPhilippe Thomassin - Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg, G 183 IIdopo il 1610

Johann Georg Platzer - Latona verwandelt die lykischen Bauern in Frösche.
‚Latona‘ is the Roman gods assimilated to the Greek goddess ‚Leto‘
1730 circa

Roma Museo Etrusco Statua Latona
Sergio D’Afflitto

S Queen Mary. Long Beach California. First Class Restaurant Doors. Detail. 1934.

Troy, François de - Portrait of a young woman as Leto.
prima del 1730

Wenceslas Hollar - Latona 1649

Wenceslaus Hollar - Artwork from University of Toronto Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection

The myth of Latona

Château de Versailles

Roman goddesses from Piroli's Antiquities of Herculaneum
The Roman goddesses Latona, Niobe, Phoebe, Aglaia (the youngest of the three Graces) and Hileaera, the latter two playing a game of astragali or knucklebones. Painting on marble by Alexander the Athenian discovered in Resina in May 1786. Copperplate engraved by Tommaso Piroli from his own Antichita di Ercolano (Antiquities of Herculaneum) Rome 1789. Italian artist and engraver Piroli (1752-1824) published six volumes between 1789 and 1807 documenting the murals and bronzes found in Heraculaneum and Pompeii. (Photo by Florilegius/SSPL/Getty Images)