Leto- Greek TitanTitan"Mother of Apollo and Artemis"

The Wandering

Leto was a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. When she conceived twins by Zeus, Hera discovered the affair and turned her jealousy upon the pregnant Titaness. She decreed that Leto could give birth on no land under the sun — no mainland, no island, nothing connected to the earth — and sent the dragon Python to pursue her wherever she went. Leto wandered the world in labor, rejected by every land she approached, each one fearing Hera's wrath.

The Birth on Delos

At last Leto reached Delos, a small island that floated unanchored on the sea and was therefore not bound by Hera's decree. Delos agreed to shelter her if the child she bore would make the island his sacred seat. The goddesses gathered to assist, but Hera detained Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, on Olympus, keeping Leto in agony for nine days. Finally Iris was sent to fetch Eileithyia with an offer of a golden necklace. Leto grasped a palm tree and gave birth first to Artemis, who then served as midwife and helped deliver her twin brother Apollo. Delos, once a wandering rock, was thereafter fixed in place and became Apollo's sacred island.

Mother's Honor

Leto's children were fierce defenders of her dignity. When Niobe, queen of Thebes, boasted of her fourteen children and mocked Leto for bearing only two, Apollo and Artemis slaughtered every one of Niobe's sons and daughters. Niobe wept until the gods turned her to stone, and a rock on Mount Sipylus weeps in her memory. When the giant Tityos attempted to assault Leto, the twins struck him down, and Zeus condemned him to eternal punishment in Tartarus — stretched across nine acres with vultures devouring his liver. Leto received cult worship alongside her children at Delos and throughout Lycia, where the wolf was sacred to her.