ILITIA (Εἰλείβωσ). — In Crete Ἐλεύβωσ, in Laconia Ἐλέβωσ, in literature Ἐλεύβωσ, perhaps from the root ελυβ, with the meaning “to come (into the light)”; Latin Ilithyia*. She is the goddess who helps bring childbirths happily to light, a function that led her to be assimilated to Hera and Artemis, eventually becoming their epithet, and respectively, among the Latins, to Juno Lucina and Diana.
Her cult, of great antiquity, was widespread in various places in Greece, especially at Delos, Delphi, Attica, and Tegea. In Crete, Homer (Od., XVIII, 188) mentions a sacred cave dedicated to I. Excavations carried out in the city of Lato
(Priansos) have brought to light inscriptions in which the goddess is associated with deities of the oath; according to Nilsson, this would make I. also a guardian of private law.
In Rome I. received a solemn sacrifice during the Secular Games (17 B.C.) celebrated by Augustus, who offered her a libation of 27 cakes on the second night of the festival, as documented by the official record (Commentarium) of the same, in which the prayer to the goddess is reported. She is invoked in the singular (as Horace also does in the Secular Song, 17, where he gives her the epithets Juno Lucina and Genetrix), whereas from the mention in the Commentarium (deis Ilithyis), from the number of the cakes (3 × 9 = 27), and by analogy with the three Moirae, to whom the sacrifice was made on the first night, it may be inferred that in Rome too, as in Greece, I. was invoked also in the plural: Εὐαέθωσι, Ilithyiae.