LATONA (Ἀγτώ). - Greek goddess, daughter of the Titan Koios and of Phoebe; loved by Zeus, to escape the fury of Hera she took refuge on Delos — the wandering island of the Aegean that from then on became fixed — where she gave birth to Artemis and Apollo (a birth commemorated with two festivals celebrated there on the 6th and 7th of Thargelion).

On Delos there was also the principal of the sanctuaries sacred to L. (Ἀγτῶον), with an archaic wooden statue and a bronze palm tree, which recalled the one to which the goddess had clung at the moment of childbirth; on the same island, moreover, her festivals (Ἀγτῶς) and her cult were closely connected with those of her children. Various other temples were scattered throughout Greece, on Crete, but above all in Asia Minor, her original homeland, where she was venerated as "lady" and as protectress of tombs and oaths; in these lands, furthermore, she seems originally to have been connected with vegetation and with chthonic rites.

Greek statues of L. were also placed in Rome, in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine (by Augustus) and in that of Concordia; representations of the goddess under the name of Letun also appear on Etruscan mirrors of the Hellenistic age.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: M. P. Nilsson, Minoan-mycenaean religion, Lund 1927, p. 444 ff.; Wehrli, s. v. in Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. V, col. 555 ff.; G. Barbieri, s. v. in F. de Ruggiero, Diz. epigr., IV, pp. 450-57.

Cesare D'Onofrio

@incollection{ec7_latona_agto, author = {D'Onofrio, Cesare}, title = {Latona (ἈΓΤΩ͂)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {949}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/latona-agto} }

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Latona (Ἀγτώ)

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