LATONA (Ἀγτῶ). - Greek goddess, daughter of the Titan Koios and Phoebea; beloved by Zeus, to escape the wrath of Era she took refuge on Delos—the wandering island of the Aegean which thereafter became fixed—where she gave birth to Artemide and Apollo (the birth commemorated by two festivals celebrated there on the 6th and 7th of Thargelion).
Delos also contained the principal sanctuary sacred to L. (Ἀγτῶον), with an archaic wooden statue and a bronze palm tree, recalling that 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 and Crete, but above all in Asia Minor, her native land, where she was venerated as “lady” and as protectress of tombs and oaths; in these regions, moreover, she appears originally to have been associated with vegetation and with chthonic rites.
Greek statues of L. were also placed in Rome, in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine (by Augusto) and in that of Concordia; representations of the goddess under the name Letun also appear on Etruscan mirrors of the Hellenistic age.