**LATONA** (Ἀντών). — From the Greek, daughter of the Titan Coeus and Phoebe; loved by Zeus, to escape the wrath of Hera she took refuge on Delos—the wandering island of the Aegean which from that time became fixed—and there gave birth to Artemis and Apollo (the birth was commemorated with two festivals held there on the 6th and 7th of Thargelion).
At Delos was also found the principal sanctuary sacred to Latona (Ἀντών), containing 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 (Ἀντών) and her cult were closely connected with those of her children. Various other temples were scattered throughout Greece, in Crete, but above all in Asia Minor, her land of origin, where she was venerated as “lady” and as protector of tombs and oaths; in these regions, furthermore, she seems to have been originally connected with vegetation and with chthonic rites.
Greek statues of Latona 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 Letum also appear on Hellenistic Etruscan mirrors.
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LA TOUR D'AUVERGNE, HENRI-ALPHONSE-GODEFROY-BERNARD, prince of LAURAGAIS and of. — French politician, b. 21 Oct. 1823 in Paris, d. 5 May 1871 at the château of Angliers (Vienne). At the age of 18 he entered the diplomatic service as an attaché at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In April 1849 he landed at Civitavecchia together with the aide-de-camp of General Oudinot with the task of reassuring the population of French intentions and making all preparations for the peaceful landing of the expeditionary corps.
Minister of France at Weimar, Florence, and Turin in 1859–60, ambassador to Berlin. Of rigidly Catholic sentiments, in October 1862 he succeeded La Valette as ambassador to Rome. There he found relations between France and the Holy See rather strained, above all because of the attitude of his predecessor, who made no secret of his hostility toward the Holy See. The new ambassador, charged with presenting to the Pope the necessity of recognizing, at least de facto if not de iure, the occupation by the Kingdom of Italy of part of the papal territory, also advised the implementation of reforms in the Papal States. Relations between the two parties improved, but the Holy See was too optimistic about the supposed change in French policy after the appointment of Drouyn de Lhuys as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The position of La Tour d’Auvergne, a man very pleasing to Pius IX, grew more difficult day by day, and the prince greeted with relief his transfer to London in October 1863. Appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1869, in July 1870 he became ambassador to Vienna and negotiated a tripartite Austro-Franco-Italian agreement against Prussia, an agreement that was not concluded because of Napoleon III’s intransigence on the Roman Question.