page_title: Leto
section_title: Chthonic assailants
hierarchical_section_title: Leto / Mythology / Chthonic assailants
caption_attribution_description: English: Apollo piercing with his arrows Tityos, who has tried to rape his mother Leto. Side A from an Attic red-figured pelike, ca. 450–440 BC. Français&#160;: Apollon frappant de ses flèches Tityos, qui a essayé d'enlever sa mère Léto. Face A d'un pélikè attique à figures rouges, v. 450-440 av. J.-C.
context_page_description: In Greek mythology, Leto is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria. She is the mother of Apollo and Artemis.
  The island of Kos is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus, in 2.47 states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera in her jealousy caused all lands to shun her. She eventually found an island that was not attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land and she could give birth. This is her only active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. In Roman mythology, Leto's Roman equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun.
context_section_description: Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became the enemies of Apollo and Artemis. One was the giant Tityos, a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.
  Another ancient earth creature that had to be overcome was the dragon Python, which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.
caption: Apollo piercing with his arrows Tityos, who has tried to rape his mother Leto (c. 450–440 BC)
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