Phoebe was the Greek Titaness who was the mother of Leto and, through Leto, the grandmother of Apollo.
Phoebe belonged to the older generation of gods called the Titans. She was a daughter of Uranus, the Sky, and Gaia, the Earth, and was traditionally paired with her brother Coeus. Their daughters were Leto and Asteria. Leto later became the mother of the Olympian twins Apollo and Artemis, making Phoebe their grandmother.
Phoebe’s name means “bright” or “radiant,” and later Greek and Roman poets used Phoebe as an epithet for Artemis, just as Phoebus could refer to Apollo. That later usage can cause confusion: Phoebe the Titaness is not simply another name for Apollo’s mother, Leto, nor is she identical to Artemis.
In Aeschylus’s account of Delphi, Phoebe receives the oracle from Themis and passes it to Apollo. This story gives her a role in the succession of prophetic authority, although it is not the only ancient tradition about Delphi. Phoebe herself had comparatively little independent cult or mythology.