Leto was the Titaness who became the mother of the Olympian twins Apollo and Artemis.
Leto was the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe and the sister of Asteria. Zeus fathered her children, but Hera’s jealousy made Leto’s pregnancy perilous. According to later traditions, Leto wandered in search of a place where she could give birth, since Hera had made the lands fear sheltering her.
The island of Delos eventually accepted Leto, and Apollo and Artemis were born there. Delos consequently became especially sacred to Apollo, while nearby traditions also connected Leto with the worship of both twins. Apollo became the god associated with prophecy, music, healing, and the sun in later popular tradition; Artemis became goddess of the hunt and was associated with the moon.
Leto is sometimes confused with her daughter Artemis because both became linked with the moon, but Leto’s defining family role is as the twins’ mother. In Roman mythology, she was known as Latona, and the story of her persecution by Hera appears prominently in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.