Lethe - apollo, leto and artemis

LETHE, "Oblivion," in Greek mythology, the daughter of Eris (Hesiod, Theog. 227). Lethe is also the name of a river (or plain, Aristophanes, Frogs, 186) in the infernal regions. Orphism (see the Petilia tablet, Kern, Orphic. frag., 32) distinguished a spring of memory and one of oblivion, and near Lebadeia, at the oracle of Trophonius, which was counted an entrance to the lower world, the two springs Mnemosyne and Lethe were shown (Pausanias ix. 39. 8).

LETO

(Latin, Latona), a Titaness, the daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, and mother of Apollo and Artemis. The chief seats of her legend were Delos and Delphi, and the generally accepted tradition is a union of the legends of these two places. Leto, pregnant by Zeus, sought a place of refuge to he delivered. After long wandering she reached the barren isle of Delos, which, according to Pindar (Frag. 87, 88), was a wandering rock borne about by the waves till it was fixed to the bottom of the sea for the birth of Apollo and Artemis. In the oldest forms of the legend Hera is not mentioned ; but afterwards the wanderings of Leto are ascribed to the jealousy of that goddess, enraged at her amour with Zeus. The foundation of Delphi follows im

mediately on the birth of the god ; and on the sacred way between Tempe and Delphi the giant Tityus offers violence to Leto and is immediately slain by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis (Odyssey, xi. 576-81; Apollodorus i. 23). Such are the main facts of the Leto legend in its common literary form, which is due especially to the two Homeric hymns to Apollo. But Leto is a real goddess, not a mere mythological figure. She has been plausibly, identified with the Lycian goddess Lada, and in Lycia graves are frequently placed under her protection, and she is also known as a goddess of fertility and as Kourotrophos ("rearer of youths"). It is to be observed that she appears far more conspicuously in the Apolline myths than in those which grew round the great centres of Artemis worship, the reason being that the idea of Apollo and Artemis as twins is one of later growth on Greek soil.

See Apollo (Oxford, 1908), p. 31.