Leto (Latona) and 68 Leto Asteroid - Versailles, France
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Metro2
N 48° 48.337 E 002° 07.051
31U E 435202 N 5406223
Leto is the mother of Apollo and Artemis. (Zeus is the father.)
Leto is her Greek name. She is known as Latona by the Romans.
Waymark Code: WMD0QP
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/03/2011
Views: 21
This sculpture of Leto (Latona) is part of the Latona Fountain in the Gardens of the Versailles Palace. The artists are Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy. The work depicts Latona (known as Leto by the Greeks) naked but for a cloth wrapped around her waist. She holds the infant Apollo on her left and Artemis is seated near her right foot facing the opposite direction.
This website (
visit link) further describes the fountain:
"Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Latona fountain illustrates the legend of Apollo’s mother and Diana protecting her children against the insults of the peasants of Lycia, and calling on Jupiter to avenge them. He heard their plea and transformed them into frogs and lizards.
The central marble group sculpted by the Marsy brothers represents Latona and her children. The group was originally placed on a rock in 1670. It was surrounded by six frogs emerging partly from the water, and twenty-four others around the fountain on the lawn. The goddess then looked towards the Château. This arrangement was modified by Jules Hardouin-Mansart between 1687 and 1689. The rock was replaced on a concentric marble base and the Latona group henceforth gazes towards the Grand Canal. The Latona fountain is prolonged by a parterre holding the two lizard pools."
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us that Leto:
"...is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe.[1] The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace.[2] In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins,[3] Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus. For the classical Greeks, Leto is scarcely to be conceived apart from being pregnant and finding a place to be delivered of Apollo and Artemis, for Hera being jealous, made it so all lands shunned her. Finally, she finds an island that isn't attached to the ocean floor so it isn't considered land and she can give birth.[4] This is her one active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim[5] and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. In Roman mythology, Leto's equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun."
As for the asteroid, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"68 Leto ( /'li?to?/ lee-toh; Greek: ??t?) is a large main belt asteroid. Its spectral type is S. It was discovered by Robert Luther on April 29, 1861. The asteroid is named after Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis in Greek mythology."