Leto: Mother of Apollo and Artemis

Leto (Greek) Latona (Roman)
Leto was a Titaness and the goddess of fruitfulness.
Leto, the daughter of the TITANS Coeus and Phoebe
Leto was always mild, gentlest among the OLYMPIANS and kind to both mortals and immortals, for she is willing to grant whatever is asked of her.
Leto would play the lyre with him in the midst of the gods.
Seduced by Zeus; produced the Artemis and Apollo
Because Zeus made love to Leto, she was hunted over the whole earth by Hera, until she came to Delos where she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis.
Leto is mostly worshipped in conjunction with her children, Apollo and Artemis.

The traditional source of mythology is in this 1855 book
BULFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY:
THE AGE OF FABLE OR STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES
by Thomas Bulfinch
Here is Thomas Bulfitch's reference to Leto by her Roman name: Latona.
A few notes: Apollo and Diana (Artemis (Latin Diana; Etruscan Artumes). Also Juno is Roman for Hera.

LATONA AND THE RUSTICS.

Some thought the goddess in this instance more severe 
than was just, while others praised her conduct as 
strictly consistent with her virgin dignity. As usual, 
the recent event brought older ones to mind, and one of 
the bystanders told this story: "Some countrymen of 
Lycia once insulted the goddess Latona, but not with 
impunity.

When I was young, my father, who had grown too old for 
active labours, sent me to Lycia to drive thence some 
choice oxen, and there I saw the very pond and marsh 
where the wonder happened. Near by stood an ancient 
altar, black with the smoke of sacrifice and almost 
buried among the reeds. I inquired whose altar it might 
be, whether of Faunus or the Naiads, or some god of the 
neighbouring mountain, and one of the country people 
replied, 'No mountain or river god possesses this 
altar, but she whom royal Juno in her jealousy drove 
from land to land, denying her any spot of earth 
whereon to rear her twins.

Bearing in her arms 
the infant deities, Latona reached this land, weary 
with her burden and parched with thirst. By chance she 
espied in the bottom of the valley this pond of clear 
water, where the country people were at work gathering 
willows and osiers. The goddess approached, and 
kneeling on the bank would have slaked her thirst in 
the cool stream, but the rustics forbade her. "Why do 
you refuse me water?" said she; "water is free to all. 
Nature allows no one to claim as property the sunshine, 
the air, or the water. I come to take my share of the 
common blessing. Yet I ask it of you as a favour. I 
have no intention of washing my limbs in it, weary 
though they be, but only to quench my thirst. My mouth 
is so dry that I can hardly speak. A draught of water 
would be nectar to me; it would revive me, and I would 
own myself indebted to you for life itself.

Let these infants move your pity, who stretch out their 
little arms as if to plead for me;" and the children, 
as it happened, were stretching out their arms.

Who would not have been moved with these gentle words 
of the goddess?

But these clowns persisted in their rudeness; they even 
added jeers and threats of violence if she did not 
leave the place. Nor was this all. They waded into the 
pond and stirred up the mud with their feet, so as to 
make the water unfit to drink.

Latona was so angry that she ceased to mind her thirst. 
She no longer supplicated the clowns, but lifting her 
hands to heaven exclaimed, "May they never quit that 
pool, but pass their lives there!"

And it came to pass accordingly. They now live in the 
water, sometimes totally submerged, then raising their 
heads above the surface or swimming upon it. Sometimes 
they come out upon the bank, but soon leap back again 
into the water. They still use their base voices in 
railing, and though they have the water all to 
themselves, are not ashamed to croak in the midst of 
it. Their voices are harsh, their throats bloated, 
their mouths have become stretched by constant railing, 
their necks have shrunk up and disappeared, and their 
heads are joined to their bodies. Their backs are 
green, their disproportioned bellies white, and in 
short they are now frogs, and dwell in the slimy 
pool.

This story explains the allusion in one of Milton's 
sonnets, "On the detraction which followed upon his 
writing certain treatises."

"I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
    By the known laws of ancient liberty,
    When straight a barbarous noise environs me
    Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.
    As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
    Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
    Which after held the sun and moon in fee."

The persecution which Latona experienced from Juno is 
alluded to in the story. The tradition was that the 
future mother of Apollo and Diana, flying from the 
wrath of Juno, besought all the islands of the AEgean 
to afford her a place of rest, but all feared too much 
the potent queen of heaven to assist her rival.

Delos alone consented to become the birthplace of the 
future deities. Delos was then a floating island; but 
when Latona arrived there, Jupiter fastened it with 
adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea, that it 
might be a secure resting-place for his beloved.

Byron alludes to Delos in his "Don Juan":

"The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
    Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
    Where grew the arts of war and peace,
    Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!"

Mother of Leucippus, who was reared as a boy in order 
to fool Galatea's husband, who had ordered the child to 
be killed at birth if it was a girl. Leto answered the 
mother's prayers eventually and changed Leucippus' sex 
to male.

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