According to Roman mythology, Amata /əˈmeɪtə/ (also called Palanto) was the wife of Latinus, king of the Latins, and the mother of their only child, Lavinia.
When Aeneas asks for Lavinia's hand, Amata objects, because she has already been promised to Turnus, the king of the Rutulians.
Turnus, and his ally Mezentius, leader of the Etruscans, are defeated by Aeneas with the assistance of the Pelasgian colonists from Arcadia and Italic natives of Pallantium, led by that city's founder, the Arcadian Evander of Pallene.
The story of this conflict fills the greater part of the seventh book of Virgil's Aeneid.
Dante imagines a mournful Lavinia, reproaching her mother, Amata, for the grief which her suicide has inflicted.