Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera, the wife of Zeus, in her jealousy ordered all lands to shun her and deny her shelter.

Once Apollo and Artemis are born and grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played.

Leto then asks her twin children to avenge her, and they respond by shooting all of Niobe's sons and daughters dead as punishment.

Usually, Leto is found at Olympus among the other gods, having gained her seat next to Zeus, or accompanying and helping her son and daughter in their various endeavors.

[4] In ancient art, she is presented as a modest, veiled woman in the presence of her children and Zeus, or in the process of being carried off by Tityos.

[6] In 20th century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada, "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia.

[9][10] Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards as the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized.

[15] Moreover, Leto's troubled childbirth bears resemblance to Alcmene's, as both suffered painful extended labours due to Hera not allowing Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to help them, and both stories overall are also thematically linked to the myth of Semele and her son Dionysus, another story of a mortal woman who bore an important son for Zeus and was punished by Hera for that.

Leto's peculiar mythology and ontology has led to suggestions that she might be a composite of two figures, an immortal goddess who bore Artemis, and a mortal woman who gave birth to Apollo.

[23] Plato also makes references to Leto's softness when trying to link etymologically her name to the word ἐθελήμονα ("willing", i.e. to assist those asking for her help),[24] as well as λεῖον ("mild").

[29] Hesiod makes her the sixth out of the seven wives of Zeus, who bore his children before his marriage to Hera,[30] however this element is absent in later accounts, all of which speak of a liaison between the two, that ended up in Leto falling pregnant.

[32] The two earliest poets, Homer and Hesiod, confirm Artemis and Apollo's status as full siblings born to Leto by Zeus, but neither explicitly makes them twins.

According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to witness the birth of Apollo were responding to a public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment.

The goddess Dione (her name simply means "divine" or "she-Zeus") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona).

According to the Bibliotheca, "But Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo.

"[39] Antoninus Liberalis hints that Leto came down from Hyperborea in the guise of a she-wolf, or that she sought out the "wolf-country" of Lycia, formerly called Tremilis, which she renamed to honour wolves that had befriended her.

Poseidon then raised high waves above Ortygia, shielding it from the light of the sun with a water dome; it was later called the island of Delos.

[58] Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.

He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi[59] under the orders of Hera, like Python was, for having slept with Zeus,[60] or alternatively he was simply overwhelmed with lust when he saw her.

[62] For the crime of having tried to rape Leto, one of Zeus' mistresses, he was punished by having his liver being constantly eaten by two vultures in the Underworld.

Zeus, moved by Artemis and Leto's tears and Apollo's words, agreed instantly and commanded Heracles to free Prometheus.

There, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses,[84] when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia.

Niobe is unable to move from grief and seemingly turns to marble, though she continues to weep, and her body is transported to a high mountain peak in her native land.

There, Hera mocks Leto over the children she gave Zeus, downplaying Artemis and Apollo's importance while bringing up their flaws (such as the flaying of Marsyas, or the killing of the Niobids).

[95] A fragment of Aeschylus possibly has Leto as the mother of the moon goddess Selene,[96] as does a scholium on Euripides's tragedy The Phoenician Women which adds Zeus as the father.

The ancient Greek colony of Physcus on the western coast of Asia Minor also contained a magnificent harbour and a grove sacred to Leto.

[126] Veneration of a local Leto is attested at Phaistos[127] (where it is purported that she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis at the islands known today as the Paximadia (also known as Letoai in ancient Crete) and at Lato, which bore her name.

[130] "The conception of a goddess enthroned like a queen and equipped with a spindle seems to have originated in Asiatic worship of the Great Mother", O. Brendel notes, but a lucky survival of an inscribed inventory of her temple on Delos, where she was the central figures of the Delian trinity, records her cult image as sitting on a wooden throne, clothed in a linen chiton and a linen himation.

[131] In ancient Greek and Roman art, Leto was a common subject in vase painting, but she was hard to distinguish due to her not having any special or unique attributes.

[120] In Crete, at the city of Dreros, Spyridon Marinatos uncovered an eighth-century post-Minoan hearth house temple in which there were found three unique figures of Apollo, Artemis and Leto made of brass sheeting hammered over a shaped core (sphyrelata).