Leto
The Rape of Leto by Tityos ca. 515 BC. From Vulci. Leto is third from left.
Abode	Delos
Consort	Zeus
Parents	Coeus and Phoebe
Siblings	Asteria
Children	Apollo and Artemis
Roman equivalent	Latona

In Greek mythology, Leto (Greek: Λητώ; Λατώ, Latō in Dorian Greek, etymology and meaning disputed) is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe and the sister of Asteria.^[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.^[6]

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).^[7] Walter Burkert notes^[8] that in Phaistos she appears in connection with an initiation cult.

Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards with the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized.^[9] In Greek inscriptions, the Letoides are referred to as the "national gods" of the country.^[10] Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos predated Hellenic influence in the region, however,^[11] and united the Lycian confederacy of city-states. The Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified, was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia.^[12] There was, of course, a further Letoon at Delos.

A measure of what a primal goddess Leto was can be recognized in her father and mother. Her Titan father is called "Coeus," and his obscure name^[13] links him to the sphere of heaven from pole to pole.^[14] Leto's mother "Phoebe" is precisely the "bright, purifying" epithet of the full moon.^[15]

Etymology[link]

Several explanations have been put forward to explain the origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Possibly related to "lethe" (λήθη; oblivion) and "Lotus" (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one".^[16] It is most likely to have a Lycian origin, as her earliest cult was centered there. Leto may have the same Lycian origin as "Leda", meaning "woman/wife" in the ancient Lycian language.

Birth of Artemis and Apollo[link]

When Hera, the most conservative of goddesses — for she had the most to lose in changes to the order of nature —^[17] discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she realized that the offspring would cement the new order. She was powerless to stop the flow of events. "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."^[18] Hera banned Leto from giving birth on "terra firma", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun.^[19] Antoninus Liberalis is not alone in hinting that Leto came down from the land of the Hyperboreans 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^[20] for her denning. Another late source, Aelian, also links Leto with wolves and Hyperboreans:

Wolves are not easily delivered of their young, only after twelve days and twelve nights, for the people of Delos maintain that this was the length of time that it took Leto to travel from the Hyperboreoi to Delos."^[21]

Most accounts agree that she found the barren floating island of Delos, still bearing its archaic name of Asterios, which was neither mainland nor a real island, and gave birth there, promising the island wealth from the worshippers who would flock to the obscure birthplace of the splendid god who was to come. The island was surrounded by swans. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and later became sacred to Apollo.

It is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail, as Callimachus wrote,^[22] as if she were merely revealing another manifestation of herself. By contrast, Leto labored for nine nights and nine days for Apollo, according to the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in the presence of all the first among the deathless goddesses as witnesses: Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis and the "loud-moaning" sea-goddess Amphitrite. Only Hera kept apart, perhaps to kidnap Eileithyia or Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor. Instead Artemis, having been born first, assisted with the birth of Apollo. Another version, in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and in an Orphic hymn, states that Artemis was born before Apollo, on the island of Ortygia, and that she helped Leto cross the sea to Delos the next day to give birth there to Apollo.

Witnesses at the birth of Apollo[link]

According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to be witnesses at 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 dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymn's hearers.^[23] The dynasty that is so concerned to be authenticated in this myth is the new dynasty of Zeus and the Olympian Pantheon, and the goddesses at Delos who bear witness to the rightness of the birth are the great goddesses of the old order. Demeter is not present; her mother Rhea attends. Aphrodite, a generation older than Zeus, is not present either. The goddess Dione (in her name simply the "Goddess") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona): if this were so, she would not have assembled here.

Chthonic assailants[link]

Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became the enemies of Apollo and Artemis. One was the giant Tityos, a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.

Another ancient earth creature that had to be overcome was the dragon Pytho, or Python, which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterwards, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.

The Lycian Letoon[link]

Leto was intensely worshipped in Lycia, Asia Minor.^[24] In Delos and Athens she was worshipped primarily as an adjunct to her children. Herodotus reported^[25] a temple to her in Egypt supposedly attached to a floating island^[26] called "Khemmis" in Buto, which also included a temple to an Egyptian god Greeks identified by interpretatio graeca as Apollo. There, Herodotus was given to understand, the goddess whom Greeks recognised as Leto was worshipped in the form of Wadjet, the cobra-headed goddess of Lower Egypt.

Leto in Crete[link]

Leto was also worshipped in Crete, whether one of "certain Cretan goddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form, influenced by the Minoan goddess".^[27] Veneration of a local Leto is attested at Phaistos^[28] (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.^[29] As Leto Phytia she was a mother-deity.

Leto of the golden spindle[link]

Pindar calls the goddess Leto Chryselakatos,^[30] an epithet that was attached to her daughter Artemis as early as Homer.^[31] "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.^[32]

The Lycian peasants[link]

Latona and the Lycian Peasants, ca. 1605, by Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Leto's introduction into Lycia was met with resistance; there, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses,^[33] when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia.^[34] The peasants there refused to allow her to do so by stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond. Leto turned them into frogs for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers.

This scene is represented in the central fountain, the Bassin de Latone, in the garden terrace of Versailles.

Niobe[link]

Niobe, a queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto had only two. For her hubris, Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, and Artemis her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Zeus after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and either turned to stone as she wept or killed herself. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death, when the gods themselves entombed them.

The Niobe narrative appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses, (Book VI) where Latona (Leto) has demanded the women of Thebes to go to her temple and burn incense. Niobe, queen of Thebes, enters in the midst of the worship and insults the goddess, claiming that having beauty, better parentage and more children than Latona, she is more fit to be worshipped than the goddess. To punish this insolence, Latona begs Apollo and Artemis to avenge her against Niobe and to uphold her honor. Obedient to their mother, the twins slay Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, leaving her childless, and her husband Amphion kills himself. 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.

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Leto

• Theoi.com, Leto
• Pictures of the sanctuary for Leto at Letoum

Randi Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg at the 2012 World Economic Forum
Born	Randi Jayne Zuckerberg (1982-02-28) February 28, 1982 (age 30)
Residence	Palo Alto, California, U.S.[1]
Other names	Randi Jayne
Alma mater	Harvard (2003), psychology[1]
Occupation	Former Director of Market Development and Spokeswoman for Facebook[2]
Home town	Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.[3]
Website
Facebook.com/Randi

Zuckerberg at the 2008 Facebook f8 Conference

Randi Jayne Zuckerberg^[4] (born February 28, 1982) is an American internet entrepreneur. She is the former marketing director of Facebook, and older sister of the company's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Ranked among 50 "Digital Power Players" by the Hollywood Reporter in 2010,^[2] Zuckerberg organized and also was a correspondent for the ABC News / Facebook Democratic Party and Republican Party U.S. Presidential primaries debates in 2008 as well as the CNN/Facebook Inauguration Day Partnership in 2009 and Comcast’s Facebook Diaries.^[5] Zuckerberg also was a correspondent at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions for Facebook in 2008. Remaining politically neutral,^[6] she told the Wall Street Journal that her Facebook journalist team was treated at the DNC "like rock stars."^[7] On the evening of November 2, 2010, Zuckerberg worked at a "town hall" assembled by ABC News as part of its television coverage of U.S. national midterm elections.^[6] The full seven hours of this event were webcast in their entirety on both ABC's website and Facebook.

She authored Spark Your Career in Advertising. Prior to working at Facebook, she was a panelist on Forbes on Fox.^[1]

On August 10, 2010, Zuckerberg announced on Twitter that she will be doing a cameo in a scene in a major motion picture.^[8]

In 2011, she gave birth to a boy, Asher, with husband Brent Tworetzky.^[9][10]

In 2011 Zuckerberg advocated the abolishment of anonymity on the Internet to protect children and young adults from cyber-bullying, saying that people hide behind their anonymity.^[11][12][13]

In August 2011 she resigned from Facebook and announced she was starting a new social media firm named "RtoZ Media".^{[14][15][16][17]} In February 2012 she changed the company name to "R to Z Studios" ^[18]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Randi Zuckerberg

• RtoZ Media
• Randi Zuckerberg on Facebook
• Randi Zuckerberg on Twitter

This article about a United States businessperson is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Jared Leto
Leto at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009.
Born	(1971-12-26) December 26, 1971 (age 40) Bossier City, Louisiana, U.S.
Other names	Bartholomew Cubbins, Angakok Panipaq
Occupation	Musician, composer, singer, songwriter, producer, actor, director, photographer
Years active	1992–present
Relatives	Shannon Leto (brother)
Website
jaredleto.com

Jared Joseph Leto (born December 26, 1971) is an American actor, director, producer, musician, and occasional model. Leto has appeared in both big budget Hollywood films and smaller projects from independent producers and art houses. He rose to prominence for playing Jordan Catalano in the teenage drama My So-Called Life (1994). He later made his film debut in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and received first notable critical praise for his performance in Prefontaine (1997). Leto played supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998) and Girl, Interrupted (1999), as well as the lead role in the horror film Urban Legend (1998), and earned critical acclaim after portraying heroin addict Harry Goldfarb in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000). He has worked with director David Fincher in Fight Club (1999) and Panic Room (2002). Since the 2000s, Leto has been nominated for awards for his work in such films as American Psycho (2000), Highway (2002), Lord of War (2005), Lonely Hearts (2006), Chapter 27 (2007), and Mr. Nobody (2009).

Leto is the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter for 30 Seconds to Mars. He formed the rock band in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, along with his older brother Shannon Leto. Signed with Immortal and Virgin, 30 Seconds to Mars released their self-titled debut album in 2002 to positive reviews. The band's follow-up album, A Beautiful Lie (2005), went platinum in several countries. This Is War, the band's third album, arrived in December 2009. Leto has also directed music videos, including the MTV Video Music Award nominated "The Kill" (2006), "Kings and Queens" (2009), and "Hurricane" (2010).

Early life and education[link]

Jared Joseph Leto was born December 26, 1971, in Bossier City, Louisiana. His parents divorced when he was a child, leaving him in the care of his mother, Constance.^[1] This separation led to a traveling life with young Jared moving with his family – mother Constance Leto, older brother Shannon Leto and grandfather – from his native Louisiana to different cities in Colorado, Virginia, Wyoming, and Haiti.^[2] "My mom's father was in the Air Force," Leto explained, "so moving around a lot was a normal way of life."^[3] His father remarried and died soon after.^[1] Leto has two younger half-brothers from his father's second marriage. Leto wanted to help his family and became a dishwasher at small snack-bar at 12, and he was a doorman at 16.^[4] Constance Leto always encouraged children’s craving for art.^[3] "I grew up in environment of actors, musicians, photographers, artists and different theatrical persons," he stated in an interview with Kerrang!; "Through this atmosphere there were no any clear boundaries and straight lines. We were proclaiming a freedom of creation and self-expression."^[5] His first musical instrument was a broken-down piano and he grew up singing classic rock, from Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin.^[6]

After dropping out briefly in the 10th grade, Leto decided to return and focus on his education at the private Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia, but graduated from Emerson Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., in 1989.^[1] When he finished school, Leto enrolled at Philadelphia's University of the Arts and majored in painting.^[1] However, after developing an interest in acting, he transferred to New York City's School of Visual Arts, where he majored in filmmaking.^[1] While he was a student there, he wrote and starred in his own short film, Crying Joy.^[2]

Acting career[link]

1992–97: Early work[link]

In 1992, Leto moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting.^[2] Leto got his first roles in TV shows like Camp Wilder (1992) and Almost Home (1993) before he becoming a regular in the 1994 series My So-Called Life^[7] as the object of Claire Danes' affection, Jordan Catalano.^[8] In 1994, Leto also made his television film debut in Cool and the Crazy.^[9] Gaining a reputation as a teen idol, Leto landed his first film role in the 1995 drama How to Make an American Quilt.^[10] Leto later co-starred with Christina Ricci in The Last of the High Kings and appeared in Switchback.

1997–99: Early critical success[link]

Leto was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" in 1996 and 1997.

Leto took his first leading role in 1997's Prefontaine, a biography of 1970's Olympic hopeful Steve Prefontaine.^[11] For the role, Leto immersed himself in the runner's life, meeting with members of the family and Prefontaine's friends. He bore a striking resemblance to the real Prefontaine, also adopting athlete's voice and upright running style.^[12] The transformation was so complete, that when the runner's sister, Linda, first saw him in character, she broke down and cried.^[13] Critical response praised Leto's acting; Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "With hypnotic blue eyes and dirty blond hair, Leto captures the rock-star style Prefontaine affected, and he looks natural in fiery performances on the track, as well as off, where Pre affected a brash, confrontational style," while Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader felt that "As the driven competitor who learns to make hubris work for him, Jared Leto gives a complex performance that suggests a deep, intriguing interior to the character even as he maintains a convincing one-dimensional facade."^[14][15]

After landing the lead role of a British aristocrat in the 1998 drama Basil, Leto starred in the teen horror film Urban Legend.^[16] He plays a school journalist and love interest of Alicia Witt’s character. Together, they go up against a crazed killer that is recreating urban legend massacres. The film was a massive success commercially, though critics mostly disliked the film.^[17] Leto was then pleased to get a role in the World War II film The Thin Red Line, as part of a cast including Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and Adrien Brody. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and was a moderate success at the box office.^[18] In 1999, he appeared as a gay high school teacher who attracts the attentions of Robert Downey, Jr. in James Toback's Black and White. The same year, he co-starred with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted, a film that tells the story of mental patient Susanna Kaysen, and which was adapted from Kaysen's memoir of the same name. Leto was nominated for a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award in the category of Best Supporting Actor for his performance, but lost to Michael Clarke Duncan for The Green Mile. He was also seen in David Fincher's cult classic Fight Club, a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name. While Edward Norton and Brad Pitt were the lead roles, Leto took the supporting role of a bleached blond Angel Face that was beaten almost beyond recognition.

2000–06: Worldwide recognition[link]

Leto played the supporting role of Paul Allen in Mary Harron's American Psycho, a film based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. He then starred as heroin addict Harry Goldfarb in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream.^[19] To prepare for his role in the film, Leto decided to live on the streets of New York City and refrain from having sex with his then fiancé, Cameron Diaz, for two months prior to shooting.^[20] He lost 28 pounds to realistically play his heroin addicted character.^[21] After the shooting of the film, Leto moved to Portugal, shaved his head and lived in a monastery for several months to gain weight.^[22][23] He admits that playing the part of Harry Goldfarb was "sadomasochistic... the hardest thing I've done".^[20] The same year, Leto played Glen Walker, an up-and-coming country rocker, in Adam Collis' directorial debut Sunset Strip.^[24] In 2001, he co-produced and had uncredited parts in Sol Goode.^[25]

After the critical success of Requiem for a Dream, Leto's next role was as the lead character in 2002's Highway. Set in 1994, Leto is caught with a gangster's wife and flee to Seattle with his best friend Jake Gyllenhaal in the week preceding Kurt Cobain's suicide. He was nominated for a Video Premiere Award for his performance. In 2002, Leto worked again with director David Fincher in Panic Room, playing a villain who terrorizes Jodie Foster.^[26] The film grossed over $30 million in its opening weekend in the United States, the best performance of a film Leto has appeared in to date.^[27] He was also in Phone Booth, playing an actor in a theater production of Drockula. He and Colin Farrell's character have a quick scene in an alley. The scene was deleted from the film, but restored when the film was aired on television.^[28]

After spending two years pursuing a career in music, Leto returned to film work in 2004 in the supporting role of Hephaestion in Oliver Stone's Alexander.^[29] The film failed domestically, with Stone attributing its poor reception to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139 million outside the United States.^[30][31] The following year Leto portrayed Nicolas Cage’s younger brother Vitaly Orlov in the action-drama Lord of War. The film was well-received by most critics and received a special mention for excellence in film making from the National Board of Review.^[32][33] In 2005, he was also in Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, a documentary on the life and work of writer Hubert Selby, Jr.^[34] Leto later starred in 2006's Lonely Hearts.^[35] Playing Fernandez, he co-starred with Salma Hayek who played the role Martha. The film received mixed responses but Leto's performance was praised by many critics who wrote "it's worth seeing for Leto's performance alone."^[36]