Leto 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 was not present and Aphrodite was not either but Rhea attended. 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 that was the case, she would not have assembled here. 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
Leto forward to explain the origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη "lḗthē" (lethe, oblivion) and λωτός "lotus" (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one". In 20th-century sources "Leto" is traditionally derived from Lycian "lada", "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian "lada" may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα "Leda". Other scholars (Paul Kretschmer, Erich Bethe, Pierre Chantraine and R. S. P. Beekes) have suggested a Pre-Greek origin. According