I do not presume to enter into the question whether we ought to consider that the Latona of Homer represents the Blessed Virgin, who was divinely elected to be the actual mother of our Lord; or rather our ancient mother Eve, whose seed He was also in a peculiar sense to be.
So far as personal application is concerned, the same arguments might be used upon the subject, as upon the interpretation of the original promise recorded in Scripture: and the question is one rather of the interpretation of Scripture, than of Homer. The relation which appears to me to be proved from the text of the poems, is between the deity called Latona and the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis. As to all beyond this, I should suppose it perhaps more just to regard her as a typical person, exhibiting through womanhood the truth of our Blessed Lord’s humanity, than as the mere representative of any individual personage.
Backward as is the position of Latona in the practical religion of Homer, the universal recognition of the deity is sufficiently established: on the one hand by her place among the deities of the Trojan party; on the other, by the punishment of Niobe for an offence against her either in Greece, or at the least in a recognised Greek legend; by the punishment of Tityus; and by her inclusion in the Catalogue of the Fourteenth Iliad.
Her slightness of action.
To this very remarkable deity no utterance of any kind is ever ascribed by Homer, and with, I think, three small exceptions, nothing of personal and individual action. Even when she takes her place among the deities in the array of battle, it is not said that she stood up against Mercury, but simply that Mercury stood up against her[268].
The three cases are as follows. First, when he makes over to her the victory in waiving the fight, she offers no reply; but simply picks up her daughter Diana’s bow and arrows, and goes after her, apparently with the intention of offering her comfort. The next action[269] attributed to her is this: that when Apollo[270] has carried the bruised and stunned Æneas into his temple on Pergamus, Latona and Diana tend him there. Thus both of these actions exhibit her in strict ideal subordination, so to speak, to one of her children, as though by tradition she existed only for them. But the second is especially remarkable, and alike illustrative of the traditional basis of the Mother and of the Son.
In the first place, as it appears to me, there can hardly be a circumstance more singular, according to the principles of the Greek mythology, than that any one deity should be introduced as acting, not in her own temple, but in the temple of another. Such however is here the case with Latona and Diana in the temple of Apollo.
Next, they are acting as purely ministerial to him. They do not enter into the fray: it is he who has been there, and who, having deposited Æneas, immediately prosecutes the affairs of the battle-field, while they, as his satellites, give effect to his purpose in setting about the restoration of the disabled warrior.
Lastly, the significance of this action is raised to the highest point, when we recollect that this is a mother executing the design of her son. Latona’s action in the Twenty-first Book, like that of Dione with Venus, can be accounted for by her maternal character. But there is no case in the Homeric poems besides this, where we see a parent-god thus acting ministerially in the execution of the plans of his or her offspring. The primeval tradition, once admitted as the basis of the mythological group, furnishes us with the key to what would otherwise be another great anomaly.
The third case is in entire harmony with the other two. Tityus, the son of Earth, is tortured in the nether world for having offered violence to Latona, and the crime was committed when she was on her way through Panopeus to Delphi. This was probably the route from Delos to that place: so that again the poet seems to represent Latona in close but subordinate connection with her son, by making her travel between the seats of his two already famous oracles.