LATINUS, in Roman legend, king of the aborigines in Latium, and eponymous hero of the Latin race. In Hesiod (_Theogony_, 1013) he is the son of Odysseus and Circe, and ruler of the Tyrsenians; in Virgil, the son of Faunus and the nymph Marica, a national genealogy being substituted for the Hesiodic, which probably originated from a Greek source. Latinus was a shadowy personality, invented to explain the origin of Rome and its relations with Latium, and only obtained importance in later times through his legendary connexion with Aeneas and the foundation of Rome. According to Virgil (_Aeneid_, vii.-xii.), Aeneas, on landing at the mouth of the Tiber, was welcomed by Latinus, the peaceful ruler whose seat of government was Laurentum, and ultimately married his daughter Lavinia.
Other accounts of Latinus, differing considerably in detail, are to be found in the fragments of Cato's _Origines_ (in Servius's commentary on Virgil) and in Dionysius of Halicarnassus; see further authorities in the article by J. A. Hild, in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités_.
LATITUDE (Lat. _latitudo_, _latus_, broad), a word meaning breadth or width, hence, figuratively, freedom from restriction, but more generally used in the geographical and astronomical sense here treated. The latitude of a point on the earth's surface is its angular distance from the equator, measured on the curved surface of the earth. The direct measure of this distance being impracticable, it has to be determined by astronomical observations. As thus determined it is the angle between the direction of the plumb-line at the place and the plane of the equator. This is identical with the angle between the horizontal planes at the place and at the equator, and also with the elevation of the celestial pole above the horizon (see ASTRONOMY). Latitude thus determined by the plumb-line is termed _astronomical_. The _geocentric latitude_ of a place is the angle which the line from the earth's centre to the place makes with the plane of the equator. _Geographical latitude_, which is used in mapping, is based on the supposition that the earth is an elliptic spheroid of known compression, and is the angle which the normal to this spheroid makes with the equator. It differs from the astronomical latitude only in being corrected for local deviation of the plumb-line.