Niobe’s seventh and youngest daughter tries in vain to ward off the fatal arrows of Artemis — the goddess’s bother Apollo had already shot Niobe’s seven sons, and Niobe’s husband Amphion of Thebes also lay dead at her feet. The figure is one of the ‘Niobids’ discovered at Rome in 1583, and transferred to the Uffizi in Florence in 1775.
Part 1 of 2
IN the sad and beautiful story of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, we have another instance of the severe punishments meted out by Apollo to those who in any way incurred his displeasure.
Niobe was the proud mother of seven sons and seven daughters, and exulting in the number of her children, she, upon one occasion, ridiculed the worship of Leto, because she had but one son and daughter, and desired the Thebans, for the future, to give to her the honours and sacrifices which they had hitherto offered to the mother of Apollo and Artemis.
The sacrilegious words had scarcely passed her lips before Apollo called upon his sister Artemis to assist him in avenging the insult offered to their mother, and soon their invisible arrows sped through the air.
Précis
In Greek mythology, Niobe was a queen who boasted of her fourteen lovely children, and mocked the goddess Leto for having but two, even suggesting that the worship of Leto should be given to her instead. In revenge, Leto’s children, the god Apollo and his sister Artemis, swept in with their invisible bows and arrows at the ready. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
The Weeping Rock on Mount Sipylus near Manisa in western Turkey, not farm from Smyrna (Izmir). According to the legend, the gods took pity on Niobe’s grief and turned her into this rock; yet still the rock continued to seep tears — which scientists attribute to the rock being made of porous limestone.
APOLLO slew all the sons, and Artemis had already slain all the daughters save one, the youngest and best beloved, whom Niobe clasped in her arms, when the agonized mother implored the enraged deities to leave her, at least, one out of all her beautiful children; but, even as she prayed, the deadly arrow reached the heart of this child also.* Meanwhile the unhappy father, unable to bear the loss of his children, had destroyed himself, and his dead body lay beside the lifeless corpse of his favourite son.
Widowed and childless, the heart-broken mother sat among her dead, and the gods, in pity for her unutterable woe, turned her into a stone, which they transferred to Sipylus, her native Phrygian mountain, where it still continues to shed tears.*
Some accounts allow at least one daughter to survive, for seeking pardon of Leto. Most often named is Meliboea, who turned so pale from fear that she was known ever after as Chloris, ‘the pale one’.
Niobe has thus become a symbol of uncontrollable grief, as we see from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Hamlet looks back over his mother’s reaction to widowhood:
And yet, within a month —
Let me not think on’t — Frailty, thy name is woman! —
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears: — why she, even she —
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn’d longer — married with my uncle.
Précis
Apollo and Artemis took their vengeance upon poor Niobe by slaying all her lovely children (save perhaps one), her husband took his own life in grief. Left all alone, Niobe wept so bitterly that the other gods pitied her, and turned her to stone; yet the tears keep flowing from the rock, which lies today on Mount Sipylus in Turkey. (60 / 60 words)
