Niobe (; ) was in Greek mythology a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa. She was the wife of Amphion and the sister of Pelops and Broteas.
Niobe is mentioned by Achilles in Homer's Iliad, which relates her hubris, for which she was punished by Leto, who sent Apollo and Artemis to slay all of her children, after which her children lay unburied for nine days while she abstained from food.Iliad 24.603–610 : "[...] the fair-haired Niobe bethought her of meat, albeit twelve children perished in her halls, six daughters and six lusty sons. The sons Apollo slew with shafts from his silver bow, being wroth against Niobe, and the daughters the archer Artemis, for that Niobe had matched her with fair-cheeked Leto, saying that the goddess had borne but twain, while herself was mother to many; wherefore they, for all they were but twain, destroyed them all. For nine days' space they lay in their blood, nor was there any to bury them, for the son of Cronos turned the folk to stones; howbeit on the tenth day the gods of heaven buried them; and Niobe bethought her of meat, for she was wearied with the shedding of tears." Once the gods had interred the slain, Niobe retreated to her native Sipylus, "where Nymphs dance around the River Acheloos,The river Acheloos in Niobe's story should not confused with its much larger namesake, the Acheloos River in mainland Greece. The Acheloos mentioned by Homer could correspond to the modern-day Çaybaşı Stream which flows around the slopes of the Mount Sipylus in immediate proximity of the Weeping Rock associated with her. The plain between the coast and the ancient city of Adramyttium was also called "Thebe" (the present-day Edremit Plain). and though turned to stone, she broods over the sorrows sent by the Gods".Iliad 24.602 ff. Later writersApollodorus, 3.5.6 asserted that Niobe was wedded to Amphion, one of the twin founders of Thebes, where there was a single sanctuary where the twin founders were venerated, but no shrine to Niobe.
Mythology
Family Her father was the ruler of a city located near Manisa in today's Aegean Turkey that was called "Tantalis" or "the city of Tantalus", or "Sipylus". The city was located at the foot of Mount Sipylus and its ruins were reported to be still visible at the beginning of the 1st century AD, although few traces remain today.There is a "Throne" conjecturally associated with Pelops in the Yarıkkaya locality in Mount Sipylus. There are two tombs called "Tomb of Tantalus" near the summits of the neighboring mountains of Yamanlar and Mount Sipylus in western Turkey, sources by respective scholars differing on the associations that may be based on the one or the other. Pliny reports that Tantalis was destroyed by an earthquake and the city of Sipylus (Magnesia ad Sipylum) was built in its place.
Niobe's father is referred to as "Phrygian" and sometimes even as "King of Phrygia", although his city was located in the western extremity of Anatolia where Lydia was to emerge as a state before the beginning of the first millennium BC, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more inland.
In the Fabulae Dione, identified in the text as a daughter of Atlas, becomes the wife of Tantalus and mother of Pelops, though Niobe herself is not mentioned.Hyginus, Fabulae 82–83. In Ovid's account of the story, Niobe names her father as Tantalus and her mother as a sister of the Pleiades and a daughter of Atlas.Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.174. Although she gives no name it is assumed to be Dione. The Hyades are traditionally the sisters of the Pleiades and daughters of Atlas, and in the account of Pherecydes, Dione numbers among them.Pherecydes in R. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography Fr.90a (=A, 18.486c D Scholia to the Iliad 18.486c); Fr.90d (=Hyginus, De Astronomia 2.21.1) According to a scholia on Euripides's Orestes, her mother is either EurythemistaScholia ad Euripides, Orestes 11 English translation. or Euryanassa,Scholia ad Euripides, Orestes 4 and 11 English translation. with the latter being a genealogy also given by Tzetzes.Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 52.
Niobe's husband was Amphion, a son of Zeus and Antiope. Amphion's twin brother, Zethus, was a ruler of Thebes. Amphion became a great singer and musician after his lover Hermes taught him to play music and gave him a golden lyre. Zethus's wife and Niobe's sister-in-law was Aëdon, who had a single child, Itylus. Aëdon was jealous of the vast progeny Niobe had produced, so she conceived a plan to kill Niobe's firstborn, a boy named Amaleus. Aëdon instructed her son to sleep in the back of the room, or in the innermost position of the bed that night, but Itylus forgot about his mother's words. So when Aëdon entered the children's chamber, she unknowingly killed her own child instead of Niobe's. Her pain was so great the gods transformed her into a nightingale.
Blasphemous boast Niobe boasted of her fourteen children, seven male and seven female (the Niobids), to Leto who only had two children, the twins Apollo and Artemis. The number varies in different sources.According to Iliad XXIV, there were twelve, six male, six female. Aelian (Varia Historia xii. 36): "But Hesiod says they were nine boys and ten girls—unless after all the verses are not Hesiod but are falsely ascribed to him as are many others." Nine would make a triple triplet, triplicity being character of numerous sisterhoods (J.E. Harrison, A Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), "The Maiden-Trinities" pp 286ff); ten would equate to a full two hands of male dactyls, while twelve would resonate with the number of Olympian gods. Using arrows, Artemis killed Niobe's daughters and Apollo killed Niobe's sons. According to some versions, at least two of Niobe's children (usually Meliboea, along with her brother Amyclas in other renderings) were spared. In these versions, Meliboea stayed greenish pale from horror for the rest of her life, and for that reason she was called Chloris (the pale one).Pausanias. Description of Greece 2.21.9 In most versions, Amphion commits suicide out of grief; according to Telesilla, Artemis and Apollo murder him along with his children. Hyginus, however, writes that in his madness he tried to attack the temple of Apollo, and was killed by the god's arrows. Devastated, Niobe fled back to Mount SipylusThe return of Niobe from Thebes to her Lydian homeland is recorded in pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 3.46. and was turned into stone, and, as she wept unceasingly, waters started to pour from her petrified complexion. Mount Sipylus indeed has a natural rock formation which resembles a female face, and it has been associated with Niobe since ancient times and described by Pausanias. The rock formation is also known as the "Weeping Rock" (), since rainwater seeps through its porous limestone.
Within Greek culture In his archaic role as bringer of diseases and death, Apollo with his poison arrows killed Niobe's sons and Artemis with her poison arrows killed Niobe's daughters.Compare the "Elphenshots" in northern-European folklore. Martin Nilsson (1967). Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion. Vol I, p.443 Niobe was transformed into a stone on Mount Sipylus in her homeland of Phrygia, where she brooded over the sorrows sent by the gods.Homer, Iliad xxiv,602 In Sophocles' Antigone, the heroine believes that she will have a similar death., lines 823-838. ANTIGONE: I’ve heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, from Phrygia – she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus, right on the mountain peak. The stone there, just like clinging ivy, wore her down, and now, so people say, the snow and rain never leave her there, as she laments. Below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears. God brings me to a final rest which most resembles hers. CHORUS: But Niobe was a goddess, born divine – and we are human beings, a race which dies. But still, it’s a fine thing for a woman, once she’s dead, to have it said she shared, in life and death, the fate of demi-gods. The iconic number "seven" often appears in Greek legends, and represents an ancient tradition because it appears as a lyre with seven strings in the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in Crete during the Mycenean age. Apollo's lyre had also seven strings.
In literature and fine arts Literature
The story of Niobe, and especially her sorrows, is an ancient one. The context in which she is mentioned by Achilles to Priam in Homer's Iliad is as a stock type for mourning. Priam is not unlike Niobe in the sense that he was also grieving for his son Hector, who was killed and not buried for several days.
Niobe is also mentioned in Sophocles's Antigone where, as Antigone is marched toward her death, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe., around line 940. ANTIGONE: I’ve heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, from Phrygia – she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus, right on the mountain peak. The stone there, just like clinging ivy, wore her down, and now, so people say, the snow and rain never leave her there, as she laments. Below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears. God brings me to a final rest which most resembles hers. CHORUS: But Niobe was a goddess, born divine – and we are human beings, a race which dies. But still, it’s a fine thing for a woman, once she’s dead, to have it said she shared, in life and death, the fate of demi-gods. Sophocles is said to have also contributed a play titled Niobe that is lost.
The Niobe of Aeschylus, set in Thebes, survives in fragmentary quotes that were supplemented by a papyrus sheet containing twenty-one lines of text.A. D. Fitton Brown offered a reconstruction of the form of the play, in From the fragments it appears that for the first part of the tragedy the grieving Niobe sits veiled and silent.
Furthermore, the conflict between Niobe and Leto is mentioned in one of Sappho's poetic fragments ("Before they were mothers, Leto and Niobe had been the most devoted of friends.").
In Latin language sources, Niobe's account is first told by Hyginus in his collection of stories in brief and plain Fabulae.
Parthenius of Nicaea records a rare version of the story of Niobe, in which her father is called Assaon and her husband Philottus. The circumstances in which Niobe loses her children are also different, see .
Niobe's iconic tears were also mentioned in Hamlet's soliloquy (Act 1, Scene 2), in which he contrasts his mother's grief over the dead King, Hamlet's father – "like Niobe, all tears" – to her unseemly hasty marriage to Claudius.William Shakespeare, "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" Act I, scii, l 149, of Queen Gertrude.
The quotation from Hamlet is also used in Dorothy L. Sayers' novel Murder Must Advertise, in which an advertising agency's client turns down an advertisement using the quotation as a caption.Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, Gollancz, London, 1933
In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron famously refers to Rome as “the Niobe of nations,” invoking the mythological figure of Niobe to lament the decline and fallen grandeur of the Roman Empire. Oscar Wilde is likewise reported to have adapted Byron’s formulation when declaring that “Ireland is the Niobe among nations. The noblest of materials for a great nation there were wrecked by the folly of England.” By appropriating Byron’s classical metaphor, Wilde reconfigures it to articulate the condition of colonial Ireland, presenting the nation as a victim of imperial oppression whose potential has been thwarted by British rule.
In William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner compares Ellen, the wife of Sutpen and father of Henry and Judith, to Niobe, "this Niobe without tears, who had conceived to the demon [Sutpen] in a kind of nightmare" (Chapter 1).
Among works of modern literature which have Niobe as a central theme, Kate Daniels' Niobe Poems can be cited.
Arts