Niobe

Niobe was a character in Greek mythology, daughter of Tantalus and Dione, although other mothers have been named in a few accounts. She married Amphion, king of Thebes, and boasted that she had more children than the goddess Leto. Apollo and Artemis shot her children, and Niobe turned into a weeping rock on Mount Sipylus.

Niobe’s Family

Hyginus calls her the daughter of Tantalus and Dione (Fabulae 9). Her brothers included Pelops, who in Ovid is the only one to weep for her (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.401–405), and Broteas, who in Pausanias is a son of Tantalus (Pausanias 3.22.4). She married Amphion, one of the twin sons of Antiope and Zeus. Amphion and his brother Zethus were the first to build the seven-gated city of Thebes with walls and towers (Homer, Odyssey 11.260–265); in Apollodorus the stones followed the music of Amphion’s lyre (Library 3.5.5).

Niobe and Leto

Niobe had a large family. Apollodorus gives seven sons and seven daughters, and notes that Hesiod said ten and ten, Herodorus two sons and three daughters, and Homer six and six (Library 3.5.6; Homer, Iliad 24.603–604). Ovid and Hyginus also give seven sons and seven daughters (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.182–183; Hyginus, Fabulae 9). Being so blessed with children, Niobe said she was more fortunate than Leto, who had only the twins Apollo and Artemis. Homer says she claimed that Leto had borne two, but she herself many (Iliad 24.607–608).

The Death of Niobe’s Children

Stung by the taunt, Leto set her children against Niobe. In Apollodorus, Artemis shot the daughters in the house, and Apollo killed all the sons together while they were hunting on Mount Cithaeron (Library 3.5.6). Of the sons, Apollodorus says, only Amphion was saved, and of the daughters only Chloris the elder, who later married Neleus; but in the account of Telesilla the survivors were Amyclas and Meliboea (Library 3.5.6). Hyginus also has the sons shot while hunting in the forest and the daughters in the palace, all except Chloris (Fabulae 9). Homer says the children lay unburied for nine days in their blood because no one could bury them, for Zeus had turned the people to stone; on the tenth day the gods buried them (Iliad 24.605–612).

Amphion

The sources disagree on how Amphion died. In Ovid he killed himself with a sword through his chest when he saw his children dead (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.271–272). In Hyginus he was killed by Apollo’s arrows when he tried to attack Apollo’s temple (Fabulae 9), and Apollodorus says that, in Telesilla’s version, he too was shot by the gods (Library 3.5.6). After his death Laius succeeded to the kingdom of Thebes (Library 3.5.7).

Niobe’s Fate

In Homer, Niobe, worn out with weeping, remembered to eat; now she is a stone among the lonely mountains of Sipylus, where the nymphs who dance around the Achelous have their beds, and there she broods over the sorrows sent by the gods (Iliad 24.602–617). Apollodorus says that Niobe left Thebes for her father Tantalus at Sipylus, and there, praying to Zeus, was turned to stone, and tears flow from the stone night and day (Library 3.5.6). In Ovid, she stiffened, her tongue froze in her mouth and she turned to stone inside, and she was swept away by a whirlwind to her homeland, where she stands fixed on a mountaintop and the marble still weeps (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.301–312).

Pausanias saw the rock on Mount Sipylus himself. Close up, he says, it is a beetling crag with no resemblance to a woman, but from further away it looks like a woman bowed in tears (Pausanias 1.21.3).

Niobe Sources

Homer, Iliad 24.602–617, Odyssey 11.260–265; Apollodorus, Library 3.5.5–7; Hyginus, Fabulae 9; Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.182–183, 6.271–312, 6.401–405; Pausanias 1.21.3, 3.22.4.

See Also: Tantalus, Dione, Pelops, Leto, Apollo, Artemis, Amphion, Thebes