Details
Region Additional (if applicable)
Greek
Region
Category
Hero
Gender
Female
Time Period
c. 8th century BCE (Homeric reference); Archaic to Classical period
Symbol
The weeping stone
Tags
greek, niobe, niobids, thebes, apollo, artemis, leto, tantalus
Introduction
Niobe is the queen of Thebes whose pride in her children brought the arrows of Apollo and Artemis down upon her house, leaving her the most mournful figure in Greek mythology. She is the daughter of Tantalus, the king of Sipylus who was condemned to eternal hunger and thirst in Tartarus, the deepest pit of the Underworld, for serving his own son to the gods at a feast. She is the wife of Amphion, the king who built the walls of Thebes with the music of his lyre, and the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, the Niobids, whose beauty and number were the envy of every mother in Greece. She is the woman who dared to boast before the temple of Leto, the Titan goddess of motherhood, that she was superior because she had fourteen children while Leto had only two. She is the mother who watched every one of her children fall to divine arrows, the sons cut down by Apollo and the daughters by Artemis, until the bodies lay piled in the palace and the streets ran with blood. She is the weeping stone on Mount Sipylus in Lydia, the rock formation that weeps eternally, where she was turned to stone by the gods but not silenced, her tears still flowing for her dead children. Every statue of grief, every mother who outlives her children, and every warning against the sin of pride carries her memory.
Gallery
Who or What was...
Niobe
Niobe was born in the kingdom of Sipylus, a region of Lydia in Asia Minor, to Tantalus and Dione. Her father was the son of Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled from Olympus, and he had been a favourite of the gods until his monstrous crime. He had invited the Olympians to a feast and served them the flesh of his own son Pelops, a prince whose shoulder was later restored with ivory when the gods discovered the deception. For this, Tantalus was cast into Tartarus, the deepest pit of the Underworld, where he stood in a pool of water that receded when he bent to drink, and beneath branches of fruit that pulled away when he reached to eat, condemned to eternal hunger and thirst. Niobe grew up in the shadow of this shame, but she married well. Amphion, the king of Thebes, was a musician of divine skill, and together they built one of the greatest families in Greece. The gods had blessed them with seven sons and seven daughters, handsome and beautiful, strong and graceful, the pride of the city.
The tragedy began with a single boast. During the festival of Leto, the Titan goddess of motherhood and the mother of Apollo, the god of music and light, and Artemis, the virgin huntress who roamed the wilderness with her bow, Niobe stood before the temple and declared that she was greater than the goddess. She had fourteen children, she said, while Leto had only two. She mocked the goddess who had struggled to find a place to give birth, chased across the earth by Hera, the queen of Olympus and wife of Zeus. She told the Thebans to honour her instead, to lay wreaths at her statue rather than at Leto's altar. The people were afraid, but Niobe's pride was absolute. She believed that her children made her untouchable.
Leto heard the boast from her sanctuary on Delos, the floating island where she had given birth to her twins after wandering the earth in labour. She cried out to Apollo and Artemis, and the two gods answered with terrible speed. Apollo, the archer whose arrows brought plague and death, descended upon Thebes and found the seven sons of Niobe at the racecourse or in the fields. He struck them one by one with his golden arrows, and they fell where they stood, their bodies pierced through the heart. The youngest, a boy still in his mother's arms, stretched out his hands in supplication, but the god did not spare him. Niobe's husband Amphion, wild with grief, tried to attack the god's temple or threw himself upon his sword, and he too died.
Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, then turned her arrows upon the daughters. The seven girls were in the palace, dressing for the festival or mourning their brothers, when the huntress struck. One by one they fell, pierced by silver arrows that found their hearts. The youngest daughter, still a child, hid herself in her mother's robes, but Artemis's arrow found her there. Niobe held the dead girl in her arms and looked at the pile of bodies around her. Fourteen children, all dead, and her husband beside them. The palace was a charnel house, and the streets of Thebes ran with the blood of the Niobids.
Niobe could not weep at first. She sat among the corpses, her face frozen in disbelief. Then the grief came, and it never stopped. She fled from Thebes, wandering across the countryside until she came to Mount Sipylus, the mountain of her father's kingdom. There she begged the gods to end her pain, and they answered by turning her to stone. But even in stone she wept. A rock formation on the mountain, wet with natural springs, was said to be her petrified form, and the water that ran down its face was her eternal tears. She remained there, weeping for her children, while the gods looked on in silence. Thebes buried the Niobids, and the city never forgot the lesson: no mortal may rival the gods.
Summary
Niobe stands as the eternal warning against the pride that counts its blessings too loudly, the queen whose fourteen children became fourteen corpses because she dared to mock a goddess. From the feast of Tantalus to the arrows of Apollo and Artemis, from the blood-soaked palace of Thebes to the weeping stone on Mount Sipylus, her story is the most terrible of maternal tragedies. Every mother who has buried a child, every rock that weeps with spring water, and every caution against boasting before the gods carries the memory of Niobe, the daughter of a sinner who became a monument to grief.
References
Validation References:
- Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 24, lines 602-620
- Hesiod, Catalogue of Women (fragment) - preserved in scholia
- Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (c. 100 BCE) - Book 3, chapter 5, sections 6-7
- Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) - Book 6, lines 146-312
- Hyginus, Fabulae (c. 2nd century CE) - section 9
- Pausanias, Description of Greece (c. 150 CE) - Book 1.21.3, 8.2.7
- Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 534-538
- March, Jennifer, Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology (1998) - Cassell, pp. 622-624
- Dowden, Ken, The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992) - Routledge, pp. 89-91
- Seaford, Richard, "The Tragic Wedding" in Journal of Hellenic Studies (1987), pp. 106-130