Details
Region Additional (if applicable)
Greek
Region
Category
Group
Gender
Both
Time Period
c. 8th century BCE (Homeric reference); Archaic to Classical period
Symbol
The funeral pyre
Tags
greek, niobids, niobe, apollo, artemis, thebes, leto, divine-vengeance
Introduction
The Niobids are the fourteen children of Niobe and Amphion whose slaughter by Apollo and Artemis stands as the most terrible divine punishment in Greek mythology. They are seven sons and seven daughters, the pride of Thebes, whose beauty and number drove their mother to boast before the temple of Leto, the Titan goddess of motherhood and the mother of Apollo and Artemis. They are the youths cut down by golden arrows on the racecourse and the maidens pierced by silver shafts in the palace, all in a single day that turned Thebes into a city of mourning. They are the brothers and sisters who died because their mother counted them too loudly, the innocent victims of a pride that was not their own. They are the buried ones whose tomb was shown to visitors at Thebes for centuries, a mound of earth that marked the place where divine vengeance had fallen. And they are the eternal warning that the children of the proud suffer for the sins of the parent, that no mortal family, however blessed, may rival the gods. Every mass grave, every generation punished for the arrogance of the one before it, and every mother who has buried a child carries their shadow.
Gallery
Who or What was...
The Niobids
The Niobids were born to Niobe, 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. Their father was Amphion, the king of Thebes who had built the walls of the city with the music of his lyre, charming the stones into place with his song. The gods had blessed the marriage with extraordinary fertility. Seven sons were born, handsome and strong, trained in the arts of war and sport, and seven daughters were born, beautiful and graceful, the flower of Theban maidenhood. The names of the sons varied in different tellings: Ismenus, the eldest; Sipylus; Eupinytus; Damasichthon; Agenor; Phaedimus; and Tantalus, named for his grandfather. The daughters were called Chloris, the eldest; Meliboea; Aglaia; Phthia; Cleodora; Ethodaia; and Pelopia, though some lists gave them different names. Together they were the Niobids, the children whose very number was their mother's boast and their doom.
They grew up in the palace of Thebes, a city whose walls were legendary and whose kings were descended from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who founded the city. The Niobids were the glory of the court. The sons competed in the games and hunted in the hills of Boeotia, the region of central Greece where Thebes stood. The daughters wove and danced and sang, and their beauty was praised throughout the Greek world. Niobe watched them with a pride that grew into arrogance. She looked at her fourteen children and then at Leto, the Titan goddess of motherhood who had only two, Apollo and Artemis, and she felt herself superior. During the festival of Leto at Thebes, she stood before the goddess's temple and told the Thebans to honour her instead. She had fourteen children, she said, while Leto had only two. The people were afraid, but Niobe's pride was absolute.
Leto heard the boast from her sanctuary on Delos, the sacred 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 golden arrows brought plague and death, descended upon Thebes and found the seven sons at the racecourse or in the fields. He struck them one by one. Ismenus, the eldest, fell first, pierced through the heart as he offered sacrifice. Sipylus fled on horseback, but the arrow overtook him. Damasichthon and Agenor fell together, their bodies twisted in the dust. Phaedimus and Tantalus, the youngest, died in each other's arms. The youngest son, still a boy, stretched out his hands in supplication, but Apollo did not spare him. The racecourse ran with blood, and the sound of the lyre that had built the city was drowned by the screams of the dying.
Artemis, the virgin huntress who roamed the wilderness with her bow, then turned her silver 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. Chloris, the eldest, collapsed at her loom. Meliboea turned to flee and was pierced through the back. The others fell in the corridors and chambers, their blood staining the floors that Amphion's music had once blessed. The youngest daughter, still a child, hid herself in her mother's robes, but Artemis's arrow found her there. Some accounts said that one daughter survived, Chloris or Meliboea, spared by the gods because she prayed to Leto for forgiveness, but most versions told of total slaughter. All seven daughters died, and the palace became a tomb.
Niobe sat among the corpses, her face frozen in a grief too vast for tears. Amphion, wild with despair, threw himself upon his sword or was struck by a thunderbolt from Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled from Olympus, for his wife's blasphemy. The bodies of the Niobids were laid upon a funeral pyre that burned for days, and the smoke of their burning rose over Thebes like a dark cloud. The Thebans buried them in a common tomb near the city, and for centuries travellers were shown the mound where the fourteen children lay. In some traditions, the Niobids were buried at Thebes but their ghosts wandered Mount Sipylus, the mountain of their grandfather's kingdom, where Niobe herself had been turned to stone. The tomb became a place of pilgrimage and warning, and mothers brought their children there to teach them the lesson of the Niobids: never boast before the gods.
The Niobids also lived on in art and literature. The scene of their slaughter was one of the most popular subjects in Greek vase painting, with Apollo and Artemis shown drawing their bows while the children fell. The Niobid Painter, an anonymous Athenian artist of the 5th century BCE, created a famous series of vases depicting the massacre, and the figures were carved into the pediments of temples. The Roman poet Ovid told their story in the Metamorphoses, expanding the horror with detail and pathos. In every age, the Niobids have stood for the innocent destroyed by the pride of the powerful, the children who paid the price for a mother's tongue.
Summary
The Niobids stand as the eternal victims of divine vengeance, the fourteen children whose lives were ended because their mother counted them before a goddess. From the palace of Thebes to the funeral pyre that burned for days, from the racecourse where the sons fell to the chambers where the daughters died, their story is the darkest warning in Greek mythology. Every child who suffers for a parent's sin, every mass grave that marks the limit of human pride, and every tomb that reminds the living of the gods' wrath carries the memory of the Niobids, the children of Niobe who were too many to save.
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, 9.17.2
- 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
- Boardman, John, "The Niobid Painter" in Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period (1975) - Thames and Hudson, pp. 78-82
- Dowden, Ken, The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992) - Routledge, pp. 89-91