NIOBE

Below: This illustration from a Greek vase depicts Niobe and was created around 460 BCE. The artist is now known as the Niobid Painter.

The Greek queen Niobe boasted that she was more fortunate than the goddess Leto because she had more children than her. She was punished severely for this act. Niobe is a prime example of a familiar type from myth —one who destroys her own happiness by foolishly boasting of it.

Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and the wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Her mother was usually said to be Euryanassa, but in some accounts of her story other names are given. According to Greek poet Sappho (fl. c. 610—c. 580 BCE), Niobe was originally a companion of the goddess Leto. However, one day she made the mistake of boasting that she had more children than the goddess. This act enraged Leto to such an extent that she called on her children Artemis and Apollo to punish Niobe for her hubris.

Using the bow and arrow that were their traditional attributes, the god and goddess shot and killed all of the children of Niobe, the Niobids. As Greek writer Homer (c. ninth-eighth century BCE) says in his epic poem the Iliad: “Though they were only two, yet they destroyed them all.” Artemis took aim at the girls while Apollo killed the boys. This is in keeping with the tradition that Artemis’s arrows were a cause of death for women. Niobe’s husband Amphion died immediately thereafter, either by suicide or at the hands of Apollo.

According to Homer, the gods turned all the local inhabitants to stone. So, for nine days, the children remained unburied. Finally, on the 10th day, the gods

Above: The Massacre of Niobe’s Children by Charles Dauphin (1620—1677) depicts Apollo and Artemis slaughtering the Niobids.

Took pity and buried the children themselves. Niobe’s grief was unrelenting, and she herself was eventually turned to stone. Her name became a byword for sorrow in antiquity.