Niobe (/ˈnaɪ.ə.biː/;Ancient Greek:Νιόβη[ni.óbɛː]: Nióbē) was inGreek mythology a daughter ofTantalus and of eitherDione or ofEurythemista orEuryanassa. She was the wife ofAmphion and the sister ofPelops andBroteas.
Niobe is mentioned byAchilles inHomer'sIliad, which relates herhubris, for which she was punished byLeto, who sentApollo andArtemis to slay all of her children, after which her children lay unburied for nine days while she abstained from food.[1] Oncethe gods had interred the slain, Niobe retreated to her nativeSipylus, "whereNymphs dance around the River Acheloos,[2] and though turned to stone, she broods over the sorrows sent by the Gods".[3] Later writers[4] asserted that Niobe was wedded to Amphion, one of the twin founders ofThebes, where there was a single sanctuary where the twin founders were venerated, but no shrine to Niobe.
Her father was the ruler of a city located nearManisa in today's Aegean Turkey that was called "Tantalis"[5] or "the city ofTantalus", or "Sipylus". The city was located at the foot ofMount Sipylus and its ruins were reported to be still visible at the beginning of the 1st century AD,[6] although few traces remain today.[7]Pliny reports that Tantalis was destroyed by an earthquake and the city of Sipylus (Magnesia ad Sipylum) was built in its place.[8]
Niobe's father is referred to as "Phrygian" and sometimes even as "King ofPhrygia",[9] although his city was located in the western extremity ofAnatolia whereLydia 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 theFabulae Dione, identified in the text as a daughter of Atlas, becomes the wife ofTantalus and mother ofPelops, though Niobe herself is not mentioned.[10] InOvid's account of the story, Niobe names her father as Tantalus and her mother as a sister of thePleiades and a daughter ofAtlas.[11] Although she gives no name it is assumed to be Dione.[12] TheHyades are traditionally the sisters of the Pleiades and daughters of Atlas,[13] and in the account ofPherecydes, Dione numbers among them.[14] According to ascholia onEuripides'sOrestes, her mother is either Eurythemista[15] or Euryanassa,[16] with the latter being a genealogy also given byTzetzes.[17]
Niobe's husband wasAmphion, a son ofZeus andAntiope. Amphion's twin brother, Zethus, was a ruler of Thebes. Amphion became a great singer and musician after his loverHermes taught him to play music and gave him a golden lyre. Zethus's wife and Niobe's sister-in-law wasAëdon, 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 namedAmaleus. 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.[18]
Niobe boasted of her fourteen children, seven male and seven female (theNiobids), toLeto who only had two children, the twins Apollo and Artemis. The number varies in different sources.[20] Using arrows,Artemis killed Niobe's daughters andApollo killed Niobe's sons. According to some versions, at least two of Niobe's children (usuallyMeliboea, along with her brotherAmyclas in other renderings) was spared. In these versions, Meliboea stayed greenish pale from horror for the rest of her life, and for that reason she was calledChloris (the pale one).[21] In most versions, Amphion commitssuicide out of grief; according toTelesilla, 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 toMount Sipylus[22] 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 byPausanias. The rock formation is also known as the "Weeping Rock" (Turkish:Ağlayan Kaya), since rainwater seeps through itsporouslimestone.
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.[23] This is related to the myth of the seven youths and seven maidens who were sent every year to the kingMinos of Crete as an offering sacrifice to theMinotaur. Niobe was transformed into a stone onMount Sipylus in her homeland ofPhrygia, where she brooded over the sorrows sent by the gods.[24] In Sophocles'Antigone, the heroine believes that she will have a similar death.[25]The iconic number "seven" often appears in Greek legends, and represents an ancient tradition because it appears as alyre with seven strings in theHagia Triada sarcophagus inCrete during theMycenean age.[26] Apollo's lyre had also seven strings.
The story of Niobe, and especially her sorrows, is an ancient one. The context in which she is mentioned byAchilles toPriam inHomer'sIliad is as a stock type for mourning. Priam is not unlike Niobe in the sense that he was also grieving for his sonHector, who was killed and not buried for several days.
Niobe is also mentioned inSophocles'sAntigone where, as Antigone is marched toward her death, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe.[27]Sophocles is said to have also contributed a play titledNiobe that is lost.
TheNiobe ofAeschylus, set in Thebes, survives in fragmentary quotes that were supplemented by a papyrus sheet containing twenty-one lines of text.[28] 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 ofSappho's poetic fragments ("Before they were mothers, Leto and Niobe had been the most devoted of friends.").[29]
InLatin language sources, Niobe's account is first told byHyginus in his collection of stories in brief and plainFabulae.
Parthenius of Nicaea records a rare version of the story of Niobe, in which her father is calledAssaon and her husband Philottus. The circumstances in which Niobe loses her children are also different, seeNiobids § Parthenius variant.
Niobe's iconic tears were also mentioned inHamlet'ssoliloquy (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.[30]
The quotation from Hamlet is also used inDorothy L. Sayers' novelMurder Must Advertise, in which an advertising agency's client turns down an advertisement using the quotation as a caption.[31]
InWilliam Faulkner's novelAbsalom, 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.[32]
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The subject of Niobe and the destruction of theNiobids was part of the repertory of Attic vase-painters and inspired sculpture groups and wall frescoes as well as relief carvings on Romansarcophagi.
The subject of the Attic calyx-krater fromOrvieto conserved in theMusée du Louvre has provided the name for theNiobid Painter.[33]
A lifesize group of marble Niobids, including one of Niobe sheltering one of her daughters, found in Rome in 1583 at the same time as theWrestlers, were taken in 1775 to theUffizi inFlorence where, in a gallery devoted to them, they remain some of the most prominent surviving sculptures ofClassical antiquity (see below). New instances come to light from time to time, like one headless statue found in early 2005 among the ruins of a villa in theVilla dei Quintili just outsideRome.[34]
In painting, Niobe was painted by post-Renaissance artists from varied traditions (see below). An early appearance,The Death of Niobe's Children byAbraham Bloemaert, was painted in 1591 towards the start of theDutch Golden Age. The English artistRichard Wilson gained great acclaim for hisThe Destruction of the Children of Niobe, painted in 1760. Three notable works, all dating from the 1770s,Apollo and Diana Attacking Niobe and her Children byAnicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier,The Children of Niobe Killed by Apollo and Diana byPierre-Charles Jombert andDiana and Apollo Piercing Niobe’s Children with their Arrows byJacques-Louis David belong to the tradition ofFrench Baroque and Classicism.
Niobe is an abstract painting byKároly Patkó.[35]
In classical music, Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654–1728) dedicated his opera "Niobe, Queen of Saba" to her myth, andGiovanni Pacini too wrote anopera on this myth.Benjamin Britten based one of hisSix Metamorphoses after Ovid on Niobe.
In modern music,Caribou called the last track on his 2007 albumAndorra "Niobe".
In modern dance,José Limón named a section of his dance theatre workDances for Isadora as "Niobe". The section is a solo for a woman mourning the loss of her children.
A marble statue of Niobe is a female lead character in a long-running 1892 farceNiobe (play) byHarry Paulton. In the play she is bought to life by a quaint electrical storm and brings the Edwardian values and relationships in the household to disarray. The season at the LondonRoyal Strand Theatre enjoyed more than five hundred performances. The play is the subject of a musical dedication byAustralian composer Thomas Henry Massey. The play was filmed in 1915.[36]
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The choice of "Niobe" simply as a name in works of art and literature is not uncommon either. Two minor characters of Greek mythology have the same name (seeNiobe (disambiguation)) and the name occurs in several works of the 19th century. More recently, one of the characters inThe Matrix film series is also named Niobe. A character namedNiobe also appeared in theRome TV series.
The elementniobium was so named as an extension of the inspiration which had led earlier to the naming of the elementtantalum byAnders Gustaf Ekeberg. On the basis of his argument according to which there were two different elements in the tantalite sample,Heinrich Rose named them after children ofTantalus—niobium andpelopium—although the argument was later contested as far as pelopium was concerned.
A mountain inBritish Columbia, Canada is named Mount Niobe.
Four successive ships of the BritishRoyal Navy were calledHMS Niobe.
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