Niobe

For other uses, see Anatolian princess.

The Weeping Rock in Mount Sipylus, Manisa, Turkey, is associated with Niobe's legend

In Greek mythology Niobe (Νιόβη, "snowy bright") was a daughter of the mythic ruler Tantalus, a primordial king in the royal house of Lydia in western Asia Minor. She was wedded to Amphion, one of the twin founders of Thebes, where there was a single sanctuary where the twin founders were venerated, but no shrine to Niobe. She was punished by Apollo and Artemis for her prideful hubris by the loss of all her children, the Niobids.

Tantalus was also called the "Phrygian" and sometimes even "King of Phrygia"; however, Tantalus ruled in Sipylus, a city located in the western extremity of Anatolia where Lydia was to emerge as a state before the beginning of the first millenia BC, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more inland and centered around Gordion. The city of Tantalus carried the same name as the mountain on which it was founded, Mount Sipylus; few traces remain of the settlement.

An Anatolian princess, Niobe married Amphion of Thebes. Niobe was the sister of Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnese .

Central mythic theme

File:Niobe2MountSypilusManisaTurkey.jpg

Niobe's Rock may assume very different appearances according to the distance of observation and the air and light conditions.

According to the Greek myth, Niobe boasted of her superiority to Leto because the goddess only had two children, the twins Apollo and Artemis, while Niobe had fourteen children (the Niobids), seven male and seven female. Thomas Bulfinch synthesized the speech which caused the indignation of the goddess in the following manner:

It was on occasion of the annual celebration in honor of Latona and her offspring, Apollo and Diana, when the people of Thebes were assembled, their brows crowned with laurel, bearing frankincense to the altars and paying their vows, that Niobe appeared among the crowd. Her attire was splendid with gold and gems, and her face as beautiful as the face of an angry woman can be. She stood and surveyed the people with haughty looks. "What folly," said she, "is this! to prefer beings whom you never saw to those who stand before your eyes! Why should Latona be honored with worship rather than I? My father was Tantalus, who was received as a guest at the table of the gods; my mother was a goddess. My husband built and rules this city, Thebes; and Phrygia is my paternal inheritance. Wherever I turn my eyes I survey the elements of my power; nor is my form and presence unworthy of a goddess. To all this let me add, I have seven sons and seven daughters, and look for sons-in-law and daughters-in-law of pretensions worthy of my alliance. Have I not cause for pride? Will you prefer to me this Latona, the Titan's daughter, with her two children? I have seven times as many. Fortunate indeed am I, and fortunate I shall remain! Will any one deny this?

By using poisoned arrows, Artemis killed Niobe's daughters and Apollo killed Niobe's sons, while they practiced athletics, with the last to die begging their lives. According to some versions, at least one Niobid was spared, (usually Meliboea). Their father Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo for having sworn revenge. A devastated Niobe fled back to Mount Sipylus 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 . The rock formation is also known as the "Weeping Rock" (Turkish: Ağlayan Kaya), since rainwater seeps through its porous limestone.

This rock formation associated with Niobe is not to be confused with a full-faced sculpture carved into the rock-face of a nearby crag, and which is located north of the mountain. This sculpture was attributed by Pausanias to Broteas, the ugly brother of Niobe, and it is in fact of Hittite workmanship and represents Cybele.

Niobe in literature

The story of Niobe is an ancient one. She is mentioned by Achilles to Priam in Homer's Iliad book XXIV, as a stock type for mourning. Priam is not unlike Niobe in the sense that he was also grieving for his son Hector, who was killed and not buried for several days. Niobe is also mentioned in Sophocles's Antigone where, as Antigone is marched toward her death, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe. The Niobe of Aeschylus, set in Thebes, survives in fragmentary quotes that were supplemented by a papyrus sheet containing twenty-one lines of text. From the fragments it appears that for the first part of the tragedy the grieving Niobe sits veiled and silent. Sophocles too contributed a Niobe that is lost. Furthermore, the conflict between Niobe and Leto is mentioned in one of Sappho's poetic fragments, ("Before they were mothers, Leto and Niobe had been the most devoted of friends.") The subject of Niobe and the destruction of the Niobids was part of the repertory of Attic vase-painters and inspired sculpture groups and wall frescoes as well as relief carvings on Roman sarcophagi.

Niobe's iconic tears were also mentioned in Hamlet's soliloquy (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 .

Among works of modern literature which have Niobe as a central theme, Kate Daniels' "Niobe Poems" can be cited.

Niobe in art

• 
  Picture of a hellenistic sculpture representing Niobe by Giorgio Sommer
• 
  1591 painting by Abraham Bloemaert
• 
  1610 tapestry by François Spierincx
• 
  1770 painting by Anicet Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier

Other Niobes

Two other Greek Niobe figures are each connected with primordial humans.

In Argos, a Niobe was a daughter of Phoroneus, and the first mortal woman to attract the love of the god Zeus. This Niobe was the mother, by Zeus, of Argus, legendary founder of the Greek city of Argos. Another child named Pelasgus is sometimes mentioned as the twin of Argus.

In Boeotia, another Niobe was the consort of the primeval man Alkomeneus, who raised Pallas Athena in her girlhood.

See also

• Niobids
• Mount Sipylus

Sources

Modern scholarship

• Robert Manuel Cook, 1964. Niobe and Her children (Cambridge University Press). Summary of the most recent research on ancient Niobid representations, pp. 6-30.
• Theoi.com, Wrath of Artemis: Niobe Excerpts of Niobe's story from Greek and Latin authors in translation.

Classical authors

• Virginia Brown's translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women, pp. 33-35; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9
• Ovid, Metamorphoses VI.145-310.

General reading

• Ekrem Akurgal (2002). Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey: From Prehistoric Times Until the End of the Roman Empire ISBN 0710307764. Kegan Paul.
• George E. Bean (1967). Aegean Turkey: An archaeological guide ISBN 978-0510032005. Ernest Benn, London.
• Cecil John Cadoux (1938). Ancient Smyrna: A History of the City from the Earliest Times to 324 A.D. Blackwell Publishing.

Popular reading

• Peter James - Nikos Kokkinos (2001-01). Travel article: "More on the "weeping stone" simulacrum of Niobe in Turkey". Fortean Times. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)