Niobe

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

Niobe (Νιόβη) was a daughter of Tantalus and the sister of Pelops, all of whom figure in Greek mythology.

Her father was the ruler of a city called either under his name, as "Tantalis" ^[1] or "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the Common Era, ^[2] although few traces remain today.^[3] Her father is referred to as "Phrygian" and sometimes even as "King of Phrygia" ^[4], although his city was 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. References to his son and Niobe's brother as "Pelops the Lydian" led some scholars to the conclusion that there would be good grounds for believing that she belonged to a primordial house of Lydia.

Niobe 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.

Central theme

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

According to the accounts, 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.^[5] Her speech which caused the indignation of the goddess was rendered 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? ^[6]

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^[7] 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 by Pausanias. The rock formation is also known as the "Weeping Rock" (Turkish: Ağlayan Kaya), since rainwater seeps through its porous limestone.

Niobe in literature, cinema and music

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.^[8] 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 ^[9] .

Among works of modern literature which have Niobe as a central theme, Kate Daniels' "Niobe Poems" can be cited. ^[10]

The choice of "Niobe" simply as a name in works of literature is not uncommon either. Two minor characters of Greek mythology have the same name (see Niobe (disambiguation)) and the name occurs in several works of the 19th century. More recently, one of the characters in the films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were also named Niobe.

In music Benjamin Britten based one of his Six Metamorphoses after Ovid on Niobe.

The element Niobium was named as such as an extension of the inspiration which had led earlier to the naming of the element tantalum by Anders 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 of Tantalus; Niobium and Pelopium, although the argument was later contested as far as pelopium was concerned.

A mountain in British Columbia, Canada is also named after Niobe; as Mount Niobe.

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

See also

• Tantalus
• Pelops
• Niobids
• Mount Sipylus
• Niobium
• Mount Niobe

References

Sources

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Modern scholarship

Classical authors

General reading

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