What Action Did Niobe Do to Bring Destruction to Her Family?

Greek mythological figure

This article is about the daughter of Tantalus. For other uses, see Niobe (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, Niobe (; Greek: Νιόβη [ni.óbɛː]) was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, the wife of Amphion and the sis of Pelops and Broteas.

Her father was the ruler of a metropolis located virtually Manisa in today'south Aegean Turkey that was called "Tantalis"^[i] or "the city of Tantalus", or "Sipylus". The city was located at the foot of Mount Sipylus and its ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the 1st century Advert,^[2] although few traces remain today.^[three] Pliny reports that Tantalis was destroyed past an earthquake and the city of Sipylus (Magnesia ad Sipylum) was built in its place.^[4]

Niobe's father is referred to as "Phrygian" and sometimes fifty-fifty as "King of Phrygia",^[5] although his city was located in the western extremity of Anatolia where Lydia was to emerge every bit a state before the beginning of the get-go millennium BC, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more than inland. In that location are references to his son and Niobe's brother equally "Pelops the Lydian", and this led some scholars to doubtable Niobe belonged to a primordial business firm of Lydia.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Niobe's hubby was Amphion, a son of Zeus and Antiope. Amphion'southward twin blood brother, Zethus, was a ruler of Thebes. Amphion became a great vocaliser and musician after his lover Hermes taught him to play music and gave him a golden lyre.

She was already mentioned in Homer's Iliad which relates her proud hubris, for which she was punished by Leto, who sent Apollo and Artemis to slay all of her children, later which her children lay unburied for 9 days while she abstained from food.^[six] In one case the gods interred them, she retreated to her native Sipylus, "where Nymphs dance around the River Acheloos,^[vii] and though turned to stone, she broods over the sorrows sent past the Gods".^[8] Subsequently writers^[9] asserted that Niobe was wedded to Amphion, 1 of the twin founders of Thebes, where there was a single sanctuary where the twin founders were venerated, just in fact no shrine to Niobe.

Central theme [edit]

Woodcut illustration of Niobe, Amphion and their dead sons, ca. 1474 – Penn Provenance Project

Niobe boasted of her fourteen children, vii male person and seven female person (the Niobids), to Leto who but had two children, the twins Apollo and Artemis. The number varies in different sources.^[ten] Her speech which caused the indignation of the goddess was rendered in the following manner:

Jacques-Louis David, Niobe and Her Girl, 1775–80, black ink with gray launder over graphite on laid paper, overall: fifteen.ii x xiv cm (vi × 5 ane/2 in.), NGA 107057

It was on occasion of the almanac commemoration in honor of Latona and her offspring, Apollo and Diana [i.e Artemis] when the people of Thebes were assembled, their brows crowned with laurel, begetting frankincense to the altars and paying their vows, that Niobe appeared among the oversupply. Her attire was splendid with aureate and gems, and her confront as beautiful as the face of an angry adult female 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 earlier your eyes! Why should Latona be honored with worship rather than I? My father was Tantalus, who was received as a invitee at the table of the gods; my female parent was a goddess. My husband congenital and rules this city, Thebes; and Phrygia is my paternal inheritance. Wherever I plow my optics I survey the elements of my ability; nor is my form and presence unworthy of a goddess. To all this let me add, I take 7 sons and vii daughters, and expect for sons-in-police and daughters-in-law of pretensions worthy of my brotherhood. Have I not crusade for pride? Will you adopt to me this Latona, the Titan's daughter, with her 2 children? I have seven times as many. Fortunate indeed am I, and fortunate I shall remain! Will whatever one deny this?^[5]

Using arrows, Artemis killed Niobe'southward daughters and Apollo killed Niobe's sons. According to some versions, at least ane Niobid (normally Meliboea, forth with her brother Amyclas in other renderings) was spared. Their male parent, Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo for having sworn revenge. Devastated, Niobe fled back to Mountain Sipylus^[12] and was turned into stone, and, as she wept unceasingly, waters started to pour from her petrified complexion. Mountain Sipylus indeed has a natural rock formation which resembles a female person face, and it has been associated with Niobe since ancient times and described by Pausanias. The rock formation is too known equally the "Weeping Rock" (Turkish: Ağlayan Kaya), since rainwater seeps through its porous limestone.

After Niobe'due south overweening pride in her children, offending Apollo and Artemis, brought virtually her children's deaths, Amphion commits suicide out of grief; according to Telesilla, Artemis and Apollo murder him along with his children. Hyginus, still, writes that in his madness he tried to attack the temple of Apollo, and was killed by the god's arrows.

The only Niobid spared stayed greenish pale from horror for the rest of her life, and for that reason she was called Chloris (the pale one).^[thirteen]

Inside Greek culture [edit]

In his archaic part as bringer of diseases and death, Apollo with his poisonous substance arrows killed Niobe'due south sons and Artemis with her poison arrows killed Niobe'southward daughters.^[14] This is related to the myth of the vii youths and seven maidens who were sent every year to the rex Minos of Crete as an offer sacrifice to the Minotaur. Niobe was transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylus in her homeland of Phrygia, where she brooded over the sorrows sent by the gods.^[xv] In Sophocles' Antigone the heroine believes that she will have a similar death.^[16] The iconic number "seven" often appears in Greek legends, and represents an ancient tradition because it appears equally a lyre with seven strings in the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in Crete during the Mycenean age.^[17] Apollo'south lyre had likewise seven strings.

In literature and fine arts [edit]

Literature [edit]

The story of Niobe, and especially her sorrows, is an aboriginal one. The context in which she is mentioned by Achilles to Priam in Homer'due south Iliad is as a stock type for mourning. Priam is non unlike Niobe in the sense that he was likewise grieving for his son Hector, who was killed and not cached for several days.

Niobe is besides mentioned in Sophocles's Antigone where, every bit Antigone is marched toward her expiry, she compares her own loneliness to that of Niobe.^[18] Sophocles is said to take also contributed a play titled Niobe that is lost.

The Niobe of Aeschylus, set in Thebes, survives in fragmentary quotes that were supplemented past a papyrus sheet containing twenty-one lines of text.^[19] 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 of Sappho'due south poetic fragments ("Before they were mothers, Leto and Niobe had been the most devoted of friends.").^[20]

In Latin linguistic communication sources, Niobe's business relationship is starting time told by Hyginus in his collection of stories in cursory and plain Fabulae.

Parthenius of Nicaea records a rare version of the story of Niobe, in which her father is called Assaon and her married man Philottus. The circumstances in which Niobe loses her children are also different, see Niobids § Parthenius variant.

Niobe's iconic tears were also mentioned in Hamlet's soliloquy (Act ane, Scene 2), in which he contrasts his mother'due south grief over the expressionless King, Village'south father – "like Niobe, all tears" – to her unseemly hasty union to Claudius.^[21]

The quotation from Hamlet is also used in Dorothy 50. Sayers' novel Murder Must Annunciate, in which an advertising agency's client turns down an advertizing using the quotation equally a caption.^[22]

In William Faulkner'due south novel Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner compares Ellen, the married woman 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 every bit a central theme, Kate Daniels' Niobe Poems can exist cited.^[23]

Arts [edit]

The bailiwick of Niobe and the devastation of the Niobids was function of the repertory of Attic vase-painters and inspired sculpture groups and wall frescoes as well every bit relief carvings on Roman sarcophagi.

The subject area of the Attic calyx-krater from Orvieto conserved in the Musée du Louvre has provided the proper name for the Niobid Painter.^[24]

A lifesize grouping of marble Niobids, including one of Niobe sheltering one of her daughters, plant in Rome in 1583 at the same time as the Wrestlers, were taken in 1775 to the Uffizi in Florence where, in a gallery devoted to them, they remain some of the most prominent surviving sculptures of Classical antiquity (come across below). New instances come to light from time to time, similar one headless statue found in early 2005 amidst the ruins of a villa in the Villa dei Quintili merely outside Rome.^[25]

In painting, Niobe was painted by post-Renaissance artists from varied traditions (see below). An early appearance, The Decease of Niobe's Children past Abraham Bloemaert, was painted in 1591 towards the start of the Dutch Golden Historic period. The English language artist Richard Wilson gained great acclaim for his The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, painted in 1760. Iii notable works, all dating from the 1770s, Apollo and Diana Attacking Niobe and her Children by Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier, The Children of Niobe Killed by Apollo and Diana by Pierre-Charles Jombert and Diana and Apollo Piercing Niobe'southward Children with their Arrows by Jacques-Louis David belong to the tradition of French Baroque and Classicism.

Niobe is an abstruse painting by Károly Patkó.^[26]

In classical music, Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654 – 1728) dedicated his opera "Niobe, Queen of Saba" to her myth. Benjamin Britten based one of his Six Metamorphoses later Ovid on Niobe.

In mod music, Caribou called the last track on his 2007 album Andorra "Niobe".

In modern dance, José Limón named a department of his dance theater work Dances 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 farce Niobe (play) by Harry 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 flavour at the London Royal Strand Theatre enjoyed more than than v hundred performances. The play is the subject of a musical dedication by Australian composer Thomas Henry Massey. The play was filmed in 1915.^[27]

'Niobe' gavotte named subsequently the 1904 farce by Harry Paulton apropos a effigy of Greek mythology

Examples in painting and sculpture [edit]

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The option of "Niobe" simply as a name in works of fine art and literature is non uncommon either. Two small-scale characters of Greek mythology accept the same name (meet Niobe (disambiguation)) and the name occurs in several works of the 19th century. More than recently, one of the characters in the films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions was besides named Niobe. A character named Niobe besides appeared in the Rome TV series.

The chemical element niobium was so named equally an extension of the inspiration which had led before to the naming of the element tantalum past Anders Gustaf Ekeberg. On the basis of his argument according to which there were 2 different elements in the tantalite sample, Heinrich Rose named them after children of Tantalus—niobium and pelopium—although the argument was later contested equally far as pelopium was concerned.

A mountain in British Columbia, Canada is named Mount Niobe.

Four successive ships of the British Majestic Navy were chosen HMS Niobe.

See also [edit]

• Aedon
• Cassiopeia (disambiguation)

Notes [edit]

1. ^ George Perrot (1892). History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia. Chapman and Hall. p. 62. ISBN978-one-4067-0883-7.
2. ^ Frazer, James George (1900). Pausanias, and other Greek sketches, later retitled Pausanias's Description of Greece. Kessinger Publishing Visitor. p. 11. ISBNone-4286-4922-0.
3. ^ At that place is a "Throne" conjecturally associated with Pelops in the Yarıkkaya locality in Mountain Sipylus. There are two tombs called "Tomb of Tantalus" near the summits of the neighboring mountains of Yamanlar and Mount Sipylus in western Turkey, sources by respective scholars differing on the associations that may be based on the one or the other.
4. ^ Pliny the Elder (1938). Natural History. Vol. 2. Translated by H. Rackham. p. 337.
5. ^ ^{a b} Thomas Bulfinch (2010). Bulfinch's Mythology. CreateSpace Contained Publishing Platform. ISBN1440426309.
6. ^ Iliad 24.603–610.
7. ^ The river Acheloos in Niobe's story should non dislocated with its much larger namesake, the Acheloos River in mainland Hellenic republic. The Acheloos mentioned past Homer could correspond to the modernistic-mean solar day Çaybaşı Stream which flows effectually the slopes of the Mountain Sipylus in immediate proximity of the Weeping Stone associated with her. It is worth noting that the patently between the coast and the ancient city of Adramyttium was as well called "Thebe" (the nowadays-mean solar day Edremit Obviously).
8. ^ Iliad xxiv.602ff
9. ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, iii.5.half-dozen, 3.
10. ^ According to Iliad XXIV, there were twelve, six male, vi female person. Aelian (Varia Historia xii. 36): "But Hesiod says they were nine boys and 10 girls—unless after all the verses are not Hesiod merely are falsely ascribed to him as are many others." Ix would make a triple triplet, triplicity existence character of numerous sisterhoods (J.E. Harrison, A Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), "The Maiden-Trinities" pp 286ff); x would equate to a full two easily of male dactyls, while twelve would resonate with the number of Olympian gods.
11. ^ Due east.g. by Quintus Smyrnaeus, i.390ff Theoi.com on-line quotation
12. ^ The return of Niobe from Thebes to her Lydian homeland is recorded in pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke three.46.
13. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece 2.21.9
14. ^ Compare the "Elphenshots" in northern-European folklore. Martin Nilsson (1967). Die Geschichte der Griechische Organized religion. Vol I, p.443
15. ^ Homer, Iliad xxiv,602
16. ^ Antigone ^{[ permanent dead link ]} , lines 823-838. ANTIGONE: I've heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, from Phrygia – she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus, right on the mount peak. The stone there, but like clinging ivy, wore her down, and now, so people say, the snow and rain never leave her there, as she laments. Below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears. God brings me to a final residuum which most resembles hers. CHORUS: Just Niobe was a goddess, built-in divine – and we are human beings, a race which dies. But still, information technology's a fine affair for a woman, one time she's dead, to have it said she shared, in life and death, the fate of demi-gods.
17. ^ F. Schachermeyer (1964). Dice Minoische Kultur des alten Kreta. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. p. 124.
18. ^ Antigone ^{[ permanent dead link ]} , effectually line 940. ANTIGONE: I've heard virtually a invitee of ours, daughter of Tantalus, from Phrygia – she went to an excruciating death in Sipylus, right on the mountain peak. The rock at that place, just similar clinging ivy, wore her down, and now, so people say, the snow and pelting never leave her at that place, [830] as she laments. Below her weeping eyes her neck is wet with tears. God brings me to a final residuum which most resembles hers. [940] CHORUS: Just Niobe was a goddess, born divine – and we are human being beings, a race which dies. But still, information technology's a fine matter for a woman, one time she's dead, to accept information technology said she shared, in life and death, the fate of demi-gods.
19. ^ A. D. Fitton Brown offered a reconstruction of the class of the play, in A. D. Fitton Brown (July 1954). "Niobe". The Classical Quarterly. 4 (iii/4): 175–180. doi:10.1017/S0009838800008077.
20. ^ John Myers O'Hara (1924). The poems of Sappho: an interpretative rendition into English. Forgotten Books.
21. ^ William Shakespeare, "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" Act I, scii, l 149, of Queen Gertrude.
22. ^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, Gollancz, London, 1933
23. ^ Kate Daniels (1988). The Niobe Poems . University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN0-8229-3596-1.
24. ^ identified past Webster, Der Niobidenmaler, Lepizig 1935; the iconography of the reverse subject and its possible relation to a lost Early on Classical wall-painting by Polygnotes was examined in Erika Simon. "Polygnotid painting and the Niobid Painter". American Journal of Archaeology. 67&year=1963: 43–62.
25. ^ Jarrett A. Lobell (July–August 2005). "A tragic figure emerges from the ruins of a Roman villa". Archaeology. 58 (4).
26. ^ A sketch is found hither.
27. ^ Massey, T. H., 1870? -1946, Niobe [music] : gavotte (All smiles) / equanimous by T.H. Massey (in no linguistic content), Wm. Bruce & Co {{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors listing (link)

References [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Niobe.

Modern scholarship [edit]

• Robert Manuel Melt, 1964. Niobe and Her children (Cambridge Academy Press). Summary of the most recent research on ancient Niobid representations, pp. 6–30.
• Albin-Lesky, "Niobe" in Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft xxxiii (1936:644–73) for a full discussion of the complexities of Niobe'due south theme.
• Theoi.com, Wrath of Artemis: Niobe Excerpts of Niobe's story from Greek and Latin authors in translation.

[edit]

• Virginia Brownish'due south translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's Famous Women, pp. 33–35; Harvard University Press 2001; ISBN 0-674-01130-9
• Ovid, Metamorphoses Six.145–310.
• Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca Three.5.6.

Full general reading [edit]

• Ekrem Akurgal (2002). Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey: From Prehistoric Times Until the Cease of the Roman Empire. Kegan Paul. ISBN0-7103-0776-4.
• George Eastward. Bean (1967). Aegean Turkey: An archaeological guide . Ernest Benn, London. ISBN978-0-510-03200-v.
• Cecil John Cadoux (1938). Ancient Smyrna: A History of the City from the Earliest Times to 324 A.D. Blackwell Publishing.
• Peter James (January 2001). "More on the 'weeping stone' simulacrum of Niobe in Turkey". Fortean Times. Archived from the original on 27 June 2007.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobe

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