A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

NIOBE
"... Like Niobe, all tears."
Shakespeare.
The quotation is an overworked quotation, like many another of those
from Hamlet; yet, have half of those whose lips utter it more than the
vaguest acquaintance with the story of Niobe and the cause of her tears?
The noble group--attributed to Praxiteles--of Niobe and her last
remaining child, in the Uffizi Palace at Florence, has been so often
reproduced that it also has helped to make the anguished figure of the
Theban queen a familiar one in pictorial tragedy, so that as long as the
works of those Titans of art, Shakespeare and Praxiteles, endure, no
other monument is wanted for the memory of Niobe.
Like many of the tales of mythology, her tragedy is a story of
vengeance wreaked upon a mortal by an angry god. She was the
daughter of Tantalus, and her husband was Amphion, King of Thebes,
himself a son of Zeus. To her were born seven fair daughters and seven
beautiful and gallant sons, and it was not because of her own beauty,
nor her husband's fame, nor their proud descent and the greatness of
their kingdom, that the Queen of Thebes was arrogant in her pride.
Very sure she was that no woman had ever borne children like her own
children, whose peers were not to be found on earth nor in heaven.
Even in our own day there are mortal mothers who feel as Niobe felt.
But amongst the Immortals there was also a mother with children
whom she counted as peerless. Latona, mother of Apollo and Diana,
was magnificently certain that in all time, nor in eternity to come, could
there be a son and daughter so perfect in beauty, in wisdom, and in
power as the two that were her own. Loudly did she proclaim her proud
belief, and when Niobe heard it she laughed in scorn.
"The goddess has a son and a daughter," she said. "Beautiful and wise
and powerful they may be, but I have borne seven daughters and seven