(Mitoloji) The daughter of Tantalus who, after boasting that she had more children than Leto, suffered the killing of her own children by Artemis and Apollo, and turned to stone while bewailing their loss
In Greek mythology, the prototype of the bereaved mother. The daughter of Tantalus, she married King Amphion of Thebes and bore him six sons and six daughters. She made the mistake of boasting of her fertility to the Titaness Leto, who had only two children, Apollo and Artemis. As punishment for her pride, Apollo killed all of Niobe's sons and Artemis all her daughters. Niobe was so overwhelmed with grief that the gods turned her into a rock on Mount Sipylus (near modern Izmir, Turkey), which weeps endlessly as the snow above it melts
(3 syl ) The personification of female sorrow According to Grecian fable, Niobe was the mother of twelve children, and taunted Latona because she had only two- namely, Apollo and Diana Latona commanded her children to avenge the insult, and they caused all the sons and daughters of Niobe to die Niobe was inconsolable, wept herself to death, and was changed into a stone, from which ran water, Like Niobe, all tears (Hamlet ) The group of Niobe and her children, in Florence, was discovered at Rome in 1583, and was the work either of Scopas or Praxiteles The Niobe of nations So Lord Byron styles Rome, the lone mother of dead empires, with broken thrones and temples; a chaos of ruins; a desert where we steer stumbling o'er recollections (Childe Harold, canto iv stanza 79 )
she provoked Apollo and Artemis to vengeance for taunting their mother, Leto, with the number and beauty of her own children; her children were slain and she was turned into stone by Zeus, in which form she continued to weep over her loss