    
|
 Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997 |
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997 |
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NEW-NUM |
|
|
NIOBE , in Greek mythology, daughter of Tantalus and Dione, wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Proud of her numerous family, six daughters and six sons, she boasted of her superiority to her friend Leto, the mother of only two children, Apollo and Artemis. As a punishment, Apollo slew her sons and Artemis her daughters. Their bodies lay for nine days unburied, for Zeus had changed the people to stone; on the tenth day they were buried by the gods. Out of pity for her grief, the gods changed Niobe herself into a rock on Mount
district
Magnesia
According to some, Niobe is the goddess of snow and winter, whose children, slain by Apollo and Artemis, symbolize the ice and snow melted by the sun in spring ; according to others, she is an earth-goddess, whose progenyvegetation and the fruits of the soilis dried up and slain every summer by the shafts of the sun-god. Burmeister regards the legend as an incident in the struggle between the followers of Dionysus and Apollo in Thebes, in which the former were defeated and driven back to Lydia
Lydia
ordinary woman. Enmann, who interprets the name as " she who prevents increase " (in contrast to Leto, who made women prolific), considers the main point of the myth to be Niobe's loss of her children. He compares her story withthat of Lamia, who, after her children had been slain by Zeus, retired to a lonely cave and carried off and killed the children of others. The appearance of the rock on Sipylus gave rise to the story of Niobe having been turned to stone. The tragedians used her story to point the moral of the instability of human happiness; Niobe became the representative of human nature, liable to pride
The tragic story of Niobe was a favourite subject in literature and art. Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote tragedies upon it; Ovid has described it at length in his Metamorphoses. In art, the most famous representation was a 'marble group of Niobe and her children, taken by Sosius to Rome and set up in the temple of Apollo Sosianus (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 4). What is probably a Roman imitation of this work was found in 1583 near the Lateran, and is now in the Uflizi gallery at Florence. In ancient times it was disputed whether the original
Praxiteles
On the whole subject see C.E. Burmeister, De fabula glaze de Niobe ejusque liberis agit (Wismar, 1836); L. Curtze, Fabula Niobes Thebanae (Corbach, 1836); W. Heffter in Zeitschrift fiir Gymnasialwesen, ix. (1855) ; C. B. Stark, Niobe and die Niobiden (1863), the standard work; E. Thramer, Pergamos (1888); C. Friederichs, Praxiteles
Mount
In GREEK ART, fig. 29 (from an Orvieto vase) represents the slaying of the children of Niobe by Apollo and Artemis; fig. 78 (Pl. VI.), Niobe shielding her youngest daughter. End of Article: NIOBE If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/NEW_NUM/NIOBE.html"> NIOBE </a> |
|
|
(Previous) NINUS |
(Next) NIORT |
Jesus Christ Saves Ministries, P.O. Box 70696, Pasadena, CA 91117JCSM is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Copyright © 1997-present. |
Free & Cheap Cell
Phones |
Cheap Long Distance
Phone Service Carriers |
Talk America Local Phone Service
|
Ztel & MCI - Unlimited Long Distance
Compare
Cell Phone Plans & Companies |
International Calling Cards & Prepaid Phone Cards |
Voice Over IP Broadband Internet Phone
Service | Wireless
Phone Plans & Cheap Cell Phones
|
_____________________________________________________________________________
