She expressed the fear lest Niobe's
defiance
should be the
signal for general contempt.
signal for general contempt.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v2
Sipylus there stood out prominently a
rock having the shape of a woman. Down the front of it streamed con-
tinual rills of water from the melting snows. This rock was declared
to be the unhappy Niobe, still mourning the loss of her husband and
her children. The idea ordinarily became part of the myth.
The Iliad gave a new version, with the following changes. It said
nothing about Philottus or Assaon. It described Niobe as being fair-
haired and as having six boys and six girls. When she offended Latona,
the goddess caused Apollo and Diana to kill the children with arrows.
Jupiter, also, took part in the destruction. When some of the people
tried to bury the children, he turned these people into stone. Nine days
the children lay where they had fallen, and Niobe wept without ceasing.
On the tenth the heavenly gods buried them, and Niobe at last thought
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? NIOBE
of taking food. But she remained inconsolable and became the rock
weeping perpetually on the heights of Mt. Sipylus. This tale Achilles
repeated to King Priam, in order to persuade him that, even while
mourning the loss of Hector, he ought to revive his strength with food.
Niobe had become proverbial as an example of the deepest grief. This
character she continued to hold through the many centuries of ancient
literature. The incident of nine days uninterrupted mourning did not
reappear in later accounts of Niobe, but it probably suggested the idea
that Ceres lamented nine days for the loss of Proserpina (cf. Bk. 5) and
that Clytie wept nine days because of the indifference of the Sun (Bk.
The Catalogues alluded to a still different account of Niobe. Her
husband, they said, was the famous Amphion, son of Jupiter and
Antiope, who built the walls of Thebes. Niobe was a Theban queen, and
in that city she suffered her tragic loss. This became the accepted form
of the tale. The myth continued to be very popular with the early poets
of Greece. The lyric poets, Mimnermus, Sappho, and Alcman, alluded
to it. The dithyrambic poets, Bacchylides and Pindar, followed their
example. Early prose writers manifested a similar interest. Herodotus
referred to Niobe, Hellanicus and Pherecydes appear to have told her
story. During this period of Greek literature, the number of Niobe's
children varied with every account. The Catalogues gave her as many
as nineteen, Herodotus gave her as few as four. The Iliad had spoken
of Jupiter as petrifying those who offered to bury Niobe's children. Sub-
sequent authors did not mention the incident, and it ceased to be a part
of the tale.
Both Aeschylus and Sophocles used the myth as a theme for trag-
edy. What changes they made individually we do not know, but together
they gave the story a markedly different form. With the Catalogues
they described Niobe as wife of Amphion and queen of Thebes. With the
Iliad they made the number of boys and girls equal, but they increased
it to seven of each. They agreed that it was Apollo and Diana who
killed Niobe's children. But they added that Apollo shot the boys while
they were hunting on Mt. Cithaeron, and Diana shot the girls in the
palace. With the early Lydian version they agreed that Niobe lost her
husband as well as her children. But they declared that Amphion went
mad and later was shot by Apollo. Niobe's father, they added, was the
famous Lydian, King Tantalus. In Greek tradition he had been well
known since the Odyssey. Although a mortal, he was a son of Jupiter
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
and had shared in the banquets of the gods. He had abused the privilege
and ever after was punished in Hades (cf. Athamas, Bk. &). Aeschylus
and Sophocles imagined that during the period of Niobe's misfortune
Tantalus still ruled in Lydia. Niobe returned to live with him. Change
of residence did not lessen her grief. She prayed that Jupiter might re-
lieve her woe, and he transformed her into the weeping rock. Referring
to Aeschylus and Sophocles, the comic dramatist Timocles observed that
tragedy gives relief by showing us worse evils than our own, for the man
who has lost a son is taught resignation by the far greater loss of Niobe.
Sophocles in his Antigone alluded at some length to Niobe's
petrifaction. In his Electra he showed the heroine regarding even
Niobe's grief as preferable to her own. The idea of grief exceeding even
that of Niobe was repeated by other poets. Propertius applied it to the
distress of Cynthia. Ovid in the Tristia and the Pontic Epistles ap-
plied it often to his own.
In the Phoenisae Euripides mentioned, among landmarks visible
from the Theban walls, the graves of Niobe's seven unmarried daughters.
The term "unmarried" he may have used only to suggest their youth.
But probably he alluded to still another version of the tale. Some au-
thorities gave Amphion and Niobe an eighth daughter, Chloris, wife of
Neleus. She had departed with her husband, they said, and so escaped
the fate of the others.
Plato in the Republic mentioned the stories of Niobe and Pelops as
unworthy fabrications of the poets, which ought to be suppressed. The
gods, he said, do not act vindictively or inflict suffering which is not ben-
eficial to the sufferer.
Alexandrian authors showed interest in the famous tale. Euphorion
alluded to it. Callimachus referred to Niobe as Phrygian, because at
certain periods Phrygian territory included Lydia, and this may have
suggested Ovid's idea that she was queen both of Thebes and of Phrygia.
The Manual retold the story. Although agreeing in many respects with
Aeschylus and Sophocles, it introduced two further details: Niobe's
mother was the Hyad Dione, a child of Atlas; and Apollo and Diana
killed only twelve of the fourteen children. One boy and one girl prayed
to Latona and were spared. The Manual recorded the names of all the
children.
Ancient painters and sculptors often treated some part of the tale,
usually the destruction of Niobe's children. At Olympia a nephew of
Phidias sculptured the event on the throne of Jupiter. Scopas dealt
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? NIOBE
with the subject in a very famous group, which in Ovid's time was trans-
ported to Rome. Both Greek sarcophagi and Pompeiian frescoes showed
the death of the boys on Mt. Cithaeron. Carved on the doors of Apollo's
temple at Rome was an ivory relief which pictured the death of Niobe
herself.
Roman poets often referred to the story. Horace mentioned it in
an ode. Propertius made several references. Ovid recalled Niobe in the
Amores, in the Epistle of Cydippe, and in each of the three chief works
written at Tomis. He showed special fondness for the incident of Niobe's
transformation into a weeping rock.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid assumed that his readers were ac-
quainted with the tradition and immediately would recognize both Niobe
and Amphion. His outline he took from the Manual, but he introduced
many changes. Where possible, he gave the events a more lively interest,
and throughout he tried to make them more plausible.
Niobe, he said, had not one but several causes for her extraordinary
pride. First there was her husband's fame. Since the time of the Odyssey,
Amphion had been celebrated as builder of the Theban walls. Apollonius
and the Manual added that he drew the stones into place by his skillful
playing on the lyre. A second cause was the fact that both Amphion and
Niobe were descended from Jove. And further, they reigned over a pow-
erful kingdom. Ovid should have stated these causes more clearly. But
he did not wish at first to do more than indicate their nature, because he
was later to repeat them at some length and so greatly to heighten the
effect of Niobe's vaunting speech. Still other causes were Niobe's wealth
and her personal beauty. These Ovid mentioned later and apparently
as afterthoughts. But the chief cause of Niobe's pride was the number
of her children. She would have been most fortunate of mothers, had she
not been elated by her own good fortune.
Niobe was not only extraordinarily proud; she disregarded a series
of warnings to repent. In the beginning Ovid had pointed out that she
knew well the fate of Arachne. This ought to have served as a general
admonition to revere the gods. Ovid imagined that Niobe received also a
second, more definite warning to worship Latona in particular. In the
tale of Pentheus, Tiresias bade the Thebans worship Bacchus. Euripides
and the Manual had given Tiresias a daughter, Manto, who inherited the
prophetic gift. They had spoken of her as contemporary with Alcmaeon
and the Epigoni at the close of Theban history (cf. Iolaiis, Bk. 9). But
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Ovid imagined that she was contemporary with Niobe and that she bade
the Thebans worship Latona.
In the tale of Pentheus, the Thebans had proceeded to worship
Bacchus. But Pentheus interrupted the ceremony with an address, in
which he called them mad and attempted to discredit the god. In the
same way, Ovid continued, the Thebans worshiped Latona; but Niobe
too interrupted the ceremony, calling them mad and attempting to dis-
credit the goddess. The Iliad had spoken of Niobe as fair-haired. Ovid
not only repeated this idea but also declared that she was beautiful. And
in a few words he described her queenly pomp.
In the speech Niobe stated what she thought her own claims to dis-
tinction and contrasted them with what she regarded as the claims of
Latona. She declared herself entitled to the honors accorded a divinity.
Although new and startling, the idea would have impressed Ovid's con-
temporaries as probable. Since time immemorial kings and queens ot
Egypt had claimed the right to divine honors. The Ptolemies and other
Greek rulers of the Alexandrian age had followed their example. Both
Egyptians and Alexandrian Greeks had thought the claim legitimate.
And in Ovid's own day the Roman provinces were according divine honors
to Augustus. That Niobe should have claimed divine honors would not
have seemed unlikely or in itself improper. Such a claim was impious only
when made with the idea of discrediting a deity. This form of impiety
had been associated with a number of mythological persons, and it
might be inferred easily from Niobe's traditional contempt for Latona.
In Niobe's presentation of her own case, Ovid made each claim
reasonably clear and picturesque, and by enumerating many claims he
gave a decided impression of arrogance. But with a more orderly ar-
rangement he might have gained a still better effect. He could have pre-
sented Niobe's claims successively as follows: personal beauty, wealth,
a celebrated husband, an illustrious ancestry, wide dominion, many chil-
dren, and the right to divine honors. This order would have corresponded
to that of his previous enumeration, it would have afforded a sharp con-
trast with the supposed claims of Latona which were to follow, and it
would have presented the ideas in order of increasing importance. But
Ovid gave instead a haphazard presentation which gained none of these
advantages.
For Niobe to call herself daughter of the celebrated Tantalus was
in accord both with Greek tragedy and with the Manual. But in the tale
of Athamas, Ovid had pictured Tantalus as already dead and being
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? NIOBE
punished in Hades; presumably he lived at a period much earlier than
the time of Niobe. Ovid took advantage of the fact that he had been
indefinite as to the intervening lapse of time. He allowed Niobe to boast
of the ancestry assigned her by tradition. But, to lessen the inconsis-
tency, he implied that Tantalus was long since dead.
With her own claims Niobe contrasted those of Latona, presenting
the case for the goddess as unfavorably as possible. Latona had no dis-
tinguished ancestry. Her father was Coeus, known only as one of the
Titans, a race vanquished by the gods. And she had no dominion. This
could be supported by tradition. According to the Homeric Hymn to
Delian Apollo, Juno exiled Latona not only from heaven but from earth.
At length Latona appealed to the barren island of Delos, offering fame
and prosperity, if it would give her a place to bear her son. After some
hesitation, the island consented and became the birthplace of Apollo.
Callimachus carried the idea of exile still further. Not content with a
general sentence of banishment from the earth, Juno appointed Mars to
exclude Latona from the mainland and Iris to exclude her from the
islands. But the goddess Asterie recently had become an obscure float-
ing isle, Ortygia, (cf. Arachne). She received Latona, surreptitiously.
But as the birthplace of Apollo she became so famous as to acquire the
new name Delos (the Clearly Seen). According to the Homeric Hymn,
Diana was born in a different Ortygia, the isle near Syracuse. Calli-
machus declared that she too was born on the obscure floating Ortygia,
which later became Delos. Niobe dwelt on the idea that Latona was an
outcast. Latona, she said, was an exile from heaven, from the land, and
from the sea, until at last Delos, a fellow vagrant, took pity on her and
offered her a place to bear her children.
And these children, Niobe continued, were only two. Her own out-
numbered them in the proportion of seven to one. Their very abundance
would be a defense from the changes of fortune. Even should many be
lost, the number would not fall so far as two, the narrow margin which
saved Latona from being childless.
After describing the Thebans as loth to interrupt their worship,
Ovid pictured the resentment of Latona. Many of the circumstances he
imitated from earlier tales. Latona had observed Niobe from her sacred
mountain, Cynthus. She appealed to her children as her only protectors
from neglect.
She expressed the fear lest Niobe's defiance should be the
signal for general contempt. All this Ovid imitated from the conduct
of Venus, which he had recorded in the tale of Proserpina. After stating
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
her wishes, Latona added entreaty. Apollo declared it needless. This,
Ovid repeated from his interview of Juno and Tisiphone in the tale of
Athamas. But Ovid invented two further circumstances. According to
some authorities, Tantalus had offended the gods by telling over-much
about their affairs. Latona suggested that Niobe was imitating her
father's notorious example. And, since Niobe had taunted the goddess
with the idea that she was virtually childless, Latona repeated the word
"childless" to suggest Niobe's appropriate punishment.
The sculpture at Olympia had shown Apollo and Diana taking aim
at Niobe's children from the throne of Jupiter. Other accounts had not
indicated the place. Ovid imagined plausibly that Apollo and Diana
came down to the citadel of Thebes, concealing their presence with
clouds.
At least the majority of previous accounts had given the impres-
sion that both deities made a simultaneous attack. Ovid declared that
at first Apollo alone began to shoot. Diana still withheld her arrows
and spared the girls. The death of the sons was to serve as a third
warning to the proud Niobe, more definite and formidable than the
others, but still permitting her to repent and escape with half of her
children.
According to the Manual, the boys were hunting in the forest of
Mt. Cithaeron. Ovid made the circumstances more striking. He showed
the boys engaged in sport on a plain easily visible from the city. He
recorded their names, taking most of them from the Manual but adding
that of Ilioneus from Vergil's Aeneid, and he gave some account of the
sports with which they were occupied. The two oldest, Ismenus and
Sipylus, were riding richly caparisoned horses; two others, Phaedimus
and Tantalus, were wrestling; the three youngest, Alphenor, Damasich-
thon, and Ilioneus, apparently were watching the rest. The destruction
of the six older boys Ovid recounted with various and vivid effect. But
he was inclined to emphasize details which were not in harmony with the
tragic situation. The Manual had spoken of one boy who prayed to
Latona and escaped. This detail suggested to Ovid the pathetic inci-
dent of the youngest son, Ilioneus. To have spared him would have con-
fused the progress of the tragedy. But Ovid allowed a brief suspense.
Terrified, Ilioneus prayed to all the gods. Apollo strove, too late, to
withhold the arrow and struck him with a lighter but fatal wound.
The events immediately following Ovid told obscurely. Evidently
he altered the traditional story in several respects and supposed the
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? NIOBE
events to have been as follows. News of the disaster passed quickly to
the palace; Amphion had been spared by Apollo, but he took his own life
with a dagger; the bodies of Amphion and his seven sons were brought
into an area of open ground, visible from the citadel, and were laid on
biers for the funeral service. Then Niobe came forth, amazed and in-
credulous, attended by her daughters. At the sight of the dead, she
realized how much cause she had to mourn. Ovid contrasted the former
proud Niobe, envied by all, with the hapless Niobe wildly embracing her
dead sons, worthy of pity even from a foe.
But her pride remained. Even so dreadful a warning did not avail.
Looking up from the dead, she boasted that she still excelled Latona in
the number of her children. Hitherto Diana had been merciful. At this
she bent her bow.
In the new catastrophe, Ovid was anxious to avoid duplicating his
account of the boys. He did not name the daughters, and he narrated
very briefly the various deaths of the older six. The Manual had spoken
of a daughter who prayed to Latona and escaped. Ovid did not repeat
the incident, but again he introduced a moment of suspense. Scopas had
shown Niobe attempting to shield her youngest daughter from Diana's
shaft. Ovid followed his example, and he added that Niobe herself pleaded
for the life of her only remaining child. She prayed too late. As she
spoke the words, the arrow reached its mark.
Since Tantalus had been for a long time dead, Niobe could not re-
turn to live with him. Ovid thought it unlikely that she could even sur-
vive a loss so overwhelming. Sitting near the bodies of her husband and
her fourteen children, he said, she hardened gradually into marble. Ovid
recorded the change as it occurred, first externally and then within,
until it left no motion save the falling tears. Tradition had associated
the petrified Niobe with the crags of Mt. Sipylus. Accordingly, Ovid
invented a picturesque incident. As Niobe sat, a weeping statue, before
her palace at Thebes, a whirlwind passed by and swept her over land and
sea to her native mountain.
In spite of defective passages Ovid showed clearly the extent of
Niobe's impiety, and he presented the chief events with dramatic effect.
His account was always the most accessible and for many centuries it
was the only full account which survived. Apart from Statius, who fol-
lowed chiefly the Iliad and Hyginus, who followed the Manual, later
authors learned of Niobe from Ovid.
Ordinarily they were content with brief allusions. Seneca referred
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
in his Agamemnon to Manto's warning. In his Oedipus he described
Niobe as standing in Hades and still proudly counting the number of
her shades. Dante saw among examples carved on the terrace of pride,
Queen Niobe mourning over her dead children. In a final canzone to
Laura, Petrarch declared that Medusa and his sin had transformed him
into a weeping rock. Erasmus noted in his Praise of Folly that wonder
at an absurd preacher turned certain divines into stone, as grief trans-
formed Niobe.
Spenser referred three times to Ovid's myth. In the Shepherd's
Calendar, Thenot pronounced Queen Elizabeth superior to Apollo or
Diana and then remembered with alarm what punishment such compari-
sons had brought on Niobe. In the Faerie Queen, Spenser declared that
Beige, with her seventeen children, would have seemed at first happier
than Niobe but afterwards incurred almost as terrible a loss in the
twelve destroyed by the tyrant Philip. And Spenser compared Bel-
phoebe, shooting at Lust, to Diana shooting at Niobe's children. In
Childe Harold, Byron recalled Ovid while beginning his great description
of Rome:
The Niobe of nations ! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.
And in The Age of Bronze he noted satirically that Mother Church
Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring, Tithes.
Modern authors, like the ancients, mentioned Niobe as typical of
the profoundest grief. Chaucer's Pandarus told his nephew that it would
not be possible to win a lady by weeping like Queen Niobe, whose tears
are still visible in the marble. Shakespeare's Troilus declared that loss
of Hector would make Niobes of all the Trojan women and turn Priam
and the youths to stone. His Hamlet described the queen as following
the body of the former king, like Niobe all tears. And Alfred Tennyson
referred to the profound grief of Niobe in three poems, Walking for the
Mail, The Princess, and The Promise of May.
In the nineteenth century many poets retold Ovid's story at some
length. Chief among these were Landor, Frederick Tennyson, Lewis
Morris, and Leconte de Lisle.
Ovid's tale inspired paintings by Rottenhammer, Le Bril, and
Wilson.
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
The Lycian Peasants
Just as the fate of Pentheus made the Thebans eager to worship
Bacchus (Bk. 3), so, Ovid continued, the fate of Niobe made them eager
to worship Latona. Ovid then introduced another story. Latona's pun-
ishment of Niobe recalled to one of the people her earlier punishment of
some Lycian peasants. This event the narrator told as a story learned
when he visited the scene and questioned his Lycian guide. Later Ovid
used a transition of the same kind while introducing the tale of Philemon
and Baucis (Bk. 8).
The myth of Latona and the Lycians was recorded first by a local
historian, Menecrates of Xanthus. After the birth of Apollo and Diana,
he said, Juno continued persecuting Latona. The goddess fled with her
infants to the mountains of Lycia. One day, while tortured by thirst,
she arrived at a pond called Melas and wished to drink and to bathe her
children. A shepherd, Neocles, had come with several companions to
water their sheep.
These men brutally drove Latona away. She first tried to reason
with them. Finding it useless, she transformed them into frogs and de-
clared that it should be their punishment to remain always as keepers of
the pond. Nicander, repeating the story, gave a detailed account of the
metamorphosis. The ill nature of the shepherds, he said, caused the dis-
torted appearance of the frogs, and their ill-mannered outcries became
raucous croaking.
Ovid prefaced the myth with a few details concerning the birth of
Apollo and Diana. Both the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and Cal-
limachus in the Hymn to Delos had stated that Juno endeavored to pre-
vent the birth of the children. She kept Ilythia, goddess of childbirth,
ignorant of Latona's presence in Delos. But after nine days the other
goddesses brought Ilythia secretly to the island. An incident of this kind
Ovid planned to use later in his tale of Galanthis (Bk. 9) and so he
merely alluded to it, by observing that Latona bore her children despite
opposition of Juno.
The Homeric Hymn declared that Latona leaned against a palm
tree. Theognis, Euripides, and Callimachus repeated the incident. Euri-
pides in his Iphigenia among the Taurians mentioned also an olive tree
which grew near by. Callimachus added that nymphs playfully biting
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
the trunk afterwards amused the infant Apollo. Catullus declared that
Latona's children were born under the olive tree. Following these hints,
Ovid observed that Latona leaned against both the palm tree and the
olive tree. This idea he repeated later in his tale of the daughters of
Anius (Bk. 13).
In Greek mythology the district of Lycia had been famous chiefly
for its association with the Chimaera. The story, as told by the Iliad,
ran as follows. A certain Amisodorus of Lycia reared a fire-breathing
monster, the Chimaera, which combined the head of a lion and the body
of a goat with the tail of a snake. This animal ravaged the country and
proved so formidable that encountering it appeared to mean certain
death. King Iobates, who wished to destroy Bellerophon, sent him to
kill this monster. Contrary to expectation the hero with his arrows
destroyed the Chimaera. The Theogony added that Bellerophon rode
to the encounter on the winged horse Pegasus. Pindar and the Manual
retold the story, with further details of their own. Greek artists often
showed the adventure, but were inclined to represent the Chimaera as
having only the form of a lion. Vergil in the Culex had distinguished
Lycia as the home of the Chimaera. In the tale of Latona and the
Lycians Ovid followed his example. In his account of Byblis (Bk. 9) he
briefly described the monster. But he never told the story, probably
because it resembled too closely the adventures of Perseus.
For Latona's adventure at the pond Ovid used Nicander. But he
introduced many desirable changes. The event was not easy to recon-
cile with the circumstances given in Ovid's tale of Apollo and Python
(Bk. 1), and in any case it must have happened in the remote past. Ac-
cordingly, Ovid made the story more indefinite by leaving nameless the
pond and the Lycians. Ovid quoted Latona's words to the men. He
showed her observing that water, like sun and air, is not the possession
of any man but common to all.
In Nicander's tale a reader might find extenuation for the conduct
of the shepherds. They needed the water for their own purpose, they
might have supposed that bathing children would interfere with the care
of their flocks, and so they might have thought it necessary to drive
Latona away. Ovid was careful to remove these possible excuses. He
described the Lycians as peasants who were gathering osiers and reeds.
They were not going to use the water themselves. He showed Latona
disclaiming any intention of bathing. And he described the Lycians as
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
not only forbidding her to drink water which they did not need but as
wantonly jumping up and down to foul it with mud.
Nicander had shown the goddess condemning the Lycians to remain
always as keepers of the pond. This might not sound like punishment,
and it was not an accurate description of frogs. Ovid said therefore that
she condemned them appropriately to reside always in a muddy pool.
Following Nicander's example, he described the transformation at some
length. Vergil in the Georgics had imitated the sound of a distant chorus
of frogs. Ovid now imitated the sound of individual frogs, croaking near
by. * But he was mistaken in describing them as croaking under water.
In later times Ovid's tale interested several great poets and artists.
Gray in his Ode on Vicissitude remembered Ovid's idea that sun and air
are common to all. Camoens likened the terrified Moors diving from the
ships of Garaa to the Lycians diving from the bank, after Latona had
transformed them. Milton declared in a sonnet that his Tetrachordon
was greeted with an outcry as noisy and stupid
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
Reubens, Brueghel, and Tench made Ovid's tale the theme of paintings.
A French sculptor used the subject for adorning a fountain at Versailles
and may have suggested to Thierry and Fremin the idea of treating the
same theme in one of the glorious fountains of San Ildefonso.
rock having the shape of a woman. Down the front of it streamed con-
tinual rills of water from the melting snows. This rock was declared
to be the unhappy Niobe, still mourning the loss of her husband and
her children. The idea ordinarily became part of the myth.
The Iliad gave a new version, with the following changes. It said
nothing about Philottus or Assaon. It described Niobe as being fair-
haired and as having six boys and six girls. When she offended Latona,
the goddess caused Apollo and Diana to kill the children with arrows.
Jupiter, also, took part in the destruction. When some of the people
tried to bury the children, he turned these people into stone. Nine days
the children lay where they had fallen, and Niobe wept without ceasing.
On the tenth the heavenly gods buried them, and Niobe at last thought
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? NIOBE
of taking food. But she remained inconsolable and became the rock
weeping perpetually on the heights of Mt. Sipylus. This tale Achilles
repeated to King Priam, in order to persuade him that, even while
mourning the loss of Hector, he ought to revive his strength with food.
Niobe had become proverbial as an example of the deepest grief. This
character she continued to hold through the many centuries of ancient
literature. The incident of nine days uninterrupted mourning did not
reappear in later accounts of Niobe, but it probably suggested the idea
that Ceres lamented nine days for the loss of Proserpina (cf. Bk. 5) and
that Clytie wept nine days because of the indifference of the Sun (Bk.
The Catalogues alluded to a still different account of Niobe. Her
husband, they said, was the famous Amphion, son of Jupiter and
Antiope, who built the walls of Thebes. Niobe was a Theban queen, and
in that city she suffered her tragic loss. This became the accepted form
of the tale. The myth continued to be very popular with the early poets
of Greece. The lyric poets, Mimnermus, Sappho, and Alcman, alluded
to it. The dithyrambic poets, Bacchylides and Pindar, followed their
example. Early prose writers manifested a similar interest. Herodotus
referred to Niobe, Hellanicus and Pherecydes appear to have told her
story. During this period of Greek literature, the number of Niobe's
children varied with every account. The Catalogues gave her as many
as nineteen, Herodotus gave her as few as four. The Iliad had spoken
of Jupiter as petrifying those who offered to bury Niobe's children. Sub-
sequent authors did not mention the incident, and it ceased to be a part
of the tale.
Both Aeschylus and Sophocles used the myth as a theme for trag-
edy. What changes they made individually we do not know, but together
they gave the story a markedly different form. With the Catalogues
they described Niobe as wife of Amphion and queen of Thebes. With the
Iliad they made the number of boys and girls equal, but they increased
it to seven of each. They agreed that it was Apollo and Diana who
killed Niobe's children. But they added that Apollo shot the boys while
they were hunting on Mt. Cithaeron, and Diana shot the girls in the
palace. With the early Lydian version they agreed that Niobe lost her
husband as well as her children. But they declared that Amphion went
mad and later was shot by Apollo. Niobe's father, they added, was the
famous Lydian, King Tantalus. In Greek tradition he had been well
known since the Odyssey. Although a mortal, he was a son of Jupiter
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
and had shared in the banquets of the gods. He had abused the privilege
and ever after was punished in Hades (cf. Athamas, Bk. &). Aeschylus
and Sophocles imagined that during the period of Niobe's misfortune
Tantalus still ruled in Lydia. Niobe returned to live with him. Change
of residence did not lessen her grief. She prayed that Jupiter might re-
lieve her woe, and he transformed her into the weeping rock. Referring
to Aeschylus and Sophocles, the comic dramatist Timocles observed that
tragedy gives relief by showing us worse evils than our own, for the man
who has lost a son is taught resignation by the far greater loss of Niobe.
Sophocles in his Antigone alluded at some length to Niobe's
petrifaction. In his Electra he showed the heroine regarding even
Niobe's grief as preferable to her own. The idea of grief exceeding even
that of Niobe was repeated by other poets. Propertius applied it to the
distress of Cynthia. Ovid in the Tristia and the Pontic Epistles ap-
plied it often to his own.
In the Phoenisae Euripides mentioned, among landmarks visible
from the Theban walls, the graves of Niobe's seven unmarried daughters.
The term "unmarried" he may have used only to suggest their youth.
But probably he alluded to still another version of the tale. Some au-
thorities gave Amphion and Niobe an eighth daughter, Chloris, wife of
Neleus. She had departed with her husband, they said, and so escaped
the fate of the others.
Plato in the Republic mentioned the stories of Niobe and Pelops as
unworthy fabrications of the poets, which ought to be suppressed. The
gods, he said, do not act vindictively or inflict suffering which is not ben-
eficial to the sufferer.
Alexandrian authors showed interest in the famous tale. Euphorion
alluded to it. Callimachus referred to Niobe as Phrygian, because at
certain periods Phrygian territory included Lydia, and this may have
suggested Ovid's idea that she was queen both of Thebes and of Phrygia.
The Manual retold the story. Although agreeing in many respects with
Aeschylus and Sophocles, it introduced two further details: Niobe's
mother was the Hyad Dione, a child of Atlas; and Apollo and Diana
killed only twelve of the fourteen children. One boy and one girl prayed
to Latona and were spared. The Manual recorded the names of all the
children.
Ancient painters and sculptors often treated some part of the tale,
usually the destruction of Niobe's children. At Olympia a nephew of
Phidias sculptured the event on the throne of Jupiter. Scopas dealt
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? NIOBE
with the subject in a very famous group, which in Ovid's time was trans-
ported to Rome. Both Greek sarcophagi and Pompeiian frescoes showed
the death of the boys on Mt. Cithaeron. Carved on the doors of Apollo's
temple at Rome was an ivory relief which pictured the death of Niobe
herself.
Roman poets often referred to the story. Horace mentioned it in
an ode. Propertius made several references. Ovid recalled Niobe in the
Amores, in the Epistle of Cydippe, and in each of the three chief works
written at Tomis. He showed special fondness for the incident of Niobe's
transformation into a weeping rock.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid assumed that his readers were ac-
quainted with the tradition and immediately would recognize both Niobe
and Amphion. His outline he took from the Manual, but he introduced
many changes. Where possible, he gave the events a more lively interest,
and throughout he tried to make them more plausible.
Niobe, he said, had not one but several causes for her extraordinary
pride. First there was her husband's fame. Since the time of the Odyssey,
Amphion had been celebrated as builder of the Theban walls. Apollonius
and the Manual added that he drew the stones into place by his skillful
playing on the lyre. A second cause was the fact that both Amphion and
Niobe were descended from Jove. And further, they reigned over a pow-
erful kingdom. Ovid should have stated these causes more clearly. But
he did not wish at first to do more than indicate their nature, because he
was later to repeat them at some length and so greatly to heighten the
effect of Niobe's vaunting speech. Still other causes were Niobe's wealth
and her personal beauty. These Ovid mentioned later and apparently
as afterthoughts. But the chief cause of Niobe's pride was the number
of her children. She would have been most fortunate of mothers, had she
not been elated by her own good fortune.
Niobe was not only extraordinarily proud; she disregarded a series
of warnings to repent. In the beginning Ovid had pointed out that she
knew well the fate of Arachne. This ought to have served as a general
admonition to revere the gods. Ovid imagined that Niobe received also a
second, more definite warning to worship Latona in particular. In the
tale of Pentheus, Tiresias bade the Thebans worship Bacchus. Euripides
and the Manual had given Tiresias a daughter, Manto, who inherited the
prophetic gift. They had spoken of her as contemporary with Alcmaeon
and the Epigoni at the close of Theban history (cf. Iolaiis, Bk. 9). But
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Ovid imagined that she was contemporary with Niobe and that she bade
the Thebans worship Latona.
In the tale of Pentheus, the Thebans had proceeded to worship
Bacchus. But Pentheus interrupted the ceremony with an address, in
which he called them mad and attempted to discredit the god. In the
same way, Ovid continued, the Thebans worshiped Latona; but Niobe
too interrupted the ceremony, calling them mad and attempting to dis-
credit the goddess. The Iliad had spoken of Niobe as fair-haired. Ovid
not only repeated this idea but also declared that she was beautiful. And
in a few words he described her queenly pomp.
In the speech Niobe stated what she thought her own claims to dis-
tinction and contrasted them with what she regarded as the claims of
Latona. She declared herself entitled to the honors accorded a divinity.
Although new and startling, the idea would have impressed Ovid's con-
temporaries as probable. Since time immemorial kings and queens ot
Egypt had claimed the right to divine honors. The Ptolemies and other
Greek rulers of the Alexandrian age had followed their example. Both
Egyptians and Alexandrian Greeks had thought the claim legitimate.
And in Ovid's own day the Roman provinces were according divine honors
to Augustus. That Niobe should have claimed divine honors would not
have seemed unlikely or in itself improper. Such a claim was impious only
when made with the idea of discrediting a deity. This form of impiety
had been associated with a number of mythological persons, and it
might be inferred easily from Niobe's traditional contempt for Latona.
In Niobe's presentation of her own case, Ovid made each claim
reasonably clear and picturesque, and by enumerating many claims he
gave a decided impression of arrogance. But with a more orderly ar-
rangement he might have gained a still better effect. He could have pre-
sented Niobe's claims successively as follows: personal beauty, wealth,
a celebrated husband, an illustrious ancestry, wide dominion, many chil-
dren, and the right to divine honors. This order would have corresponded
to that of his previous enumeration, it would have afforded a sharp con-
trast with the supposed claims of Latona which were to follow, and it
would have presented the ideas in order of increasing importance. But
Ovid gave instead a haphazard presentation which gained none of these
advantages.
For Niobe to call herself daughter of the celebrated Tantalus was
in accord both with Greek tragedy and with the Manual. But in the tale
of Athamas, Ovid had pictured Tantalus as already dead and being
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? NIOBE
punished in Hades; presumably he lived at a period much earlier than
the time of Niobe. Ovid took advantage of the fact that he had been
indefinite as to the intervening lapse of time. He allowed Niobe to boast
of the ancestry assigned her by tradition. But, to lessen the inconsis-
tency, he implied that Tantalus was long since dead.
With her own claims Niobe contrasted those of Latona, presenting
the case for the goddess as unfavorably as possible. Latona had no dis-
tinguished ancestry. Her father was Coeus, known only as one of the
Titans, a race vanquished by the gods. And she had no dominion. This
could be supported by tradition. According to the Homeric Hymn to
Delian Apollo, Juno exiled Latona not only from heaven but from earth.
At length Latona appealed to the barren island of Delos, offering fame
and prosperity, if it would give her a place to bear her son. After some
hesitation, the island consented and became the birthplace of Apollo.
Callimachus carried the idea of exile still further. Not content with a
general sentence of banishment from the earth, Juno appointed Mars to
exclude Latona from the mainland and Iris to exclude her from the
islands. But the goddess Asterie recently had become an obscure float-
ing isle, Ortygia, (cf. Arachne). She received Latona, surreptitiously.
But as the birthplace of Apollo she became so famous as to acquire the
new name Delos (the Clearly Seen). According to the Homeric Hymn,
Diana was born in a different Ortygia, the isle near Syracuse. Calli-
machus declared that she too was born on the obscure floating Ortygia,
which later became Delos. Niobe dwelt on the idea that Latona was an
outcast. Latona, she said, was an exile from heaven, from the land, and
from the sea, until at last Delos, a fellow vagrant, took pity on her and
offered her a place to bear her children.
And these children, Niobe continued, were only two. Her own out-
numbered them in the proportion of seven to one. Their very abundance
would be a defense from the changes of fortune. Even should many be
lost, the number would not fall so far as two, the narrow margin which
saved Latona from being childless.
After describing the Thebans as loth to interrupt their worship,
Ovid pictured the resentment of Latona. Many of the circumstances he
imitated from earlier tales. Latona had observed Niobe from her sacred
mountain, Cynthus. She appealed to her children as her only protectors
from neglect.
She expressed the fear lest Niobe's defiance should be the
signal for general contempt. All this Ovid imitated from the conduct
of Venus, which he had recorded in the tale of Proserpina. After stating
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
her wishes, Latona added entreaty. Apollo declared it needless. This,
Ovid repeated from his interview of Juno and Tisiphone in the tale of
Athamas. But Ovid invented two further circumstances. According to
some authorities, Tantalus had offended the gods by telling over-much
about their affairs. Latona suggested that Niobe was imitating her
father's notorious example. And, since Niobe had taunted the goddess
with the idea that she was virtually childless, Latona repeated the word
"childless" to suggest Niobe's appropriate punishment.
The sculpture at Olympia had shown Apollo and Diana taking aim
at Niobe's children from the throne of Jupiter. Other accounts had not
indicated the place. Ovid imagined plausibly that Apollo and Diana
came down to the citadel of Thebes, concealing their presence with
clouds.
At least the majority of previous accounts had given the impres-
sion that both deities made a simultaneous attack. Ovid declared that
at first Apollo alone began to shoot. Diana still withheld her arrows
and spared the girls. The death of the sons was to serve as a third
warning to the proud Niobe, more definite and formidable than the
others, but still permitting her to repent and escape with half of her
children.
According to the Manual, the boys were hunting in the forest of
Mt. Cithaeron. Ovid made the circumstances more striking. He showed
the boys engaged in sport on a plain easily visible from the city. He
recorded their names, taking most of them from the Manual but adding
that of Ilioneus from Vergil's Aeneid, and he gave some account of the
sports with which they were occupied. The two oldest, Ismenus and
Sipylus, were riding richly caparisoned horses; two others, Phaedimus
and Tantalus, were wrestling; the three youngest, Alphenor, Damasich-
thon, and Ilioneus, apparently were watching the rest. The destruction
of the six older boys Ovid recounted with various and vivid effect. But
he was inclined to emphasize details which were not in harmony with the
tragic situation. The Manual had spoken of one boy who prayed to
Latona and escaped. This detail suggested to Ovid the pathetic inci-
dent of the youngest son, Ilioneus. To have spared him would have con-
fused the progress of the tragedy. But Ovid allowed a brief suspense.
Terrified, Ilioneus prayed to all the gods. Apollo strove, too late, to
withhold the arrow and struck him with a lighter but fatal wound.
The events immediately following Ovid told obscurely. Evidently
he altered the traditional story in several respects and supposed the
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? NIOBE
events to have been as follows. News of the disaster passed quickly to
the palace; Amphion had been spared by Apollo, but he took his own life
with a dagger; the bodies of Amphion and his seven sons were brought
into an area of open ground, visible from the citadel, and were laid on
biers for the funeral service. Then Niobe came forth, amazed and in-
credulous, attended by her daughters. At the sight of the dead, she
realized how much cause she had to mourn. Ovid contrasted the former
proud Niobe, envied by all, with the hapless Niobe wildly embracing her
dead sons, worthy of pity even from a foe.
But her pride remained. Even so dreadful a warning did not avail.
Looking up from the dead, she boasted that she still excelled Latona in
the number of her children. Hitherto Diana had been merciful. At this
she bent her bow.
In the new catastrophe, Ovid was anxious to avoid duplicating his
account of the boys. He did not name the daughters, and he narrated
very briefly the various deaths of the older six. The Manual had spoken
of a daughter who prayed to Latona and escaped. Ovid did not repeat
the incident, but again he introduced a moment of suspense. Scopas had
shown Niobe attempting to shield her youngest daughter from Diana's
shaft. Ovid followed his example, and he added that Niobe herself pleaded
for the life of her only remaining child. She prayed too late. As she
spoke the words, the arrow reached its mark.
Since Tantalus had been for a long time dead, Niobe could not re-
turn to live with him. Ovid thought it unlikely that she could even sur-
vive a loss so overwhelming. Sitting near the bodies of her husband and
her fourteen children, he said, she hardened gradually into marble. Ovid
recorded the change as it occurred, first externally and then within,
until it left no motion save the falling tears. Tradition had associated
the petrified Niobe with the crags of Mt. Sipylus. Accordingly, Ovid
invented a picturesque incident. As Niobe sat, a weeping statue, before
her palace at Thebes, a whirlwind passed by and swept her over land and
sea to her native mountain.
In spite of defective passages Ovid showed clearly the extent of
Niobe's impiety, and he presented the chief events with dramatic effect.
His account was always the most accessible and for many centuries it
was the only full account which survived. Apart from Statius, who fol-
lowed chiefly the Iliad and Hyginus, who followed the Manual, later
authors learned of Niobe from Ovid.
Ordinarily they were content with brief allusions. Seneca referred
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
in his Agamemnon to Manto's warning. In his Oedipus he described
Niobe as standing in Hades and still proudly counting the number of
her shades. Dante saw among examples carved on the terrace of pride,
Queen Niobe mourning over her dead children. In a final canzone to
Laura, Petrarch declared that Medusa and his sin had transformed him
into a weeping rock. Erasmus noted in his Praise of Folly that wonder
at an absurd preacher turned certain divines into stone, as grief trans-
formed Niobe.
Spenser referred three times to Ovid's myth. In the Shepherd's
Calendar, Thenot pronounced Queen Elizabeth superior to Apollo or
Diana and then remembered with alarm what punishment such compari-
sons had brought on Niobe. In the Faerie Queen, Spenser declared that
Beige, with her seventeen children, would have seemed at first happier
than Niobe but afterwards incurred almost as terrible a loss in the
twelve destroyed by the tyrant Philip. And Spenser compared Bel-
phoebe, shooting at Lust, to Diana shooting at Niobe's children. In
Childe Harold, Byron recalled Ovid while beginning his great description
of Rome:
The Niobe of nations ! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.
And in The Age of Bronze he noted satirically that Mother Church
Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring, Tithes.
Modern authors, like the ancients, mentioned Niobe as typical of
the profoundest grief. Chaucer's Pandarus told his nephew that it would
not be possible to win a lady by weeping like Queen Niobe, whose tears
are still visible in the marble. Shakespeare's Troilus declared that loss
of Hector would make Niobes of all the Trojan women and turn Priam
and the youths to stone. His Hamlet described the queen as following
the body of the former king, like Niobe all tears. And Alfred Tennyson
referred to the profound grief of Niobe in three poems, Walking for the
Mail, The Princess, and The Promise of May.
In the nineteenth century many poets retold Ovid's story at some
length. Chief among these were Landor, Frederick Tennyson, Lewis
Morris, and Leconte de Lisle.
Ovid's tale inspired paintings by Rottenhammer, Le Bril, and
Wilson.
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
The Lycian Peasants
Just as the fate of Pentheus made the Thebans eager to worship
Bacchus (Bk. 3), so, Ovid continued, the fate of Niobe made them eager
to worship Latona. Ovid then introduced another story. Latona's pun-
ishment of Niobe recalled to one of the people her earlier punishment of
some Lycian peasants. This event the narrator told as a story learned
when he visited the scene and questioned his Lycian guide. Later Ovid
used a transition of the same kind while introducing the tale of Philemon
and Baucis (Bk. 8).
The myth of Latona and the Lycians was recorded first by a local
historian, Menecrates of Xanthus. After the birth of Apollo and Diana,
he said, Juno continued persecuting Latona. The goddess fled with her
infants to the mountains of Lycia. One day, while tortured by thirst,
she arrived at a pond called Melas and wished to drink and to bathe her
children. A shepherd, Neocles, had come with several companions to
water their sheep.
These men brutally drove Latona away. She first tried to reason
with them. Finding it useless, she transformed them into frogs and de-
clared that it should be their punishment to remain always as keepers of
the pond. Nicander, repeating the story, gave a detailed account of the
metamorphosis. The ill nature of the shepherds, he said, caused the dis-
torted appearance of the frogs, and their ill-mannered outcries became
raucous croaking.
Ovid prefaced the myth with a few details concerning the birth of
Apollo and Diana. Both the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and Cal-
limachus in the Hymn to Delos had stated that Juno endeavored to pre-
vent the birth of the children. She kept Ilythia, goddess of childbirth,
ignorant of Latona's presence in Delos. But after nine days the other
goddesses brought Ilythia secretly to the island. An incident of this kind
Ovid planned to use later in his tale of Galanthis (Bk. 9) and so he
merely alluded to it, by observing that Latona bore her children despite
opposition of Juno.
The Homeric Hymn declared that Latona leaned against a palm
tree. Theognis, Euripides, and Callimachus repeated the incident. Euri-
pides in his Iphigenia among the Taurians mentioned also an olive tree
which grew near by. Callimachus added that nymphs playfully biting
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
the trunk afterwards amused the infant Apollo. Catullus declared that
Latona's children were born under the olive tree. Following these hints,
Ovid observed that Latona leaned against both the palm tree and the
olive tree. This idea he repeated later in his tale of the daughters of
Anius (Bk. 13).
In Greek mythology the district of Lycia had been famous chiefly
for its association with the Chimaera. The story, as told by the Iliad,
ran as follows. A certain Amisodorus of Lycia reared a fire-breathing
monster, the Chimaera, which combined the head of a lion and the body
of a goat with the tail of a snake. This animal ravaged the country and
proved so formidable that encountering it appeared to mean certain
death. King Iobates, who wished to destroy Bellerophon, sent him to
kill this monster. Contrary to expectation the hero with his arrows
destroyed the Chimaera. The Theogony added that Bellerophon rode
to the encounter on the winged horse Pegasus. Pindar and the Manual
retold the story, with further details of their own. Greek artists often
showed the adventure, but were inclined to represent the Chimaera as
having only the form of a lion. Vergil in the Culex had distinguished
Lycia as the home of the Chimaera. In the tale of Latona and the
Lycians Ovid followed his example. In his account of Byblis (Bk. 9) he
briefly described the monster. But he never told the story, probably
because it resembled too closely the adventures of Perseus.
For Latona's adventure at the pond Ovid used Nicander. But he
introduced many desirable changes. The event was not easy to recon-
cile with the circumstances given in Ovid's tale of Apollo and Python
(Bk. 1), and in any case it must have happened in the remote past. Ac-
cordingly, Ovid made the story more indefinite by leaving nameless the
pond and the Lycians. Ovid quoted Latona's words to the men. He
showed her observing that water, like sun and air, is not the possession
of any man but common to all.
In Nicander's tale a reader might find extenuation for the conduct
of the shepherds. They needed the water for their own purpose, they
might have supposed that bathing children would interfere with the care
of their flocks, and so they might have thought it necessary to drive
Latona away. Ovid was careful to remove these possible excuses. He
described the Lycians as peasants who were gathering osiers and reeds.
They were not going to use the water themselves. He showed Latona
disclaiming any intention of bathing. And he described the Lycians as
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
not only forbidding her to drink water which they did not need but as
wantonly jumping up and down to foul it with mud.
Nicander had shown the goddess condemning the Lycians to remain
always as keepers of the pond. This might not sound like punishment,
and it was not an accurate description of frogs. Ovid said therefore that
she condemned them appropriately to reside always in a muddy pool.
Following Nicander's example, he described the transformation at some
length. Vergil in the Georgics had imitated the sound of a distant chorus
of frogs. Ovid now imitated the sound of individual frogs, croaking near
by. * But he was mistaken in describing them as croaking under water.
In later times Ovid's tale interested several great poets and artists.
Gray in his Ode on Vicissitude remembered Ovid's idea that sun and air
are common to all. Camoens likened the terrified Moors diving from the
ships of Garaa to the Lycians diving from the bank, after Latona had
transformed them. Milton declared in a sonnet that his Tetrachordon
was greeted with an outcry as noisy and stupid
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
Reubens, Brueghel, and Tench made Ovid's tale the theme of paintings.
A French sculptor used the subject for adorning a fountain at Versailles
and may have suggested to Thierry and Fremin the idea of treating the
same theme in one of the glorious fountains of San Ildefonso.
