With the beginning of the seventeenth century,
literary
description
of art lost favor.
of art lost favor.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v2
5).
While
the goddess wandered sadly through Arcadia, Neptune courted her.
Anxious to escape him, she took the form of a mare and entered the
cave at Phigalia. There she became the mother of Arion. As before
in the tale of Theophane, the offspring took the animal form assumed
by the parents. This version was shown in sculpture at Phigalia and
was mentioned by Herodotus. Ovid probably found the story in the
work of some Alexandrian author.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
The fifth picture showed Neptune ravishing Medusa. The story
Ovid had told already in his Fourth Book, reserving for this passage
Neptune's disguise as a huge bird. But he should have said again that
Neptune followed Medusa into Athena's temple and defiled the shrine.
Arachne would not have omitted a circumstance so unwelcome to her
divine rival.
Last came Neptune's intrigue with Melantho, a daughter of Deu-
calion. To deceive her, the god took the form of a dolphin.
Following the nine pictures of Jupiter and the six of Neptune,
Arachne added four of Apollo. Callimachus had imagined that because
of fondness for Admetus, the god disguised himself as a farm hand (cf.
Battus, Bk. 2). This idea Arachne made the subject of a pictorial
design. Two other designs portrayed Apollo, first as a hawk and then
as a lion. These myths we know only from Ovid. The fourth picture
showed Apollo and Isse, daughter of Macareiis. She was a Lesbian
girl, in love with a shepherd. Apollo had impersonated her lover.
There still was room for two more pictures. The first showed
Bacchus transforming himself into a cluster of grapes, in order to
court Erigone, daughter of Tcarius. The second portrayed Saturn with
the nymph Philyra. According to the Titanomachia, Saturn took the
shape of a horse. Ovid followed a brilliant allusion to the story which
Vergil had made in the Georgics (cf. Ocyrhoe, Bk. 2). To complete the
work, Arachne enclosed all her pictures with a border of flowers and
twining ivy.
In planning the contest between Athena and Arachne, Ovid seems
to have given it the following course. Arachne was to challenge Athena.
Nymphs of the river Pactolus were to be appointed as judges. Athena
was to portray edifying themes in a simple, orderly design. Arachne
was to portray impious themes in a design which, although full of
interest, was ill arranged and over crowded. The river nymphs were
then to decide in favor of Athena. This would have made an excellent
story. But at the last moment Ovid hesitated. At the close of the
previous book he had just shown river nymphs deciding a similar con-
test in favor of the Muses. Although he was to make the new contest
different in many other respects, Ovid shrank from recording another
decision by the nymphs. He omitted the appointment of judges and
proceeded at once to the contest. But how was Athena to obtain the
victory? Ovid found himself in an awkward predicament. Rather
without cause, he declared the work of Arachne so admirable that
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
neither Athena nor Envy herself could raise an objection. Unable to
win the contest by skill, Athena resorted to violence. She tore Arachne's
work and struck her rival on the head with the shuttle. This was
variety, but with an inconsistent and disagreeable effect.
In telling of the metamorphosis itself, Ovid made a number of de-
sirable changes. Chagrined at the ill usage, he said, Arachne hanged
herself. Athena relenting, loosened the rope and saved her from death.
The innovation was appropriate, for Greek authors in general regarded
Athena as the personification of reason, and Callimachus had shown
that even when offended by Tiresias she treated him with kindness and
consideration. But Ovid obtained the further advantage of contrast
with his subsequent tale of Marsyas. Without emphasizing the differ-
ence, he allowed his readers to contrast the humanity of Athena with
the notorious cruelty of Apollo.
Athena then declared that for punishment Arachne and all her
race must continually dangle from cords. Before Diana transformed
Actaeon (Bk. 3), Ovid had shown her sprinkling him with water. He
had repeated the circumstance, when Proserpina metamorphosed
Ascalaphus (Bk. 5). Ovid attributed a similar act to Athena. But
instead of water, Athena sprinkled juice prepared by Hecate, goddess
of witchcraft, whom Ovid afterwards mentioned frequently in his tales
of Medea and Circe. Ovid then described elaborately the transforma-
tion of Arachne into a spider.
After Ovid's time his remarkable story continued to enjoy popu-
larity and to exert important influence of many kinds. It was, first
of all, by far the best account of Arachne, and it soon became the only
one. As such it attracted a number of the chief poets in later times.
Among warning examples carved on the terrace of Pride, Dante
saw Arachne half transformed, lamenting over the web which had
proved her undoing. Tasso mentioned her name as synonymous with
skill in the household arts, which his Clorinda despised. Ariosto de-
scribing Alcina's perfumed sheets, Spenser portraying Acrasia's deli-
cate veil, Shakespeare repeating the gloomy meditation of Troilus --
all named Arachne as excelling in the preparation of a fine and beautiful
woof. Spenser referred to her again as the spider spinning webs under
the roof of Mammon's cave.
In Muipotomos, Spenser retold the tale of Arachne at some length,
to account for the spider's hostility to the butterfly. He altered many
particulars, and, for his own purpose, he made the story far better.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
First he described Arachne's work and attributed to her only the pic-
ture of Europa, which he elaborated effectively from several ancient
accounts. Then he described Athena's picture of the contest with
Neptune. He omitted her four lesser designs; but he imagined that in
her border she wove an exquisite butterfly. Seeing this, he said,
Arachne knew that she was vanquished and she became a spider, mother
of the insect in Spenser's own poem.
Ovid's myth of Arachne was valuable also for its many subordinate
tales. A number of them were available elsewhere, and some of them
had been told more fully. But Ovid's version was ordinarily the first
which was read by men of later times and it provided by far the largest
and most accessible collection. It became a favorite source of reference.
Athena's web afforded the best account of the contest with Nep-
tune. Dante mentioned this contest in his Purgatorio. Camoens de-
scribed it, somewhat inappropriately, as represented in the sculpture
of Neptune's palace.
Far more important were the tales in the web of Arachne. They
treated a picturesque and perennially interesting theme, the loves of
the pagan gods, and within brief compass they included twenty-one
stories. This was a collection which later authors found valuable from
several points of view.
Less than two centuries after Ovid's time, it had an important
place in religious controversy. These many stories telling how a god
engaged in some illicit love affair and descended to the trick of dis-
guising himself as a human being or a beast had originated among
people living in a savage state. They were inherited either from pre-
historic times or from some backward community of later Greeks.
With the advance of culture and morality, enlightened Greeks found
them both irreverent and immoral and would have been glad to let them
sink into oblivion. They excluded them where possible from public
worship and turned to a purer, more philosophic belief. It was im-
possible to keep the irreverent and the ignorant from repeating the
old, unworthy stories; but these tales had ceased to be respectable, and
in general no one took them seriously. Alexandrian authors continued
to record them as matters of literary and scientific interest, and Ovid
used them cleverly as scandals told by the impious Arachne.
Suddenly the pagan religion was assailed by zealous leaders of the
Christians. Both Greek and Latin converts seized on the old, immoral
myths and paraded them as typical examples of pagan belief. Arachne's
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
web became a veritable arsenal for invectives both in verse and prose.
Clement of Alexandria used at one time or another nineteen of the
twenty-one stories, and he referred to an Alexandrian version of a
twentieth. This use of Ovid's tale for religious controversy was im-
portant, but it ended with the triumph of the Christian faith.
During the Renaissance more than one author began to use
Arachne's tales for literary effect. Sometimes it was possible to draw
on a number of them in a single passage. In a prose romance, Dorastus
and Fawnia, Greene showed the young prince justifying his disguise
as a shepherd by recalling the fact that Jupiter became a bull for the
sake of Europa, Neptune a ram for Theophane, and Apollo a swain
for Admetus. This passage Shakespeare gladly repeated in A Winter's
Tale. Moliere in his Amphitryon showed the goddess Night marvelling
that Jupiter should forsake his divinity not only for human forms but
even for such animal shapes as a bull, a snake, or a swan. And Herrick
in his poem To Maids Who Walk Abroad observed that Jove
Put on all shapes to get a Love:
As now a Satyr, then a Swan;
A Bull but then ; and now a Man.
Spenser went much further. Pictured in tapestry of the House
of Busyrane, he said, Britomart saw eighteen of Arachne's tales.
Spenser sometimes expanded Ovid's references effectively, either from
another account or from his own imagination, and sometimes he altered
part of the story. In substantial agreement with Ovid, he included
the adventures of Jupiter with Europa, Danae, Leda, Alcmena, Asterie,
Antiopa, and Aegina. But Proserpina became the "Thracian maid. "
As in Ovid's tale, Neptune courted Theophane, Iphimedia, Arne, and
Melantho. And he ravished Medusa. But for this adventure he did
not take the form of a bird; more appropriately he took the form of a
winged horse. Apollo became a lion and a falcon. But Spenser added
another disguise as an old woman. Apollo loved Isse, but it was for
her sake that he became a herdsman of Admetus. Saturn and Bacchus
too were there. But it was Bacchus who courted Philyra and Saturn
who courted Erigone; and Saturn became not a horse, but a centaur.
At other times a modern poet recalled only a single tale. Poliziano
in a beautiful description of Europa on the bull recalled Ovid's picture.
Ariosto remembered both Ovid and Poliziano in his account of Angelica
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
carried out to sea by her unruly horse. Spenser declared even Leda's
swan inferior to the pair described in his Prothalamioii. Goethe in the
Second Part of his Faust attributed to Homunculus a beautiful vision
of the meeting between Leda and the swan, and in his Magic Flute
he declared that Papageno too obtained children from eggs. In one
of the most famous lyrics of the seventeenth century, William Strode
alluded to Danae and the golden rain. And William Morris retold the
tale delightfully in his Earthly Paradise.
Ovid's contest of Athena and Arachne had further influence, sig-
nificant though more indirect and vague. Description of imaginary
works of art did not cease with Ovid's death but enjoyed a long subse-
quent history. Later authors delighted to include accounts of sculp-
ture, painting, or pictorial design. These authors were inspired almost
entirely by Vergil and Ovid, and from them they learned ordinarily to
make such description contribute to the progress of the tale. Doubtless
Vergil's influence was important. But Ovid's was much more so.
Although Vergil afforded excellent examples of description inspired by
imaginary works of art, Ovid could offer in addition an immense num-
ber of congenial subjects. Some of them Ovid himself had used for
this purpose; many more he had recorded with such vividness that they
could readily be used by others. And his tale of Arachne afforded not
only his best description of art but a very rich and accessible store-
house of tales. Accordingly later authors turned for inspiration to
Ovid, especially to his account of Arachne, and nearly always they
showed his influence clearly in their work.
During the late Roman period description of art appears to have
been rare. But Claudian's young goddess, Proserpina, wove a design
of the Creation and shrank with vague foreboding as she included
Pluto's realm of shades. During the Middle Ages description of deco-
rative mythological pictures became a favorite practice of romances
and of poems dealing with the Court of Love. Chaucer, following the
general tendency, told of elaborate mythological murals in the course
of his House of Fame, his Knight's Tale, and his Parliament of Fowls.
Dante used a similar idea but for a different purpose. Examining the
first terrace of Purgatory, he saw, carved in the wall and the floor
examples, both Christian and pagan, warning him against the sin of
pride.
With the coming of the Renaissance, description of art became
even more prominent. Ariosto, influenced chiefly by Vergil, gave two
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
long descriptions of imaginary art employed to represent future events
of history. In the first he recorded the series of paintings by which
Merlin dissuaded Charlemagne from invading Italy. In the second he
told with enthusiasm of the embroidered scenes depicting the glory of
Hippolito d'Este, with which Cassandra adorned the marriage bed of
Rogero and Bradamante. Elsewhere he described also the sculptures
portraying well known ladies and poets of his own time that Rinaldo
saw decorating the fountain of an Italian palace. Tasso, following
both Vergil and Ovid, described appropriate scenes carved on Armida's
gate. Camoens portrayed brilliantly the mythological sculpture adorn-
ing both the palace of Neptune and the Indian palace of Calicut, and
he recounted eloquently many events from Portuguese history, which
were woven in the banners of Gama's fleet.
In England the tendency to describe imaginary works of art was
especially strong, and it was encouraged by the popularity in great
houses of actual tapestries adorned with mythological events. In the
romance Arcadia, Sidney described events of this kind as shown in the
murals of Pales' temple. Marlowe depicted them first in Hero's robe
and then in the richly sculptured interior of the temple of Venus.
Shakespeare introduced mythological tapestry in his Lucrece and
mythological paintings in his Taming of the Shrew. But none of these
could compare with Spenser. In imaginary tapestries of the House of
Busyrane he assembled the many themes of Arachne's web, many more
from other tales of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and still others of his own
invention; and he marshalled them in orderly, brilliant groups until they
became an immense still pageant teaching the universal power of Love.
With the beginning of the seventeenth century, literary description
of art lost favor. And in the eighteenth century Lessing declared that
poet and pictorial artist should work in mutually exclusive fields: the
poet should narrate successive happenings, and the pictorial artist
should describe either the circumstances of a single moment or those of
an unchanging scene. But with the Romantic Revival, literary descrip-
tion of art reappeared. The new examples had no close relation to
Ovid. They were suggested rather by the general literary tendency in
which he played an important role and especially by the great poetry of
the Renaissance. Keats wrote his famous description of a Grecian urn.
Tennyson described many paintings in his Palace of Art; he introduced
accounts of sculpture in The Princess and in Gareth; and he told briefly
of a shield-cover embroidered pictorially by Elaine.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
In actual works of art three of Ovid's subordinate tales became
exceedingly popular. The tale of Leda inspired two paintings by
Correggio, Da Vinci's sketch completed by Puligo, and paintings by
Caravaggio, Sodoma, Veronese, Tintoretto, van Biesbraeck, Fleury,
Boucher, and Riesener. Michelangelo used the story for a beautiful
statue completed by Ammanate. The tale of Leda inspired also the
French sculptors Courtot, Desbois, Ruilleau, and Clesinger. Salmon
de Brosse treated it in a decorative fountain of the Luxembourg
Gardens, Hildebrand showed it in relief, and Filarete carved it on a
door panel of St. Peter's.
The myth of Antiopa suggested paintings by Veronese, Rubens,
and Jordaens and masterpieces by Correggio, Titian, and Watteau.
It was treated in sculpture by the French artist Rodin.
The story of Danae became a theme for Veronese, Tintoretto,
Rossi, Mabuse, Gossaert, van Dyck, a disciple of Boucher, Calvart,
and Carolus Duran. It suggested a great work of Correggio and two
masterpieces of Titian, and it inspired one of the most famous master-
pieces of Rembrandt.
Modern science too did Ovid ample honor. It gave the name
Arachnida not only to all the many varieties of spiders but also to a
great class of animals which includes the scorpions, mites, and king-
crabs in all their forms both existing and extinct.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
NlOBE
After the transformation of Narcissus (Bk. 3), Ovid had pointed
out that news of his fate spread far and wide and caused reverence for
Tiresias by all except the impious Pentheus. After the transformation
of Arachne, he said, the news spread in a similar manner and caused
reverence for the gods by all except the impious Niobe. According to
tradition, Niobe was a Lydian and a native of the country near Mt.
Sipylus. Since this region was only a few miles from the home of
Arachne, Ovid imagined that Niobe was contemporary with Arachne
and was personally acquainted with her. She had special cause to take
warning, and she became the more wanton in her defiance. Ovid pro-
ceeded to retell the famous story.
The myth of Niobe seems at first to have been related wholly to
Lydia. It was told somewhat as follows. Niobe, daughter of Assaon,
having a number of children, regarded herself as superior to the
goddess, Latona, who had only two children, Apollo and Diana. She
treated Latona with contempt. The goddess punished her by destroy-
ing her entire family. She caused Niobe's husband, Philottus, to perish
in an accident and Niobe's father, Assaon, to court his own daughter.
Being repulsed, Assaon invited Niobe's children to a feast and burned
them to death. Niobe threw herself over a cliff, and Assaon killed him-
self with a sword. This version of the tale appeared in several works
which now are lost. It survives in the Loves of Parthenius.
Among the crags of Mt. 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.
the goddess wandered sadly through Arcadia, Neptune courted her.
Anxious to escape him, she took the form of a mare and entered the
cave at Phigalia. There she became the mother of Arion. As before
in the tale of Theophane, the offspring took the animal form assumed
by the parents. This version was shown in sculpture at Phigalia and
was mentioned by Herodotus. Ovid probably found the story in the
work of some Alexandrian author.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
The fifth picture showed Neptune ravishing Medusa. The story
Ovid had told already in his Fourth Book, reserving for this passage
Neptune's disguise as a huge bird. But he should have said again that
Neptune followed Medusa into Athena's temple and defiled the shrine.
Arachne would not have omitted a circumstance so unwelcome to her
divine rival.
Last came Neptune's intrigue with Melantho, a daughter of Deu-
calion. To deceive her, the god took the form of a dolphin.
Following the nine pictures of Jupiter and the six of Neptune,
Arachne added four of Apollo. Callimachus had imagined that because
of fondness for Admetus, the god disguised himself as a farm hand (cf.
Battus, Bk. 2). This idea Arachne made the subject of a pictorial
design. Two other designs portrayed Apollo, first as a hawk and then
as a lion. These myths we know only from Ovid. The fourth picture
showed Apollo and Isse, daughter of Macareiis. She was a Lesbian
girl, in love with a shepherd. Apollo had impersonated her lover.
There still was room for two more pictures. The first showed
Bacchus transforming himself into a cluster of grapes, in order to
court Erigone, daughter of Tcarius. The second portrayed Saturn with
the nymph Philyra. According to the Titanomachia, Saturn took the
shape of a horse. Ovid followed a brilliant allusion to the story which
Vergil had made in the Georgics (cf. Ocyrhoe, Bk. 2). To complete the
work, Arachne enclosed all her pictures with a border of flowers and
twining ivy.
In planning the contest between Athena and Arachne, Ovid seems
to have given it the following course. Arachne was to challenge Athena.
Nymphs of the river Pactolus were to be appointed as judges. Athena
was to portray edifying themes in a simple, orderly design. Arachne
was to portray impious themes in a design which, although full of
interest, was ill arranged and over crowded. The river nymphs were
then to decide in favor of Athena. This would have made an excellent
story. But at the last moment Ovid hesitated. At the close of the
previous book he had just shown river nymphs deciding a similar con-
test in favor of the Muses. Although he was to make the new contest
different in many other respects, Ovid shrank from recording another
decision by the nymphs. He omitted the appointment of judges and
proceeded at once to the contest. But how was Athena to obtain the
victory? Ovid found himself in an awkward predicament. Rather
without cause, he declared the work of Arachne so admirable that
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
neither Athena nor Envy herself could raise an objection. Unable to
win the contest by skill, Athena resorted to violence. She tore Arachne's
work and struck her rival on the head with the shuttle. This was
variety, but with an inconsistent and disagreeable effect.
In telling of the metamorphosis itself, Ovid made a number of de-
sirable changes. Chagrined at the ill usage, he said, Arachne hanged
herself. Athena relenting, loosened the rope and saved her from death.
The innovation was appropriate, for Greek authors in general regarded
Athena as the personification of reason, and Callimachus had shown
that even when offended by Tiresias she treated him with kindness and
consideration. But Ovid obtained the further advantage of contrast
with his subsequent tale of Marsyas. Without emphasizing the differ-
ence, he allowed his readers to contrast the humanity of Athena with
the notorious cruelty of Apollo.
Athena then declared that for punishment Arachne and all her
race must continually dangle from cords. Before Diana transformed
Actaeon (Bk. 3), Ovid had shown her sprinkling him with water. He
had repeated the circumstance, when Proserpina metamorphosed
Ascalaphus (Bk. 5). Ovid attributed a similar act to Athena. But
instead of water, Athena sprinkled juice prepared by Hecate, goddess
of witchcraft, whom Ovid afterwards mentioned frequently in his tales
of Medea and Circe. Ovid then described elaborately the transforma-
tion of Arachne into a spider.
After Ovid's time his remarkable story continued to enjoy popu-
larity and to exert important influence of many kinds. It was, first
of all, by far the best account of Arachne, and it soon became the only
one. As such it attracted a number of the chief poets in later times.
Among warning examples carved on the terrace of Pride, Dante
saw Arachne half transformed, lamenting over the web which had
proved her undoing. Tasso mentioned her name as synonymous with
skill in the household arts, which his Clorinda despised. Ariosto de-
scribing Alcina's perfumed sheets, Spenser portraying Acrasia's deli-
cate veil, Shakespeare repeating the gloomy meditation of Troilus --
all named Arachne as excelling in the preparation of a fine and beautiful
woof. Spenser referred to her again as the spider spinning webs under
the roof of Mammon's cave.
In Muipotomos, Spenser retold the tale of Arachne at some length,
to account for the spider's hostility to the butterfly. He altered many
particulars, and, for his own purpose, he made the story far better.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
First he described Arachne's work and attributed to her only the pic-
ture of Europa, which he elaborated effectively from several ancient
accounts. Then he described Athena's picture of the contest with
Neptune. He omitted her four lesser designs; but he imagined that in
her border she wove an exquisite butterfly. Seeing this, he said,
Arachne knew that she was vanquished and she became a spider, mother
of the insect in Spenser's own poem.
Ovid's myth of Arachne was valuable also for its many subordinate
tales. A number of them were available elsewhere, and some of them
had been told more fully. But Ovid's version was ordinarily the first
which was read by men of later times and it provided by far the largest
and most accessible collection. It became a favorite source of reference.
Athena's web afforded the best account of the contest with Nep-
tune. Dante mentioned this contest in his Purgatorio. Camoens de-
scribed it, somewhat inappropriately, as represented in the sculpture
of Neptune's palace.
Far more important were the tales in the web of Arachne. They
treated a picturesque and perennially interesting theme, the loves of
the pagan gods, and within brief compass they included twenty-one
stories. This was a collection which later authors found valuable from
several points of view.
Less than two centuries after Ovid's time, it had an important
place in religious controversy. These many stories telling how a god
engaged in some illicit love affair and descended to the trick of dis-
guising himself as a human being or a beast had originated among
people living in a savage state. They were inherited either from pre-
historic times or from some backward community of later Greeks.
With the advance of culture and morality, enlightened Greeks found
them both irreverent and immoral and would have been glad to let them
sink into oblivion. They excluded them where possible from public
worship and turned to a purer, more philosophic belief. It was im-
possible to keep the irreverent and the ignorant from repeating the
old, unworthy stories; but these tales had ceased to be respectable, and
in general no one took them seriously. Alexandrian authors continued
to record them as matters of literary and scientific interest, and Ovid
used them cleverly as scandals told by the impious Arachne.
Suddenly the pagan religion was assailed by zealous leaders of the
Christians. Both Greek and Latin converts seized on the old, immoral
myths and paraded them as typical examples of pagan belief. Arachne's
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
web became a veritable arsenal for invectives both in verse and prose.
Clement of Alexandria used at one time or another nineteen of the
twenty-one stories, and he referred to an Alexandrian version of a
twentieth. This use of Ovid's tale for religious controversy was im-
portant, but it ended with the triumph of the Christian faith.
During the Renaissance more than one author began to use
Arachne's tales for literary effect. Sometimes it was possible to draw
on a number of them in a single passage. In a prose romance, Dorastus
and Fawnia, Greene showed the young prince justifying his disguise
as a shepherd by recalling the fact that Jupiter became a bull for the
sake of Europa, Neptune a ram for Theophane, and Apollo a swain
for Admetus. This passage Shakespeare gladly repeated in A Winter's
Tale. Moliere in his Amphitryon showed the goddess Night marvelling
that Jupiter should forsake his divinity not only for human forms but
even for such animal shapes as a bull, a snake, or a swan. And Herrick
in his poem To Maids Who Walk Abroad observed that Jove
Put on all shapes to get a Love:
As now a Satyr, then a Swan;
A Bull but then ; and now a Man.
Spenser went much further. Pictured in tapestry of the House
of Busyrane, he said, Britomart saw eighteen of Arachne's tales.
Spenser sometimes expanded Ovid's references effectively, either from
another account or from his own imagination, and sometimes he altered
part of the story. In substantial agreement with Ovid, he included
the adventures of Jupiter with Europa, Danae, Leda, Alcmena, Asterie,
Antiopa, and Aegina. But Proserpina became the "Thracian maid. "
As in Ovid's tale, Neptune courted Theophane, Iphimedia, Arne, and
Melantho. And he ravished Medusa. But for this adventure he did
not take the form of a bird; more appropriately he took the form of a
winged horse. Apollo became a lion and a falcon. But Spenser added
another disguise as an old woman. Apollo loved Isse, but it was for
her sake that he became a herdsman of Admetus. Saturn and Bacchus
too were there. But it was Bacchus who courted Philyra and Saturn
who courted Erigone; and Saturn became not a horse, but a centaur.
At other times a modern poet recalled only a single tale. Poliziano
in a beautiful description of Europa on the bull recalled Ovid's picture.
Ariosto remembered both Ovid and Poliziano in his account of Angelica
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
carried out to sea by her unruly horse. Spenser declared even Leda's
swan inferior to the pair described in his Prothalamioii. Goethe in the
Second Part of his Faust attributed to Homunculus a beautiful vision
of the meeting between Leda and the swan, and in his Magic Flute
he declared that Papageno too obtained children from eggs. In one
of the most famous lyrics of the seventeenth century, William Strode
alluded to Danae and the golden rain. And William Morris retold the
tale delightfully in his Earthly Paradise.
Ovid's contest of Athena and Arachne had further influence, sig-
nificant though more indirect and vague. Description of imaginary
works of art did not cease with Ovid's death but enjoyed a long subse-
quent history. Later authors delighted to include accounts of sculp-
ture, painting, or pictorial design. These authors were inspired almost
entirely by Vergil and Ovid, and from them they learned ordinarily to
make such description contribute to the progress of the tale. Doubtless
Vergil's influence was important. But Ovid's was much more so.
Although Vergil afforded excellent examples of description inspired by
imaginary works of art, Ovid could offer in addition an immense num-
ber of congenial subjects. Some of them Ovid himself had used for
this purpose; many more he had recorded with such vividness that they
could readily be used by others. And his tale of Arachne afforded not
only his best description of art but a very rich and accessible store-
house of tales. Accordingly later authors turned for inspiration to
Ovid, especially to his account of Arachne, and nearly always they
showed his influence clearly in their work.
During the late Roman period description of art appears to have
been rare. But Claudian's young goddess, Proserpina, wove a design
of the Creation and shrank with vague foreboding as she included
Pluto's realm of shades. During the Middle Ages description of deco-
rative mythological pictures became a favorite practice of romances
and of poems dealing with the Court of Love. Chaucer, following the
general tendency, told of elaborate mythological murals in the course
of his House of Fame, his Knight's Tale, and his Parliament of Fowls.
Dante used a similar idea but for a different purpose. Examining the
first terrace of Purgatory, he saw, carved in the wall and the floor
examples, both Christian and pagan, warning him against the sin of
pride.
With the coming of the Renaissance, description of art became
even more prominent. Ariosto, influenced chiefly by Vergil, gave two
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
long descriptions of imaginary art employed to represent future events
of history. In the first he recorded the series of paintings by which
Merlin dissuaded Charlemagne from invading Italy. In the second he
told with enthusiasm of the embroidered scenes depicting the glory of
Hippolito d'Este, with which Cassandra adorned the marriage bed of
Rogero and Bradamante. Elsewhere he described also the sculptures
portraying well known ladies and poets of his own time that Rinaldo
saw decorating the fountain of an Italian palace. Tasso, following
both Vergil and Ovid, described appropriate scenes carved on Armida's
gate. Camoens portrayed brilliantly the mythological sculpture adorn-
ing both the palace of Neptune and the Indian palace of Calicut, and
he recounted eloquently many events from Portuguese history, which
were woven in the banners of Gama's fleet.
In England the tendency to describe imaginary works of art was
especially strong, and it was encouraged by the popularity in great
houses of actual tapestries adorned with mythological events. In the
romance Arcadia, Sidney described events of this kind as shown in the
murals of Pales' temple. Marlowe depicted them first in Hero's robe
and then in the richly sculptured interior of the temple of Venus.
Shakespeare introduced mythological tapestry in his Lucrece and
mythological paintings in his Taming of the Shrew. But none of these
could compare with Spenser. In imaginary tapestries of the House of
Busyrane he assembled the many themes of Arachne's web, many more
from other tales of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and still others of his own
invention; and he marshalled them in orderly, brilliant groups until they
became an immense still pageant teaching the universal power of Love.
With the beginning of the seventeenth century, literary description
of art lost favor. And in the eighteenth century Lessing declared that
poet and pictorial artist should work in mutually exclusive fields: the
poet should narrate successive happenings, and the pictorial artist
should describe either the circumstances of a single moment or those of
an unchanging scene. But with the Romantic Revival, literary descrip-
tion of art reappeared. The new examples had no close relation to
Ovid. They were suggested rather by the general literary tendency in
which he played an important role and especially by the great poetry of
the Renaissance. Keats wrote his famous description of a Grecian urn.
Tennyson described many paintings in his Palace of Art; he introduced
accounts of sculpture in The Princess and in Gareth; and he told briefly
of a shield-cover embroidered pictorially by Elaine.
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? PALLAS AND ARACHNE
In actual works of art three of Ovid's subordinate tales became
exceedingly popular. The tale of Leda inspired two paintings by
Correggio, Da Vinci's sketch completed by Puligo, and paintings by
Caravaggio, Sodoma, Veronese, Tintoretto, van Biesbraeck, Fleury,
Boucher, and Riesener. Michelangelo used the story for a beautiful
statue completed by Ammanate. The tale of Leda inspired also the
French sculptors Courtot, Desbois, Ruilleau, and Clesinger. Salmon
de Brosse treated it in a decorative fountain of the Luxembourg
Gardens, Hildebrand showed it in relief, and Filarete carved it on a
door panel of St. Peter's.
The myth of Antiopa suggested paintings by Veronese, Rubens,
and Jordaens and masterpieces by Correggio, Titian, and Watteau.
It was treated in sculpture by the French artist Rodin.
The story of Danae became a theme for Veronese, Tintoretto,
Rossi, Mabuse, Gossaert, van Dyck, a disciple of Boucher, Calvart,
and Carolus Duran. It suggested a great work of Correggio and two
masterpieces of Titian, and it inspired one of the most famous master-
pieces of Rembrandt.
Modern science too did Ovid ample honor. It gave the name
Arachnida not only to all the many varieties of spiders but also to a
great class of animals which includes the scorpions, mites, and king-
crabs in all their forms both existing and extinct.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
NlOBE
After the transformation of Narcissus (Bk. 3), Ovid had pointed
out that news of his fate spread far and wide and caused reverence for
Tiresias by all except the impious Pentheus. After the transformation
of Arachne, he said, the news spread in a similar manner and caused
reverence for the gods by all except the impious Niobe. According to
tradition, Niobe was a Lydian and a native of the country near Mt.
Sipylus. Since this region was only a few miles from the home of
Arachne, Ovid imagined that Niobe was contemporary with Arachne
and was personally acquainted with her. She had special cause to take
warning, and she became the more wanton in her defiance. Ovid pro-
ceeded to retell the famous story.
The myth of Niobe seems at first to have been related wholly to
Lydia. It was told somewhat as follows. Niobe, daughter of Assaon,
having a number of children, regarded herself as superior to the
goddess, Latona, who had only two children, Apollo and Diana. She
treated Latona with contempt. The goddess punished her by destroy-
ing her entire family. She caused Niobe's husband, Philottus, to perish
in an accident and Niobe's father, Assaon, to court his own daughter.
Being repulsed, Assaon invited Niobe's children to a feast and burned
them to death. Niobe threw herself over a cliff, and Assaon killed him-
self with a sword. This version of the tale appeared in several works
which now are lost. It survives in the Loves of Parthenius.
Among the crags of Mt. 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.
