INTPOBE, the daughter of Tantalus, king of Lydia, was married to Amphion, by whom she had, according to Ovid and other ancient writers, seven sons and seven daughters. This is the most commonly received opinion, though Homer (` xxiv. 602, &c.) and others give the numbers variously. The pride of Niobe at having this numerous progeny was so great that she is said in ancient story to have insulted Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, by refusing to offer at the altars raised in her honour, declaring that she had a better claim to worship and sacrifices than one who was the mother of only two children. Latona, indignant at this insolence and presumption, called upon her children to revenge her, and punish the arrogance of Niobe. Apollo and Diana heard the prayer, and obeyed the entreaty of their outraged parent. All the sons of Niobe fell under the arrows of Apollo, while the daughters in like manner met their death from the hands of Diana. Chloris alone escaped the common fate. She was the wife of Neleus, king of Pyles. This terrible judgment of the gods so affected the now heart-stricken and humiliated Niobe, that she was changed by her excessive grief into stone on Mount Sipylus in Lydia. Pausanias says (i. 21, 3) that the rock on Sipylus, which went by the name of Niobe, and which he had visited, " was merely a rock and a precipice when one came close up to it, and bore no resemblance at all to a woman ; but at a distance you might imagine it to be a wonian weeping with downcast countenance." The fable of Niobe and her children has afforded a subject for art, which has been finely treated of the greatest ancient masters of sculpture. It consists of a series, rather than a group, of figures of both sexes, in all the disorder and agony of expected nr present suffer ing; while one, the mother, the hapless Niobe, in the most affecting attitude of supplication, and with an expression of deep grief, her eyes turned upwards, implores the justly offended gods to moderate their anger and spare her offspring, one of whom, the youngest girl, she strains fondly to her bosom. It is difficult by description to do justice to the various excellence exhibited in this admirable work. Its great merit is independent of fine execution, in which it is inferior as a whole to many other well-known productions of the Greeks. Its excellence consists in the finer qualities of sentiment, as expression, grace, propriety, and variety of action, with that unity of effect by which the scene is brought dramatically and at the same time truly before the spectator, and a story of the most affecting interest told in language that cannot be mistaken. The arrangement of the composi
tion is supposed to have been adapted to a tympanum or pediment. The figure of Niobe, of colossal dimensions compared with the other figures, which are life size, forms, with her youngest daughter pressed to her, the centre ; while the rest of the sons and daughters are ranged in various ways on each side, some exhibiting expression of fear, others agonised with pain, others in grief, while one of the sons lies dead or dying, and stretched upon the ground. All are graceful, and some of the figures possess also great beauty, and the action and expression of many of the heads offer admirable examples for study to the artist. The whole attitude and expression of Niobo herself may truly be called sublime.
The colossal scale of the principal figure has justly been objected to as a fault. The artist doubtless had two purposes in view when he 3r ventured on this deviation from truth. The first was the necessity which he felt of giving a superior height and volume to the apex and key, as it were, of his composition; and next perhaps the desire lie had to concentrate the interest in his chief figure by forcing it thus upon the attention. But although we should hesitate before taking any exception to the practice of the great leaders and masters of art, yet, generally speaking, any departure from the truth of nature—the real canon of excellence when rightly studied—is so far from being com mendable or admiessible, that, where it has been indulged in by the ancients with the view of gaining greater effect and energy, it may usually be considered rather as evidence of their inability to work out their idea with the authorised means, than as a practice to be admired or imitated ; and it may always be argued that they would have been so much the more entitled to our admiration if they had produced their works within those limitations which nature dictates. The pro ductions which exhibit these faults, for they must be accounted so, will be found to be worthy of the high estimation in which they are held for other properties, and rather in spite of than because of the licence which their authors have allowed themselves.