The proof is that the poets who have dramatised the whole story of the Fall of Troy, instead of selecting portions, like Euripides; or who have taken the whole tale of
Niobe, and not a part of her story, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or meet with poor success on the stage.
Even lovely
Niobe had to think about eating, though her twelve children--six daughters and six lusty sons--had been all slain in her house.
Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of St Niobe, of whom Prior Aymer told us.* A water-fiend hath possessed the
* I wish the Prior had also informed them when Niobe was
"Theogony" 963 ff.) with some such passage as this: `But now, ye Muses, sing of the tribes of women with whom the Sons of Heaven were joined in love, women pre-eminent above their fellows in beauty, such as was
Niobe (?).' Each succeeding heroine was then introduced by the formula `Or such as was...' (cp.
John was a little disappointed not to find a tender
Niobe, but feeling that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came leisurely in and laid himself upon the sofa with the singularly relevant remark, "We are going to have a new moon, my dear."
Here and there, above this shelf, a head of
Niobe, hanging to a nail, presented her pose of woe; a Venus smiled; a hand thrust itself forward like that of a pauper asking alms; a few "ecorches," yellowed by smoke, looked like limbs snatched over-night from a graveyard; besides these objects, pictures, drawings, lay figures, frames without paintings, and paintings without frames gave to this irregular apartment that studio physiognomy which is distinguished for its singular jumble of ornament and bareness, poverty and riches, care and neglect.
Her mother sat, like a
Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest little girl on her lap, softly beating the child's hand up and down in time to the music.
Way,
Niobe, Alisha Ali, Carol Gilligan, and Pedro Noguera, Eds.
(12) Once transformed, Ovid's Adonis will be a flower, his
Niobe a rock, and his Daphne a tree in perpetuum.
Edited by
Niobe Way, Alisha Ali, Carol Gilligan, and Pedro Noguera