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Niobe's husband was Amphion, a son of Zeus and Antiope. Amphion's twin brother, Zethus, was a ruler of Thebes. Amphion became a great singer and musician after his lover Hermes taught him to play music and gave him a golden lyre. Zethus's wife and Niobe's sister-in-law was Aëdon, who had a single child, Itylus.
Amphion building Thebes with the power of music, from a 1655 engraving. Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus (see Amphion and Zethus). [2] Together, they are famous for building Thebes. Pausanias recounts an Egyptian legend according to which Amphion employed magic to build the walls of the city. [3]
Artemis; 5 daughters with a nurse; younger son with a pedagogue; 3 other sons; Apollo. Top: dead Niobids. 160–170 Ad In Greek mythology , the Niobids were the children of Amphion of Thebes and Niobe , slain by Apollo and Artemis because Niobe, born of the royal house of Phrygia , had boastfully compared the greater number of her own offspring ...
In the Odyssey, however, Zethus's wife is called Aëdon, a daughter of Pandareus in book 19, who killed her son Itylus in a fit of madness and became a nightingale. [11] Later authors would clarify that Aëdon tried to kill Niobe and Amphion's firstborn Amaleus out of jealousy that Niobe had borne many children, while she and Zethus only had one.
It was said that the boys, whom Apollo slew, were killed while they were hunting in the woods. Their father, Amphion, committed suicide at the sight of the lifeless bodies of his sons, or was slain by Apollo while storming his temple in protest. Niobe herself would be transformed into rock following the slaying of the daughters.
Amphion and Zethus expanded the city (and renamed it Thebes) and built the seven gates of Thebes, naming them after Amphion's daughters (Thera, Cleodoxa, Astynome, Astycratia, Chias, Ogygia, Chloris). Niobe, a boastful woman, attracted the wrath of Artemis and her brother Apollo, who were furious at Niobe for taunting their mother. Artemis then ...
Aëdon mourned her only son greatly, and thus Zeus, the father of Amphion and Zethus, transformed her into a nightingale when Zethus began to hunt her down following Itylus's murder. [17] A Homeric scholiast attributed the story of Aëdon killing her son in her effort to murder Niobe's to Pherecydes, a historian who lived during the fifth ...
Meliboea was the only one (or one of two) spared when Artemis and Apollo killed the Niobids in retribution for Niobe's insult to their mother Leto, bragging that she had many children while Leto had only two. Meliboea was so frightened by the ordeal, she turned permanently pale, changing her name to Chloris ("pale one").