person
Niobe
also: Nioba, Niobe
Mythical Theban queen whose boast over her many children provoked Apollo and Artemis to slay them all, after which she was turned to stone in her ceaseless grief. Cicero treats her petrification as an image of grief frozen into perpetual silence.
Reading notes
- Tusculan Disputations §3.63 Niobe is imagined turned to stone
Niobe, whose children were all slain and who was petrified in grief; Cicero reads her transformation into stone as an image of grief locked in perpetual silence.