159 HISTORY OF GREECE. to Lira, yet eluding his touch as often as he tried to grasp them and leaving his hunger and thirst incessant and unappeased.> Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old legend re- volting to his feelings : he rejects the tale of the flesh of Pelops having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the gods. 2 Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphion, and had a numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and seven daughters. Though accepted as the intimate friend and companion of Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemas, 3 she was presumptuous enough to triumph over that goddess, and to place herself on a footing of higher dignity, on account of the superior number of her children. Apollo and Artemas avenged this in- sult by killing all the sons and all the daughters : Niobe, thus left a childless and disconsolate mother, wept herself to death, and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks continued always to identify on Mount Sipylus. 4 Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but a king of Paphlagonia ; by others it was said that Tantalus, hav- ing become detested from his impieties, had been expelled from Asia by Ilus the king of Troy, an incident which served the double purpose of explaining the transit of Pelops to Greece, and of imparting to the siege of Troy by Agamemnon the charac- ter of retribution for wrongs done to his ancestor. 5 When Pe- lops came over to Greece, he found CEnomaus, son of the god Args and Harpinna, in possession of the principality of Pisa. DiodOr. iv. 77. Horn. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar gives a different version of the punishment inflicted on Tantalus : a vast stone was perpetually im- pending over his head, and threatening to fall (Olymp. i. 56 ; Isthm. vii. 20).
- Pindar, Olymp. i. 45. Compare the sentiment of Iphigeneia in Eurip-
ide-s, Iph. Taur. 387. 3 Sappho (Fragm. 82, Schneidewin) A<ZTG> K.a.1 Nto/3a fiuXa filv tyikai ijaav kralpat. Sappho assigned to Niobe eighteen children (Aul. Gell. N. A. iv. A. xx. 7) ; Hesiod gave twenty ; Homer twelve (Apollod. iii. 5). The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version both of tba genealogy and of the misfortunes of Niche" (Parthen. Narr. 33). 4 Ovid, Metam.vi. 164-311. Pausan.i. 21, 5 ; viii. 2, 3. Apollon. Uhorl ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59, Dindorf; Die- I8r. iv. 74.
