in fabulous history, the daughter of Tantalus, and the wife of Amphion king of Thebes, was a princess of great beauty; but being the mother of seven sons and as many daughters, she had the presumption to prefer herself to Latona, who had only Apollo and Diana. Latona enraged at this contempt, caused Apollo and Diana to kill Niobe's 14 children with their arrows, the former slaying the sons, and the latter the daughters, in the embraces of their mother. On which Niobe being filled with the deepest grief, Jupiter, in compassion to her incessant tears, turned her into stone.