The Story of Niobe, Parts 2 and 3

Seven archery murders in the unlucky city of Thebes ...

Adapted from Book VI of Ovid's Metamorphoses

2

At Cynthus, in her austere dwelling
high on the peak of a prodigious cliff,
Latona waits the waft of incense, and the bees’
murmur of far-off Theban prayers, too soon
ended and not enough to satisfy. Then up
to her ears by Echo carried comes Niobe’s speech.
Each laurel thrown to the temple floor, each
stooped retreat without the proper obeisance
is a slap in Latona’s face. How fair a face?
One need but look at Apollo and Artemis
formed in her guise in high relief. From her
the beauty that stuns to silence, from force
unknown beyond the universe, the arts divine
inspired by the sun-bright siblings.  “You two!”
her mother summons them, and fast they fly
as quick as thought and waves of energy.
They reach for her embrace; she shivers off
all contact in the ice of her anger. “You two,
my pride and joy, you know that I bow
to no one but Hera, knowing my place
that others many know and honor theirs,
hear how my divinity has been tarnished,
my temple insulted, my prayers snuffed out.
This Niobe, spawn of Tantalus, who crept
like a dog to sup on the gods’ apples, daughter
of a thief of table scraps, you she insults, too,
preferring her own grown sons and daughters
to the elder gods she should at least give nod to
and pass by in silence if she cannot praise.
No Apollo, no Artemis she honors: she calls me
childless, in bloat of pride just like a sow
who loses count of her many piglets and swells
to name and number them lords of the sty.
Just like her father, she is swollen with hubris.”

 More would Latonia have said, but Phoebus
Apollo with lifted hand stops her. “Enough!
Each moment spent in hearing more, delays
the moment of Latona’s punishment. Let’s go!”
So saying, he seizes his sister’s hand, and off
they fly. Sooner than a man could harness
two horses to a chariot, they came to Thebes,
concealed in cloud above the tower of Cadmus.

3
It was a field of Mars where they but played at war,
the exercising grounds of Latona’s athletic sons.
Crowds gathered daily to watch their chariots,
the shows of archery, the wrestling and races.
Truly, they seemed like gods at play. The earth
was flat and dry where horses’ hoofs and wheels
packed down the dust and clay. Only a few trees
and shrubs dotted the open plain, the city walls
in plain view behind it. King Amphion seldom came,
but many idled and watched as princes rode
horseback in Tryrian purple, turning and racing
with their tight gold-coated bridles. Ismenus,
first-born, his mother’s favorite son, rode wide
along the curved track, as if to race against
any or all of his brothers. Hard he pulled the bit,
the foam’d mouth of the young stallion resisted.
He squinted once at the single cloud, the only one
marring the sky’s perfection of azure, then sat
upright and cried as the first arrow struck him,
red on purple and straight through the heart.

 What can one say of the arrows of Apollo,
and those of his sister, no less in power?

Unleashed, they always strike their target.
Not even a zephyr would dare to deflect
the path from archer’s eye to the target.
Only another god, invisible, could nudge
the victim to safety in the eye-blink between
the harp twang of string and the heart-pierce
of flesh-rending bronze. And so, “Ah, me!”

was all Ismenus said, as he sank sideways downward
over the shoulder of his astonished horse.

 His brother, Sipylus made out the fatal sound
of the arrow-laden quiver within the cloud,
and giving rein, fled for the city walls,
just as a captain turns sail away and flees
from a sudden storm. How many hoof-beats
and how fast would take him to safety? Too slow,
too late, as the unavoidable arrow took him.
The arrow shaft sang as it sliced his neck.
Only a gurgling noise escaped him as the point
thrust out through his Adam’s apple. Forward
he pitched and his own horse trampled him.
His warm blood gushed in the dry ground’s gullies. 

Elsewhere upon the playing field, two brothers fond
who loved nothing more than trading triumphs
and sweet defeats as well-oiled wrestlers
were at a sweaty match, each goaded on by friends
and adherents. “Go Phaedmus!” some called.
“Tantalus! Be like your grandsire! Invent some trick
to tumble your brother under foot! On, Tantalus!”
The brothers strained together, breast to breast,
their breathing as heavy as lovers’, their eyes intent
for one another’s stumbling weakness. There was not
the track of an ant between them when both inhaled,
swelling their huge frames, as just one arrow,
one perfect, impossible arrow, sped from the bow
of Artemis intent to outshine her brother. One arrow
impaled them both. They groaned in unison, eyes locked
upon one another in disbelief. Naked they fell.
Their last breath was a mutual exhalation.

 Helpless Alphenor watched them die, and from the crowd
rushed forth, He beat his breast and crying, “My brothers!
My brothers!” he marked himself for ready death. He leaned
to lift the stone-dead bodies of Phaedmus and Tantalus,
and just as if he had carried them to their grave
the spot he stood on became his own death. One arrow
from Apollo plowed through his midriff at perfect center,
a bull’s eye hit that sent him groaning to slow
and painful death-agonies,. Someone ran bravely
and pulled out the Olympian arrow. Out came his lungs
and a cascade of blood. All stared in horror
at the hooded forms in the hovering cloudbank.

One brother hardly passed from boy to man, pretty
Damasichton, was almost, one would think, too fair
to kill. That may be why the god’s arrow deflected,
piercing below the knee. The boy reached down
to tend the fast-bleeding wound, and lo!
the second arrow pierced through his head so far
that from his astonished mouth the feathers showed.
So fierce the heart-blood pulsed in the prince’s neck
that the arrow went out and up on a geyser of blood.

 One son alone remained. Ilioneus he was called.
He knelt and stretched his arms in prayer.
“Unknown gods, whom we have offended, spare me!
All ye gods, but name yourselves and I will make amends!”
The god of arrows was stirred to pity, inhuman
he was not as patron to all human arts. But while he thought,
Apollo’s hand, so used to the automatic flow
of arrow from quiver, of bowstring draw and release,
alas and eheu! he had let the arrow go! The youth fell,
but the arrow, perhaps alive itself, withheld its force.
But as though the death of all had been foredoomed,
the boy’s heart broke anyway, and he perished.