You may be wondering what possible wrong Niobe could have committed to warrant such a horrific punishment. Homer has Achilles remind Priam of the story in the final book of the Iliad. In this telling, Niobe has twelve children (later sources will agree on fourteen). Proud of her fecundity, Niobe describes herself as the equal of fair-cheeked Leto, goddess and mother of Apollo and Artemis.1 And because of this vain and foolish boast, all her children are slaughtered by Leto’s furious offspring.
