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Truly Intense Vengeance Stories From Greek Mythology

Khalid Elhassan June 14, 2021 35 min

The twelve major Olympian gods. Pintrest

Roman bust of Niobe, copied from an earlier Greek original. Royal Academy of Arts

27. Greek Gods Thought Being a Proud Mother Was a Sin Worthy of Divine Vengeance

In Greek mythology, Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus, who got his own dose of terrible divine vengeance from the gods – see below. Niobe was a queen of Thebes who was blessed with great fortune. In addition to her noble birth and her descent from a king, Niobe was a stunning beauty. However, she committed the sin of hubris – a mixture of extreme pride, dangerous overconfidence, and overweening arrogance. For that, the gods visited their vengeance upon her.

Niobe took great pride in both her birth and her looks. What she took the greatest pride in, however, was her large brood of fourteen children – seven sons and seven daughters. A common theme in Ancient Greek stories about the gods is that pride on the part of mortals tends to set them off. One day, the people of Thebes went out to celebrate the feast of Latona – a religious festival in honor of Leto, also known as Latona, the mother of the gods’ Apollo and Artemis. Niobe’s conduct that day got her in serious trouble.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.