Niobe, in the Greek mythology the daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes, to whom she bore six sons and six daughters, in her pride of whom she rated herself above Leto, who had given birth to only two children, Apollo and Artemis, whereupon they, indignant at this insult to their mother, gave themselves for nine days to the slaughter of Niobe's offspring, and on the tenth the gods buried them; Niobe, in her grief, retired to Mount Sipylos, in Lydia, where her body became cold and rigid as stone, but not her tears, which, ever as the summer months returned, burst forth anew.