# Niobe — Metamorphoses character guide

> Niobe in Metamorphoses by Ovid.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** proud Niobe

**First appearance:** 0060-story-of-niobe

## Snapshot

A queen of Thebes, daughter of Tantalus, who parades her fourteen children before a goddess and learns how quickly pride can be answered.

## Who they are

Niobe is royalty twice over — a Theban queen and a daughter of the gods — and she wears her fertility like a crown, forbidding her city to worship Latona, who has only two children. Her boast is not idle vanity but a public theological argument: that her abundance proves her greater than the mother of Apollo and Diana. Ovid lets her speak at length, so that the punishment when it comes lands not as a moral but as a horror.

## In the story

### [Story of Niobe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/chapters/story-of-niobe)

The proud queen of Thebes who boasts of her children and insults Latona, leading to the slaughter of her offspring.

### [Transformation of Niobe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/chapters/transformation-of-niobe)

Transformed into a stone statue after the loss of her children, she weeps eternally.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/characters/niobe
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/characters