Niobe
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Niobe
Niobe
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Niobe, asteroid 71 (the 71st asteroid to be discovered, on August 13, 1861), is approximately 106 kilometers in diameter and has an orbital period of 4.6 years. There were two mythological Niobes. One was the first mortal woman loved by Zeus. The other was a woman who was inordinately proud of her many children and ridiculed the goddess Leto about her children. In revenge, Leto had all of Niobe’s children slain, upon which witnessing, Niobe turned to stone. According to Martha Lang-Wescott, the asteroid Niobe indicates inordinate pride in children, creativity, fertility, or virility, which leads to humbling experiences or sorrow. Niobe’s key words are “humility” and “fertility.” Jacob Schwartz gives this asteroid’s astrological significance as “humbling lessons from a source of pride or creativity.”
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Niobe
in ancient Greek mythology, the daughter of Tantalus and the wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Niobe’s boasting of her numerous progeny (seven sons and seven daughters, according to Euripides) insulted Leto (Latona), the mother of Apollo and Artemis. To avenge the insult to their mother, Apollo and Artemis slew the children of Niobe (the Niobids) with their arrows. Niobe, who turned to stone from grief, was carried to the summit of Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor, where she was condemned eternally to shed tears for her murdered children. There were numerous reworkings of the Niobe myth in classical literature (such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 6) and art (sculpture of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., preserved in Roman copies).