Ilioneus, Son of Nioba

myminifactory

In ancient Greek mythology, Niobe emerged as a pivotal figure, born to Tantalus and either Dione or Eurythemista/Euryanassa. She was the sister of Pelops and Broteas, while her father ruled over a city near Manisa in present-day Aegean Turkey, known as "Tantalis," "the city of Tantalus," or "Sipylus." Nestled at the foot of Mount Sipylus, the ruins of this ancient settlement remained visible until the early 1st century AD. Pliny documented that Tantalis was ravaged by an earthquake, replaced by the city of Sipylus (Magnesia ad Sipylum). As a Phrygian ruler and sometimes referred to as "King of Phrygia," her father's kingdom lay on the western edge of Anatolia, where Lydia would eventually rise to prominence before the start of the first millennium BC. The title "Pelops the Lydian" for her brother led scholars to conclude that Niobe might have belonged to an ancient lineage of Lydia. Homer's Iliad chronicled her tale of hubris, which earned her punishment from Leto; Apollo and Artemis were sent to slay all of her children, leaving them unburied for nine days while their mother abstained from food. Following the gods' intervention in interring her children, Niobe retreated to her native Sipylus, where nymphs dance around the River Acheloos. Despite being transformed into stone, she brooded over the sorrows inflicted by the gods. Later writers claimed that Niobe was wedded to Amphion, a co-founder of Thebes, but no shrine dedicated to her existed in this sacred sanctuary.