218There was a flat plain, spreading wide near the walls, beaten by constant horses, where a crowd of wheels and hard hooves had softened the clods beneath. 221There some of Amphion's seven sons mount strong horses, press backs red with Tyrian dye, and manage reins heavy with gold. 224Of these Ismenus, who had once been the first burden his mother bore, while he wheels his four-footed steed's course in a sure circle and reins in its foaming mouth, 'Ah me!' 227he cries out, and carries arrows fixed in the middle of his chest, and, the reins let go by his dying hand, gradually slides sideways off the horse's right shoulder.
230Next, hearing the sound of a quiver through the empty air, Sipylus was giving his horse the reins, as when a helmsman, foreseeing rain, flees at the sight of a cloud and lets down the hanging sails on every side, so that no light breeze may slip away. 234Yet as he gives rein, the unavoidable weapon overtakes him; 235and the arrow stuck quivering in the top of his neck, and the bare iron stood out from his throat. 237He, bent forward as he was, rolls over the galloping legs and the mane, and stains the ground with warm blood. 239Unhappy Phaedimus and Tantalus, heir to his grandfather's name, when they had put an end to their usual labour, had passed to the youthful work of the gleaming wrestling-ground; 242and already they had locked chest to chest, struggling in a tight hold, when an arrow, sped from the drawn string, pierced them both, joined as they were.
245They groaned together, together laid their limbs, bent with pain, on the ground, together as they lay rolled their eyes for the last time, together breathed out their life. 248Alphenor sees, and beating his torn breast flies to them, to lift their cold limbs in his embrace, and falls in that dutiful service: for the Delian god burst his inmost vitals with the deadly iron. 252As soon as it was drawn out, part of his lung was torn out on the barbs, and with his life his blood poured out into the air. 254But no single wound strikes long-haired Damasichthon. 255He had been struck where the leg begins and where the sinewy back of the knee makes a soft joint.
257And while he tries with his hand to pull out the deadly weapon, a second arrow was driven through his throat up to the feathers. 259The blood drove it out, and, spurting high, leaps up and springs far, boring through the air. 261Last, Ilioneus had raised his arms in prayers that would not avail, and had said, 'O gods, all of you together,' not knowing that not all needed to be asked, 'spare me.' 264The bow-bearer was moved, when the weapon could no longer be called back. 265Yet he died of the slightest wound, his heart not deeply pierced by the arrow. 267Rumour of the disaster and the people's grief and the tears of her household made the mother certain of so sudden a ruin, amazed that it could have happened, and angry that the gods had dared this, that they had so much right.
271For their father Amphion, driving a sword through his breast, had ended in dying his grief together with the light. 273Alas, how far this Niobe differed from that Niobe who had lately driven the people from Latona's altars and had carried her steps, head held high, through the middle of the city, envied by her own people, but now pitiable even to an enemy. 277She lays herself on the cold bodies and, in no order, distributes last kisses among all her sons. 279Raising from them her bruised arms to the sky, 'Feed, cruel Latona, on my grief, feed,' she says, 'and glut your heart with my mourning: I am carried out to my burial.
283Exult, and triumph, my victorious enemy. 284But why victorious? 284more remain to me in my misery than to you in your happiness: even after so many deaths I win.' 286She had spoken, and the string twanged from the drawn bow. 287It terrified all except Niobe alone: she is bold in her misfortune. 288The sisters were standing in black garments before their brothers' biers, with hair unbound. 290Of these one, drawing out the arrow fixed in her vitals, sank down dying with her face laid on her brother: another, trying to console her wretched mother, suddenly fell silent and was bent wholly double by a wound. 295This one collapses as she flees in vain, that one dies upon her sister; this one hides, that one you could see trembling.
297And when six had been given to death, having suffered various wounds, the last remained. 298Covering her with her whole body, her whole robe, the mother cried, 'Leave me one, the youngest; of many I ask for the youngest, and for one.' 301And while she asks, the one she asks for falls. 301Bereaved, she sat down among her lifeless sons and daughters and husband, and grew rigid with her woes. 303No breeze stirs her hair, in her face is colour without blood, her eyes stand unmoving in her sad cheeks, there is nothing alive in the image. 306Her very tongue, too, freezes within against her hard palate, and her veins cease to be able to move; 308neither can her neck bend nor her arms make movements nor her foot walk; 309within, too, her vitals are stone.
310Yet she weeps. 310And wrapped in the whirl of a mighty wind, she was snatched away to her homeland. 311There, fixed on a mountain's peak, she melts, and even now the marble trickles with tears.