Amphion’s Death after Niobe’s Children Fall

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/210-amphion-suicide-niobe-apollodorus

Cycle: Heroes — Theban / Niobid aftermath

Version line: Apollodorean — Amphion kills himself (or is killed) when Apollo and Artemis slay the Niobids

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 3.5.6; cf. Ovid, *Metamorphoses* 6.271–312 (**Roman** transmission of Amphion’s suicide); Homer, *Iliad* 24.602–617 (Niobe’s grief; Amphion named among the dead of that house)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/210-amphion-suicide-niobe-apollodorus.md

Characters

Artemis — slayer of the daughters
Niobe — boastful mother; surviving mourner (petrification elsewhere)
People of Crisa — slayer of the sons (and, in some versions, of Amphion)
Zethus — husband of Niobe; co-king/builder of Thebes; dies after the children’s slaughter

Places

Thebes — house of Amphion and Niobe; place of the slaughter and Amphion’s death

Themes

Narrative

Amphion, husband of Niobe and co-builder of Thebes’s walls with Zethus, is undone by his wife’s boast against Leto. When Apollo and Artemis kill Niobe’s sons and daughters, Amphion destroys himself—Apollodorus says he killed himself; Roman Ovid elaborates a sword-suicide amid the corpses. Some classical notices instead have Apollo slay Amphion as well. The Theban lyre-hero who had charmed stones into walls ends not in musical apotheosis but in the collapse of his house. Niobe’s petrification on Sipylus follows as a separate grief-metamorphosis; this entry closes Amphion’s line at the moment the arrows fall.