"The gods have indeed punished me, but they have left me my beautiful daughters"
She had scarcely spoken when one after another her daughters fell dead at her feet. Niobe clasped the youngest in her arms to save her from the deadly arrows. When this one, too, was killed, the queen could bear no more. Her great grief turned her to stone, and the people thought that for many years her stone figure stood there with tears flowing constantly from its sad eyes.
One of the most famous temples in Greece was built to Apollo at a place called Delphi. Here there was always a priestess, whose duty it was to tell the people who came there the answers which the god gave to their questions. She would place herself on a seat over a crack in the earth out of which arose a thin stream of gases. By breathing this she was made light-headed for the moment, and then she was supposed to be able to tell the answer which Apollo gave.
These answers were almost always in poetry; and though they were very wise sayings, it was sometimes hard to tell just what the god meant by them. Once a great king wished to begin a war, and asked the advice of Apollo about it at Delphi. The priestess answered, that if he went to war he would destroy a great nation. The king thought that this must mean that he would conquer his enemies, and so he began the war. But, alas, he was conquered himself, and found that it was his own nation which was to be destroyed.
Although these oracles, as they were called, were so hard to understand, the Greeks thought a great deal of them; and they would never begin anything important without first asking the advice of Apollo.
Artemis, the Huntress-Goddess
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, and like him she was very skillful with the bow and arrow. When very young, she went to her father, Zeus, and begged him to allow her to live a free and happy life upon the beautiful mountains. Zeus granted her wish, and so she became the great huntress-goddess of the fields and forests.
As Apollo was the god of the sun and the bright daylight, so Artemis was the goddess of the moon. She loved to hunt by moonlight; and when the Greeks made statues of her, they sometimes represented her with a torch held high in one hand and a bow in the other. Artemis always had a band of maidens with her, who ran beside her, and took care of her dogs, and carried her arrows. She could run so swiftly that she could overtake the fleetest deer in the hunt. She and her maidens would dash through the forests with cries and merry laughter, and then when the hunt was over they would bathe in the pure mountain streams.
Artemis loved the woods and mountains so dearly that she rarely left them for the cities of men. But she was very selfish in her love of them, and did not wish to be disturbed in her enjoyment. There was once a young man named Actaeon, who was a great hunter, and who often wandered through the forests alone with his dogs. One day he came upon the goddess Artemis, playing with her maidens upon the banks of a stream. Instead of going away at once, as he should have done, he stood quite still and watched them. This made Artemis so angry that she changed him into a deer, and his own dogs then turned upon him, and tore him to pieces.
Artemis loved all the animals of the forest, but her favorite was the deer. Once a great king of the Greeks killed a doe of which Artemis was very fond. This king was just starting out upon a great war, and he had many vessels in the harbor all ready to sail. But day after day passed, and the wind blew constantly from the wrong direction, and the vessels could not put out to sea. The Greeks grew impatient, and asked the priest why it was that the gods gave them no fair breeze.
Then the priest consulted the gods, and told the people that Artemis was angry because the king had killed her doe, and that she would not let the right winds blow until the king gave up his young daughter to be sacrificed upon the altar of the goddess At first the king refused to do this, for he loved his daughter greatly; but at last he had to consent. Then the beautiful girl was led to the altar, and the priest raised his long knife to strike. But before it fell upon her breast, a cloud dropped over her, and hid her from sight. When it floated away the girl was nowhere to be seen; only a white doe remained in her place, and this the priest sacrificed in her stead.
The goddess had taken pity upon the maiden, and carried her in the midst of that thick cloud far away to a distant country. There she served for a long time as priestess in one of the temples to Artemis. But at last, after many years, her brother found her, and she was allowed to come back to her own country and friends once more.
Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom.
ATHENA
Athena was one of the most powerful of the goddesses. She was called the daughter of Zeus; but the Greeks believed that she had sprung full grown from his head, wearing her helmet and armor. She was more warlike than the other goddesses, and was almost always successful in her battles.
Athena was the goddess of wisdom and learning. The owl was her favorite bird, because of its wise and solemn look, and it is often represented with Athena in the images which the Greeks made of her.
While Artemis loved most the woods and mountains, Athena like the cities better. There she watched over the work and occupations of men, and helped them to find out better ways of doing things. For them she invented the plow and the rake; and she taught men to yoke oxen to the plow that they might till the soil better and more easily. She also made the first bridle, and showed men how to tame horses with it, and make them work for them. She invented the chariot, and the flute, and the trumpet; and she taught men how to count and use numbers. Besides all this, Athena was the goddess of spinning and weaving; and she herself could weave the most beautiful cloths of many colors and of the most marvelous patterns.
There was once a girl named Arachne, who was a skillful weaver, and who was also very proud of her skill. Indeed, she was so proud that once she boasted that she could weave as well as the goddess Athena herself. The goddess heard this boast, and came to Arachne in the form of an old woman. She advised the girl to take back her words, but Arachne refused. Then the bent old woman changed suddenly into the goddess Athena. Arachne was startled and surprised, but in an instant she was ready for the test of skill which the goddess demanded. The two stood at looms side by side, and wove cloth covered with the most wonderful pictures. When the goddess discovered that she could find no fault with Arachne’s work, she became terribly angry. She struck Arachne, and tore the cloth on her loom. Arachne was so frightened by the anger of the goddess that she tried to kill herself. Athena then became sorry for the girl, and saved her life by changing her into a spider. So Arachne lives to this day, and still weaves the most wonderful of all webs upon our walls and ceilings, and upon the grasses by the roadside.
It was not often, though, that Athena was so spiteful as you must think her from the story of Arachne. Usually she was kind and generous; and nothing pleased her better than to help brave, honest men, especially if they were skillful and clever.
The Greeks loved to tell the story of one such man whom Athena helped. His name was Odysseus, and in a great war of the Greeks he had proved himself to be one of the bravest and most cunning of all their chiefs. But in some way he had displeased the god Poseidon so much that when the war was over, and all the other Greeks sailed away in safety, Poseidon would not permit him to reach his far-off home. So for ten years Odysseus was kept far from his wife and child. He was blown about by storms, his ship was wrecked, and he had to meet and overcome giants and all sorts of monsters. Indeed, he had to make a trip down into the dark world of the dead before he could find out how he might manage to get back to his home again. But through it all, Athena was his friend. She watched over him, and encouraged him, and in each difficulty she taught him some trick by which he could escape. At last, after he had suffered much, and had even lost all of the men who had started with him, she brought him safely home again, in spite of all that Poseidon could do to prevent it.