Niobe
3 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Niobe. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ni'o-be, in Greek mythology, a queen of Thebes. She was a handsome, proud woman. Her husband built and ruled the city. She had seven sons and seven daughters. According to the legend, she interrupted the citizens in the midst of their services in honor of the goddess Leto and her two children, Apollo and Artemis. She berated them for offering sacrifices to an unknown, unseen goddess and her offspring, while she, a queen in regal beauty, stood in their midst with seven sons and seven daughters. She boasted openly that her wealth and her children were beyond the reach of the envious gods. The citizens abandoned the sacrifices. The goddess Leto, on a point of Mount Cynthus, addressed her children in anger and confusion, calling attention to the want of respect shown her by the people of Thebes. As the sons of Niobe were at their games on the plain of Thebes, one throwing the discus, another driving a chariot, others wrestling, etc., Apollo sent shaft after shaft with unerring aim from his bow. Two fell from their chariots, two others in the act of wrestling were transfixed by the same arrow. An elder brother running to their aid fell prostrate with an arrow through his body. The youngest son, seeing the fate of his brethren, raised his arms imploringly toward the gods; but it was too late,-an arrow had already left the bow of Apollo. He, too, fell slain. Even then the spirit of Niobe was unbroken. In the midst of her anguish she boasted of her seven daughters of unsurpassed beauty and grace, saying that sons-in-law would take the place of her sons. Again the arrows of Apollo sped. The daughters fell one after another, even around the biers of their dead brothers. While the unhappy mother clasped the youngest, the last of her children, to her heart, the child died transfixed by a fatal shaft. Niobe, in excess of grief, was turned into stone. A whirlwind wafted her away to her native mountain, where she may still be seen a mass of stone, from which a trickling fountain flows. The Niobe group is the subject of a piece of beautiful Grecian sculpture in the Uffizi gallery at Florence. In describing Rome, once mistress of the world, Byron has used the legend of Niobe beautifully: The Niobe of nations, there she stands, Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Greek mythology, the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion, King of Thebes, to whom she bore six sons and six daughters. Proud of her children, she despised Leto or Latona, who had only two children, Apollo and Artemis; whereupon Latona, enraged at her presumption, moved her children to destroy all the children of Niobe with their arrows. Niobe was changed into stone on Mount Sipylus, in Lydia. Such mausoleum; and a Roman gateway. is the Homeric legend, which, however, Nimes (ancient Nemausus) is supposed was afterward much varied and enlarged. Only fragments exist of the tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles on this theme, which was a favorite subject of ancient art. A noble group representing Niobe and her children was discovered at Rome in 1583, and is now in the Uffizi Palace at Florence. It is a Roman copy of a Greek work.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A daughter of Tantalus , king of Lydia, and Euryanassa, or Dione . She married Amphion , and, according to Hesiod, they had ten sons and ten daughters. All the sons of Niobe expired by the darts of Apollo , and all the daughters, except Chloris, were destroyed by Diana . Niobe, overwhelmed with grief, was changed into a stone. 2026 Editor's Note: In Homer's Iliad, her children lay unburied for nine days while she abstained from food, and the gods themselves finally interred them. Later writers placed her petrification on Mount Sipylus in Lydia, where a natural rock formation resembling a weeping woman was identified as Niobe in antiquity and is still visible today. (Ed: BR 2026-07-11)