that he has absorbed in his person various minor solar deities, representing different phases of the sun, just as subsequently Shamash absorbed the attributes of practically all the minor sun-deities.
In the systematized pantheon, Ninib survives the tendency towards centralizing all sun cults in Shamash by being made the symbol of a certain phase of the sun. Whether this phase is that of the morning sun or of the springtime with which beneficent qualities are associated, or that of the noonday sun or of the summer solstice, bringing suffering and destruction in its wake, is still a matter of dispute, with the evidence on the whole in favour of the former proposition. At the same time, the possibility of a confusion between Ninib and Nergal (q.v.) must be admitted, and perhaps we are. to see the solution of the problem in the recognition of two diverse schools of theological speculation, the one assigning to Ninib the role of the spring-tide solar deity, 'the other identifying him with the sun of the summer solstice. In the astral-theological system Ninib becomes the planet Saturn. The swine seems 'to have been the animal sacred to him, or to have been one of the symbols under which he is represented. The consort of Ninib was Gula (q.v.). (M. Ja.)
NINUS, in Greek mythology, the eponymous founder of
Nineveh (q.v.), and thus the city itself personified. He was
said to have been the son of Belos or Bel, to have conquered
in seventeen years the whole of western Asia with the help of
Ariaeus, king of Arabia, and to have founded the first empire.
During the siege of Bactra he met Semiramis, the wife of one
of his officers, Onnes, whom he took from her husband and
married. The fruit of the marriage was Ninyas, i.e. “The
Ninevite.” After the death of Ninus, Semiramis, who was
accused of causing it, erected to him a temple-tomb, nine stades
high and ten stades broad, near Babylon. According to Castor
(ap. Syncell. p. 167) his reign lasted fifty-two years, its commencement
falling 2189 B.C. according to Ctesias. Another Ninus
is described by some authorities as the last king of Nineveh,
successor of Sardanapalus.
See J. Gilmore, Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias (1888).
NIOBE, in Greek mythology, daughter of Tantalus and Dione,
wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Proud of her numerous
family, six daughters and six sons, she boasted of her superiority
to her friend Leto, the mother of only two children, Apollo
and Artemis. As a punishment, Apollo slew her sons and
Artemis her daughters. Their bodies lay for nine days unburied,
for Zeus had changed the people to stones; on the tenth day
they were buried by the gods. Out of pity for her grief, the gods
changed Niobe herself into a rock on Mount Sipylus in Phrygia,
in which form she continued to weep (Homer, Iliad, xxiv.
602–617; Apollodorus iii. 5; Ovid, Metam. vi. 146-312). The
names and number of her children, and the time and place
of their death, are variously given. This “Niobe,” described
by Pausanias (i. 21) and Quintus Smyrnaeus (i. 293-306), both
natives of the district, was the appearance assumed by a cliff on
Sipylus when seen from a distance and from the proper point
of view (see Jebb on Antigone, 831). It is to be
distinguished from an archaic figure still visible, carved in the
northern side of the mountain near Magnesia, to which tradition
has given the name of Niobe, but which is really intended
for Cybele.
According to some, Niobe is the goddess of snow and winter, whose children, slain by Apollo and Artemis, symbolize the ice and snow melted by the sun in spring; according to others, she is an earth-goddess, whose progeny—vegetation and the fruits of the soil—is dried up and slain every summer by the shafts of the sun-god. Burmeister regards the legend as an incident in the struggle between the followers of Dionysus and Apollo in Thebes, in which the former were defeated and driven back to Lydia. Heffter builds up the story round the dripping rock in Lydia, really representing an Asiatic goddess, but taken by the Greeks for an ordinary woman. Enmann, who interprets the name as “she who prevents increase” (in contrast to Leto, who made women prolific), considers the main point of the myth to be Niobe’s loss of her children. He compares her story with that of Lamia, who, after her children had been slain by Zeus, retired to a lonely cave and carried off and killed the children of others. The appearance of the rock on Sipylus gave rise to the story of Niobe having been turned to stone. The tragedians used her story to point the moral of the instability of human happiness; Niobe became the representative of human nature, liable to pride in prosperity and forgetfulness of the respect and submission due to the gods.
The tragic story of Niobe was a favourite subject in literature and art. Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote tragedies upon it; Ovid has described it at length in his Metamorphoses. In art, the most famous representation was a marble group of Niobe and her children, taken by Sosius to Rome and set up in the temple of Apollo Sosianus (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 4). What is probably a Roman imitation of this work was found in 1583 near the Lateran, and is now in the Uffizi gallery at Florence. In ancient times it was disputed whether the original was the work of Praxiteles or Scopas, and modern authorities are not agreed as to its identity with the group mentioned by Pliny.
On the whole subject see C. E. Burmeister, De fabula quae de Niobe ejusque liberis agit (Wismar, 1836); L. Curtze, Fabula Niobes Thebanae (Corbach, 1836); W. Heffter in Zeitschrift für Gymnasialwesen, ix. (1855); C. B. Stark, Niobe und die Niobiden (1863), the standard work; E. Thrämer, Pergamos (1888); C. Friedrichs, Praxiteles und die Niobegruppe (1865); A. Mayerhöfer and H. Ohlrich, Die Florentiner Niobegruppe (1881 and 1888); for the on Mount Sipylus, see C. B. Stark, Nach dem griechischen Orient (1874); G. Weber, Le Sipylos et ses monuments (1880); W. Ramsay, “Sipylos and Cybele,” in Journal of Hellenic Studies, iii. (1882); Frazer’s Pausanias, iii. 555; for vase-paintings, see Heydemann, Niobe und Niobiden auf griechischen Vasenbildern (1875). For further literature on the subject, see A. Preuner’s mythological bibliography in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. xxv. (1891); the various derivations of the name and interpretations of the legend are given in Enmann’s article in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie.
In Greek Art, fig. 29 (from an Orvieto vase) represents the slaying of the children of Niobe by Apollo and Artemis; fig. 78 (Pl. VI.), Niobe shielding her youngest daughter.
NIORT, a city of western France, chief town of the department
of Deux-Sèvres, 42 m. E.N.E. of La Rochelle on the railway
to Saumur. Pop. (1906) 20,538. Niort is situated on the left
bank of the Sèvre Niortaise, partly in the valley and partly on
the slopes of the enclosing hills. The tower of the church of
Notre-Dame (15th and 16th centuries) has a spire 246 ft. high,
with bell-turrets adorned with statues of the evangelists, and
at the base a richly decorated dais in the Renaissance style;
and the north doorway shows a balustrade, of which the balusters
form the inscription O Mater Dei, memento mei St André,
with a fine window in the apse, and St Hilaire, which contains
some beautiful frescoes, both date from the 19th century. Of
the old castle, whose site is partly occupied by the prefecture,
there remains the donjon—two large square towers united by
a central building, flanked by turrets, built, it is said, by Henry II.
of England or Richard Cœur de Lion. The platform on the
top affords a fine view of the public garden (one of the most
picturesque in France) and the valley of the Sèvre. The old
town-hall, Renaissance in style, is wrongly known as the Aliénor
palace, after Eleanor of Guienne; it contains a collection of
antiquities. The house is still shown in which Madame de
Maintenon is erroneously stated to have been born. Near Niort
are the fine feudal ruins of the fortress of Coudray-Salbart.
Niort is the seat of a prefect and a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitration, lycées for both sexes, a school of drawing, a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Bank of France. Tanning, currying, shammy-dressing, glove-making and the manufacture of brushes and boots and shoes are the staple industries.
Up to the 7th century the Niort plain formed part of the Gulf of Poitou; and the mouth of the Sèvre lay at the foot of the hills now occupied by the town which grew up round the castle erected by Henry Plantagenet in 1155. The place was captured by Louis VIII. in 1224. By the peace of Brétigny it was ceded to the English; but its inhabitants revolted against the Black Prince, and most of them were massacred when his troops recovered the town by assault. In 1373 Duguesclin regained
