Oh! change thy counsels, Jove, our sorrows end!
And if my rash, intemperate zeal offend,
For my child's sake, his father, pardon me!'"
The god Apollo, too, had his mortal loves: the fair maiden Coronis, whom in a fit of jealousy he shot through the heart,--the mother of Æsculapius, the god of healing; Daphne, the beautiful nymph, who would not listen to his entreaties, and was finally changed into a laurel tree; and the muse Calliope, by whom he became the father of Orpheus, who inherited his parent's musical and poetical gifts. The story of the loves of Orpheus and his beautiful wife, Eurydice, is one of the most touching in all literature: how she died from the bite of a venomous serpent, and her spirit was conducted down to the gloomy realms of Hades, leaving Orpheus broken-hearted; how Zeus gave him permission to go down into the infernal regions to seek his wife; how he appeased even Cerberus's rage by his music, and Hades and Proserpina consented to restore Eurydice to life and to her husband's care, but on the one condition that he should leave the infernal regions without once turning to look into the face of his beloved wife; and how he observed the mandate until just before he reached the earth, when he turned, only to behold the vanishing form of the wife he had so nearly snatched from the grave. The rest of his days were passed in sadness, and finally some Bacchantes, enraged at his sad notes, tore him limb from limb, and cast his mangled remains into the river Hebrus. "As the poet-musician's head floated down the stream, the pallid lips still murmured 'Eurydice!' for even in death he could not forget his wife; and as his spirit floated on to join her, he incessantly called upon her name, until the brooks, trees, and fountains he had loved so well caught up the longing cry and repeated it again and again."
The story of Niobe is one of the best-known Greek legends, because of its exquisite portrayal in art. Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, the mother of fourteen children,--seven manly sons and seven beautiful daughters,--in her pride taunted the goddess Latona, mother of Apollo and Artemis, because her offspring numbered only two. She even went so far as to forbid her people to worship the two deities, and ordered that all the statues of them in her kingdom should be torn down and destroyed. Enraged at the insult, Latona called her children to her, and bade them slay all the children of Niobe. Apollo, therefore, coming upon the seven lads as they were hunting, slew them with his unfailing arrows; and while the mother was grieving for the loss of her sons, Artemis began to slay her daughters. In vain did the mother strive to protect them, and one by one they fell, never to rise again. Then the gods, touched by her woe, changed her into stone just as she stood, with upturned face, streaming eyes, and quivering lips.
Three other heroines of mythology deserve to be enrolled within this brief chronicle: Andromeda, Ariadne, and Atalanta. The Princess Andromeda, a lovely maiden, was being offered as a sacrifice to a terrible sea monster who was devastating the coast. She was chained fast to an overhanging rock, above the foaming billows that continually dashed their spray over her fair limbs. As the monster was about to carry her off as his prey, the hero Perseus, returning from his conquest of Medusa, suddenly appeared as a deliverer, slew the monster, freed Andromeda from her chains, restored her to the arms of her overjoyed parent, and thus won the princess as his bride.
Far more pathetic is the story of the Princess Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, who fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus when he came to rescue the Athenian youths and maidens from the terrible Minotaur. She provided him with a sword and with a ball of twine, enabling him to slay the monster and to thread his way out of the inextricable mazes of the labyrinth. Theseus in gratitude carried her off as his bride; but on the island of Naxos he basely deserted her, and Ariadne was left disconsolate. Violent was her grief; but in the place of a fickle mortal lover, she became the fair bride of an immortal, the genial god Dionysus, who discovered her on the island and wooed and won her.
Atalanta, the third of this illustrious group, the daughter of Iasius, King of Arcadia, was a famous runner and sportswoman. She took part with Meleager in the grand hunt for the Calydonian boar, and it was she who at last brought the boar to bay and gave him a mortal wound. When Atalanta returned to her father's court, she had numberless suitors for her hand; but, anxious to preserve her freedom, she imposed the condition that every suitor should engage with her in a footrace: if he were beaten, his life was forfeited; if successful, she would become his bride. Many had thus lost their lives. Finally, Hippomenes, a youth under the protection of Aphrodite, who had bestowed on him three golden apples, desired to race with the princess. Atalanta soon passed her antagonist, but, as she did so, a golden apple fell at her feet. She stooped to pick it up, and Hippomenes regained the lead. Again she passed him, and again a golden apple caused her to pause, and Hippomenes shot ahead. Finally, just as she was about to reach the goal, the third golden apple tempted her to stop once more, and Hippomenes won the race and a peerless bride.