See previous thesis blog post: Appendix A – Categorization of Plague saints (22)
HOMER, The Iliad: Book 1, 8-9
Thus did [Chryse] pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with the face dark and night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrows in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning. For nine whole days he shot his arrows among the people…Thereon the seer spoke boldly. “The god,” he said, “is angry…He will not deliver the Danaens from pestilence till Agamemnon has restored the girl without fee or ransom to her father and has send a holy hecatomb to Chryse. Thus we may appease him.”
OVID, Metamorphoses: Book 6, 204-312: The Story of Niobe
The goddess (Leto) was deeply angered, and on the summit of Mount Cynthus she spoke to her twin children. ‘See, it will be doubted whether I, your mother, proud to have borne you, and giving way to no goddess, except Juno, am a goddess, and worship will be prevented at my altars through all the ages, unless you help me, my children. Nor is this my only grief. This daughter of Tantalus has added insult to injury, and has dared to put her children above you, and has called me childless, may that recoil on her own head, and has shown she has her father’s tongue for wickedness.’ Latona would have added her entreaties to what she had related, but Phoebus cried ‘Enough! Long complaint delays her punishment!’ Phoebe said the same, and falling swiftly through the air, concealed by clouds, they reached the house of Cadmus.
There was a broad, open plain near the walls, flattened by the constant passage of horses, where many wheels and hard hooves had leveled the turf beneath them. There, a number of Amphion’s seven sons mounted on their strong horses, and sitting firmly on their backs, bright with Tyrian purple, guided them using reins heavy with gold. While Ismenus, one of these, who had been the first of his mother’s burdens, was wheeling his horse’s path around in an unerring circle, and hauling at the foaming bit, he cried out ‘Oh, I am wounded!’ and revealed an arrow fixed in his chest, and loosing the reins from his dying hands, slipped gradually, sideways, over his mount’s right shoulder…The archer god Apollo was moved, though already the dart could not be recalled: yet only a slight wound killed the boy, the arrow not striking deeply in his heart. The sisters, with black garments, and loosened hair, were standing by their brothers’ bodies. One, grasping at an arrow piercing her side, falling, fainted in death beside her brother’s face. A second, attempting to comfort her grieving mother, fell silent, and was bent in agony with a hidden wound. She pressed her lips together, but life had already fled. One fell trying in vain to run, and her sister fell across her. One tried to hide, while another trembled in full view. Now six had been dealt death, suffering their various wounds: the last remained. The mother, with all her robes and with her body, protected her, and cried out ‘Leave me just one, the youngest! I only ask for one, the youngest of all!’ While she prayed, she, for whom she prayed, was dead. Childless, she sat among the bodies of her sons, her daughters, and her husband, frozen in grief.
The breeze stirs not a hair, the color of her cheeks is bloodless, and her eyes are fixed motionless in her sad face: nothing in that likeness is alive. Inwardly her tongue is frozen to the solid roof of her mouth, and her veins cease their power to throb. Her neck cannot bend, nor her arms recall their movement, nor her feet lead her anywhere. Inside, her body is stone. Yet she weeps, and, enclosed in a powerful whirlwind, she is snatched away to her own country: there, set on a mountain top, she wears away, and even now tears flow from the marble.
