History of Monsters, Page 196 — Ulisse Aldrovandi

...thread, and continues to work her ancient spider-webs.

However, Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, gave little thought to Arachne's miserable fate. Having borne seven sons and as many daughters to her husband Amphion, she not only made light of the sacrifices to Latona but even believed she should be honored above the goddess herself. Enraged by this arrogance, Latona ordered Apollo and Diana to pierce Niobe’s children with their arrows. Overwhelmed by this immense grief, her husband took his own life, and Niobe herself took on the form of stone.

"Her neck cannot bend, her arms cannot gesture, her feet cannot walk; even her internal organs have turned to stone."

Later, while traveling through Lycia and suffering from a burning thirst, Latona approached a pond. When the local Lycian peasants tried to stop her, she immediately transformed them into frogs.

"Raising her hands to the stars, the goddess said, 'May you live forever in that pond!' And so they do. Although they are underwater, they still try to croak their insults. Their voices are now hoarse, their inflated necks are swollen, and their very brawling stretches their wide-gaping maws. Their backs touch their heads, their necks seem to have vanished, their backs are green, and their bellies—the largest part of their bodies—are white. Now, as new frogs, they leap about in the muddy depths."

The people of Thebes celebrated these stunning divine miracles; indeed, there was no one among them who failed to mention Apollo’s vengeance against the Satyr. Marſyas the satyr had challenged Apollo to a flute-playing contest, but once he was defeated, he was stripped of his skin. The blood flowing from his entire body was transformed into a river that runs through Phrygia, named the Marsyas after the satyr.

"The Marsyas is the name of the clearest river in Phrygia."

They say Pelops was present during these calamities. He was the son of Tantalus, the tyrant of Arcadia, and had been cooked by his own father and served as a feast for the gods. While all the other gods abstained from eating him, Ceres did not. Eventually, the gods gathered his limbs and, with the help of Mercury, summoned his soul back from the Underworld to restore him to life. Since his left shoulder was missing, they replaced it with one of ivory. They cast his father, Tantalus, down into the depths of Tartarus, where he is tormented by perpetual hunger and thirst in the midst of food and drink.

This was the state of affairs when princes from many regions were traveling to Thebes to attend the public spectacles. The Athenians alone were absent, as their city was under siege by neighboring peoples. Consequently, Pandion, the King of the Athenians, sought military aid from Tereus, the son of Mars and King of the Thracians. In exchange, Pandion gave him his daughter Procne in marriage. While living in her husband's palace, Procne was seized by an incredible longing to see her sister, Philomela. She begged her husband Tereus to travel to Athens and bring her sister back to Thrace. To please his wife, Tereus reached Athens, but he fell lustfully in love with Philomela. After bringing her to Thrace, he raped her; to prevent this crime from being revealed, he cut out her tongue and locked her in a stable, later lying to his wife by claiming her sister had died on the journey.

However, Philomela, determined not to let such an atrocity remain hidden, sent her sister a garment embroidered with the details of the crime. When Procne understood what had happened, she was driven by a wild fury. She broke into the stables, brought her sister to the palace, and killed her own son, Itys, serving him to his father to be eaten. Realizing the horror, Tereus pursued his wife and Philomela, but through the mercy of the gods, they were all transformed into winged birds. Thus, Procne was changed into a swallow, Philomela into a nightingale, Tereus into a hoopoe, and Itys into a pheasant.

"Then you would have thought the bodies of Pandion's daughters, pursued by a naked blade, were suspended on wings. They hung on wings: one seeks the woods, the other enters the eaves of houses; even now, the marks of murder have not left their breasts, and their feathers are stained with blood. He, swift in his grief and his craving for punishment, is turned into a bird with a crest standing upon its head."

Regarding Philomela, the author of *Philomela* sings as follows