Editing Leto (section)

=== Wrath myths ===
[[File:Giocatrici-di-astragali.JPG|thumb|upright=1.4|Phoebe pacifying Leto and Niobe while two Niobids play [[knucklebones]], fresco of [[Herculaneum]], 1st century AD, [[National Archaeological Museum, Naples]].]]

Leto's introduction into [[Lycia]] was met with resistance. There, according to [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]'',<ref>[[Ovid]], ''[[Metamorphoses]]'' [https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph6.php#anchor_Toc64106370 6.317-81]; see also [[Antoninus Liberalis]], ''Metamorphoses'' [https://topostext.org/work/216#35 35]</ref> when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia.<ref>The spring Melite, according to Kerenyi 1951:131.</ref> The peasants there refused to allow her to do so by stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond. Leto turned them into frogs for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers.

[[File:Tintoretto, tavole per un soffitto a palazzo pisani in san paterniano a venezia, 1541-42, latona trasforma i contadini della licia.jpg|thumb|left|''Latona transforms the
[[Lycian peasants]] into frogs'', Palazzo dei Musei ([[Modena]])]]

[[Niobe]] was a queen of [[Thebes (Greece)|Thebes]] and wife of [[Amphion]] of whom [[Sappho]] wrote that "Lato and Niobe were most dear friends",<ref>[[Sappho]] frag [https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/usappho/sph30.htm 127]</ref> although she is most famous for boasting of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children ([[Niobe|Niobids]]), seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto had only two. She also mocked Apollo's effeminate appearance and Artemis' manly appearance. For her [[hubris]], Leto asks her children to take revenge. Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, and Artemis killed her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions<!--see Chloris for citations please--> a number of the Niobids were spared. Other sources say that Artemis spared one of the girls (usually [[Chloris]], sometimes alongside her brother Amyclas, because the two prayed to Leto). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Zeus after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to [[Mount Sipylus]] in [[Asia Minor]] and either turned to stone as she wept or killed herself. Her tears formed the river [[Achelous]]. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death when the gods themselves entombed them.

The Niobe narrative appears in Ovid's ''[[Metamorphoses]]''<ref>[[Ovid]], ''[[Metamorphoses]]'' [https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph6.htm#480077260 6.146]–[https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph6.htm#480077262 6.312]</ref> where Leto has demanded the women of Thebes to go to her temple and burn incense. Niobe, queen of Thebes, enters in the midst of the worship and insults the goddess, claiming that having beauty, better parentage and more children than Leto, she is more fit to be worshipped than the goddess. To punish this insolence, Leto begs Apollo and Artemis to avenge her against Niobe and to uphold her honor. Obedient to their mother, the twins slay Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, leaving her childless, and her husband Amphion kills himself. Niobe is unable to move from grief and seemingly turns to marble, though she continues to weep, and her body is transported to a high mountain peak in her native land.