Frescoes depicting the Massacre of the Niobids at the Archaeological Museum of Naples in Italy

The Knucklebone Players, Herculaneum

Painting - Wax on marble (Height x Width cm) 20–37 BC–37 AD

This painting, painted on marble with wax, was most likely inspired by a Greek original.

The inscriptions, written in capital letters and small in size, are barely legible.

The Knucklebone Players In the upper left corner, we can read: “Alexandros Athenaios egrapse ”, which means “Alexander the Athenian drew it”.

The names of the characters are also written next to them, as was customary under Emperor Augustus.

We can thus read the names of Leto, Niobe, Phoebe, Aglaea and Hilary.

Aglaea and Hilary, unaware of the tragedy unfolding, are playing knucklebones.

While Niobe boasts to Leto that she has had more children than her.

We see Phoebe, Hilaris' sister, pushing Niobe towards Leto in an attempt to reconcile them.

Niobe tries to apologise and reaches out to Leto, but the latter keeps her arms crossed and refuses her apology.

We know that afterwards, to take revenge, Leto asked her children, Apollo and Artemis, to kill Niobe's children.

The Massacre of the Niobids, Pompeii, Casa del Marinaio

The Massacre of the Niobids Fresco – Water-based pigments on coating (129 × 162 cm) 20 BC–37 AD

Niobe's sons flee the deadly arrows of Apollo, who is avenging his mother, Latona, whom Niobe had disrespected by considering her an inferior goddess.

Queen Niobe had shown her contempt by forbidding the Thebans from honouring the altars of this “ poor Latona", who had fled Giunone's vengeance before finding refuge on the island of Delos to give birth to Apollo and Artemis, her only children.

The Massacre of the Niobids Niobe boasted of the beauty of her fourteen children and prided herself on her fertility, saying that she was seven times more fertile than Latona. The horses are galloping, ridden by the sons of Niobe, seized with panic, for they have become the tiny targets of an infallible archer who kills them one after the other, under the gaze of a doe standing on an altar dedicated to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.

The hunters have become the hunted, forgetting the wild animals running in the woods in the background, while the couple sitting at the foot of the altar is completely indifferent to the drama surrounding them.

The Massacre of the Niobids The man with the grey beard and his cornucopia probably symbolises Acheron, the river of sorrow, which marks the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

The young woman at his side symbolises Gargaphia, a river in the valley near Mount Cithéron in Boeotia.

The hunter Actaeon, having seen Artemis bathing in its waters, was immediately transformed into a stag and devoured by his own hounds.

The sons of Niobe, killed because of their mother's impiety, were also unjustly condemned to death like Actaeon, who accidentally saw the nakedness of Artemis, which no one was supposed to see.

The Murder of the Niobids, Pompeii, Casa dei Dioskouros

Fresco - Water-based pigments on coating (222 × 124 cm) 62–79 AD