contagious distempers
being attributed to the excessive heat of the sun, it was fabled that
Apollo had killed them with his arrows; while women, who died of the
plague, were said to owe their death to the anger of Diana. Thus,
Homer says, that Laodamia and the mother of Andromache were killed by
Diana. Valerius Flaccus relates the sorrow of Clytie, the wife of
Cyzicus, on the death of her mother, killed by the same Goddess; so
the Scholiast on Pindar (Pythia, ode iii.) says, on the authority of
Pherecydes, that Apollo sent Diana to kill Coronis and several other
women. Eustathius distinctly asserts, that the poets attributed the
deaths of men, who died of the plague, to Apollo; and those of women,
dying a similar death, to Diana.

This supposition is based upon rational and just grounds; since many
contagious distempers may be clearly traced to the exhalations of the
earth, acted on by the intense heat of the sun. Homer, most probably,
means this, when he says that the plague came upon the Grecian camp,
on the God, in his anger, discharging his arrows against it; or, in
other words, when the extreme heat of his rays had caused a corruption
of the atmosphere. It may be here observed, that arrows were the
symbol of Apollo, when angry, and the harp when he was propitious.
Diogenes Laertius tells us, that, during the prevalence of the plague,
it was the custom to place branches of laurel on the doors of the
houses, in the hope that the God, being reminded of Daphne, would
spare the places which thereby claimed his protection.

Ovid says, that the sons of Niobe were killed while managing their
horses; but Pausanias tells us that they died on Mount Cithaeron, while
engaged in hunting, and that her daughters died at Thebes. Homer says,
that her children remained nine days without burial, because the Gods
changed the Thebans into stones, and that the offended Divinities
themselves performed the funeral rites on the tenth day; the meaning
probably, is, that, they dying of the plague, no one ventured to bury
them, and all seemed insensible to the sorrows of Niobe, as each
consulted his own safety. Ismenus, her eldest son, not being able to
endure the pain of his malady, is said to have thrown himself into a
river of Boeotia, which, from that circumstance, received his name.
After the death of her husband and children, Niobe is said to have
retired to Mount