oo, had his mortal loves: the fair maiden Coronis, whom
in a fit of jealousy he shot through the heart,--the mother of
AEsculapius, the god of healing; Daphne, the beautiful nymph, who would
not listen to his entreaties, and was finally changed into a laurel
tree; and the muse Calliope, by whom he became the father of Orpheus,
who inherited his parent's musical and poetical gifts. The story of the
loves of Orpheus and his beautiful wife, Eurydice, is one of the most
touching in all literature: how she died from the bite of a venomous
serpent, and her spirit was conducted down to the gloomy realms of
Hades, leaving Orpheus broken-hearted; how Zeus gave him permission to
go down into the infernal regions to seek his wife; how he appeased even
Cerberus's rage by his music, and Hades and Proserpina consented to
restore Eurydice to life and to her husband's care, but on the one
condition that he should leave the infernal regions without once turning
to look into the face of his beloved wife; and how he observed the
mandate until just before he reached the earth, when he turned, only to
behold the vanishing form of the wife he had so nearly snatched from the
grave. The rest of his days were passed in sadness, and finally some
Bacchantes, enraged at his sad notes, tore him limb from limb, and cast
his mangled remains into the river Hebrus. "As the poet-musician's head
floated down the stream, the pallid lips still murmured 'Eurydice!' for
even in death he could not forget his wife; and as his spirit floated on
to join her, he incessantly called upon her name, until the brooks,
trees, and fountains he had loved so well caught up the longing cry and
repeated it again and again."

The story of Niobe is one of the best-known Greek legends, because of
its exquisite portrayal in art. Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, the mother
of fourteen children,--seven manly sons and seven beautiful
daughters,--in her pride taunted the goddess Latona, mother of Apollo
and Artemis, because her offspring numbered only two. She even went so
far as to forbid her people to worship the two deities, and ordered that
all the statues of them in her kingdom should be torn down and
destroyed. Enraged at the insult, Latona called her children to her, and
bade them slay all the children of Niobe. Apollo, therefore, coming upon
the seven lads as they were hunting, slew them with his unfailing
arrows; and while the mother was grieving for the loss of her sons,
Arte