Book XVI, 132: On the Same

Stand near, stranger, and weep when thou lookest on the infinite mourning of Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, who held not her tongue under lock and key; whose brood of twelve children is laid low now on earth, these by the arrows of Phoebus, and those by the arrows of Artemis. Now, her form compounded of stone and flesh, she is become a rock, and high-built Sipylus groans. A guileful plague to mortals is the tongue whose unbridled madness gives birth often to calamity.