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PLEIADES

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Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 835 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PLEIADES , in See also:

Greek See also:mythology, the seven daughters of See also:Atlas and Plelone, and sisters of the See also:Hyades. Owing to their grief at the See also:death of their sisters or at the sufferings of their See also:father, they were changed into stars. In another See also:account, the Pleiades and their See also:mother met the See also:hunter See also:Orion in See also:Boeotia, and the sight of them inflamed his See also:passion. For five years he pursued them through the See also:woods, until See also:Zeus translated them all—Plelone and her daughters, Orion, and his See also:dog—to the See also:sky. The Pleiades See also:rose in the See also:middle of May and set at the end of See also:October, and their connexion with See also:spring and autumn explains the See also:legend. As bringers of the fertilizing rains of spring, which have their origin in the See also:west, they are the daughters of Atlas; as the forerunners of the storms of autumn, they are represented as being driven onward by Orion .in pursuit. The word is probably connected with 1rXEiwv, either in the sense of " many in number," since the stars formed a See also:close See also:group, resembling a bunch of grapes (hence sometimes called 06rpvs), or as " more in number " than their sisters. Others derive the name from srXEiv (to See also:sail), because See also:navigation began at the See also:time of their rising. They are probably alluded to in See also:Homer (Odyssey, xii. 62) as the doves (reAeiabes) who brought See also:ambrosia from the west to Zeus. One of these doves was always lost during the passage of the Planctae . (wandering rocks), referring to the fact that one of the seven Pleiades was always invisible.

This was See also:

Merope, who hid her See also:light from shame at having had intercourse with a mortal, See also:Sisyphus. All the Pleiades became the ancestresses of divine or heroic families. They were called Vergiliae (probably connected with ver, spring) by the See also:Romans. See See also:Hesiod, See also:Works and Days, 383; See also:Apollodorus iii. 10; Diod. Sic. iii. 6o; See also:Theocritus xiii. 25; See also:Hyginus, Astronom. ii. 21; See also:Ovid, See also:Fasti, iv. 169; V. 599.

End of Article: PLEIADES

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