Pleiades

Also Known As: Greek Πλειάδες, “the Seven Sisters”; Latin Vergiliae; individually Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope or Asterope, and Merope; the name variously derived from plein, “to sail,” from peleiades, “doves,” or read as “daughters of Pleione”
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Seven star nymphs whose annual rising and setting governed the Greek calendar of harvest, ploughing, and safe voyage.
Role in Mythos: Daughters of the Titan Atlas who were pursued by the hunter Orion and set among the stars, where the chase continues across the night sky.
Relation to Humans: Farmers and sailors read their movements to time the grain harvest, the autumn sowing, and the opening and closing of the sailing season. They were also mothers of mortal and divine lines, so several royal houses of Greece traced their descent back to these stars.

Just before dawn in early May, a small knot of stars lifts over the eastern horizon, six or seven pale points crowded close enough to hide behind a thumbnail. Greek farmers watched for that rising the way sailors watched the wind. It told them the barley was ready and the sickle should be sharp. When the same cluster sank back into the sea at the far end of the year, the ploughing began, and no captain with sense left harbor. The stars had names, and the names were sisters: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope, the seven Pleiades.

They were the daughters of Atlas, the Titan condemned to hold the sky apart from the earth at the western edge of the world, and of the Oceanid Pleione, a daughter of the encircling river Ocean. That parentage placed them among a wide family of star-sisters and nymphs. The rain-bringing Hyades were their half-kin, also fathered by Atlas; the Hesperides tended their golden apples in the same far west; Calypso kept her lonely island somewhere out past the edges of the map. Born on the Arcadian mountains, the Pleiades ran with Artemis in the high country, unwed and quick, part of the goddess’s wild retinue.

There is no agreed face for them, and the reason is written into their story. They were maidens, then a scatter of doves, then stars, and each shape erased the last. When artists reach for them they borrow the shape of ordinary Greek girls in undyed linen, but the myth keeps turning them into something you cannot hold. The oldest of the sisters, Maia, is the clearest of the group, described as shy and retiring, dwelling apart in a cave on Mount Cyllene. The rest come down to us mostly as a list of names and a cluster of light.

The trouble began, as it so often did, with a hunter who would not take no for an answer. Orion, a giant of Boeotia, saw the sisters crossing the hills, sometimes with their mother Pleione beside them, and wanted them. He followed. He kept following, for seven years by one count, and the sisters found no ground where he was not somewhere behind them. Worn down, they cried out to Zeus for rescue. He answered by lifting them out of reach: first he changed them into peleiades, grey doves, and then he fixed them in the sky as stars. It was mercy of a particular kind. They were saved by being turned into something else.

Even in the heavens the hunt did not stop. Orion was set among the stars behind them, and the great constellation still climbs after the little cluster night after night, gaining and never catching. Look for the pattern and the chase is plain: the Pleiades rise first and lead, Orion follows over the horizon a little later, sword and belt and all.

Count the stars, though, and you find only six that come easily to the eye, when the sisters number seven. The Greeks noticed the same thing and told stories to fill the gap. One says the lost sister is Merope, the only Pleiad to marry a mortal, the trickster king Sisyphus of Corinth, and that she dimmed herself out of shame at the match while her sisters shone bright over their unions with gods. Another says it is Electra who slipped away, unable to keep watching the fall of Troy, the city her son Dardanus founded; grief drew a veil across her, and in some versions she broke from her place entirely and streamed across the sky as a comet, hair loose behind her. The stories disagree on which sister vanished. They agree that one of them could not bear what being a star required.

The others left their mark on the mortal world through their children. Maia bore Hermes to Zeus in her mountain cave, and so the swift messenger of the gods counted a star among his parents. Electra gave Zeus both Dardanus, ancestor of the Trojans, and Iasion. Taygete’s son by Zeus was Lacedaemon, from whom Sparta took its heart. Alcyone lay with Poseidon and mothered Hyrieus; Sterope is named as the mother of Oenomaus by Ares. Whole royal genealogies of Greece climbed back, generation by generation, to seven points of light.

Their power was never violence. It was time. The heliacal rising of the cluster in May opened the season of reaping and the season of sailing; its setting in the misty water of late autumn closed both and let the gales come. Hesiod, writing his farmer’s almanac, told his brother plainly to harvest when the Pleiades of Atlas were rising and to plough when they were going down, and to haul the ship well up the beach once they had plunged into the sea to escape Orion’s strength. For forty days and nights they hid below the horizon, then returned as the year came round again. To read them was to know when the world was safe.

Their weakness is the other side of that gift. They could not stand and fight, only flee and be transformed; the rescue that made them eternal also unmade them as women. One dimmed for love of a mortal, one for grief over a burning city, and the whole cluster spends every night running from a hunter it will never outrun and never escape. They mark the safe seasons for everyone but themselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Pleiades in Greek mythology?

The Pleiades are the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. They were star nymphs and companions of the goddess Artemis, and after being pursued by the hunter Orion they were transformed into doves and then placed among the stars as the cluster that still bears their name.

Why did Orion chase the Pleiades?

Orion, a giant hunter of Boeotia, desired the sisters and pursued them across the hills, in some accounts for seven years, sometimes chasing their mother Pleione along with them. The sisters prayed to Zeus for rescue, and he changed them into doves and set them in the sky, where Orion was placed behind them as a constellation that still appears to hunt them across the night.

Why are only six of the seven Pleiades visible?

Although the sisters number seven, usually only six stars are easily seen, and Greek myth explained the missing one in two ways. In one version it is Merope, who dimmed herself in shame for marrying the mortal Sisyphus rather than a god; in another it is Electra, who veiled her face in grief at the fall of Troy, the city founded by her son Dardanus.

How did the Pleiades mark the seasons for farmers and sailors?

The rising of the Pleiades in early May signaled the time to harvest grain and the opening of the sailing season, while their setting in late autumn marked the time to plough and the close of safe voyaging. Hesiod’s Works and Days instructs farmers to reap when the Pleiades rise and plough when they set, and warns sailors to beach their ships once the cluster sinks into the sea.

Who were the children of the Pleiades?

Several Pleiades bore children to the gods, founding important mythic lineages. Maia was the mother of Hermes by Zeus, Electra bore Dardanus and Iasion to Zeus, Taygete was the mother of Lacedaemon, and Alcyone bore Hyrieus to Poseidon, while Merope alone married a mortal, the Corinthian king Sisyphus.