Atlas and Pleione, daughter of Ocean, had seven daughters called the Pleiades, born to
them at Cyllene in Arcadia, to wit: Alcyone,
Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and
Maia.1 Of these, Sterope was married to Oenomaus,2 and Merope to Sisyphus.
And Poseidon had intercourse with two of them, first with Celaeno, by whom he had Lycus,
whom Poseidon made to dwell in the Islands of the Blest, and second with Alcyone, who bore
a daughter, Aethusa, the mother of Eleuther by Apollo, and two sons Hyrieus and Hyperenor.
Hyrieus had Nycteus and Lycus by a nymph Clonia; and Nycteus had Antiope by Polyxo; and
Antiope had Zethus and Amphion by Zeus.3 And Zeus consorted with the other
daughters of Atlas.
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1 As to the Pleiades, see Aratus,
Phaenomena 254-268; Eratosthenes, Cat. 23; Quintus
Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica xiii.551ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il.
xviii.486; Scholiast on Pind. N. 2.10(16); Scholiast on Ap.
Rhod., Argon. iii.226; Hyginus, Ast. ii.21; Hyginus, Fab.
192; Ovid, Fasti iii.105, iv.169-178; Serv. Verg. G. 1.138, and Serv. Verg. A.
1.744; Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, p. 397, ed. F. Eyssenhardt
(in his edition of Martianus Capella); Scriptores rerum
mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 73 (First Vatican Mythographer 234). There
was a general agreement among the ancients as to the names of the seven Pleiades.
Aratus, for example, gives the same names as Apollodorus and in the same order. However,
with the exception of Maia, a different list of
names is given by the Scholiast on Theocritus xiii.25, who tells us
further, on the authority of Callimachus, that they were the daughters of the queen of
the Amazons. As their father was commonly said to be Atlas, they were sometimes called
Atlantides (Apollodorus, below; Diod. 3.60.4; compare Hes. WD 382). But there was much diversity of opinion
as to the origin of the name Pleiades. Some derived it from the name of their mother
Pleione; but the most probable view appears to be that the name comes from
2 Compare Paus. 5.10.6. According to another account, Sterope or Asterope, as she is also called, was not the wife but the mother of Oenomaus by the god Ares. See Eratosthenes, Cat. 23; Hyginus, Ast. ii.21; Hyginus, Fab. 84, 159; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 73 (First Vatican Mythographer 234).
3 See above, Apollod. 3.5.5.
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