Epitome 14. Bull
IT is said to have been placed among the stars because it carried Europa across the sea from Phoenicia to Crete, as Euripides recounts in his Phrixos;* for that reason it was granted the honour by Zeus of being one of the most conspicuous constellations. Others say, however, that this is a cow, an image of Io, and that it was for her sake that the constellation was marked out for this honour by Zeus.
The forehead and face of the Bull are delineated by the stars known as the Hyades. Where the back of the Bull is cut off, the Pleiades are set, which consist of seven stars, and are thus called the Seven-starred. Only six are in fact visible, while the seventh is extremely faint.
It is further mentioned in the Vatican Fragments that the Hyades could be identified as nurses of Zeus:
According to Pherecydes of Athens, these are the nurses of Zeus, who are known as the nymphs of Dodona.
Epitome 23. Pleiades
The Pleiades lie on the back of the Bull at the so-called cut-off;* the cluster is made up of a group of seven stars, which are said to be the daughters of Atlas, and it is thus called the Seven-starred. One cannot see seven, however, but only six, and the explanation for that goes something like this: six of them had liaisons with gods,* so they say, and one of them with a mortal. Three of them slept with Zeus, namely Electra, who gave birth to Dardanos, Maia, who gave birth to Hermes, and Taygete, who gave birth to Lacedaimon; while two slept with Poseidon, namely Alcyone, who gave birth to Hyrieus, and Celaino, who gave birth to Lycos; and Sterope is said to have slept with Ares, bearing Oinomaos to him. But Merope married a mortal, Sisyphos, and that is why she is wholly invisible. The Pleiades are very highly regarded by human beings because they indicate the changing of the seasons.
Hyginus
The Constellation
The Bull faces toward the east, and only half of it can be seen; its knees seem to be beginning to sink to the earth, and its head is turned in the same direction. Its knees are divided from the rest of its body by the equator. Its left horn, as we have mentioned above, comes together with the right foot of the Charioteer. Between the edge of its body and the tail of the ram there lie seven stars which have been called the Vergiliae by the people of our country, and the Pleiades by the Greeks. The Bull sets and rises backwards.
It has one star on each horn, of which that on the left is the brighter, one star on each eye, one on the middle of its forehead, and one on the base of each horn; these seven stars are known as the Hyades, although some exclude the two last-mentioned stars, so as to ascribe five stars in all to the Hyades. The Bull has, furthermore, a star on its left hind knee, one above its hoof, one on its right knee, three between its shoulder-blades, the last of which is brighter than the others, and one star on its chest. Which makes eighteen in all, excluding the Pleiades.
The Mythology
It [the Bull] is said to have been placed among the constellations because it carried Europa safely to Crete, as Euripides recounts. Or according to some authors, when Io was transformed into a cow, Zeus, so as to make amends, placed her among the stars in such a way that the front of her body could be clearly seen in the semblance of that of a bull, while the rest of her body was rather faint.
The bull faces toward the sunrise, and the stars that outline its face are known as the Hyades. According to Pherecydes of Athens, these are the nurses of Dionysos, seven in number, who were formerly known as the nymphs of Dodona. These are their names: Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedile, Coronis, Polyxo, Phyte, and Thyone. Lycourgos is said to have put them to flight* causing all except Ambrosia to take refuge with Thetis, as Asclepiades* recounts. But according to Pherecydes, they took Dionysos to Thebes to entrust him to Ino, and Zeus expressed his gratitude to them by placing them among the stars.
The Pleiades came to be called by that name, according to Musaeus, because fifteen daughters* were born to Atlas and Aithra, daughter of Oceanos, five of whom were called the Hyades, so he points out, because they had a brother Hyas who was greatly loved by his sisters. After he was killed during a lion hunt, the five sisters whom we have just mentioned were so overcome by unremitting grief, so the story goes, that they died as a result; and so, because they grieved most of all at his death, they came to be called the Hyades. The other ten sisters reflected on the death of their sisters, and seven of them committed suicide; and since the greater number of them felt that way, they came to be called the Pleiades.*
Or according to Alexander,* the Hyades were called by that name because they were daughters of Hyas and Boeotia,* and the Pleiades because they were daughters of Pleione, daughter of Oceanos, and Atlas.
The Pleiades are said to be seven in number, but no one can see more than six of them. It has been suggested by way of explanation that, of the seven, six went to bed with immortals—three with Zeus, two with Poseidon, and one with Ares—while the other is indicated to have been the wife of Sisyphos. To Zeus, Electra bore Dardanos, and Maia Hermes, and Taygete Lacedaimon; to Poseidon, Alcyone bore Hyrieus, and Celaino bore Lycos and Nycteus; and to Ares, Sterope bore Oinomaos (although others say that she was the wife of Oinomaos). As for Merope, who married Sisyphos, she gave birth to Glaucos, who was the father of Bellerophon according to many accounts. She was placed among the stars thanks to her other sisters, but because she married a mortal, her star is faint.
According to other accounts, it is Electra who cannot be seen, for the following reason. The Pleiades led the chorus of the stars, so it is thought, but after the fall of Troy and the destruction of all who were descended from her through Dardanos, Electra was overcome by grief and abandoned the company of her sisters to establish herself on the circle known as the arctic, and at long intervals she can be seen in mourning with her hair unloosed; for that reason she has come to be called a comet (long-haired star).
The ancient astronomers placed these apart from the Bull; they were the daughters, as we have already said, of Pleione and Atlas. While Pleione was once passing through Boeotia with her daughters, Orion* grew overexcited and tried to rape her, causing her to flee; but Orion pursued her for seven years without being able to catch her. Taking pity on the girls, Zeus placed them among the stars, and some astronomers have called them the Bull’s tail. Thus it is that Orion still seems to pursue them as they flee toward the west. Our countrymen have called these stars the Vergiliae because they rise after springtime (ver),* and they enjoy greater honours, indeed, than all other stars because their rising indicates the arrival of summer, and their setting the coming of winter, something that cannot be said of other constellations.
Alternative account of the mythology of the Pleiades and Hyades
Atlas had twelve daughters and a son, Hyas, by Pleione or an Oceanid. When Hyas was killed by a wild boar or a lion, his sisters grieved for him so desperately that they died of their grief. Of these, the first five were transferred to the stars to take their place between the horns of the Bull, namely Phaisyle, Ambrosia, Coronis, Eudora, and Polyxo, who were called the Hyades after the name of their brother. In Latin they are called the Suculae.* Some say, however, that they are called the Hyades because they are arranged like the letter Y, or others because they bring rain at their rising, for raining is called huein in Greek. There are some who think that they appear among the stars because they were the nurses of Dionysos whom Lycourgos drove out of the island of Naxos.* The other sisters who died of grief later were also turned into stars, and they were called the Pleiades because they were more in number ( pleious). Some think, however, that they owe their name to the fact that they are set close together, that is to say, plesion, and they are indeed so tightly clustered that it is not easy to count them, and it is impossible to tell for certain with the naked eye whether there are six or seven of them.
Their names are Electra, Alcyone, Celaino, Merope, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia, and of these, they say that Electra does not show herself because of the death of Dardanos and the loss of Troy; while others think that Merope seems to blush because she took a mortal for a husband whereas all the others had liaisons with gods. Driven from the chorus of her sisters for that reason, she wears her hair unloosed in sorrow, and is thus called a comet or long-haired star, because she stretches out for such a distance, or else called xiphias because she is shaped like a sword-point. This star is a portent of sorrow.
Commentary
The Bull
(i) This was commonly said to be the bull that had carried Europa across the sea from Phoenicia to Crete. Europa was the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor or Phoenix, and Zeus fathered Minos and other children by her to found the Cretan royal line (Ap. 3.1.1–2). In Eratosthenes’ narrative, Zeus was plainly presented as having sent the bull, but in early sources he is said to have transformed himself into the bull to abduct her (e.g. Hes. fr. 140 MW), and some Latin authors revert to this tradition when recounting the astral myth (Ovid, Fasti 5.604 ff., cf. Germanicus 536 ff.). In that case, Zeus would merely have placed an image of the bull in the sky to commemorate his exploit
(ii) Eratosthenes also cited an alternative in which the constellation represents the transformed Io. This Io was a daughter of the Argive river-god Inachos, and was of genealogical importance as the ancestor of the Argive and Theban royal lines. She aroused the love of Zeus, who subsequently transformed her into a cow to conceal her from the jealous Hera (or else she was transformed by Hera herself ); she then wandered off to Egypt, where she was restored to human form and gave birth to Epaphos, her son by Zeus (Ap. 2.1.3). In that case, the figure in the sky is not a bull at all, but a cow. No one would know, however, because only the front half of the animal is represented there; in fuller narratives, it may have been explained that this was deliberately arranged by Zeus, as Artemis did for Hippe (see p. 51).
(iii) Two other alternatives are recorded elsewhere without further detail (schol. Arat. 167). One appeals to another tale from Cretan myth by suggesting that this is the bull that aroused the passion of Pasiphae. Her husband Minos had aroused the anger of Poseidon by failing to offer him in sacrifice a magnificent bull that he had sent up from the sea, and Poseidon responded by contriving that Pasiphae should mate with it and so conceive the Minotaur (Ap. 3.1.3).
(iv) Or this is the bull of Marathon, which Theseus captured while travelling to Athens to claim his throne, and offered in sacrifice to Athena; since it is identified in our source, as often, with the Cretan bull which was fetched by Heracles as his seventh labour, this story too has a Cretan connection.
The Pleiades
(i) This easily distinguishable star-cluster by the Bull was of calendrical importance from an early period, and is mentioned by Homer (Il. 18.486) and Hesiod (Works and Days 383). The etymology of its very ancient name remains a matter for speculation. In popular lore, the stars in such clusters tend to be identified either with animals, or with maidens, nymphs, and the like. The Greeks chose to view the Pleiades as maidens, and came to identify them more specifically as the seven daughters of Atlas. Hesiod already refers to them as Atalgeneis (born of Atlas) in his Works and Days (383), and they are named explicitly as the daughters of Atlas, with their usual names, in a later ‘Hesiodic’ fragment (fr. 169 MW, cf. Simonides 555 PMG). The name that was assigned to their mother, Pleione, was evidently suggested by that of the Pleiades themselves. Their nature as beings in the sky and in astral myth, in which they are seen as a group of maidens who are associated together as a unit, is inconsistent with the main function that they serve in ordinary myth, as women who become ancestors of notable heroic lines, mainly as a result of liaisons with gods, and thus stand at the head of the Atlantid genealogies (Ap. 3.10.1, etc.)
It was only relatively late that any story came to be offered to explain how these daughters of Atlas came to be placed in the sky. The main story was suggested by the position that they occupy there in relation to the constellation Orion. Since they lie quite close to him and set ahead of him, the notion could arise that he is pursuing them through the sky. When Hesiod remarks that they plunge into the sea to escape him (Works and Days 619–20), it is no more than a poetic expression (cf. Pindar, Nemean Ode 2.10–12), but that thought provided the starting-point for the development of an astral myth. They wanted to remain virgins, so we are told, and to hunt with Artemis, but they came under pursuit from Orion and appealed to Zeus to transfer them to the stars (schol. Il. 18.486). Or in the version recorded by Hyginus, it is their mother Pleione who arouses the lust of Orion, and they come under pursuit too because they are with her. It does seem odd that they should be the ones who are snatched away to become stars, but this version may have been based on an earlier tradition in which Orion was said to have pursued their mother (such a story is ascribed to Pindar, schol. Nem. 2.10–12). Although the Epitome makes no mention of such a myth, Eratosthenes would presumably have recounted it in some version, not necessarily that of Hyginus.
(ii) Hyginus also recounts a myth that they shared with the Hyades, in which the members of both groups are sisters who are transferred to the sky after the death of their brother Hyas (see below).
(iii) There is a fragment from Aeschylus (fr. 312N) in which we are told that the Pleiades were so distressed by the sufferings of their father Atlas—who had to hold up the world—that they appear in the heavens as wingless doves ( peleiades, in reference to a folk etymology for their name). This could be more a poetic fancy than a reference to an astral myth in the proper sense.
(iv) According to a fragment from Moiro (cited by Athenaeus, 491b), a woman poet of the early Hellenistic period, some doves ( peleiades!) brought ambrosia to the infant Zeus from the waters of the Ocean, while a large eagle brought nectar from a cliff, and Zeus placed both the doves and the eagle in the heavens after rising to power, i.e. as the Pleiades and Eagle, awarding the special honour to the former of announcing the coming of summer and winter.
(v) Otherwise there were myths that were offered to explain why only six of the seven Pleiades are clearly visible. Merope, who married Sisyphos, king of Ephyra/Corinth, hides herself away (Ovid, Fasti 4.175–6) or shines faintly as though blushing, because she is ashamed to have been the only sister who married a mortal. Or Electra, the mother of Dardanos and ancestor through him of the Trojan royal line (Ap. 3.12.1), was so distressed by the fall of Troy and the destruction of the Trojan family that she veiled her face with clouds, or ceased to shine, or departed elsewhere to become a comet or the little fox-star (Alcor, Ursa Majoris 80) by the large Bear.
The Hyades
(i) A connection with Dionysos was suggested by the god’s cultic title of Hues. He was a son of Zeus by the Theban princess Semele, daughter of Cadmos, and was born in peculiar circumstances, because his father stitched him into his thigh after inadvertently causing the death of his pregnant mother, and brought him to birth in due time from his own body (see Ap. 3.4.3); there were two main traditions about what happened to him next, that he was reared either by nymphs or by his mother’s sister, Ino, at Thebes, but the two versions could be combined as in Hyginus’s narrative. The Hyades are identified there as the nymphs who were initially charged with his care, but these nymphs are said to have handed him over to Ino at some point (presumably because they and the child were coming under threat from the jealous Hera; the Lycourgos story is inserted from another source). The Hyades were already personified as nymphs in the Hesiodic Astronomy (fr. 219 MW), which cited five names for them, but it was the early mythographer Pherecydes (fifth century) who developed this story in which they were identified as the Dodonian nymphs who looked after the infant Dionysos; Pherecydes took over the Hesiodic names with additions and an alteration, so that there were now seven. The number of the Hyades varies from two to seven in different sources. A reference to the Dodonian nymphs in the Vatican Fragments confirms that Eratosthenes took over the story from Pherecydes. Dodona was in Epirus in north-western Greece, far away from Ino’s home-city of Thebes.
(ii) In a joint myth with the Pleiades, they and the Hyades are sisters, and they have a brother Hyas, who was invented to provide an explanation for the name of the Hyades. The sisters became divided into two groups, and so acquired their separate names, as a result of the differing degrees of grief that they felt when Hyas met a premature death during a hunting-trip. Five died quickly of their grief, and so came to be named the Hyades after their brother, while seven died more slowly, and were called the Pleiades because there were more of them ( pleious). There is an error in the present text of Hyginus’s Astronomy, which states that there were fifteen sisters rather than twelve, and then compounds the error with an idiocy through the explanation that it offers for the name of the Pleiades, by presenting them as having formed the more sensitive majority within the second group; since the correct number is given for the sisters in Hyginus’s other reference to the myth, in Fabulae 192, also translated above, the author himself may not have been responsible for this.
(iii) These are the daughters of Cadmos (schol. Arat. 172). There were four of these in the usual tradition, Agave and Autonoe being named in addition to Semele and Ino. Although no details are offered in our source, they were evidently placed in the sky because of their connection with Dionysos, since reference is made once again to the notion that they owed their name to his cultic title of Hues.
(iv) Or these are the three daughters of Erechtheus (schol. Arat. 172). When Eumolpos and the Thracians launched an attack against Athens, Erechtheus, an early king of Athens, received an oracle saying that victory could be achieved only through the sacrifice of one of his daughters; he put the youngest to death, but the others then committed suicide because they had sworn to die a common death (Ap. 3.15.4). Our source refers to a lost play about this episode by Euripides, the Erechtheus, but that play could hardly have suggested that they became the Hyades, because we know that it indicated that they became the Hyacinthides (fr. 65 Austin), heroines who were honoured in an Athenian cult.
(v) These are the Heliades, the sisters of Phaethon (Claudian 28, 170 ff.). It was said that they so wept for their dead brother (see p. 127 for the circumstances) that they were turned into poplar trees, and their tears became the source of amber (Hyginus, Fab. 154). If the Charioteer, who is separated from the Bull and Hyades only by the Twins, was identified with Phaethon, the thought could naturally arise that these star-maidens could be identified as his sisters.