Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

The Hyades are sisters of the Pleiades in the Atlasid stemma—daughters of Atlas and Pleione (or of Atlas and Aethra), or in other lines daughters of Hyas and Boeotia, or of Oceanus. Classical lists give five or more names (e.g. Phaesyle, Coronis, Cleeia, Phaeo, Eudora in Hesiodic-astral tradition; Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedile, Coronis, Polyxo, Phyto, Thyone in others). Their myth has two main strands. In the rain-star aetiology, they weep for their brother Hyas, killed by a lion, boar, or serpent while hunting; Zeus sets them as the Hyades, whose rising and setting bring storm and rain (their name popularly linked to “to rain”). In the Dionysiac strand (Apollodorus and related), Zeus entrusts the infant Dionysus to Ino and then to nymphs of Nysa—often identified with the Hyades—who rear him; as reward they are placed among the stars. Both strands can coexist in handbook form: nurses of the wine-god and sisters mourning Hyas become the same rainy cluster near Taurus’s face. Catalogue the Hyades as Atlasid (or kindred) sisters of the Pleiades—mourners of Hyas and/or nurses of Dionysus—catasterized as the rainy stars of the farmer’s and sailor’s year.