Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pleione.
The gallery
The Pleiades
Elihu Vedder, 1885
Vedder's Metropolitan Museum canvas dances the seven daughters of Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione — Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. The mother herself stays off-stage; her name is the constellation's root and the painting's genealogical key.
In play
Pleiades (star cluster)
Messier 45 still carries Pleione's name in the cluster and in the star Pleione (28 Tauri) — the Oceanid mother fixed among her daughters in the winter sky.
Pleione (mythology)
Oceanid wife of Atlas, mother of the Pleiades (and in some accounts the Hyades) — protectress of flocks and sailing whose name means increase.
Pleiades (Greek mythology)
The seven sisters born to Pleione and Atlas on Cyllene — the genealogical fact every ancient astronomer and poet repeats when the cluster rises.