In Classical Greek mythology, Taygete was a nymph, one of the Pleiades according to the Bibliotheca (3.10.1) and a companion of Artemis, in the goddess's archaic role as potnia theron, "Mistress of the animals," a role with its likely roots in prehistory. Her parents were Atlas and Pleione.

Mount Taygetos in Laconia, dedicated to the goddess, was her haunt, and the Taygetus mountain on the Peloponnese was named after her.

In a rare variant of the myth, Taygete was instead called the daughter of Agenor rather than of Atlas.

As he mastered each of the local nymphs one by one, Olympian Zeus pursued Taygete, who invoked her protectress Artemis. The goddess turned Taygete into a doe with golden horns. Any distinction between the nymph in her human form and in her doe form is blurred: the nymph who hunted the doe in the company of Artemis is the doe herself.

As Pindar conceived the myth-element in his third Olympian Ode, "the doe with the golden horns, which once Taygete had inscribed as a sacred dedication to Artemis Orthosia" ("right-minded" Artemis) was the very Ceryneian Hind that Heracles later pursued. For the poet, the transformation was incomplete, and the doe-form had become an offering. Pindar hints that the mythic doe, even when slain and offered to Artemis, also continues to exist, to be hunted once again (although not killed) by Heracles at a later time.

Karl Kerenyi points out, in The Heroes of the Greeks, that "It is not easy to differentiate between the divine beast, the heroine and the goddess."

According to Pausanias (3.1.2 and elsewhere), Taygete conceived Lacedaemon, the mythical founder of Sparta, through Zeus, as well as Eurotas. Pausanias noted, at Amyclae, that the rape of Taygete was represented on the throne there.

According to Pseudo-Plutarch, Taygete was the wife of Lacedaemon, sometimes referred to as Sparta, whose name was given to the city of Sparta. Their son was named Himerus.