0906Pleiades_Rogers

0906Pleiades_Rogers

Art Institute of Chicago
Apollodorus Bibl. 3.10.1-3

Randolph Rogers, “The Lost Pleiad” (Merope), after 1874, Art Institute of Chicago

Reid says that this is at Brooklyn Museum. Are there two versions?

Mythological: The daughters of Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione were Maia, Taygete, Electra, Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Merope. Collectively they are known as the Pleiades. Orion, the great hunter, pursued them with malicious intent; to save them and to punish Orion, the whole group was katasterized. Merope fell in love with a mortal and, to conceal her shame, she went missing. Others say that Electra, the mother of Dardanus (a great father of the Trojans) went missing in grief over Troy’s sack.

If you look at the Pleiades constellation with the naked eye, you might just be able to count six discreet stars out in front of Orion. The seventh is hard to see. (In fact, you can see the seventh better if you don’t look directly at them!) That seventh sister is the “lost” Pleiad. Flamsteed's Atlas Coelestis shows the relationship between Orion and the Pleiades.

Photo by Claire Monson

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University and other contexts.
This resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.