Hyades

• the Hyades, a group of seven stars in the head of Taurus (called in pure Lat. suculae; v. 3. sucula), Cic. N. D. 2, 43, 111; Plin. 18, 26, 66, § 247; 37, 7, 28, § 100; cf. id. 2, 39, 39, § 106. They were fabled as daughters of Atlas and sisters of Hyas and of the Pleiades, Ov. F. 5, 165 sq.; id. M. 3, 595; 13, 293; Verg. A. 3, 516; Hor. C. 1, 3, 14.— In sing.: Hyas, ădis, the Hyad, collect., Stat. S. 1, 6, 22.

(Ὑάδες), that is, the rainy, the name of a class of nymphs, whose number, names, and descent, are described in various ways by the ancients. Their parents were Atlas and Aethra ( Ov. Fast. 5.169, &c.), Atlas and Pleione (Hyg. Fab. 192), or Hyas and Boeotia (Hygin. Poet. Astr. 2.21 ); and others call their father Oceanus, Melisseus, Cadmilus, or Erechtheus. (Hyg. Fab. 182; Theon ad Arat. Phaen. 171; Serv. ad Aen. 1.748.) Thales mentioned two, and Euripides three Hyades (Theon, l.c.), and Eustathius (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1156) gives the names of three, viz. Ambrosia, Eudora, and Aesyle. Hyginus (Hyg. Fab. 182), on the other hand, mentions Idothea, Althaea, and Adraste; and Diodorus (5.52) has Phili.a, Coronis, and Cleis. Other poets again knew four, and Hesiod (apud Theon. l.c.) five, viz. Phaesyle, Coronis, Cleeia, Phaeote, and Eudora. (Comp. the five different names in Serv. ad Virg. Georg. 1.138; Hyg. Fab. 182, 192.) But the common number of the Hyades is seven, as they appear in the constellation which bears their name, viz., Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedile, Coronis, Polyxo, Phyto, and Thyene, or Dione. (Hygin. Poet. Astr. 2.21 ; Hesych. s. v.) Pherecydes, the logographer, who mentioned only six, called them the Dodonaean nymphs, and the nurses appointed by Zeus to bring up Dionysus. In this capacity they are also called the Nysaean nymphs. (Apollod. 3.4.3; Ov. Fast. 5.167, Met. iii 314; Serv. ad Aen. 1.748; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1155.) When Lycurgus threatened the safety of Dionysus and his companions, the Hyades, with the exception of Ambrosia, fled with the infant god to Thetis or to Thebes, where they entrusted him to Ino (or Juno), and Zeus showed them his gratitude for having saved his son, by placing them among the stars. (Hygin. Poet. Asir. 2.21.) Previous to their being thus honoured, they had been old, but been made young again by Medeia, at the request of Dionysus. (Hyg. Fab. 182; Ov. Met. 7.295.) As nymphs of Dodona, they were said, in some traditions, to have brought up Zeus. (Schol. ad Hom. Il. 18.486.) The story which made them the daughters of Atlas relates that their number was twelve or fifteen. and that at first five of them were placed among the stars as Hyades, and the seven (or ten) others afterwards under the name of Pleiades, to reward them for the sisterly love they had evinced after the death of their brother Hyas, who had been killed in Libya by a wild beast. (Hyg. Fab. 192; Ov. Fast. 5.181 ; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1155.) Their name, Hyades, is derived by the ancients from their father, Hyas, or from Hyes, a mystic surname of Dionysus; and according to others, from their position in the heavens, where they formed a figure resembling the Greek letter Υ. The Romans, who derived it from ὗς, a pig, translated the name by Suculae (Cic. de Nat. Deor. 2.43.); but the most natural derivation is from ϝ̔́ειν, to rain, as the constellation of the Hyades, when rising amultaneously with the sun, announced rainy and tormy weather. (Cic. lc.; Ov. Fast. 5.165; Hor. Carm. 1.3.14; Verg. A. 3.516; Gell. xii?.) [L.S]

(Ὑάδες). According to some, the daughters of Atlas and sisters of the Pleiades. The best accounts, however, make them to have been the nymphs of Dodona, to whom Zeus confided the nurture of Bacchus. Pherecydes gives their names as Ambrosia, Coronis, Eudora, Dioné, Aesula, and Polyxo. Hesiod, on the other hand, calls them Phaesula, Coronis, Cleea, Phaeo, and Eudora. The names generally given to the seven stars are Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedilé, Coronis, Polyxo, Phyto, and Dioné or Thyené. The Hyades went about with their divine charge, communicating his discovery to mankind, until, being chased with him into the sea by Lycurgus, Zeus, in compassion, raised them to the skies and transformed them into stars. According to the more common legend, however, the Hyades, having lost their brother Hyas, who was killed by a bear or lion, or, as Timaeus says, by an asp, were so disconsolate at his death that they pined away and died; and after death they were changed into stars (Hyg. Fab. 192). The stars called Hyades (Ὑάδες) derived their name from ὕειν, “to make wet,” “to rain,” because their setting, at both the evening and morning twilight, was for the Greeks and Romans a sure presage of wet and stormy weather, these two periods falling respectively in the latter half of April and November. Horace, with a double allusion to both fable and physical phenomena, calls the stars in question tristes Hyadas (Carm. i. 3, 14). The Roman writers sometimes call these stars by the name of Suculae, “little pigs,” for which epithet Pliny assigns a singular derivation. According to this writer, the Roman farmers mistook the etymology of the Greek name Hyades, and deduced it, not from ὕειν, “to rain,” but from ὗς, “a sow” (Pliny , Pliny H. N. xviii. 26). It is more probable, however, that Suculae was the oldest Roman name, given before the Greek appellation was known, and to be compared with our popular astronomical terms such as “the Dipper,” “Charles's Wain,” etc. Isidorus derives the term Suculae from succus, in the sense of “moisture” or “wet” (a succo et pluviis, Isidor. Orig. iii. 70), an etymology which has found its way into many later works. Some grammarians, again, sought to derive the name Hyades from the Greek Υ (upsilon), in consequence of the resemblance which the cluster of stars bears to that letter.

The Hyades, in the celestial sphere, are at the head of the Bull (ἐπὶ τοῦ βουκράνου).

• the nymphs of Nysa changed into the: Apollod. 3.4.3