Hyades- Greek GroupCollective"The Rainy Ones"

Nysa and the Death of Hyas

The Hyades were daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Aethra, half-sisters to the Pleiades. Ancient sources count them as five or seven, and Hyginus names five in the Astronomica. Their brother was the hunter Hyas.

When Hermes carried the twice-born Dionysus away from Hera's jealous wrath, he brought the infant to the Hyades at Mount Nysa. Apollodorus says the nymphs raised the young god in a cave there, nourishing him until he came of age.

Hyas went hunting in Libya and was killed by a lion. Hyginus preserves this version; other sources name a boar. The sisters' grief was so consuming that they died of sorrow. Zeus placed them among the stars as the cluster in the head of Taurus.

On the Shield and in the Sky

Homer set the Hyades on the divine Shield of Achilles alongside the Pleiades and Orion. Their heliacal rising in late autumn coincided with the onset of the Mediterranean rainy season, and Greek farmers watched for the cluster to know when storms were coming. Sailors marked the same sign. The name itself was tied to the Greek word for rain.