The Story of the Seven Daughters of Atlas That Turn Into Pleiades

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Among the nymphs under Diana's training were seven sisters, the daughters of Atlas. On moonlight nights these sisters used to dance in the woodland dells, and one night Orion, the hunter, saw them faintly through the trees.

They resembled a group of wonderful wild birds, and the sight influenced the hunter's heart to beat boisterous and quick. Similarly as he had pursued the deer for quite several times, he started now to pursue these nymphs.

Not that he intended to hurt them, but rather he needed to go sufficiently close to them to see them better. The nymphs were scared and fled quickly through the trees.

The speedier they ran, the quicker Orion followed them.

Finally the poor alarmed sisters turned out into an open place, where it was practically as light as day, and there Orion about to overwhelmed them.

Perceiving how close he was, the sisters called to Diana for help, and after that, when they were nearly in the hunter's grip, they all of a sudden vanished, and seven white pigeons ascended from the grass where they had been, and took off up into the night sky.

Arriving at the sky, the seven pigeons turned into seven splendid stars. There the stars shone, in a little gathering, near one another, for hundreds of years. They were known as the Pleiades.

Long after the time when the panicked nymphs were changed first into pigeons, and afterward into stars, one of the sisters left her place among the Pleiades, that she won't not see the fall of Troy.

While this city was consuming, she hurried frantically through space, her hair flying out behind her, and men called her a comet. She stayed away forever to her place among the Pleiades.

Toward the finish of his life on earth, Orion too was set among the stars. He is there, in the sky, right up 'til the present time, with his lion's skin, his club, and his jeweled belt.

A few people say that the Pleiades still fly from before him.