Alcyone (Pleiad)
One of the Pleiades sisters, daughters of Atlas from Greek mythology
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Alcyone (/ælˈsaɪ.əniː/; Ancient Greek: Ἀλκυόνη, romanized: Alkyóne), in Greek mythology, was the name of one of the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione or, more rarely, Aethra.[1]
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She attracted the attention of the god Poseidon and bore him several children, variously named in the sources: Hyrieus, Hyperenor, and Aethusa;[2] Hyperes and Anthas;[3] and Epopeus.[4][5] By a mortal, Anthedon, Alcyone became the mother of the fisherman Glaucus, who was later transformed into a marine god.[6]
Etymology
Alkyóne comes from alkyón (ἀλκυών), which refers to a sea-bird with a mournful song[7] or to a kingfisher bird in particular.[8] The meaning(s) of the words is uncertain because alkyón is considered to be of pre-Greek, non-Indo-European origin.[9] However, folk etymology related them to the háls (ἅλς, "brine, sea, salt") and kyéo (κυέω, "I conceive"). Alkyóne originally is written with a smooth breathing mark, but this false origin beginning with a rough breathing mark (transliterated as the letter H) led to the common misspellings halkyón (ἁλκυών) and Halkyóne (Ἁλκυόνη),[10] and thus the name of one of the kingfisher bird genus' in English Halcyon.
| Relation | Names | Sources | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollodorus | Ovid | Hyginus | Pausanias | Athenaeus | Clement | |||
| Parentage | Atlas and Pleione | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Atlas and Aethra | ✓ | |||||||
| Consort | Poseidon | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Anthedon | ✓ | |||||||
| Children | Aethusa | ✓ | ||||||
| Hyrieus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Hyperenor | ✓ | |||||||
| Epopeus | ✓ | |||||||
| Hyperes | ✓ | |||||||
| Anthas | ✓ | |||||||
| Glaucus | ✓ | |||||||