Library (3.10.1-3.10.4)

Atlas and Pleione, daughter of Ocean, had seven daughters called the Pleiades, born to them at Cyllene in Arcadia, to wit: Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia.[*] Of these, Sterope was married to Oenomaus,[*] and Merope to Sisyphus. And Poseidon had intercourse with two of them, first with Celaeno, by whom he had Lycus, whom Poseidon made to dwell in the Islands of the Blest, and second with Alcyone, who bore a daughter, Aethusa, the mother of Eleuther by Apollo, and two sons Hyrieus and Hyperenor. Hyrieus had Nycteus and Lycus by a nymph Clonia; and Nycteus had Antiope by Polyxo; and Antiope had Zethus and Amphion by Zeus.[*] And Zeus consorted with the other daughters of Atlas.

Maia, the eldest, as the fruit of her intercourse with Zeus, gave birth to Hermes in a cave of Cyllene.[*] He was laid in swaddling-bands on the winnowing fan,[*] but he slipped out and made his way to Pieria and stole the kine which Apollo was herding.[*] And lest he should be detected by the tracks, he put shoes on their feet and brought them to Pylus, and hid the rest in a cave; but two he sacrificed and nailed the skins to rocks, while of the flesh he boiled and ate some,[*] and some he burned. And quickly he departed to Cyllene. And before the cave he found a tortoise browsing. He cleaned it out, strung the shell with chords made from the kine he had sacrificed, and having thus produced a lyre he invented also a plectrum.[*] But Apollo came to Pylus[*] in search of the kine, and he questioned the inhabitants. They said that they had seen a boy driving cattle, but could not say whither they had been driven, because they could find no track. Having discovered the thief by divination,[*] Apollo came to Maia at Cyllene and accused Hermes. But she showed him the child in his swaddling-bands. So Apollo brought him to Zeus, and claimed the kine; and when Zeus bade him restore them, Hermes denied that he had them, but not being believed he led Apollo to Pylus and restored the kine. Howbeit, when Apollo heard the lyre, he gave the kine in exchange for it. And while Hermes pastured them, he again made himself a shepherd's pipe and piped on it.[*] And wishing to get the pipe also, Apollo offered to give him the golden wand which he owned while he herded cattle.[*] But Hermes wished both to get the wand for the pipe and to acquire the art of divination. So he gave the pipe and learned the art of divining by pebbles.[*] And Zeus appointed him herald to himself and to the infernal gods.

Taygete had by Zeus a son Lacedaemon, after whom the country of Lacedaemon is called.[*] Lacedaemon and Sparta, daughter of Eurotas ( who was a son of Lelex,[*] a son of the soil, by a Naiad nymph Cleocharia), had a son Amyclas and a daughter Eurydice, whom Acrisius married. Amyclas and Diomede, daughter of Lapithus, had sons, Cynortes and Hyacinth.[*] They say that this Hyacinth was beloved of Apollo and killed by him involuntarily with the cast of a quoit.[*] Cynortes had a son Perieres, who married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, as Stesichorus says, and she bore Tyndareus, Icarius, Aphareus, and Leucippus.[*] Aphareus and Arene, daughter of Oebalus, had sons Lynceus and Idas and Pisus; but according to many, Idas is said to have been gotten by Poseidon. Lynceus excelled in sharpness of sight, so that he could even see things underground.[*] Leucippus had daughters, Hilaira and Phoebe: these the Dioscuri carried off and married.[*] Besides them Leucippus begat Arsinoe: with her Apollo had intercourse, and she bore Aesculapius. But some affirm that Aesculapius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly.[*] And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her, but that she, against her father's judgment, preferred and cohabited with Ischys, brother of Caeneus. Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings and made him black instead of white, as he had been before; but he killed Coronis. As she was burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the centaur,[*] by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he had received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead.[*] I found some who are reported to have been raised by him,[*] to wit, Capaneus and Lycurgus,[*] as Stesichorus says in the Eriphyle; Hippolytus,[*] as the author of the Naupactica reports; Tyndareus, as Panyasis says;[*] Hymenaeus, as the Orphics report; and Glaucus, son of Minos,[*] as Melesagoras relates.

But Zeus, fearing that men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt.[*] Angry on that account, Apollo slew the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolt for Zeus.[*] But Zeus would have hurled him to Tartarus;

however, at the intercession of Latona he ordered him to serve as a thrall to a man for a year. So he went to Admetus, son of Pheres, at Pherae, and served him as a herdsman, and caused all the cows to drop twins.[*] But some say that Aphareus and Leucippus were sons of Perieres, the son of Aeolus, and that Cynortes begat Perieres, and that Perieres begat Oebalus, and that Oebalus begat Tyndareus, Hippocoon, and Icarius by a Naiad nymph Batia.[*]