Merope

Mythogy Meme

6 Muses or Nymphs

5/6

In Greek mythology, Merope is one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlasand Pleione. 

Orion pursued the Pleiades named Maia, Electra, Taygete, Celaeno, Alcyone,Sterope, and Merope after he fell in love with their beauty and grace. Artemis asked Zeus to protect the Pleiades and in turn, Zeus turned them into stars. Artemis was angry because she no longer could see her companions and had her brother, Apollo, send a giant scorpion to chase and kill Orion. Zeus then turned Orion into a constellation to further pursue the Pleiades in the skies.A dark interstellar cloud ravaged by the passage of Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster.

In another legend, the sisters were transformed by Zeus into stars because Orion fell in love with them and relentlessly pursued their affection for 12 years. At first they were turned into doves, but later, along with Orion, into stars so that forever the hunter Orion would pursue them.

In either legend the Pleiades were turned into stars and now, along with their half sisters, the Hyades (who died weeping for their dead brother Hyas), are part of the star constellation Taurus.

Merope is the faintest of the stars because she was the only of the Pleiades to have married a mortal. Her sisters had relations with gods and bore them sons, but Merope married Sisyphus and lived on the island Chios. Merope gave birth to Glaukos, Ornytion,Almus, Thersander and Sinon. The star Merope is often called the “lost Pleiad” because she was at first not seen by astronomers or charted like her sisters. One myth says that she hid her face in shame because she had an affair with a mortal man, another says she went toHades with her husband, Sisyphus.

(Jennifer Lawrence as Merope)