Taurus, Europa and the Pleiades: the ancients' spring sky
Zeus as a bull abducts Europa, the Pleiades flee Orion, the Hyades weep for their brother: myths and farming calendars of the constellation Taurus.
Few constellations have been watched as closely as Taurus. Orange Aldebaran shines there, two star clusters visible to the naked eye, the Hyades and the Pleiades, gather within it, and for centuries its rising marked the work of the fields. It is no surprise that some of the most famous myths of antiquity settled around this figure, from the abduction of Europa to the weeping of the nymph sisters.
The white bull and the princess of Tyre
According to the best-known myth, Zeus fell in love with Europa, daughter of Agenor, king of the Phoenician city of Tyre. While the girl was playing with her companions on the seashore, the god appeared to her in the form of a white, gentle bull. Europa, curious, climbed onto its back; the bull then plunged into the waves and carried her all the way to Crete. From their union were born Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon.
Ancient mythographers relate that Zeus placed the bull's image among the stars in memory of the deed. In the sky the animal appears cut in half: only its head, horns and forelegs are visible, as if the rest of its body were still submerged in the sea. Other authors preferred to see in the figure Io, the lover of Zeus turned into a heifer. Much earlier, the Babylonians called this constellation “the bull of heaven”, a name recalling the creature faced by Gilgamesh.
The seven sisters and the hunter
On the back of Taurus lies the small swarm of the Pleiades. The myth calls them daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione. The hunter Orion pursued them for a long time, until Zeus turned them first into doves and then into stars; even today, in the winter sky, Orion seems to run after them without ever catching up. Of the seven sisters mainly six can be seen with the naked eye, and tradition explained the missing one in different ways.
Some said that Merope hid out of shame, being the only one to have married a mortal, Sisyphus; others that Electra had veiled her face in grief at the fall of Troy, founded by her descendants. The Hyades, the V-shaped cluster that outlines the bull's face, were instead the sisters of Hyas, killed during a hunt: their endless weeping, it was said, brought the rains.
A clock for the fields
Beyond myth, the Pleiades were a practical tool. Hesiod, in Works and Days, advises beginning the harvest at their rising and the ploughing at their setting. Their name has been linked to the Greek verb “to sail”, because the sailing season opened with their appearance. The cluster is recognised in many cultures: in Japan it is called Subaru, and many scholars identify it in the seven grouped dots of the Nebra sky disc, found in Germany.
Taurus thus combines generative strength, divine desire and the measure of agricultural time. Astrological tradition has associated the sign with fertile earth, stability and the patience of working oxen, qualities the ancients saw reflected in the regular rhythm with which its stars return each year. The Pleiades, meanwhile, keep recalling the bond between the sky and the seasons of the harvest.